The Madonna on the Moon (16 page)

That name broke my rigid spell. Whatever else had happened in this room, my one thought was: I have to have that note.

“We’ve got to report this.” Hermann Schuster turned to go. Kallay and Koch followed, walking backward and still staring, fascinated by the gruesome scene. Petre, who had never
paid me much attention before, took my hand. Like a longtime intimate. “Come on, Pavel. It’s not good to stay here.”

My eyes were glued to the piece of paper. I wanted to just pick up the note but I couldn’t. No, I had to. Right now. Once the police started to examine everything it would be too late.
Something crashed in the stairwell. Hermann Schuster’s knees had given way, and he’d fallen. “Petre! Come quick and help!” Petre Petrov jumped for the stairs. A few steps,
and I shoved the note into my pocket.

The men decided at first to just announce to the village of Baia Luna that the priest had died. This was absolutely not the time to make the circumstances of his death public, especially because
it would frighten the women and children. That afternoon they would call an assembly, but first they had to do what was always done whenever a villager passed away. Karl Koch hunted up Julius Knaup
and instructed the sacristan to toll the mourning bell. Within two minutes the village square was filled with people shaking the snow out of their hair and wondering which of the old folks the bell
was for. When the name Johannes Baptiste made the rounds, everyone gasped. The women broke down in tears. The men bowed their heads or stared helplessly into the silent descent of the snowflakes
and didn’t know what to do with their hands. Then someone finally extended his hand to a neighbor who passed the handshake on until all the men and women were walking around in silence,
consoling one another. Even the Brancusis, for whom hostility to the church and clergy was a revolutionary article of faith, mixed in with the mourners, genuinely moved by the pain at the loss and
realizing that Johannes had always been their opponent but never their enemy.

Karl Koch made the mistake of warning everyone not to enter the rectory under any circumstances until the police in Apoldasch had been notified. After this warning a tense silence prevailed
until people realized what the Saxon was saying. When Avram Scherban called out, “What do we need the police for? Our good shepherd was almost ninety and now he’s dead,” shock and
fury gripped the mourners. People at the edge of the crowd started saying that the pastor had not died a natural death. Everyone began talking at once; some even shouted angrily that Karl Koch
should tell them what was going on. At last Petre Petrov couldn’t control his emotions any longer and shouted, “They slit his throat. They killed him. Him and Fernanda. They murdered
him, silenced him—silenced him for good!”

Petre stumbled over to his mother and broke down. While Aldene Petrov bent over her son, everyone else, men and women, rushed to the rectory. Only the Gypsies stood off to one side of the
square, shivering in their thin clothes and the silent fear that, from now on, Baia Luna would not be a good place for them.

Schuster, Kallay, and a few other strong men tried to keep the advancing crowd from entering the rectory. They didn’t succeed.

The first who rushed the building pushed their way forward to the scene of the crime, where their yelling ceased. Silence filled the room, spread to those pushing in from behind, in the halls,
on the stairs, on the village square. Slowly, gradually it became quiet. You could hear the snow falling.

“He’s an angel now,” a voice suddenly called. Everyone looked at Dimitru. “And he should look like an angel. And so should his Fernanda.” Everybody stepped aside to
make way for the Gypsy. Dimitru was bringing a stack of snow-white bedsheets.

At the stroke of four Julius Knaup and Marku Konstantin started pulling the bell ropes and hung on them into the night, ringing themselves to exhaustion. Six men carried Fernanda Klein on their
shoulders, six Johannes Baptiste, three on the left and three on the right, and all of Baia Luna followed. With infinite slowness the procession moved through the village, through the first
snowfall. Flakes fell on white linen, on two dead faces carried on strong shoulders that were still too weak, white flakes on dark coats and on blond, brown, and black heads that didn’t shake
them off. Every man, woman, and child held a candle in their left hand and cupped their right around the flame to protect it from the wind.

We reached the church, and the pallbearers laid the bodies on the altar, where they slept in white like an elderly couple. There was singing but no loud prayers, no murmured rosaries. Only the
tolling of the bells and sometimes a cough from the chilly pews. The church was bright with all the candles held in hands onto which hot wax dripped, so bright that no one noticed the Eternal Flame
was no longer burning.

I sat up front on the right side of the nave beside Grandfather Ilja and Dimitru. The women sat on the left. Around midnight the children were asleep in their mothers’ arms, the candles
had burned down, and the bells had fallen silent.

When Hermann Schuster and Istvan Kallay were just reaching the police station in Kronauburg with their team of horses, the first inhabitants of Baia Luna were returning to their homes, filled
with sorrow and wondering fearfully who would do such a thing. Whatever evil lurked behind the murder of two human beings, it had done more than just kill them. That most silent day Baia Luna had
ever experienced ushered fear into the village. I wasn’t sure, but on my way home I thought I had seen Fritz Hofmann and his mother Birta among all the shadowy faces streaming out of the
church.

T
he note: since I had snatched the piece of paper from the devastation in the study and under the nose of the murdered priest, it had been knocking
around in my head, but I hadn’t been able to think clearly about it. The image of the naked Baptiste on his chair raged in my brain, loomed larger, more powerful, threatened to burst my
skull, and left no room for anything else. I sat on my bed. The note was on my nightstand in the lamplight: “6.11. A. Barbu, library key. Return!!!”

That’s all that was on the scrap of paper, hastily scribbled in pencil. What was clear was that only a man had such angular, spiky handwriting. The housekeeper Fernanda hadn’t
written it, Johannes Baptiste had, and obviously on November 6. Not until I reviewed the events of that day did I understand how the note came to be written.

November 6 was the previous Wednesday. I’d gotten up earlier than usual, caught Grandfather holding a tin funnel to his ear, and given him the Cubans for his birthday. Then I went to
school, listless as ever. “Send this man straight to hell! Destroy him!” Angela Barbulescu had whispered in my ear. At noon I’d seen the teacher for the last time, when she
shuffled to the blackboard, took the rag and wiped out Fritz’s sentence about his “thing.” In the afternoon Dimitru’s cousin Salman from Kronauburg had driven the television
to Baia Luna in his cart, picked up some ugly guy on the way, and given him a ride to the village. Probably Barbu had known the stranger and had a drink with him in her parlor, she from the bottle
as always, he from a glass. After that she’d disappeared. But the note revealed that before she did, Angela Barbulescu had paid a visit to the pastor on that Wednesday afternoon, before three
o’clock. Because at three, Dimitru was already lugging the television into the tavern. While the men were admiring the appliance I’d run off to tell Fritz Hofmann about my
grandfather’s birthday present. Fritz had come right back with me. And right after that, Johannes Baptiste arrived at the tavern where he remained until late that evening. Thus there was no
time later than the early afternoon, after school, when Barbu could have been at the priest’s.

“Library key.” The pastor had given Barbu the key to the library. Normally Johannes Baptiste had nothing to do with the rectory library. Whoever wanted to borrow a book would go to
Dimitru. But at that particular time he wasn’t in the library because he was busy with the television. Pater Johannes—everybody knew his memory was increasingly letting him
down—had given the key to “A. Barbu” and made a note to himself: “Return!!!” The note was supposed to remind him not to forget to retrieve the key in case the teacher
(with her reputation as a slattern) didn’t return it herself. Had Barbu returned the key? The question seemed to me of secondary importance. Much more important was, What was my teacher
looking for in the library? And on the afternoon of November 6, of all days! Couldn’t she have waited until the next day, when Dimitru would be lying on his red chaise longue again, whiling
away the hours with his studies? Which book was so important to Barbu that she had to bother the old pastor that very afternoon for the key? And where was that book now? If a book was missing from
the library, there was only one person who would know: Dimitru.

But was it right to visit him alone? I needed an ally, a friend. Fritz was dead to me. Hermann, the son and namesake of the Saxon Schuster, was a decent guy but much too clueless for me to
explain the whole story to him, beginning with Barbu’s sunflower dress and ending with what happened to the Eternal Flame. What about Petre Petrov? Petre had taken me by the hand in the
murder room, and for a moment we had been partners in pain. But I hardly knew Petre. He was two years older and beginning to enter into the world of the men. He usually didn’t have much to do
with younger boys like me. I only knew one person I would want to tell everything to: Buba, except I didn’t see her in my mind’s eye, couldn’t conjure up her image. I knew about
her eyes, her open laugh, her cheeky remarks, soft hands, and the smell of earth and smoke in her hair. But I couldn’t see or hear or taste her. And I wouldn’t see her or taste her as
long as the picture in my head and heart, the image of the naked Pater Johannes tied up on his chair, left no room for anything else.

Something evil had come over Baia Luna. It had stolen Fernanda and our Good Shepherd from the village and introduced fear. A knife through the throat had not just silenced the pastor but also
made him deaf for all time. Pater Johannes would never listen to anyone again. That was what caused my despair.
Out of the house of God! Go to hell.
Those were the last words I had heard
from the priest’s lips. Johannes Baptiste had died in the mistaken belief that I, Pavel Botev, had extinguished the Eternal Flame. And the priest would never ever hear, No, no, no, Pater
Johannes. It wasn’t what you think. I bit my pillow in the night to keep from crying out in grief.

On Sunday morning Hermann Schuster, Istvan Kallay, and their haggard horse returned from Kronauburg. They had driven all night. “The police are on their way to investigate the
murder,” said Istvan while Schuster unhitched the nag.

They arrived at midday. Two jeeps and a black hearse. In one jeep sat Plutonier Cartarescu and the fat policeman, in the other six uniformed officers.

“What a fucking pain,” complained the fat cop with the bird’s nest of hair. Despite the cold he was dabbing sweat from his brow. He clamped his cap under his arm and introduced
himself with rank and name: “District Commissioner Captain Patrascu. Never had been to Baia Luna in my whole life, and now I’m here again, twice in three days! Things are really
poppin’ up here. First a teacher disappears and now this.” He lit up a Carpati. “Where’s the crime scene?”

Kristan Desliu pointed toward the rectory. “But the deceased are in the church.”

“What? The bodies are in the church! Who took them there?” Plutonier Cartarescu was livid.

“We did.”

“Are you crazy? That’s a serious offense: interference in police work! Crime scenes are not to be touched under any circumstances. How are we supposed to investigate now that
you’ve tampered with the evidence? Who was responsible for this unauthorized transport?”

“Calm down, calm down,” said Patrascu. “Let’s take a look first.”

While some of the policemen waited on the village square, the commissioner, Cartarescu, and two officers walked to the rectory. Since the door had fallen shut, they called for Simenov the
blacksmith who broke it open with a powerful jerk of his crowbar. An hour later the officers returned from their inspection.

“Complicated, complicated,” Patrascu said and took a drag on his cigarette. “Thousands of footprints—in front of the house, on the stairs, everywhere you look. Nothing to
be done about it. Kind of a mess up there. What were we going to find? We don’t even know what to look for. You can see the perpetrators were looking for something, too. But the way they
threw stuff around they probably didn’t find anything useful either.”

“What do you mean the perpetrators didn’t find anything?” Cartarescu didn’t understand. “How can you tell?”

“Experience. Burglars only throw things around when no one’s home. But if someone’s there, there’s a different procedure. Believe me, if I hold a straight razor to your
throat you’re gonna tell me where everything is: money, jewelry, booze, important papers, whatever. You’re gonna spill the beans in a flash, voluntarily—if you can call it
voluntary under the circumstances. Unless there isn’t anything hidden. In which case the boys will turn everything upside down until they realize there’s nothing to be found. Then if
they’re smart crooks they just beat it. But I’ll tell you what: if they’re pissed off, they’ll slice you open. That’s what we got here.”

Cartarescu gave a surly shrug and urged his superior to inspect the victims themselves.

“You fellows do it,” said Patrascu. “I’m retiring on the fifteenth, so why should I inflict that gruesome stuff on myself? After forty-five years on the job, I’ve
seen enough.”

When Plutonier Cartarescu and two sergeants finally returned from examining the corpses in the church, the other policemen were still questioning men and women from the village. Suspicious
persons? Strangers in the village? Personal enemies of the pastor in his private life? What about clerical opponents? Unusual occurrences? A lot of money in the rectory? Religious art? Gold
objects? They asked about the relationship between Fernanda and the priest, wanted to know everything about his habits, penchants, dislikes. Until finally Karl Koch had had enough.