The Madonna on the Moon (46 page)

After midnight we gathered up the lab equipment and snuck across the village square to the churchyard. We stood before the grave that had been dug years ago for the body of our priest Johannes
Baptiste. In a short while, the enlarger, trays for the developer and fixer, and bottles of chemicals, as well as the camera, telescope, and the key to the laundry room, had disappeared into the
hole, which was now filled in and topped with rotted wreaths, bouquets of plastic flowers, and tattered silk bows. I hung on to a cardboard box with photos of stags in rut. It was part of our plan.
Then we went to bed. Let Lupu Raducanu come if he was going to.

And he did, next morning at eight. And as expected, he wasn’t alone.

A dozen militiamen jumped out of three olive-green SUVs and formed into groups of three.

“Search all the empty houses first!” ordered Captain Cartarescu.

The men fanned out. Then Cartarescu and Major Raducanu headed straight for our concession. That was the cue for Kathalina’s first scene.

She opened the door and came out to meet them.

“About time you show your faces around here again. Are you going to return our things or pay us compensation?”

Raducanu and Cartarescu slowed their steps. Now Grandfather, Dimitru, and I came out of the shop as well. “I don’t want compensation, I want my lab and my camera back!” I
shouted at my mother.

“And I want my telescope! Are you going to give it back to me or not?” Granddad was really into his part. He seemed genuinely outraged.

“You crooks!” raged Dimitru. “First you confiscate all our beautiful equipment and then you’re not even going to compensate us for it. That’s what we call robbery,
you outlaws!”

Raducanu lost his temper. “Shut up!” he screamed, several times. “Shut up!” His voice cracked. His downy cheeks were flushed.

Dimitru was uncowed. “You steal like magpies and then blame it all on the Gypsies.” He clenched his fists and spat on the ground.

Captain Cartarescu struggled to get hold of himself and finally drew his pistol.

“Everybody into the store! Into the store for questioning!”

“But you already questioned us two weeks ago! Do we have to go through this again? It’s getting to be a drag.” I could feel that our play was working according to plan.

Major Raducanu asked for an ashtray and lit up a Kent. He inhaled deeply, trying hard to keep his cool. “You purchased a darkroom kit and optical instruments in a shop in Kronauburg. Where
are they?”

“We didn’t purchase them, we traded for them,” shouted Ilja. “Traded a good TV, a German Loewe Optalux. You got any idea what something like that is worth?”

“Where the hell is that darkroom, goddamnit?” Raducanu was steaming.

“Are you serious?” I replied calmly. “Your colleagues were here two weeks ago and confiscated everything. They promised to bring it back if it was all legit. We’ve been
waiting ever since.”

“What? What colleagues?” Cartarescu spluttered.

“Your left hand doesn’t know what your right hand is doing, apparently,” I said. “Two majors from the Security Service.”

“And Heinrich Hofmann,” Ilja added, “but he didn’t have anything to do with the confiscation.”

Totally perplexed, Lupu Raducanu massaged his temples. He obviously had no idea where to begin asking all the questions he had. “So tell me once more: two majors were here from the
Security Service? That’s impossible because I would have known about it.”

I assumed an expression of bewildered innocence. “But they were here and Heinrich Hofmann was with them.”

“He must have had something to take care of in his old house since—”

Raducanu cut Grandfather off. “We’ll get to Hofmann later. These two men: when were they here and what did they want, exactly?”

“That’s just what we’d like to know,” I replied. “At first we had no idea they were from the Securitate. We thought they were here to collectivize us, that it had
something to do with expropriation.”

“They sat right here!” Ilja pointed to one of the tables in the taproom. “My daughter-in-law even served them coffee.”

“Couldn’t be bothered to thank me,” hissed Kathalina.

I continued, “They asked me if I knew Heinrich Hofmann’s son Fritz. What a stupid question! I spent eight years at the desk next to his at school! Did I still have contact with him?
How would I? He’s been living in Germany for years and I’m sure he thanks his lucky stars for every day he doesn’t have to spend in this boring Podunk. Suddenly those guys wanted
to know if I was also a photography enthusiast. Yes, of course, ever since Herr Hofmann’s assistant showed me how a darkroom worked. I even took the two security people into our storeroom to
show them all the equipment I’m so proud of, the things we traded the TV for in Gheorghe Gherghel’s shop. And you know what one of them told me?”

“I’m all ears,” said Raducanu.

“‘You can be arrested for having these things in your possession!’ These guys are crazy, I thought. I hadn’t even unpacked all the stuff yet. But they explained that it
had been obtained illegally.”

“But it was all
legalamente.
Or do the rules of Socialism forbid trades?” Raducanu ignored Dimitru’s remark and turned to Kathalina.

“These two men supposedly from a state agency—what did they look like?”

“My God, what did they look like? Let’s see—like men from the city. One was wearing a nice sport coat, salt and pepper, very good material. The bigger of the two had on a brown
leather coat, even though it was very warm. He was a least a head taller than his partner with the glasses. If you ask me, the man in glasses looked educated, somehow. Not like those ruffians from
the state militia.”

“The one with glasses looked like a politician,” I interjected, “or maybe a doctor.”

“A doctor with glasses?” Raducanu pricked up his ears, took out a pad of paper, and made some notes. On his right ring finger was a gold wedding ring.

“Did the men tell you their names?”

“No, but the tall one was very striking,” continued Kathalina. “With a mustache. Early forties, I’d say.”

“And he had a wart on his cheek,” I added. “On the right side . . . no, the left . . . to my left, so it was on his right cheek.”

“A big one,” said Dimitru.

Kathalina shook her head. “That wasn’t a wart, it was a birthmark. But it was very noticeable.”

The major continued to take notes. He seemed to be calming down.

“What was Hofmann the photographer doing here?” Raducanu addressed the question directly to Grandfather.

“I don’t know. He hasn’t been in the village in years, not since he moved to Kronauburg. They say he can’t get his house here sold. Who’s going to move to Baia Luna
in times like these? Anyway, while they were questioning us, he went to his old house. Maybe he left something there by accident when he moved away. All I know is that he roared away with the other
two in one of those green jeeps. And they took my telescope and my grandson’s photo equipment with them.”

Raducanu gave me a sharp look. “Why do you need a darkroom?”

“Hang on!” I ran upstairs and returned with the box of photographs. I spread the rutting stags out on the table. “Impressive, aren’t they? When I saw these pictures at
Mr. Gherghel’s it struck me like a bolt of lightning: that’s what I want to do, too! Hunting with a camera. That would be fun. There’s nothing going on here in Baia Luna. And
besides, the stags in our mountains are even more impressive than these in the photos. I should be able to make some money with pictures like these or better.”

Raducanu thought it over. “What about the telescope?”

It was the question Kathalina had been waiting for, and she jumped right in. “Idiots! They went and traded my beautiful TV for that telescope, these two loonies right here!” She was
pointing at Dimitru and Grandfather. “I told you that thing would cause us trouble, didn’t I? But nobody listens to me.”

Dimitru played the wounded party. “You don’t know the first thing about scientific precision or about
morbus lunaticus.
”

“Feel free to call your disease by its proper name: lunacy—moon sickness. My father-in-law’s moon sick and epileptic,” Mother stormed on, “and this Gypsy persuaded
him to get the telescope—to observe the moon.”

Ilja went to the cash register where all our important family documents were kept and handed Cartarescu the medical certificate without uttering a word.

“She’s right,” the captain conceded. “The Kronauburg hospital diagnosed epilepsy.”

Raducanu didn’t even glance at the paper. He demanded another glass of water, opened a pill bottle, and swallowed a handful of headache tablets.

“That’s what I said,” repeated Dimitru. “My friend Ilja suffers from
lunaticus morbus.
And so it’s logical for him to observe the moon minutely through a
telescope. Determine the causes! That’s what he’s doing. But it looks like there are certain people in this country who have a powerful interest in preventing our research. Pinched our
telescope without further ado in the name of state security. Are we going to get compensated for it or not?”

Raducanu grabbed the water glass and hurled it at the Gypsy. It missed Dimitru’s head and shattered against the wall. The security agent jumped up screaming “Shit, shit, shit!”
and stormed out of the shop.

Vera Raducanu was waiting patiently among the curiosity seekers gathered at a respectful distance around the jeeps on the village square. She hurried toward her son, bemoaning his neglect and
ingratitude.

He pushed his mother roughly aside. “This is where you belong!” he said.

One by one, the search parties trickled in with nothing unusual to report. Only the head of the commando that had searched the rectory spoke of a strange room in the cellar with mattresses,
candles, and a powerful odor of perfume. It had to be a secret love nest. They had asked around and determined that only the sexton Julius Knaup possessed a key to the cellar. When the militiaman
asked if Major Raducanu wanted to inspect the room and interrogate the sexton, Lupu Raducanu’s response was to get into a car, slam the door, and roar off toward town.

Captain Cartarescu put his hand to his cap in salute and apologized for the inconvenience. He mumbled something about a misunderstanding and assured us that the Botev family wouldn’t be
bothered again in the future.

By the time the vehicles of the militia were crossing the Tirnava, Erika Schuster and a few other women were already bustling into the rectory and down to the cellar. “That’s how it
smelled in Barbu’s wardrobe, too,” Erika declared. And everybody knew that the only person who used Rêves de la Nuit nowadays was Vera Raducanu.

While the sexton’s hidden love nest was restocking the village with rumors, sneers, and derision, Dimitru and I were dancing for joy in the taproom. I uncorked a bottle on the house while
Grandfather gasped for breath on the bench next to the stove, he was laughing so hard. And then Kathalina had to let off some steam.

“Never, never again,” she screamed, “never again will I be pulled into one of your schemes. I thought my heart was going to stop. I almost died of fear.” She was
trembling all over and wept bitterly.

Mother didn’t calm down until that evening, when she wrung the promise from Dimitru, her father-in-law, and me that we would act reasonably from now on and for all eternity. Ilja and
Dimitru had to swear their oath with hand on heart in the name of the Holy Trinity. Kathalina forbade them even to mention the name of the Mother of God.

Chapter Twelve

“They’ve forgotten us,” said Hermann Schuster, “plain and simple forgotten us.” Like the Saxon, his sons Andreas and Hermann Junior, as well as
Hans Schneider, the Hungarian Istvan Kallay, and the two Petrovs, were all uncertain whether Schuster’s assessment of the situation was good news or bad. I, too, had at first paid little
attention to the announcement that issued from our taproom radio on a spring evening in the year ’62, but then we all pricked up our ears.

The National Congress was no longer predicting the triumphant victory of Socialism in the future but instead proclaiming its arrival in the present. By official decree, the utopian ideal had
mutated into a fait accompli.

“Ten thousand farmers streamed into the capital today to cheer the Central Committee and express their gratitude to the party for its extraordinary achievements. Amid euphoric ovations,
President Gheorghiu-Dej announced the successful completion of the collectivization of Transmontanian agriculture. All private agricultural enterprises the length and breadth of the country have
been transformed into productive state cooperatives. Sources close to the State Council report that on the occasion of the celebrations, forty thousand former counterrevolutionaries have been
pardoned and released from prison, thereby gaining the chance to fulfill their patriotic duty to help build the New Nation.”

“Socialism’s been achieved? I’d like to know where,” Trojan Petrov grumbled. “We’ve been waiting for those fucking expropriators for years. No sign of them.
They really have forgotten us. The world must end for the Communists just this side of Apoldasch.”