The Days of the King (19 page)

On the morning when Siegfried squeezed his new psalm in among his older texts, Joseph and Elena Strauss set out early toward Cotroceni, after leaving the boy at the baker's house. Their hired carriage proceeded with difficulty, because the road, as far as the eye could see in both directions, was crowded with other somber conveyances, moving in single file. The horses advanced at a patient walk, occasionally stopping and then going on, and they were constantly being overtaken by people dressed and shod in every possible manner, all of them heading to the monastery church of the royal residence. Over the bridge, on the banks of the Dîmbovitza, where the vehicles had slowed to a snail's pace, Joseph paid the coachman and they decided to alight. They held each other by the hand, so as not to lose one another in the throng. They were silent, and silent they remained as they climbed the gentle slope, careful at first as to where they trod, but then no longer mindful of their boots and clothes. They walked slowly, borne along by the stream of people, and so it took them more than an hour to cover the short distance. Above, in the garden of the Princess Elena Orphanage, thousands of souls had gathered on one side of the church, at a distance, where they hoped to hear snatches of the service carried on the wind. The little Princess Maria, who had called herself Itty, had fallen ill on Easter Sunday, in that very place, playing with the orphans, running and laughing. The scarlet fever had consumed her and taken her away to the angels. Her laughter was never more to peal in the United Principalities or anywhere on this earth. Her sufferings had dissolved in a place of greenness and tranquility. Her face was no longer rosy, but thereafter, at least in the month of May, the color of the peonies would recall her cheeks. Now the human languages, as many as she had learned, crumbled to dust in Paradise, where the children learn a single language, that of the Heavens. By noon, with his shoulder pressed to the shoulder of his wife, lost in the gray multitude, Joseph did not feel the water in his boots, or the damp air, or the biting cold. He thought of the little girl with the blue dress, lying under so many veils. He also thought of her father, and he kept trying to glimpse the face of the prince. As the little coffin was lowered into the grave, he caught only a vague, distant outline, a flash of a general's uniform. In the afternoon, after two hours of waiting, when they at last reached the grave, his hazel eyes read what was written on the cross. Inscribed in two lines, it went like this:
Maria
and
Christ is risen!

 

It was autumn 1875, and the uproar that had burst out on Whitsunday, when the royal train had been involved in a serious accident near Bucharest and Carol I had miraculously escaped from the mangled iron girders, and panels with only a superficial wound below one knee, had long since died away. Quite some time had passed, too, about eight weeks, since the laying of the foundation stone of Peleş Castle in Sinaia, when the prince with his own hand had grasped the trowel and smoothed the mortar, praying not only for the new building but also for the birth of a dynasty. And in the middle of October, one evening, drinking red wine and chatting, Herr Strauss finally understood that Karl Ludwig's prayer that August had referred to the fruit of Elisabeth Pauline's womb. Above and beyond the gossip of the town, which had been saying for years that the princess was barren, Joseph had just heard from his friend Otto Huer that she was paralyzed, the result of a nerve disease. He tossed back his glass and quickly refilled it; he listened for further details, but found they were no more than harebrained rumors, and so he changed the subject, smiled, and beneath that smile concealed his suffering and regrets. He admonished himself for not having told Otto over their very first beer how he had arrived in that city. He was sorry that he had not spoken to him of his visits to the palace, of the powdered
Amanita muscaria,
and, above all, of the blind whore. His heart truly ached in his chest for having hidden from Elena so many things: the prostitutes, his connection to the prince, and, from start to finish, the subsequent nightmare, in which there was nonetheless a glimmer of light, the little face of an innocent child with a slightly hooked nose and increasingly bushy eyebrows, who was called Petre. He poured himself some more wine, not once, but four times, and after the barber left to go home, while Elena and Sănducu were breathing peacefully, asleep in the next room, he called the tomcat, the only one who knew everything. He took him in his arms and stroked him for a long time. He saw in the darkness how the tuft of white fur at the tip of his tail moved slowly, rhythmically, like a lazy pendulum. The next day, he shut up his surgery earlier than usual, and before lunch, telling his wife he had some business to attend to, he went out into the bustling street, veered off along narrow lanes, and walked for a brief space along the boulevard, then down Podul Mogoşoaiei, raised his hat to acquaintances, did not look at the buildings, or at the clouds, passed by the palace, and came to a stop on the southern side of the guardhouse. Presenting all kinds of documents, which attested to his medical studies, his places of employment in Prussia, his Berliner origins, and the fact that he was now a dentist in Bucuresci, he demanded an audience with Prince Carol. The officer who kept the register studied the documents carefully, although he seemed not to understand German. He looked at Joseph a number of times and said that he would be informed of the response at home, by letter.

In early January, when the city was still hung over after the feast of Saint Basil and preparing for the frosts and wassails of Epiphany, at his door Joseph found a military courier, who made him sign for an envelope. On the sheet of paper within, beneath the signature of the marshal of the royal household, Theodor C. Văcărescu, he was informed that he, Joseph Strauss, German, Roman Catholic, dentist, residing on Lipscani Street at number 18, was to be received by H. H. the Prince on Thursday, January 14, 1876, at ten minutes to five
P.M.,
sharp. He took the announcement as a gift, if not divine, then at least propitious. Especially since the day it arrived, the eighth of the month, was his fortieth birthday. Later, when Thursday came at last and the calendar showed the number 14, he entrusted himself to Otto Huer for a shave and haircut. He obeyed Elena to the last detail with respect to clothes, shoes, and handkerchief, and when Sănducu placed a four-leafed clover in his palm, he slipped the lucky charm into his waistcoat pocket. After explaining to them one last time what he wanted to petition the prince about, a complicated matter of taxation, he put his right foot forward when he crossed the threshold, and hailed a horse-drawn cab. As required, he arrived at the royal palace half an hour before the audience. He left his coat, galoshes, and kidskin cap in the cloakroom, and then he was led by a lackey, not the doorman in livery or the Arab butler with the shalwars and turban, into the waiting room next to the adjutants' office. As he made his way across the broad vestibule, the interior no longer seemed familiar. Huge oriental carpets were stretched over the parquet, oil paintings with views of Istanbul hung on the walls facing the chancellery offices, landscapes from the Principalities hung on the other side, and at the foot of the stairs, behind a glass partition curtained with purple velvet, were two life-sized bronze wolves. In the room he entered, there were four other men, including a grain merchant and a former minister of justice, a pale man from the faction of the moderates. The air was not stifling, but the minutes sizzled, glowed, flickered like hot coals. A number of times, the dentist felt the need to loosen the knot of his cravat and to open the top buttons of his shirt, but he refrained and instead sat with his legs crossed, examining his shoelaces. He thought that his meeting with Karl Ludwig would resemble a strange confessional, in which each would shrive the other and confess his own sins. However it might be, he was sure that he, Joseph, would leave that discussion relieved, having rid himself of somber dreams and fears. He tried to guess whether he would be received in the office, in the library, or in some newly furbished room. He wondered whether between the bookshelves he would still find the collection of old weapons and, in particular, the unusual portrait of Erlkönig, the prince's beloved stallion. When the door opened, he was called in first. He took a step toward the stairs, supposing that they would be ascending to the upper floor, but the functionary checked him with an admonitory whisper and showed him into a room on the other side of the hall. In the office of the marshal of the royal household, the dentist was heard for a quarter of an hour by a mere counselor. He mumbled something vague about taxes being too high and about the gifts demanded by the men from the treasury. Through the monocle fixed upon him could be discerned a disbelieving—and bored—pupil.

 

The times continued to hurry, streaking like rabbits or soaring like hawks. In the same way, for example, as the new liberal coalition. First it emerged from the egg, then grew strong and learned to flap its wings in the house of Mazár Pasha (who, to cap it all, was in fact a Briton of Dutch origins, Sir Stephen Bartlett
Lakeman, former commandant of a death squad in South Africa, a veteran of the Crimean War, and a mercenary in the service of the sultan), wheeled for months and months high in the political sky, stalking its prey, before swooping ruinously upon Lascar Catargiu, toppling him from power. In April, after five years without significant crises or reversals, the Principalities were left with a strange council, which the newspapers christened the Ministry of the Sword, because it was led by General loan Emanuel Florescu and included another two career soldiers, with braided bands down their trousers. It was also in April, after the life of the first transition cabinet had proven more ephemeral than a summer midge, that the ever present Manolache Costache Epureanu took his seat in the prime minister's chair. In July, he was obliged to get up again and leave for his estate, where he could better bear the summer heat. Taking his place at the head of the government, after some three thousand five hundred days, bitterly long days during which he had dreamed of nothing else, was the 'Vizier.' And Ion C. Brătianu lived up to his nickname. After winning renown for having supposedly taken part in a plot against Napoleon III, after accompanying a captain of dragoons from Berlin to Bukarest to see him elevated to the throne, after striving to manipulate the prince from behind the scenes, after being the first minister of war not to hold the rank of officer, after thundering and fulminating against the sovereign from the benches of the opposition, after plunging himself up to his neck in the ridiculous Ploesci revolution, after donning sackcloth and ashes and kissing the hand he had tried to bite, and many other provocative escapades and episodes, he had got it into his head at the height of the dog-day weather, when the year 1876 blazed like an oven, to attempt from his position as president of the council to arrest all twelve conservative former ministers, headed by Catargiu, and to see that their wealth was confiscated, on the grounds that they had squandered the country's finances. Carol was vehemently opposed, indicating that after ten years of rule he had had enough of circus shows and vendettas. But unprecedented turmoil had arisen not only to the north but also to the south of the Danube. In Bosnia and Herzegovina the Christians had risen up against the Ottoman yoke, Serbia and Montenegro had declared war on the Porte (Prince Nikola having won a few pallid victories), the uprisings in the Bulgarian lands had been smothered under the
yatagans
of the Turkish
ba^buzuks,
while in Istanbul itself, at the very heart of the empire, Sultan Abdülaziz had been driven out of the Dolmabahçe Sarayı, and three months later the usurper, Murad V, had been declared insane and banished from both throne and harem. The new padishah, Abdülha-mid II, his mind caught up in burning matters, such as Russia's threat to break off diplomatic relations and Great Britain's intention to convene a Balkan peace conference, closed his eyes or else paid no heed when on the banks of the Dîmbovitza, immediately after the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the enthronement of Carol I, medals with the head of the prince were cast and national decorations established, in defiance of the stipulations of the princely
firman.

By now the railroad traversed the Balota and Severin forests, and followed the course of the Danube as far as the western frontier at Vîrciorova, by the island of Ada-Kaleh, where it linked up to the Austrian railways and the sparkle of Vienna; it made the outline of the Principalities more prominent on the maps of the continent and fulfilled one of Prince Karl Ludwig's abiding obsessions. Then, as the great city labored to cast off its Turkish raiment, all kinds of changes were made, some merely a matter of airs and graces, such as Ishlik Makers
Street becoming French Street, others radical, involving the demolition of old buildings and construction of new ones, in particular on the sites of a number of old monasteries that had been impoverished by the nationalization of the monastic estates under Cuza. At the whim of their modish new owners, Manuc's Inn was rechristened the Hotel Dacia, the Otel Oteteleşeanu became the Hôtel Frascatti, the Slătineanu Restaurant became the Capşa, after the brother confectioners, while the Church of Saint John the Great, founded by the boyar Preda Buzescu and rebuilt by Brîncoveanu, was razed to the ground with sledgehammers and pickaxes, along with its cells, stables, and outbuildings. Only the abbot's house was spared, into which was moved, after renovation, the Savings and Loans Bank. Not far away, at the eastern end of the boulevard across the road from the University, where Saint Sava Church had been reduced to a mound of rubble, there appeared a square with lanes and young trees, in one corner of which Grigore Şuţu, proprietor of the adjacent palace, built at his own personal expense hothouses with palm trees, cacti, and other never-before-seen plants, to match the pelicans, pheasants, and peacocks in his courtyard. And there, in the very center of the town, while sparse, yellowed leaves still hung from the branches of the trees, preparations were under way for the unveiling of the first statue in Bucuresci. It was November 1876, and the only sculptures people were familiar with were the stone crosses with Slavonic inscriptions that had been erected at crossroads to drive out evil spirits from the city's slum districts. And so the news of the twenty-foot-tall bronze monument was cause for general excitement. Reading the newspapers from cover to cover and sensing which way the wind was blowing, Herr Strauss had learned that it was to be an equestrian statue, fashioned by Albert Carrier de Belleuse,
in Paris, portraying one of the voievods dear to the hearts of Wallachians, Mihai the Brave. The matter did not enthuse him in the least, perhaps because he had seen hundreds of statues in his life, not only on the Unter den Linden, but also in every small German town, in the churches if not in the streets, perhaps because of the indifference that had settled over him since the deceptive audience at the palace, perhaps because in that sour season, when he had emphatically understood that he was forty years old, he preferred to play with Sănducu or to chat with his friends than to be jostled by a crowd of gawpers. And on the eighth day of the month he would undoubtedly have idled around the house if Elena had not insisted that they go out together, buy some chrysanthemums, and join the curious onlookers hurrying to cheer the prince. For almost a week, his wife had been overwhelmed by the fever of her blood and maiden name, hoping with all her heart that Prince Carol would not refrain from firm, even warlike, action, which in the roiling turmoil of the Balkans would have been a breath of fresh air for Serbia. Karl Ludwig, as they saw him from the pavement by the university, through the headscarves, hats, and caps, through the fluttering handkerchiefs and flowers, bore himself with superb confidence. As the young nation did not yet have an anthem, he flawlessly saluted during the triumphal march intoned by the brass band. Then he stepped out in front of the guard platoon, gave a short nod to the diplomats, ministers, and generals, came to a stop before the monument concealed beneath veils of white canvas, grasped the ropes handed to him, tugged them and let the soft casing tumble, like a thin layer of snow. For a good few minutes, he listened to the gasps of the crowd and let them gaze upon the mounted voievod, towering atop his stallion from a massive marble plinth, upon whose sides were emblazoned the arms of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania. And all the people saw how the Unifier, in his cast-bronze form, wore a plumed cap, held the reins in his right hand and an axe aloft in his left, with a sheathed sword at his hip, while the tail of his slightly rearing steed was wind-blown even in the calm of that tranquil, breezeless morning. Then, in a solemn ceremony, in which Joseph detected something of the rhythm and ritual of the Potsdam officers' school, the sovereign handed new, sanctified battle flags to the thirty-two regiments of the army. In a kind of exaltation, the former Miss Duković deciphered the motto embroidered on the flags in gold thread,
For honor and homeland,
and later she clapped wildly, when, by chance, a snatch of the prince's speech reached her ears: "
I am convinced that the time for courage has not passed...
"