The Days of the King (8 page)

Then, toward morning, he heard a murmuring brook and rustling grass; he saw a sunlit glade, with beeches, alders, and sycamores. He awoke bewildered and wet, and the stain on the sheets resembled neither spittle nor dried blood—it was different from other stains.

T
HE CANDLES HAD
been snuffed out a short time before, and so in the rustling air only the gray soles of a pair of feet could be made out. When the darkness had diluted, the calves and thighs became visible, bared, tensed, sometimes entwined, then quickly unclenching. In the narrow bed, where the sheets smelled of lavender, two legs were slowly rocking, and another two were arching above them, trying to touch (the ankles, the heels), flexing back and then lifting towards the ceiling, as if they wanted to scrape the grainy whitewash. The rocking intensified, the broad motions became short jerks, the rustling air in the room ceased to rustle and was pervaded by heavy panting, by a faint whining and a groaning that burgeoned. The sheet slid from the hips, and amid the shadows of night a white bottom loomed, writhing wildly, up and down, back and forth. Then exhaustion descended, the beard no longer scratched against the plump bosom, it sank into its softness, the breathing settled into a normal cadence, moist lips twitched, a hand rested on a thigh, long, straight hair lay fanned out. Moments, plentiful moments, elapsed in this way, indolently, until the bodies separated and each lay stretched on
its back, close together, giving off a warm mist. And in that mist, a small snub nose rediscovered the perfume it had forgotten for long minutes, a fine perfume of almond flowers, such as it had never encountered before, and another nose, hooked and prominent, sensed once more the lavender beneath the sheets, but paid it no heed and avid, astonished, and insatiable, it feasted on the moist odors of the woman's body. In his belly, something bunched up like a hedgehog and saddened when she propped herself on her elbow, rose (her right hand grasping the back of a chair and her left groping over the floor), took three steps, fumbled for the tin basin, the bucket of water, and the soap, washed long and thoroughly, calmly and languidly, dried herself likewise, at leisure, and drove away, at least for a time, the scent between her thighs, neither sweet nor bitter. The woman's palms settled, one on his shoulder, the other on his belly, they set out feeling and searching, they discovered the calfskin sheath with the drawstring at the mouth and the thread encrusted around it, they slowly removed it, like a scabbard, and immersed it in an infusion of sage, to cleanse it and keep it supple. Careful fingers grasped the tired, sticky phallus, bathed it, coddled it, caressed it like a babe, and as they could not give it suck, they allowed the breasts to embrace it and rock it. The man decided to light a cigar and uncork the champagne. He found neither an ashtray nor glasses, so he fetched a dish and some earthenware mugs. And in the iridescent darkness, the cork popped like a discharging pistol, it stirred up the dogs far and wide, it frightened the mice in the crannies and under the floorboards, it wakened the geese, and, far worse, provoked in the girl a dreadful shriek, followed by a leap as far as the table. He knelt on the jute mat, tousling her hair, he spoke to her continuously in French, he kissed her on the coccyx, on each rib and on her warm nape, his kisses made their way back to her soft, downy bottom, like a peach, but the kisses were no longer kisses, for he was already running the tip of his tongue down her spine, without giving the cigar or the champagne another thought. He descended lightheaded, smoothly, and he would have descended yet lower had she not twisted away. They stretched out once more on the narrow bed, propped against pillows and the wooden frame, they drank from the mugs without handles, then she moistened each of her nipples in the cold, fizzy liquid, gave them to him, and waited. It was a long time before her hands once more set out on their search. They found his member (which she petted with words such as he had never heard before:
pulicică, sulac, coinac,
and
ştremeleag),
thrust it into the mug, and they played with it, pampered it, scrubbed its tangled curls and rosy, childish head, and her lips wiped it well after its bath. Then the hands dressed it in its little kidskin coat, velvety and moist, they tightened the drawstring, and once more lost themselves in madness.

A king is a king, even if he is called
domn
or
domnitor,
but above all, a king is a man, because no one has ever been born on a throne or with a crown on his head. And he, Carol I, after ignoring the laws of nature and the needs of the body for more than a year, three hundred and eighty-four days, to be exact, always monopolized by and caught up in the convoluted problems of the Principalities, by the languor, by the chaotic commotion and urgent business around him, had avoided treading the slippery path of seamy liaisons. The end of spring found him gloomy and irascible, incapable of taking delight in the warm breezes, the peonies, and the cherry blossoms. Nor was his brother Friedrich, who had accompanied him during a long sojourn in Jassy and on a visit to the Danube
ports, capable of brightening his mood. It was also around then that he received the news that his youngest sister, Marie, was to be engaged to the Count of Flanders, news that gave him a start, in the shadow of which, had it not been for his beard and bushy eyebrows, a crooked smile might have been deciphered. He wrote without delay, mimicking joy, but in the letters, commas, periods, and exclamation marks, as if the ink itself consisted of astonishment and regrets, he saw only the irony of fate. The man who had refused the rickety and uncomfortable throne upon which Carol himself now sat, that very man, the one with the eight Christian names, Philippe, Eugène, Ferdinand, Marie, Clément, Baudouin, Leopold, and George, happy and carefree in his castle in Laeken, near Brüssel, was to receive the gifts of the hand, the laughter, and the wonderfulness of his sister, the creature whom he, far away at the ends of the earth (as many believed), missed most of all, while he strove to restore to health a strange land whose people did not wish to rid themselves of their ailments. On the third of the month, in the afternoon, Prince Karl gazed absently at the foliage in front of his window, indifferent to the preparations for the May 10 festivities, inclined to see only hypocrisy and operatic gestures in that collective eagerness to celebrate the lapse of one year since his arrival in Bukarest. As so often before, he thought of the miraculous infusion he had drunk in Istanbul, before being received by the sultan, and he desired a teacupful, enough for him to forget what was gnawing away at him and to be happy for a few hours. He sent for Joseph Strauss, with the specific information that he was expecting a cup of tea, but he doubted from the outset that he would get what he demanded. He had not summoned him since March, after he had been obliged to appoint Kretzulescu to the head of the council of ministers, given Ghika's weariness of politics, and after he had corrected the draft of a law whereby a new currency, with the rather comical name
leul
("the lion"), was to replace piasters, francs, and all the other foreign coins in circulation. And, indeed, on the third of the month, as afternoon drew toward dusk, the dentist appeared with his calfskin bag, ready to explain why he would not prepare an infusion of
Amanita muscaria, Fliegenpilz,
snake's hat, or snake mushroom. As he stood by the door, Herr Strauss strung together his protective and sorrowful lies. He said that the powder had run out in Constantinople, that he did not know with what herbs it had been made, that he had been given the desiccated preparation in Berlin by a traveling apothecary who had vanished without trace, that he, too, longed for the enchanted potion. The prince listened to him carefully, with that attitude of his which passed as stern and distant. He understood what was to be understood, because he held the conviction that to a man in whom you have no doubts you should grant, when required, the right to concoct a story. He invited him to sit on the couch of yellowish velvet, he sat down beside him, and they clinked glasses of tart white wine. They sat in silence. The tree by the window swayed softly, a plane tree with large, young leaves. Then Joseph, with his chin resting on his palms and his elbows resting on his knees, gazing at the waxed parquet, banished shame (because at that moment, perhaps because of the wine, his loyalty and affection were greater), and asked him. And the prince, appreciating the tone of his question, replied, with his eyes fixed on the ceiling: No. No, he had not touched a woman for a long time, not since he had donned the uniform of a captain of dragoons.

A week later, the tenth day of May 1867 dissolved differently from other days, with a gilded service at the Metropolia (for gilded were the robes of the Metropolitan Nifon, of the bishops
and the priests of the great conclave), a reception laid on by the prince in the throne room (where he had delivered his first speech in Romanian, although his words, thanks to Professor Treboniu Laurian, had not much resembled those used by his subjects, having Latin forms and sounds) and a military parade down Podul Mogoşoaiei, which drew half the city to the avenue's sidewalks and excited three-quarters of the women. Later, while in the city hall new streets and boulevards were taking shape beneath the architects' nibs and on other large sheets of paper a new channel for the sluggish and stinking Dîmbovitza was being traced out, so that the river would no longer flood the city, the dentist was busy making sure that a small old reed-clad building near the Silvestru Church looked more like a home than a brothel. He had chatted and haggled long with an old madam named Mareta, flustering her with the tale of a rich client, a Dutch merchant with a predilection for blind whores, he had thrust into her palm a gold coin, a gulden, and finally he brought in some painters to whitewash the house front, the hall, and the rooms. The old woman and two of her girls scrubbed the floorboards and the woodwork, filled a mattress with fresh straw, shook out the pillows and aired them in the sun, washed the rugs, the sheets, the curtains, the coverlet, the tablecloth, and the wall hangings in the freshly whitewashed room, rinsing them repeatedly with lavender, placed new candles in the earthenware candlesticks, arranged mugs and plates on a shelf, stowed the chamber pot and a basin under the bed, laid clean towels over the back of the chair, placed a tablet of soap on the edge of the stove, readied a glass jug, and did not hurry to cut flowers then; rather, they waited until noon on the sixteenth day of May, when they knew it was time, and picked lilies and roses in the yard. First, two carts arrived in the lane, sent by that pale, thin German, and gravel was laid along the path from the gate up to the porch. The third girl, Linca, had not taken any part in the labor, so as not to spoil her hands and her stamina. Mareta gave her a long bath, as if she were soaking laundry. She rubbed her with ass's milk and strawberries, combed her hair and sprinkled it with rose-hip oil, and when ruddy evening fell, when the artisans' quarter resounded to the lowing and bleating before milking, gave her a teaspoonful of honey in which she had sprinkled a little powdered stag-beetle horn. Meanwhile, in the center of Bucuresci, a man in the twenty-ninth year of his life, a man who found himself in the office of the sovereign, sitting in the chair of the sovereign's desk, took it into his head to cut his fingernails. And as it was none other than he, Karl Eitel Friedrich Zephyrinus Ludwig, sitting in that chair, in that office, in that palace, and since he was the sovereign of a land about to embark upon summer with ripening fields of wheat and awakening clouds of dust, he asked his ministers and those on the audience list for a breathing space of two minutes. Using a silver-plated pair of clippers, he trimmed his fingernails as short as possible, then meticulously gathered them and sprinkled them in the wastepaper basket, waiting to stroke the unknown skin with his fingertips and surrender himself to tactile sensation.

In the silence of sleep and night, when an owl might have hooted, but did not hoot, a short man in the garb of a Western merchant or ship owner, with the hood of his cape pulled up to shield against damp, mosquitoes, and miasmas, passed by a soldier of the guard, without waking him, and went out by a back door. He climbed into a carriage, an ordinary one, and shook the hand of the man therein, who was wearing a cloak and a hat with a curved brim. They looked into each other's eyes as they left the palace grounds together, amid a clatter of horses' hooves, skirted the Bucureştioara, a stagnant, marshy stream, bumped along potholed narrow streets that smelled of jasmine and cesspits, of chicken coops and lilac; and came to a stop in the darkness. The passengers entered a spacious yard and walked down a graveled path. On the porch, the shorter man removed his hood and remained alone as the other man departed, after making sure once more that the area was deserted.

The fingertips had reached the point of torpor some time after midnight, a few hours still before the frail light of dawn. And together with the fingertips, the bodies had given themselves up to a long abandonment, like two huge seashells, buried in a straw mattress rather than the sands of an estuary. That torpor was disturbed, all of a sudden, by a sneeze. Then came more sneezes, muffled at first, then loud and irritating, one after another and seemingly uncontrollable. Murkily, the man remembered war maneuvers of long ago, when as a junker or cadet he had sheltered in hay ricks, stables, and attics, and a military doctor, a major, had warned him that he was allergic to hay. He got out of bed, naked, drank some champagne straight from the bottle, blew his nose loudly, left the handkerchief on the table, and held his breath for almost a minute, pinching his nostrils and ears so that no air would enter. The girl was saying something, she felt sorry for him and she was afraid, but he spoke to her in German, feigning not to understand her. He sat on the chair, blinking to get rid of the droplets that were trickling between his eyelashes. Soon, he felt her hands on his ankles, they climbed his calves and knees, rested for a moment and then glided down to the soles of his feet, they grasped his big toes, squeezing them gently, slowly, they ascended once more, sliding their way over his thighs and upward. In the gray light, he could distinguish only the crown of her head, her shoulders, and breasts, and for a few moments he wanted also to see her face, to caress it, but he forgot this desire. The hands moved higher and gripped his buttocks, allowing the small, gentle head to find room between his legs, under his belly. He tousled her long, straight hair, first spreading it like a fan or a peacock's tail, then parting it in the middle and laying it over her arms, to the left and right, chestnut-colored and silky, like two wings. From beneath her locks there came warm breaths, fleeting touches, peace. All of a sudden, the low room was no longer a room, the darkness was no longer darkness, the convoluted problems of the Principalities crumbled to dust, the maps of the continent shed their colors and contours, they whitened like cream, the seasons merged along with sun and azure sky into the gallop of a gray pony over a boundless plain, bearing in its saddle a little boy, Karl Ludwig, who loved his wooden targets—the hares, boars, and foxes—and did not want to riddle them with pellets. The little boy was carrying in the breast pocket of his tunic a lead soldier, and the man was clasping the nape of a young woman with his fingertips, as her mouth opened wide and moist.