The Madonna on the Moon (14 page)

That afternoon a gray four-wheel-drive vehicle with grimy windows and a dented fender pulled up at the cattle trough on the village square. To everyone’s surprise there were two men in the
car with Cartarescu. A uniformed policeman from Kronauburg squeezed out of the jeep after Plutonier, a heavyset guy with a full beard and grizzled, wiry hair sticking out under his cap like a
bird’s nest. He lit up a Carpati and shook hands with the men of Baia Luna but ignored me and Petre Petrov. The third man remained in the backseat awhile. At first all I saw were his shiny
black shoes peeking out the door, and I got the impression that this classy footwear was hesitating to step into the mud of the village street. But then he emerged: Major Lupu Raducanu, in
plainclothes. His brown coat had obviously been made to order of the finest material and was draped casually over his shoulders. He cut an elegant figure, although it contrasted disconcertingly
with his soft, beardless face. Chubby cheeks gave him a more prepubescent than masculine appearance. Lupu Raducanu was in his mid twenties but looked markedly younger, which didn’t exactly
make him seem predestined for his high position in the Securitate. Because of his bored and apathetic manner, some cadres had been disgruntled to learn of his promotion to major in the Security
Service. They’d tried to block it, in fact. But their reservations melted away once word got around that this officer possessed interrogation methods so crafty and unconventional that he
could bring any opponent of the Republic to the point of talking—or, as Karl Koch muttered, of silence. Nobody in Baia Luna knew any details, just enough to know that it was better to have
nothing to do with the Securitate in general and Lupu Raducanu in particular.

Raducanu looked around, impassive except for a restless glitter in his eyes. I saw how the men who had just been jovially greeting Cartarescu and the stout policeman suddenly folded their arms
across their chests. The women lowered their voices. Intimidated by the oppressive atmosphere, the shouting children fell silent.

“My son, my fine boy! It’s been so long!” With outstretched arms the widow Vera rushed toward Lupu. She hadn’t heard from him in a year. All she’d had was a package
delivered by a military supply truck the previous Christmas. In it Vera found a salami, genuine ground coffee, a bar of Luxor soap in gold foil, and a slip of paper with three meager words on it:
“Happy Holidays, Lupu.” But for the moment, her disappointment seemed forgotten. She flew to her son, who was standing on the village square with ostentatious calm.

“Lupu, my son, don’t you know how much your mother has missed you? You never visit me. Why don’t you get me out of this miserable hole? Why so ungrateful?”

Vera née Adamski had married Aurel Raducanu, a high-ranking officer of the Security Service, at a young age and with her chin in the air had moved from Baia Luna to an imposing villa on
the Klosterberg in Kronauburg. There she lived until, one night three years ago, she discovered her husband lying in the bathroom next to the toilet bowl like a dead pig with a yellow face and a
swollen belly. A diagnosis of putrefied liver made the rounds. And then Vera Raducanu began her free fall into the abyss. Her pension was canceled, and she had to clear out of the house on the
Klosterberg. To escape the humiliation (for a woman of her social position) of wasting away in a shabby apartment block on the outskirts of town, Vera had preferred to take refuge in Baia Luna in
the house of her cousin Adamski the mailman. Only for a short time, as she repeated on every possible occasion. Because her son Lupu, treading in his father’s footsteps and pursuing a
brilliant career with the Securitate, would soon fetch her back to town and restore her social status.

Major Lupu Raducanu dismissed his mother’s reproaches with a curt “I have work to do” and turned to the onlookers. “Does she live down there?” He pointed in the
direction of Angela Barbulescu’s cottage and was rewarded with a nod. The security agent gave a brief jerk of his chin, which Cartarescu and the elderly policeman from Kronauburg took as a
signal to follow him.

For ten or fifteen minutes the three of them looked around in the teacher’s house and came to the conclusion that a minute forensic investigation was unnecessary. Plutonier Cartarescu
merely impounded the empty schnapps bottle and the glass. These objects were regarded as evidence that, once again, alcohol had driven a person to commit a desperate act.

On the village square the elderly policeman explained that just in the district of Kronauburg, four hundred people were reported missing each year. Half of them showed up again in a week, and a
good portion of those had taken off in the first place to escape familial or conjugal duties or had disappeared with a lover or mistress, while two or three dozen of the disappearances were alcohol
related.

“Those drunks are awful, just awful,” Cartarescu corroborated his superior’s words, “and we have to identify the bodies, mostly in the spring when they emerge after the
snow melt. First the suicides fill up on booze, then they freeze to death in their sleep. Remember last summer, that case with the false teeth?”

“Don’t remind me,” groaned the fat guy and he stuck another Carpati in his mouth. “Three gold teeth. Who’s got that many? We found the skull first—up in the
Fagaras Mountains, below the Ortuella Chasm. Just the naked noggin with a couple tufts of hair still on it. And the bones, all mixed up: arms, ribs, thighbones. No surprise: the wolves and bears
make a mess of everything, like a Gypsy camp. We knew where the scene of the crime was once we found the bottle. The cork was still in it. Drink yourself silly and then neatly cork up the bottle,
your male suicides never do that. And the bottle was only half empty. You want to know why? It was a woman! We were thinking we’d have to go knock on every dentist’s door in the whole
district, but we found the right one pretty quick. He said right away, ‘I know her. Three gold teeth, two in the upper-right quadrant, one in the lower left.’ The wife of Dascalescu,
second in command at Kronauburg Electric. A randy old goat, let me tell you, after anything with skirts. Must have gotten to be too much for her, being the wife and always last in line. Killed
herself instead of her old man. She was missing without a trace for two whole years. Scratch that: nobody disappears without a trace. It’s just a question of when we find the
remains.”

Plutonier Cartarescu added that for now we shouldn’t worry too much about Miss Barbulescu. “She’ll turn up again for sure. Unless she’s holed up somewhere with a secret
lover.” Cartarescu snorted a laugh, glanced over at the silent Lupu Raducanu in embarrassment, and then offered the opinion that a person’s love life was fundamentally a private matter
and therefore not the object of official scrutiny. But since in Miss Barbulescu’s case it was a civil servant who was involved, her absence from the school would be punished as a serious
dereliction of duty, although at the present time no search would be initiated.

The fat policeman nodded and ground out his cigarette with his shoe. “There’s no point searching now when it’s already snowing in the mountains.”

Cartarescu enjoined us to keep our eyes and ears open and report anything whatsoever unusual to the police station in Apoldasch. Then he tugged at his cap, saluted, and opened the driver’s
door of the jeep.

“Just a moment! We’re not in such a hurry.”

The whole time I’d been getting the feeling that Lupu Raducanu had just as little interest in the fate of missing drunks as in the disappearance of a village schoolteacher. Now he turned
to the men of Baia Luna.

“Just a few more questions,” said the security agent. Then he looked around and walked up to the Saxon Hermann Schuster. Everyone could see the goose egg on his forehead. It had
turned dark violet since the party member Roman Brancusi had shattered a bottle on his head on Grandfather’s birthday.

“You should have that examined in the hospital,” said Raducanu. “An undiagnosed concussion can cause permanent damage.”

“It’s nothing worth mentioning,” the Saxon replied.

“Doesn’t look good, though.”

“Like I said, not worth mentioning.”

Raducanu dug a white pack of cigarettes out of his coat pocket. Kents: a brand unknown in Baia Luna. The major flipped open a silver lighter, took his own sweet time lighting his cigarette, and
then inhaled the smoke.

“I hear you had a little disagreement a few days ago?”

“Me? No. I can only repeat, it wasn’t worth mentioning.” Schuster seemed ill at ease.

“That’s right. Just a little misunderstanding.” Liviu Brancusi and his brothers Roman and Nico emerged from the crowd of men and came over to Raducanu and Schuster.

“J-j-just a mi-mi-misunderstanding between two m-m-men,” Roman repeated. “A m-m-minor mi-mi-misunderstanding between two m-m-men who had ma-ma-maybe a little too m-much to
drink. You can see, M-m-major, the argument’s been se-se-settled already.”

Roman Brancusi ostentatiously extended his hand to Hermann Schuster. The Saxon shook it.

“Well, well. The argument is settled. How nice. Very pleasant to hear. So now you’re in agreement?”

Schuster and the three Brancusi brothers nodded cautiously.

“Very good. I hear tell that the argument was about the implementation of the government’s five-year plan and the upcoming collectivization of agriculture.”

“Who told you that?” asked Schuster.

“It doesn’t matter, does it? Now that you, a Saxon, an ethnic German, and the comrades Brancusi are in agreement.”

Hermann Schuster didn’t reply.

Major Raducanu turned to Roman. “Comrade, I understood you to say that this difference of opinion is really over and done with?”

“Ye-yes indeed, Co-co-comrade Major.”

“Very good. That means we can proceed immediately to transfer private landholdings in Baia Luna to the possession of the Commonwealth?”

Liviu Brancusi piped up, “It’s possible there’s a little more persuading that needs to be done. But our side has the best arguments. Baia Luna needs progress.”

“So, Comrade Brancusi, that means the work of persuasion has yet to be completed?”

“But soon will be, Comrade Major! Very soon.”

“I don’t understand. You were just talking about being in agreement. But now? Do people have a problem seeing the necessity for progress? Is there stubbornness? Protests?
Resistance?”

The onlookers saw party member Liviu getting red in the face. “Protests? Resistance? Here in the village? No, no, one wouldn’t put it that way.”

“One damn well would put it that way!” Karl Koch pushed his way to the front. “And I will put it that way. Loud and clear.”

Koch looked Major Raducanu straight in the eye.

“After the war your father Aurel sent us off to the Russian mines even though you people cheered for the Führer just as much as we did. We Saxons did the dirty work for you. When we
came home you’d taken our land, our houses, even the right to vote, a right every citizen has. We had a long struggle to get everything back that belonged to us. And now you want to
dispossess us again. Let me tell you something, you little snot! I’m not giving up anything. Nothing! You Bolsheviks aren’t getting anything out of me. Over my dead body!”

Lupu Raducanu kept calm, even nodded. “You’re an upstanding fellow, an honest soul, Herr . . . Herr . . . ?”

“Koch,” said the Saxon, “Karl Koch.”

Raducanu lit up another Kent. “Our country needs people like you, honest men, Herr Koch. People who say what they think.”

The Saxon was completely nonplussed.

I was standing off to one side and got a fright as Lupu Raducanu suddenly stretched out his arm and pointed at our shop. “Herr Koch, there must be paper and pencils in that
store?”

“Of course,” answered the confused Saxon. “Why do you ask?”

To Karl Koch’s surprise Raducanu took his wallet out of his coat and fished out a bill. Before Koch knew what was happening, the major had stuck the money into his jacket pocket.

“Herr Koch, you will go into that store and buy paper and a pencil. Then you will sit down in your parlor and write down everybody’s name. Just the men in the village, in two
columns. To the left the names of the ones who want a kolkhoz and to the right the names of the men who refuse to accept progress. I know you’re an honest man. You won’t forget anyone.
You have three days. Then I want to see the list. I think we understand each other. Three days.”

Raducanu flipped his cigarette onto the ground.

“I’ll do shit-all, pretty boy.”

Koch spat onto Raducanu’s shiny shoes and tore the bill into little pieces. The major grinned, turned on his heel, and got into the car.

The fat policeman gave a brief shrug, which I interpreted as a gesture of regret, then Cartarescu started the car. The motor revved to a shriek, and the tires spun. As the cloud of diesel
exhaust dissipated, I corrected an erroneous impression. I always thought a Securitate interrogator made people sweat, but Lupu Raducanu gave me a chill.

Chapter Five