As he stood in front of the bathroom mirror and painstakingly tweezed at the hair tufts growing out of his ears, Mr Stoenescu remembered a joke he'd heard the day before and, tee-hee-hee, chuckled unwittingly. There was still plenty of time till his nephew was due. However, he had his routines and they came first. The blare of the TV was wafting in from the dining room. He trimmed his ear- and nose-hair every two weeks, yet when it came to shaving, he'd do it every morning, day in, day out, somehow out of reflex, a reflex going back to the times he used to hold a position. Thanks to the circumstances, he'd come to be charged with major responsibilities from a young age, yup, he chuckled again, he'd been appointed to a great variety of senior positions, quite delicate some of them, but that's another story. In the beginning he'd found it quite hard, the shaving bit, that is, as he was only used to taking a bath on Saturdays, in the cask, behind the stable in summer and in the heated kitchen in winter. In the shade of the adobe wall, under the ink-blue sky, not far from the plot where the maize plants were rustling, he'd scrub his own back, for his father had died in the war and male siblings he had none only sisters. His father had breathed his last on the eastern front, yet his mother, his sisters and himself had claimed all their lives, as counselled by some tovarisch, that he'd died a hero's death on the western front fighting the fascists, but that's another story. For fifty years he'd been fresh shaved every morning, with the odd exception. He'd scrape his straight- or safetyrazor across his cheek, carefully stretching the skin with two fingers, whilst listening to the radio or the TV. He'd enjoy the familiar cracking of stub, rapt in contemplation of the lather, thick as whipped cream, revealing swathe upon florid swathe of freshened up skin, ready to show 'em all who's top
dog. At his mother's death he was expected, according to custom, not to interfere with the growth of his beard for forty days. And he would have fain gone ahead and done it, hadn't he, 36 hours into his mourning, received a phone call from a friend warning him he was being rumoured to have fallen pray to superstition. He'd always had friends in high places, whom he'd do favours to in his turn. So he removed his black armband and glided his razor over his cheeks thus fending off trouble. It was much later that he started addressing the issue of his nose and ear hair, when it no longer posed the risk of being associated with bourgeois practices which would have incurred serious problems for him. Not unlike the spot of trouble Dinu had run into, right? Oh well, funny how of late the smallest gestured seemed to recall scenes long gone and whatever he touched displayed its long, tangled roots, thrust deep and spread throughout a past he'd thought long since consumed by dry rot, feeding on its soil. He was, of course, in his bathroom tiled in shades of walnut, complete with Italian basin and shower, somewhere central, with the shade of trees soothingly seeping in through the window. Yet he found himself simultaneously in other rooms his life had taken him to, like, for instance, a wooden shack, at the youth construction site he's dipping his shaving brush into a tin once holding sardines, now filled with cold river water, in preparation of calling a rally with slogans dispatched from high up. As if history itself consisted of a sequence of rooms, not unlike an immense house with rooms opening into each other; you go from room to room, and there's no way you could have reached the one you're in at the moment, the one you're having your tea or shaving in, if you hadn't crossed all the rooms leading to it. A kind of causality he startled at the
word. That happened to him occasionally, out of reflex, when delicate words popped into his thoughts. Time was when such words could have landed him in trouble if, giving free rein to his thoughts, he would have used them idly, but that's another story. A brief, fleeting startle. Like a bird's shadow on a child's hopscotch, he felt like saying, but there was no one to say it to. His cheeks were now flaccid. His bushy eyebrows, though, which could give people the shivers in their day, had not entirely lost their volume. They still kept something of the electricity of power. On the whole, he was pleased with his looks. Other folks in his age, or even younger, were already feeding the linden trees in the cemetery. True, tee-hee-hee, in his age other folks were presidents, but that's another story. Oh well, it had started some time back, more precisely, after having that dream, hmmm, what should he call it?, unusual‌ surreal. Since that time he'd started remembering all sorts of things, the past seemed closer than ever, his skin was crawling with history. Mr Esco (a national epopee, coming-of-age novel and riddle) Mr Esco was born out of a tinned fish box or out of a jar of stewed fruit, no one knows for sure. Some claim he has emerged from the foam of sheep-milk whey, only to be taken for complete idiots by others. Perhaps we should side with those holding less extreme views and talk about the weather, or join the revolutionaries and debate the Rumanian spelling reform. Anyway, it is important to know that in his childhood Mr Esco was partial to a game of noughts and crosses using a stick to trace the grid in fresh
cowpats. In his teens he quite enjoyed having lift rides in town. Yet more important than all that is what happened to Mr Esco and his wife yesterday around lunchtime. They found out, completely by chance, on a zebra crossing, that early in the nineteenth century, teller windows had been invented. Now the moment they found out that fact, Mr and Mrs Esco started being dragged from one teller window to another. A clerk with decayed teeth whispered into their ears: if the woman keeps being driven from pillar to post for more than three times, she'll give birth to a child with two heads and four legs. A second clerk, who'd been eavesdropping, said: the species tends to adapt to bureaucracy. A third one, who'd been eavesdropping with both ears, joined in to say: tough luck! When that luridly dressed woman approached him he was on the Copou hill, not far from the tree once wrapped in yellow polythene, a tree that had shaken from the foundation his confidence in the present. It was a beautiful day, with marine overtones, and he felt as carefree as a seashell. Wrapped in penumbra, as if the sun had been shading its light from somewhere round the corner or through a filtering cloth, the street, the houses, the people had acquired a sort of strange imponderability, verging on oblivion. A snug, stale happiness was oozing forth from each and every thing. Only in dreams can one experience a state confusing and at the same time so real, akin to the happiness distilled from repeated defeats through a subtle effort of selfdeceit. The luridly dressed woman seemed to comprehend all those things and that's why she appeared to be walking differently. Briskly, not languidly. Lovely weather for a stroll, Vasya, she said, with the most natural air in the world,
bloody bitch, as she came to a halt. A routine statement, by the sound of it, yet one that thrust him into the past, far into the past, too, back in the days when he was incredibly young and favoured being called Vasya rather than Vasile, the days when, in order to secure a career, one was supposed to like vodka rather than wine at the communist party functions. Quite, he replied, as he made panic-stricken efforts to place her. Still, it may well rain tomorrow, Vasilicã, she added, watching without a trace of concern the sky furrowed by long, whitish rib-like clouds. That second intervention threw him even farther back in time, back in the days when his mother, the only one calling him Vasilicã, used to divine next week's weather in the gizzards and entrails of birds. He became imperceptibly flustered and, unsteady on his feet like a boxer in the wake of two unexpected blows, felt the need to sit down on the bank. Yet that was not all. The tranquil, petty bourgeois dream, was getting rough around the edges, acquiring the makings of a nightmare the kind favoured by explosive or at least metaphysical natures. He was tempted to say revolutionary, but the word had long since lost its glamour. Basil! The women called out to him on the verge of hysteria. Whereupon he gave a visible start. That's how he's been known among writers and artists, in the days when he'd held one of the positions. In the seclusion of their eccentric studios he'd allowed them to get chummy with him, and they'd come up with that frenchified name for him. You're a true Esco, Basil, you've made history, the woman had added in a no-nonsense sort of voice. You've done good deeds, you ought to start writing about them, she added on a prophetic note, record the truth, that is‌ Although the woman did appear mad to him, her madness was not entirely without method, as the Bard would have put
it. The idea of writing his memoirs first irked him, than gradually came to win him over. The woman laughed and lit a cigarette with matches made in Brãila. Then she told him indifferently: there's history you make 'cause you want to, and there there's history you make in spite of yourself. Mr Stoenesco was astounded by the weight of her words, yet not for long, as the luridly dressed woman added: they are like the left and right legs. History needs two legs in order to be able to walk, and what they have in common is the place where they converge‌ And where's that? Piece of cake: in the ass. And the woman started shaking with laughter, choked on her own cigarette smoke, coughed, waved goodbye to him and left, bent double with laughter. He didn't know what to think of the whole thing. Never before had he come across such frivolity and impudence. The woman had already covered a fair distance when she turned on her heels and walking backwards she called out to him in a jocular tone: try not to force any interpretation upon my words, I'm not even remotely related to the Austrian Jew. And she started laughing again. See it as a random occurrence and nothing more, one in a series with no logic to it, she added. We'll meet again, anyway, won't we? she almost screamed, as her voice, muffled by urban murmurs, had lost some of its vigour. Anyway, he was not sure he wanted to see her again. In spite of her advice, he couldn't help interpreting, or rather his mind ran away with him without so much as by your leave, and he reasoned that it was not by chance everything had unfolded under the tree once wrapped in yellow polythene. His ears started ringing with the syntagm historical requisite and he shooed it away like some annoying fly. His mind conjured up the image of one of those
metallic green flies buzzing around faeces, but he also drove that image out of his head, despairing of his inability to come up with his own words and images to say what he had to say while his own mind took ample advantage of the things others had said, things he failed to find anything beyond anything but a vortex, a void. There was no root there to hold on to, not a vine, not a straw, not anything but a hint of panic and dismay. That's what it meant to be alone, he managed to cogitate, and couldn't for the life of him figure out whether those had been his own words or not. O the feeling of having time swept from under one's feet. On a Tuesday, Mr Esco, traipsing along in his flipflops and whistling merrily, left his house in order to buy some bread and accidentally found himself in Bucharest. So reluctant was he to go back, that he decided to stay, started a family got a job and in dew time lost it. He'd always had the feeling the city was full of ministries, buses, statues and rushing people. One was hard put to find a quiet corner where one could take a leak. Although he'd gone to great lengths to buy a hat and a tie, no one wanted to employ him, so he went on living happily with his family. Once, a fellow with a missing tooth and a gold tooth to make up for the gap offered to pay him for standing eight hours a day on one leg, but he declined on account of not liking the fellow's face. So as not to lose touch with reality, he started going out to the corner beer place where he soon made lots of friends, people and dogs alike. As a rule, he stayed in touch with reality together with Mr Ov and Mr Ovici, living in Bucharest on a temporary basis and keen to make a name for themselves. Actually, Mr Ov was on his way to Paris, where he meant to perfect his philosophical system, but he'd felt the need for a
phenomenological stopover. This gentleman was fond of the traditional local pudding and equally fond of the Calea Victoriei avenue, where women would stroll, boobs reaching up to their chins, like a bad case of tonsillitis. Mr Ovici, on the other hand, collects cities. As soon as he visits them, he pins them to his lapel, medal-like. Of course, he's a most distinguished gentleman he goes to sleep wearing a bowtie with his pyjamas yet when he's had a couple of beers, he changes into a complete ass, going so far as to claim Bucharest is made up of a bunch of Turks and another bunch of Greeks and Armenians, while the rest are frauds, farmers and a long list of assorted f-words. Mr Ov is trying in vain to argue with him to the contrary, because Mr Ovici forces his nose into the beer mug by pulling at his ears and declares: My name's longer, so I'm right. The story with the tree swathed in yellow polythene had a funny enough opening. He first caught a glimpse of it from the tram, 'twould have been hard not to see it, a full-sized hornbeam or whatever you call 'em, dendrology was not one of his fortes, suddenly gone yellow like a jaundice patient, as weird as a Zeppelin shot down bang in the centre of the city. He chose to walk on the way back for the express purpose of watching the marvel at leisure. He was not the only one marvelling at the sight, but he'd stopped to ruminate on the image. Most of the passersby were wondering what on earth was that thing was. Was the city hall trying to pull their leg or was that a new method for treating sick trees. The mystery was soon unravelled by a lady exiting the institution that hosted the strange contraption: that was an art project. “Contemporary art� she volunteered, smiling noncommittally as she shrugged her
shoulders in an apparent attempt to apologise. At first, as one versed in artistic matters, as he thought of himself, Mr Stoenesco, was fully appreciative of the joke, yet later on, when the lady, in the grips of panic, stressed “oh, yes, I'm telling you contemporary art”, it dawned upon him that there was no joke and he was left, as it happened quite rarely, speechless. He went on home in confusion, unable to put the story out of his mind. As he pondered the things he'd seen and heard, his moods were swinging from surprise to disillusionment, from bafflement to bitterness, from revulsion to curiosity… Thanks to the position he used to hold, the artistic movement of the city was thoroughly mapped in his head. He was quite familiar with those who had talent and with those who didn't. He knew the style of each one of them as well as the more obscure depths of their psychologies (they'd frequently plotted, hadn't they, against the communist party injustice and obtuseness), he'd supported them from within the system, yet try as he may, he couldn't even begin to imagine who'd come up with such… he was at a loss for words… well, yes, with such nonsense. It was not that the piece lacked talent. That was a blatant case of imposture. With a capital I. Personally, he who had protected art for years and years under the dictatorship and helped it survive under terrible circumstances, could only feel disgusted. He made several phone calls. Melancholy or cheerful voices, slightly surprised, cautious or saccharine voices answered him and, little by little, they succumbed to conversation. As they nattered along, he could almost see their faces, marked by age, of course, the years like great black oxen tread the world, don't they, he could picture their studios like just as many forlorn shells, strewn with stuffed
birds, dry fish hands, spindles and spinning wheels, dusty albums and old icons, strange-looking stones, brass objects, clay pots and bulrush stems with flowering spikes, alongside the omnipresent Moses with his little devil's horns. Not infrequently he'd penetrated those temples of creation, both shabby and resplendent at the same time, steeped in mystery, where the artist, torn between unfathomable states, laid his soul on the easel. He'd trodden that space with a hint of shyness, but also aware of the importance of his position. Sometimes the place reeked of stale wine and sour beer, but that's another story. They'd been whispering things that might have landed them in jail for years on end. They'd grumbled against the socialist regime, talked about the good side of bourgeois art, even about abstract and American art, he'd been expressing support of the new generation, meant to infuse the local scene with new blood and he'd turned a blind eye to the religious paintings propped face down in the corners of the studios. Some of them he'd help sell to the Central Committee collectors, to doctors and lawyers and even to people living abroad. During the last years of the regime, the years of the grumbling stomachs, he's helped them exchange paintings for salami, meat, butter, coffee and many such things. He'd happened to mediate between ancient, smouldering hatreds, between rancid envies, and he'd caused anonymous notes with rabid words to go missing. He'd been a good guy, a reasonable person and, above all, an art lover. It was not him that said so rumours to that effect had been reaching him under various circumstances. It was not for nothing that, so many years after Ceausescu's death, writers and artists had no qualms about shaking his hand in public or allowing him into their studios. He'd always known how to secure future favours. Of
course, back in 1990 he'd had to cope with a few delicate months, but that's another story. After watching, his jaws clenched rigid in shock, the broadcast execution of the presidential couple, he'd expected the worst. His family supported him, though. There's just the one incident casting a shadow over those tense months in which the world had turned upside down: being spat at, just as he went out of the lift, the spit landing right between the eyes. The spit reeked of cheap brandy. From time to time, in a token act of bookish revenge, he retrieves a book of essays authored by the person in question and, no, he does not read a certain fragment just the dedication, which suffices. Might be that at the right time he'll make it public if he has to. It goes without saying that he ignored the filth the press was occasionally throwing at him. It's not as if he'd had a choice, to be honest. The turbid chaos of freedom, the confusing vortex of history, had twisted the most balanced of minds, while he kept his mouth shut, something he'd always been good at. Next thing he knew, his generation and the one coming right after it once again saved the day for Romania. At least that's what he thought, even if there were opinions to the contrary. In May 1990 that became obvious for him: positions were once again assigned to experienced people, people he'd known for a long time. Even if now they called themselves “Mister” rather than “Comrade”, they were among the few able to impose a structure on chaos. He agreed, the very young ones had been the leaven of the revolution, their merits shouldn't go unrecognized, yet it was only he and his peers, the ones who'd built that country from scratch and knew it to the least of its people, that were capable of running it. With or without communism, they were the only ones who knew how to organize and lead a people, how to keep a tight rein on them.
The lot who'd fled the country and those who, rightly or not, had languished in prisons for long years, no matter how worthy of respect their courage and suffering were, came from another planet. He was absolutely certain that, had they come to power, they would have thought revenge and nothing but, whereas stability is the world needs. That was the last mission of his generation and they acquitted themselves well. In the autumn of 1990 he'd been himself invited by the majority party to contribute his expertise suggesting the steps to be taken in support of the cultural life of the new society, while in 1991 he was appointed consultant for art and heritage matters. Obviously he went back to his former office. The furniture was unchanged. People had been so busy going out to street protests and reading the free press that dust lay thick everywhere in sight, the corners of the room were fuzzy with cobwebs and in a remote drawer he came across his old majolica ashtray complete with the half-smoked Kent cigarette he'd stubbed out in haste. He'd only kept the position for a few years. Fed up with financial problems and the constant turmoil, he chose to retire. He kept going to art exhibitions, keep an eye on new talents and buy the odd painting. Keep informed, that is. Now that was all the more reason for him to be intrigued by the tree wrapped in yellow polythene. It had somehow landed there out of the blue, without anyone planting it, without him witnessing its growth. Like all foreign bodies with no known history to their names, it posed, he felt, a hidden threat to be unleashed any moment. He made several phone calls, conversed at length, listened to tirades and laments and in the end revised the information and drew the conclusions. It was nothing but a bunch of
rebellious students, big-headed, too, out to make an impact, of course. They were unable to make a drawing, yet set out to revolutionize art. They were not even members of the Artists' Union. Serious people wanted nothing to do with them, serious galleries wouldn't touch them with a barge pole. That Soros guy, a Hungarian Jew gone to the States, was funding their crap, while foreign cultural centres pampered them. They'll run out of steam in a few years. Alternative my foot. Who'd ever decorate their dining room with a tree wrapped in yellow polythene? They'd never sell one item. Experimental art‌ Bullshit. In their dreams. Liberal propaganda through culture. The West had lost interest in such nonsense ages ago. The reactions of some old masters were just the thing to put his mind at ease. They were sort of a guarantee that the world was not totally out of control. A revolution can indeed change a society, but Art, with a capital A, is actually eternal. Pure beauty art albums in their thousands are bearing testimony is imperishable. As he pondered on those things he felt his soul brimming over, thrilled by an invisible wave, pervaded by a noble uplifting feeling as he had rarely experienced before, by the sublime faith in the perfection and ultimate sense of art. Emotion brought tears to his eyes. Mr Ov, of course, had not been a philosopher from the start, he'd seen better days. In the most widely circulated version of his biography, things are laid down as follows: one afternoon, around 17:13, he said to himself out of the blue: watched from above, all things become philosophical. On the first day after that discovery, Mr Ov found himself a ten-storied building, reclined in a basket chair and commenced to meditate in a historically-sanctioned stance:
finger-to-temple. Still all generalizations on the 1:10 scale appeared provincial. Next he got a train, rode all the way to Bucharest and climbed on top of the Intercontinental, pretending he was from maintenance. Although a terrible wind was blowing, he stuck it out for 21 minutes exactly. Anyway, that was plenty of time for him to realize that the 1:22 scale was just as unsatisfactory, particularly since it wasn't even a round number, so he repaired to a beer place, where he met Mr Esco and Mr Ovici, people who failed to change his life. Although it's not exactly a nice thing for us to do, let's have a look at what's going to happen in the future. Deeply dissatisfied, he'll learn to weave baskets, make money and go Descartes' land, on top the Eiffel tower, in order to fine-tune his relative theory of generalization. It will be winter and Paris will be unencompassable. On top of it all, his temple-appended finger will be afflicted with frostbite leading to amputation half a year later. Disappointed and agnostic, he'll be putting off his suicide on a daily basis for the next ten years. He'll end up getting bored and entering politics, only to be appointed director of the Intensive piggery not far from his birthplace. But for the moment he's in Bucharest, the city where personalities grossly outnumber the streets. It's raining outside and he, together with Mr Esco and Mr Ovici, are passionately talking about all and sundry. There's no thing in this world he cannot elaborate a theory on, with the possible exception of matchsticks which he has a thing against since birth. Hadn't someone else invented the lighter, he would have done it himself and that's for sure. But however, that's another story.
He blew up his cheeks and rubbed them vigorously with sanitary alcohol, then slapped them gently the way nurses prepare buttocks for a painful injection. He did everything with abrupt, rush gestures, as if subjecting himself to some Spartan treatment. To be sure, the alcohol did sting a bit, caused his face to smart in places, which he rather enjoyed, he felt younger, tougher, more like a man. The military-like ritual filled him with energy. If his son, Silviu, had only seen him, he would have told him off, in that slightly jocular tone children reaching maturity employ to scold their parents. Why on earth was he giving his father the most expensive aftershaves for presents? To avoid crossing him, he opened the bathroom cabinet, stuffed with tubes and an assortment of bottles in all shapes and sizes, and picking some lotion at random, he splashed it on his face wrinkling his nose. There‌ Happy now? He mumbled and chortled, tee-hee-hee, proud of the trick he'd devised. He was due within moments, storming in as was his wont, to drop Adrian before rushing back to work. Silviu was running a foreign car franchise. After trying his hand at a pizza parlour and an antique and old icons shop, now he seemed to have found his true vocation. On Saturdays, Adrian was going out with his granddad. Most of the time he'd entertain the boy passionately telling him stories from his own life, so that he'd know he didn't come from your run-of-the-mill family. Apparently, the little one really had a thing for history, for he was listening to him without interrupting questions. Looking at the city with a clean-shaved face he found it a better sight. His apartment, which he'd received from the party more years ago than he cared to remember, had a rare quality: each room offered a different view of the city. Under the blazing sun the buildings seemed to be made
of molten lava and, as it streamed through the hills, the city brought to mind a molten steel charge scared by the tiny threadlike flow of the cast-iron grey Bahlui River. Behind the hill, crest serrated by apartment buildings and new church steeples, hidden to the eye yet visible to his mind spread the rolling tar sea frozen into symmetrical waves the roof of the Heavy Machinery Plant. It was there that the crimson lava of the city was headed, the colossus swallowing welding flames, ledeburite and molten iron, to spit onto the conveyor belt pieces of massive machinery, equipments and spare parts. That was way back in the days when he would take his guests to the Galata hill to show them the colossus in all its splendour. Now, watched from above, it was a sorry sight. The proud dragon of yore was nothing but a stranded whale rotting away and peeling off in the sun. It couldn't even swallow the ashes of the workers' cigarettes, as for over ten years, the conveyor belt only turned out unemployed workers and retirees. If you actually happened to go by train from Iaยบi to Bucharest, you could see the twilight of the country's steel and cast iron heyday, as decay set in under the indifferent eyes of the passengers and the government. Bloated with rust, their concrete slabs weathered beyond recognition and rank with overgrown weeds, the great industrial facilities were displaying their leanness everywhere. Geese and sheep are grazing among lathe plinths. Cows tangle their horns in electrical cables hanging limply and pointlessly. The wind is howling as it rushes through pipes and conduits. Caved in ceilings, broken walls, gutted wall sockets, basins run aground upon tree tops, dead concassors and cogwheels, their teeth ravaged by caries, fill the beholder's soul with heaviness. Children dressed in hand-me-downs are stealing bricks by the bagful,
while starving people are digging through the grasses littered with plastic bags and bottles in search of scrap iron. With a little luck they find a crankshaft or a crane hook and they can drink for a whole week. This is the carrion of communism, shedding dust and rust. Here and there, out of its rotting flesh, little villas spring up, complete with neat gardens and bristling with satellite dishes. The closer you get to Bucharest, their number increases. Many a time he thought that if he'd been born in Bucharest or at least gone to school there, his life would have been completely different. But that's another story‌ He cast a melancholy glance to his watched and made for the next room to select his suit, tie and shirt. But instead of opening the wardrobe, he looked out of the window, taking in another face of the city. One of those tiny yellowish apartment blocks, among the first to be built for the Soviet bigwigs, was where Dinu used to live long, long ago. They say he ended up in prison because he used to sit with his legs crossed at party meetings and kept a Siamese cat, which betrayed a bourgeois attitude. But that was another story. He realized that of late he'd taken to overusing that another-story phrase, and that was getting on his nerves. His eyes came to rest on the little church they were steadily building in a corner of the playground behind his block out of plastic and double-glazing panels and, taken aback, he crossed himself discreetly. In his opinion Bucharest is redolent with the fragrance of bread, while in the rest of the country all statues are carved out of the “mamaligaâ€? cornmeal porridge, and the only true competence of the locals is the ability to guess what bus goes to what ministry. Mr Ov, the collector, is of the
contrary opinion that, seen from above, the city looks like a petrol stain or, at best, with a rabbit herd, each of them a different colour. Hence the whole argument. Mr Esco, instead of arbitrating the dispute, takes offence and consequently commences to trim his fingernails, whereupon he falls asleep. Bad idea, because the argument escalates to a fight and he misses that excellent performance thus having to beg the waiter for an account of the story. Next day, though, in the morning, without him even noticing anything, Mr Esco's life took an unexpected turn. At 5.13 or thereabouts, he was hardly awake when his left hand started yakking in Russian. Assuming the silly bugger was talking in its sleep, he hastened to thrust it under the cold water tap at the basin, but to no avail. Not long after that his right hand followed suit talking in some twisted language, Turkish by the sound of it. Then one of his legs mumbled something in Bulgarian while the other one lamented in Greek. As if on cue, one ear started chirping in Cuman while the other one resorted to Latin. For a moment, Mr Esco was at a loss, suspecting he'd swallowed the Babel Tower by mistake. As, for the past three days, his wife had been constantly on the phone with her sister who'd immigrated to Italy, he had to manage on his own. Out of sheer despair, he sneezed three times in a row and his nose replied with “Shalom�. He panicked and started sucking on a mint, reckoning that if the neighbours got wing of it, they'd capture him and sell him to the circus. So he packed in a hurry and rushed to the airport, with the intent to leave Ov and Ovici as his local replacements in the city of Bucharest. However, they only spoke English there and wouldn't believe that he was a born native of Bucharest. So he started whistling and went to buy some bread.
After the unfortunate story with the jaundiced tree, disappointments came in quick succession. The world he lived in, swollen and raging like a river bursting its banks, had been thrown out of kilter. The state witnessed helplessly, or indifferently, to be precise, the exhibitionism of a bunch of twerps claiming they were making art while, in truth, they were only making a big show out of kowtowing to the west, which couldn't be entirely put down to naivetĂŠ. He was too old to believe anyone dispensed money for free, but that's another story... Out of an interest which he sometimes found morbid, whenever he got wind of an event involving the young rebels he slunk sheepishly into the audience. Thus he had to go to the most unexpected and bizarre places because, as far as he could tell, the art officially educating the masses and secretly withdrawing into itself, was now taking to the streets, descending to the pavements, or even lower, to the basements. It migrated democratically out of the central airy, well-lit chambers towards the foetid outskirts where, the way he saw it, it should have stayed forever and a day, to the aesthetic satisfaction of the Gypsies (well, Roma, to be politically correct), the beggars, the unemployed and, obviously, of all the rodents and associated vermin. He'd been taken to sordid outskirts, to abandoned factories with broken windows and rust plump as dough, in coppices stripped bare by the frost, among skips over spilling with blossom-like garbage, to deserted construction sites or in underground passages where the stench of urine tore at your nose, to fumes-choked intersections and even to zebra crossings, where a trolleybus almost smashed into the artists, as an attempted sacrifice on the altar of art or, more in their spirit, as a mere occupational hazard. He missed no
stinking corner of the city, not even the city dump where, as he'd read in the papers, it had taken the artists lots of trouble to gain access to, since the officials at the City Hall, where bureaucracy and narrow-mindedness were rampant, were hard put to figure out the philosophy of contemporary art. No he was not fastidious, nor had he been born with a silver spoon in his mouth or raised by a governess, with bourgeois values for lunch, but all the same art was, for him, an entirely different matter. After all, these angry young people were more Marxist than the Proletkult set. The difference was that they enjoyed more freedom than was good for their age. What they were doing went by nice-sounding names, fashionable English buzzwords like happening, performance or installations, but God was his witness, he couldn't for the life of him see where the art was. Al he could see were boys and girls in slashed jeans, with shaved skulls or alternately rancid dreadlocks, doing all sorts of strange things, sometimes even potentially dangerous to their health or the health of whoever happened to watch them. They were counting with closed eyes, they buried their heads in the earth and breathed through a tube, they wrote notes and pressed them into the hands of passers-by, they cured the hams and sausages of the unemployed in the Canta district, they painted white the waste found in random garbage containers, they hung themselves from crane hooks or piled up TV sets on top of one another or else sat them in half circles. As far as he was concerned they were nothing but people who'd miss their vocation. They belonged, by rights, in a circus. They let loose in the city fibreglass cows to browse the asphalt or made jam out of the strawberries picked by Romanian immigrants to Spain. He had been, of course, to the famous Turkish bath, a ruin to all intents and
purposes, which the organizers did not have the basic decency of subjecting to even token restoration. The plaster was fallen revealing the bare brickwork, while the woodwork was downright rotten, one being in danger of breaking one's neck at every step. Participation was international, yet art was nowhere to be seen. In a pool halffilled with water, German books advertising post-war literature were floating sealed in plastic bags. A mannequin swaddled in phosphorescent duct tape, with slits where its eyes and mouth were supposed to be, was glowing in a small dark room. He'd dubbed it, for his own personal benefit, The Statue of Liberty. In another room, a TV set was showing the same sequence ad infinitum, with neither beginning nor end. In a former toilet cubicle a squatting guy was holding a newspaper or just doodling. From five or six hotplates where pots of water had been set to boil plumes of steam were shooting into the air causing paper-cut maps hanging from the wall to spin. Out of a chocolate toilette bowl you could help yourself freely. There was even a takeaway option‌ Seldom had he come across such a bunch of wackos united in the genuine belief they were making art. If you chanced to scratch behind an ear or took off one of your shoes because you had a pebble in it, you found yourself making contemporary art without knowing it, the way Monsieur Jourdain was making prose, and stood a fair chance of being proclaimed founder of some artistic movement. No, nothing had given him a thrill, his spirit had found no aesthetic delight, nor any deep, life-changing message to awaken his inner being or at least intrigue him. It was with disappointment, even anger that he left the place. Probably that whole bunch saw themselves as emerging from Duchamp's urinal like Venus from the sea surf; still they
were nothing but the product of a clogged toilet bowl. Well, he could say it openly. He wouldn't have exchanged today's imposture for the works formerly commissioned by the party, now shameful family secrets, so-called compromising skeletons piled up in the musty basements of apprehensive museums. No, he wouldn't claim they were masterpieces, yet those artists picturing miners, oil rigs, plentiful harvests, the glorious princes of the Romanian principalities or Ceausescu's visit to some construction site, knew how to hold a brush in their hands: even in that junk their talent was obvious, it haloed the canvas. For him personally, talent born talent that is, not the acquired or aped versions, was the supreme argument. The rest, to put it in non-academic terms, was just crap. He could swear that all those rebellious punks who'd hardly ever heard of Malevich's Black Square, were completely out of their depth when it came to the golden ratio, they'd smear themselves to their asses if asked to mix two colours yet, good God, they dubbed themselves artists. The dictatorship, for better or worse, wouldn't have allowed such things to happen. These last thoughts took even him by surprise, so he shook his head as if electrocuted to get rid of them. Mr Esco took a look at his generation and thought to himself: “I take a look at my generation and‌â€? He observed them shaking in their shoes, as if his tiny secret antennae detected the imminence of black clouds in the shape of army-boot soles. His knees jerked up uncontrollably and rhythmically two-three centimetres high, to the throbbing accompaniment of his ashplant. He's watching her from afar, and occasionally has a hard time making out her profile in the jumble of hands and legs, in the
melee of bodies besieging the market stalls. Parsley, dill, tomatoes, cucumbers everything vanished into the emptybellied bags, hanging limp like tattered banners on a battlefield. He made it to the kitchens. Everything was crunched, sliced, gnawed at, diced, chewed, sucked to the last vitamin. His was a fierce generation, born to fight. The old folks were indefatigable vitamin hunters. Between their sallow gums, the last sprig of cress breathed its last, writhing in agony. In spring they all seemed to go berserk. Translucent and bony, eyes brutish with winter, they'd tread on each other's feet and they'd shove, devitalized, listless gladiators. Some of them went so far as to pinch each other or mutter oaths under their breaths. They were wicked and helpless. Their limp hands felt every item of merchandise, turning it on all sides, tested the vigour of fruit, rummaged around. Then wrinkled their noses. Pouted their wilted lips. Smirked shrewdly. They'd bargain for days on end, till the green went limp, the fruit went rotten and had to be sold at a lower price. They'd snap at the vitamin with trembling hands, secured and smiled triumphantly. They'd rub their little paws with satisfaction. As summer approached, they'd calm down, sort of. Only went out in the cool of the day. First thing in the morning, they'd storm the market. Sampling, sniffing around. With a certain politeness. Discreetly, some of them. Around eleven thirty, a bugle imperceptible to the untutored yet clearly discernible for their lot, called the retreat. They'd come back at around four thirty, refreshed after their afternoon nap. The shrewdest of the species turned up at six, on the off chance they'd bag some produce gone bad during the day. Which the farmers wouldn't bother to take back home. This year, though, they seemed worse than ever.
Though spring was all but gone, their growls were still audible. The scurry of rummaging hands went on unabated. The herb-hunting frenzy still gleamed in their eyes. Their vocabulary was a weedy garden. Yes. It looked like they were in for a dry year. His generation could sense such things. A vitamin shortage loomed ahead. They were headed for a drought, and no doubt about it. His instinct never failed him. That could be a fine opportunity to make a fast buck. Holding a position was no longer fashionable. Silviu called from outside the block to let him know he had no time to come up. He'd drop Adrian in the alley, by the entrance. Oh well, he'd splashed that stinking after shave on his face for nothing. Before going downstairs, he resorted to one last scrutiny in the mirror. Hair was all right, the tie knot tight and plumb, colours matching, back straight. He could have done with an extra three to four centimetres added to his stature, but that's another story. In the lift he briefly treated the woman next door to his theory on apartment heating systems, known to be detrimental to the collective spirit, as opposed to good old central heating. As he sensed he'd been persuasive enough, he also chose to expound the theory to Adrian, in a more accessible form, of course. He'd been long since acquainted with the principle of adjusting information to the listener's level of culture, from way back in the days when he was in charge of political propaganda in villages, but that's another story. In the city they had their own route, comprising, as a rule, historical monuments, or buildings that had played an important part in his life and activity. On occasion they'd sit down on a bench and, while the frail boy played silently with his own
fingers, a bad habit he'd acquired after his parents' divorce, he would tell him at length about the eminent people of the city, without leaving out his own major contribution to the city's welfare. Their Saturday adventure always ended at the McDonald's next to the station, where lots of the city elite used to converge, and the child's eyes lit up at the sight of the Happy-Meal toys. Apart from the nouveau riche, wearing crew-cuts and rope-thick gold chains, sporting tiered bellies and bandying bawdy jokes about, one could see doctors, lawyers and even priests, well, the kind of people who could afford splurging on such an outing. He would have liked Adrian to make friends and romp around, but apparently he was too shy for that kind of thing. While the child, a concentrated frown on his face, was playing with a pair of exophthalmic eyes fitted with a device that could attach them to the padded tongue of his trainers, according to the girl at the counter, he remembered his strange dream that ravaged his memories. On entering the door, he realized he was not going into his bedroom, but in his old office. Only thing is, there's a dentist rather than a cigarette smell inside. At the desk, in front of a typewriter, a pre-war model, his old acquaintance, the luridly-dressed woman. Her fingers are poised above the keys, like beaks ready to peck at the nicely-rounded buttons. She's all eyes and seems ready to get down to work. What's for lunch, Siles, baby? she asks in the most natural tone. Although it seems a routine question, the viciousness lies in that “Siles baby”, which only his ex-wife used. Caught off guard again he's beginning to get nervous and a wave of heat flushes his scalp. Sausages and beans, he answers in a bilious voice. The woman bangs at the keys: “Sausages and beans”. Each letter has a different taste, she explains, and now, after
I've typed this combination, you to taste the food in your mouth. He concentrates on his tongue and palate and, sure enough, his taste buds revel in the purest sausage-and-beans flavour, the kind you could only get at the communist party canteen. The woman winks at him naughtily and types: “shit”. Then pulls out the sheet, screws it into a ball and dumps it into the waste-paper basket. He touches his tongue to his palate and looks at her questioningly. Gluttony's not what we're here for, she snaps at him. We're here to record history. You've promised us a synopsis, Basil. I'm listening, she adds, crouched over the typewriter, fingers like hail raining down. He regains his poise and retorts: Now then, get down to writing, do. Let's start with the title. The Life and Times of Comrade…? Ehmmm, Mister… Mister? From the beginning: The Life and Times of Vasile Stoenescu or a short history of the Romanian people from the author's birth to the present day. Bang! I was born in a needy family, in an age of extreme social tension… No, that's no good. There we go: Vasile is the second son of Maria Stoenescu, née Bujara, and Dumitru Stoenescu, heroically fallen in the course of duty… No, no, no! Again: few know it's going to be a momentous year for Europe. While in Great Britain the BBC had started broadcasting the first television programme on a regular basis, the first analogical computer was being invented in the United States of America, the paper clip was being invented in Norway and Charles Seeberger was perfecting the escalator, Vasile Stoenescu was born in a little Romanian village… Bang! The beginning had been hard. Now the synopsis
started flowing like a river of erudition. He paces to and fro, hands clasped behind his back, and from time to time, pouting and screwing up his eyes, he's searching for the right word. At some point he realizes he's taken off his jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves to his elbows, as in preparation for digging the garden. Thus, he feels at ease and the dictation proceeds faster. The sun sets to the rhythm of his sentences, and in a moment of grace he comes up with the appropriate ending: The typewriter's clicking is history's progress on high heels. Whereupon he collapses into the armchair, lights up a cigarette and asks to see the typed text. Mr Esco (a national epopee, coming-of-age novel and riddle) he reads at the top of the page, in the middle. Then: Mr Esco was born out of a tinned fish box or out of a jar of stewed fruit, no one knows for sure‌ But that's another story, he cries out indignantly, shaking his right fist. Indeed, quite another story, the luridly-dressed woman confirms‌
And bursts into a nervous fit of laughter, guttural and sarcastic, growing to a paroxystic crescendo, cracking the ceiling and shattering the windows, causing the block to collapse, demolishing the city, screwing itself into the brain.
English translation by Florin Bican
This text was comissioned for Critical Point Project, with the occasion of Vector Association’s participation in the frame of Frieze Projects. 2010 Š of Dan Lungu Generously supported by the Romanian Cultural Institute in London