Part 3

Two serving maids and the nephew of the head of the house enter with huge, four cornered bottles; one little drink and a dried fig open the meal. That is the custom evidently to banish the taste of cigarettes which are always in evidence. Then wine is poured into glasses--the heavy, thick, ink-black wine of Lissa--and each one selects his favorite morsel from the plates. Before the sugared eggs are passed around the wine takes effect--only a few clean out their plates with rye bread--and next comes the _minestra_, then baked macaroni with _hashée_ made from the entrails of young lambs; fowl roasted in sugar, small _barboni_ baked in oil, baked ink-fish with citron, pullets cooked with fresh vegetables and beef and served upon huge platters. First one and then another of the guests hands over to the attendants first the silver pistols and then the knives; then they unfasten the heavy leathern girdles and loosen their neckbands. Louder and more boisterous rises the laughter, redder the faces, even the face of my little companion grows rosy when I insist that she translate for me some of the witticisms.

Now, _fritolli_ are brought in, round sweet cakes fried in oil, turkeys, from which each one cuts a slice, or rather tears it off, as it happens. Fresh wine is continually brought, while the master of the house announces the year and place of vintage; wines from the islands, from Greece. Occasionally a guest rises and drinks the health of the bride’s father, the bridegroom or some guest. Outside in the court-yard are heard the noisy voices of workmen and servants who are eating at a long table. The Perovic family have never been niggards.

The heat is insufferable despite open doors and windows; and I long for the fresh air and coffee. How long can this debauchery continue? At length the champagne comes and after that the special dish of honor.

Upon a long wooden tray, borne by two servants, a roast lamb is brought, and placed upon a serving table which is shoved up to the lower end of the large table. With a lordly gesture the master of ceremonies steps forward, takes up a large knife, ground thin as a hair. The master of the house speaks a few words. Then all the young people sitting round the table bow their heads quickly and cover their eyes with the edge of the table cloth. All laugh and talk and holler. My little companion whispers to me to do just what the others do. I see the master of ceremonies lift a huge knife, and then with one blow which makes the glasses dance, sever the entire roasted lamb. One more blow and the “_jaraz_” lies cut in four parts.

The guests drop the edge of the table cloth, wipe their eyes and hair--the ones who did not skilfully hide and shelter themselves with the cloth. The master of the house congratulates the master of ceremonies upon his skill and dexterity.

This officially ends the meal. To be sure cakes and fruit are brought in, but only the ladies taste of them. The men continue to drink. The Archimandrite rises, thanks the master of the house for the banquet. The kissing of shoulders begins again, and I attempt to take advantage of the opportunity by making my own adieux, when the hands of my little companion grab me by the arm and she whispers: “Please don’t go now. I’m afraid! I’m afraid!” I see that she is watching anxiously a little group at one end of the table.

Beside the master of the house stands that young gloomy looking man--the wooer whom Nine had rejected. He is smiling scornfully and whispering in the ear of the old man. The old man laughs in an ugly manner, swallows glass after glass of wine. Then he pounds on the table and roars: “_Who mentions his name, he is dead!_” The others nod approval, slap him on the back, and touch drinking glasses with him. In the meantime the gloomy looking man goes up to talk with the bride and groom. His face is sad and tragic. He is telling them something that affects them deeply. The young bride nods approval, my sergeant pulls down his coat, straightens up and clears his throat, and walks up to the old man.

I saw Fabriccio standing beside the old man. I saw him place his hand upon the old man’s shoulder, and then I heard his words as if echoing through a strange silence:

“Father--on this happy day, let us not forget poor Nicolo, who with wife and child and poverty--”

There was no way to help now. With distended eyes, white with rage, the old man jumped up. I saw Fabriccio stagger back, then start to run after the old man through the open door. There was noise and confusion on the stairs--then I saw the little bride throw herself upon the dead body of Fabriccio.

Three days later they found the old man in hiding in a house of ill-fame. Poor little Nine!

L. G. CARAGIALE

EASTER CANDLES

Leiba Zibal, proprietor of the little rest-house by Podeni, is sitting thoughtfully under the projecting roof in front of the wine shop waiting for the stage which is already overdue an hour.

The life story of Zibal is long and it is not particularly merry. But now, in his present condition when he is suffering so from fever, it is a genuine amusement for him to parade before his mind its various incidents.

Huckster, petty merchant, general go-between--sometimes even more humble--dealer in rags and old clothes, once tailor and cleaner in a sad, dirty little street in Jassy. He had had to try his hand at all these things in the interval after losing his place as waiter in a large wine house. Under his supervision two porters had carried a cask of wine into the cellar. In the division of the labor they fell out. One seized a stick of wood and dealt his partner a blow on the head so severe that he dropped unconscious and blood spattered the walk.

Zibal shrieked with horror at the sight, but the porter was hastening to get away, and lifting a threatening hand to Zibal, who fainted from terror. As a result he was ill for several months, and when he came back he found his old place had been filled.

Then began a fight for existence, which was made harder by his marriage to Sura. But patience and endurance can overcome the most treacherous fortune.

Sura’s brother--proprietor of the rest-house by Podeni--died, and the little business was inherited by Zibal who carried it on on his own account. Here he had lived for five years. He had managed to scrape together a small competence in raw and well aged wine, which at any time has an equivalent in gold. Zibal had freed himself from poverty, but now they are all ill, he and his wife and the child--ill with the marsh fever.

The people in Podeni are bad tempered and quarrelsome. Harsh words, scorn, curses, constant complaints that they are being poisoned with vitriol. But worst of all are the threats. A threat for a sensitive, nervous nature, is worse than a blow. And now what makes Leiba Zibal suffer more than the fever, is a threat.

“Ah!--dog of a Christian!” he thinks sadly. The one he refers to is friend George. He wonders where he is hiding--this man with whom he had had an unpleasant experience.

It was on a morning in fall. George stumbled into the rest-house weary, saying he was just out of the hospital and must have work. Zibal hired him. But George proved to be coarse and rough and bad tempered. He cursed and grumbled. He was a lazy and unwilling servant, and he stole.

One day he threatened Zibal’s wife, who was soon to be confined, that he would give her a blow in the abdomen, and another time he set the dogs upon the baby. Leiba paid him and dismissed him. But George said at first that he would not go away, that he had been hired for a year. The proprietor retorted that he would go to the authorities and complain of him, and ask for the law to free him from him.

Then George grabbed for something hidden within his clothes and shrieked:--“Judas!” He started toward Leiba as if he were going to fall upon him.

Fortunately, just at this moment, guests came to the hostelry, because the stage had just driven up. George began to grin. “What? You weren’t afraid, were you, Mr. Leiba? See--I’m going!”

Then he bent over the table toward Leiba making him shrink back as far as possible, and whispered: “_You just wait till Easter night!_ We’ll pick red eggs together! Then you’ll find I’ve reckoned up your account!”

The guests entered the rest-house.

“Goodbye till Easter, Mr. Leiba!” added George as he went out the door.

Leiba went to the authorities, put the case before them and asked for protection. The sub-prefect--a merry young fellow--was the first one to learn the modest request preferred by Leiba, and he began at once to laugh and to make fun of the trembling Jew. Leiba tried to make him comprehend the danger of the situation. He explained that the rest-house was in a lonely place, far from a village--yes, even off the highway. But the sub-prefect merely told him in a jocular manner to brace up and try to be sensible. Moreover he didn’t wish to talk about such things in a village where the people were so quarrelsome and poor, because it might put notions of insubordination into their heads.

Some days later George was sought by mounted police at command of the sub-prefect. A crime had been committed and suspicion pointed to him.

“How much better it would have been,” Leiba thought, “if he had put up with him until the people came! Because now no one knew where he was.”

Although this had happened a long time ago, it all lived again tonight in his memory, accelerated with fever and suffering. He saw him grab at his clothes as if for a concealed weapon, he heard again the threat, and he suffered again just as he did then at the import of the words. Why did the memory happen to come back so vividly just now, he kept asking himself.

It was the night before Easter.

In the little village, some two kilometers away upon the hills, between the big ponds--he could hear the church bells ringing. And they sound so strangely when they echo through a brain made sensitive with fever. Sometimes the bells are very loud and sometimes they scarcely whisper. Easter eve was at hand. This was the time set by George for fulfillment of his threat.

“Now, of course, he is safely in prison somewhere,” said Leiba, reassuringly.

However, it may be, Zibal will have to remain in Podeni until the next quarter is over. Then with his money he will move to Jassy and open a nice little business, on the Market square--then Leiba will have good health again and not shake with fever. He will be right beside police headquarters. He will give tips liberally to all the policemen--to the inspector of police--Who pays well, is safe.

On a great market square like the one in Jassy, night is noisy, and just as light as day. No darkness there--no silence either. Never such deep silence as in this lonely valley of Podeni, between the black hills and the great speechless water. In Jassy there is a rest-house--right in an angular building on the corner--which is the finest place in the world for a rest-house. There, all night long girls dance and sing in a _Café chantant_. What noise they make! What merry life! There any hour of the day or night you can look out your windows and see the gentlemen who enforce the law amusing themselves with other gentlemen of the law--in coquetting with the girls.

Why should he make himself miserable by staying here any longer, when the business grows worse daily, especially now since the railroad was built, which has to make a detour of miles because of the swamps?

“Leiba,” calls Sura. “The stage is coming. I can hear the bells.”

The valley of Podeni is just like the bottom of a kettle--all surrounded by hills. Down in the southern part, the springs that come from the mountains, spread out into lakes, where grouped water grasses grow like bushes. Between the swamps and the high hills in the middle of the valley stands Leiba’s lonely rest-house as brave as a fortification. Despite the wet land the walls are dry as powder.

At sound of Sura’s voice he gets up painfully and stretches his legs cramped with fever. He looks long toward the East. There is no sign of the stage.

“It isn’t coming. You just thought so,” he replied to the woman and sank down again.

Exhausted, he crosses his arms upon the table, and his head drops down upon them. Relaxation steals over his weary nerves, and his mind wanders in the strange visions of illness.

George--Easter eve--criminals--Jassy--a little safe rest-house in the Market square--a thriving business--health. He falls asleep.

Sura and the child are no longer in the house. Leiba walks to the door of his hotel and surveys the street along which they must come. Life is busy in that great street, along which the carriage wheels spin, accompanied by the rhythmic tread of horses’ feet upon shining asphalt.

Suddenly the traffic is held up and from Copou--a suburb of Jassy--a crowd of foot people approach, all gesticulating and hollering. They seem to accompany some one: soldiers, watchmen, spectators. In all the windows and doors are crowds of greedy observers.

“Ah, ha,” thinks Leiba. “Now they have caught a robber!”

The crowd comes nearer. Sura slips out of the crowd and comes up to where Leiba is standing on the rest-house steps.

“What’s up, Sura?”

“A madman from Golia[2]--_escaped_.”

“Let’s close up so he can’t attack us.”

“Oh, they’ve bound him. But before they did it, he beat the soldiers. The bad tempered Christians shoved a Jew out of the crowd, and the madman bit him on the cheek.”

From the front steps Leiba has a fine vantage point from which to see. On the step below Sura stands holding the baby.

There he goes--the madman whom two soldiers are trying to hold. His arms are bound by strong ropes. The man has the body of a giant. His head is just like a bull’s; black, thick-curled. Hair covers his face--dark, in disorder. What a mass of hair covers his head! He is bare-footed; he keeps spitting blood and the hair he bit from the cheek of the Jew. Now the crowd pauses. What is the trouble?

The soldiers free the madman. The people step aside and make an open space about him. The madman pauses and sweeps the circle with his eyes, which at length pause by Zibal’s door. He gnashes his teeth, then darts for the steps. In the space of a second he seizes the head of the baby with his right hand and the head of Sura with his left, dashes them together and they split open like egg shells.

When the two heads smash together there is a noise like the thunder.

With agony of soul, like a man plunged from a high cliff, Leiba calls: “A world stands by and looks on calmly while we are made the sacrifice of a madman!”

But somehow he cannot say the words; they stick to his lips.

“_Up_--Jew!” a voice calls, and a great whip strikes upon the table.

“That’s a stupid joke!” remarks Sura from the door-step of the rest-house. “The idea of startling a man out of sleep like that: miserable peasant-dog!”

Leiba jumped up.

“You’re afraid, are you, Jew?” a scornful jester asks.

“Sleeping in broad daylight?--Get up--guests are coming. The stage is here.”

And after the old custom--which sets the Jews in agony--he put his arms around him and began to tickle him.

“Let me alone,” he cried, trying to wiggle away. “Don’t you see I’m sick? Let me alone!”

At length the stage comes, after almost three hours delay. There are two travelers who sit down together at one table. From the conversation of the travelers he learns the following facts. At the last post station, there was a murder committed the night before in a rest-house run by a Jew. The post horses were always changed here. But the robbers stole the horses and escaped to another village, and until other horses could be procured, the travelers were forced to observe the scene of the crime.

If the house had not been robbed one would have thought it an act of revenge or religious fanaticism. In stories told about certain religious sects, there were just such crimes. Even in the fever that was consuming him, Leiba began to shiver.

Then followed something that evidently filled the conductor of the stage with deep respect.

The passengers were two students--one of philosophy and one of medicine. Between the students now arose a debate. Atavism--alcoholism and its pathological results. Theories of heredity--mistakes of training and education--neurosis! All the discoveries of modern science. But first--reversion to type--Darwin--Haeckel--Lombroso--Between Darwin and Lombroso the enthusiastic guests had found time to sip a little of Schopenhauer, too,--“_toward Heaven and toward the light_!”

Zibal was a long way from comprehending these enlightened theories. Perhaps for the first time exalted words like these vibrated upon the feverish swamp-air of Podeni.

But one thing Leiba had understood better than all the rest, and that was “reversion to type”--that was an exact description of George. This picture, which he had only visioned dimly, now blazed out in his mind with the vividness of reality. He saw it in its most unessential details.

The stage was far away now. Leiba watched it out of sight until it turned around a corner of the mountains. The sun had just dipped behind one of the black peaks and evening began to veil with its shadows the lonely valley of Podeni. Restless and unhappy he drops down upon the chair again and turns over in his mind all that he has heard.

In the lonely night, in the darkness, a man, two women and two children were snatched from sleep and murdered. The shrieks of the children which brutal blows silence, when they slit their bellies open--and then the last one to die, who had to sit in a corner and watch all that happened--_until his own turn came_. It was worse than an execution, and there is no hope for a Jew when he falls into the hands of the Christians.

The feverish lips of Leiba follow all these thoughts mechanically. Shivers run down his back; with trembling step he walks along the passageway in the rest-house.

“Without doubt,” thinks Sura--“Leiba is bad. He’s ill. He has _queer_ thoughts in his head.”

How else could she explain the peculiarities of the past few days?

He closed the rest-house and lighted the candles just as Shabbes was drawing to a close. Three times guests knocked on the doors and friendly voices asked admittance. At every knock he jumped up and kept his wife from opening the door, while he whispered, his eyes rolling with terror: “Don’t move--I won’t let a Christian in tonight.”

Then he went into the passageway and began to sharpen the ax on the threshold. He trembled so he could with difficulty keep to his feet. He answered his wife harshly and at length sent her to bed, with command to put out the light. At first she refused but he repeated the command so strangely that she did not dare disobey, but she made up her mind that later she would find out the cause.

Sura had put out the lamp and now she was sleeping beside Strul.

Sura was right; Leiba is seriously ill.

It is night now--black night. Leiba sits beside the step that leads to the passageway and listens--What is he listening to?

Far, far in the distance there is an indistinguishable sound like horses’ feet--a dull mysterious murmur as of conversation. When night makes the eye useless then the ear takes upon itself increased distinguishing power.

There’s no mistake about it now. Upon the road that leads from the highway here is heard the beat of horses’ hoofs. Zibal gets up and tiptoes to the great door of the passageway. It is well protected by a bar shoved into the masonry on both sides. At the first step sand creaks under his shoes. He takes off his shoes and walks in his stockings. He reaches the door just at the moment the horsemen go by. They are talking. He catches the following words:

“He got up early.”

“But what if he had gone away?”

“Then his turn will come another time. I could have wished--”

He hears no more. The men are too far away now. Of whom were they talking? Who had gone to bed or ridden away? Whose turn will come another time? Who was it who wished it had been different? And what were they after on this lonely side-road, which was used only by people who come to the rest-house?

An oppressive weight burdened his head.

Could it be George?

Leiba felt his strength giving way and dropped down on the threshold. In the confusion of his head he could not hit upon a clear thought. Without knowing what he did he turned back and lighted a little lamp.

It was only a ghost of light, the wick was so nearly burned. It gave off very dim, vertical rays that were scarcely visible. But it was sufficient for him to observe the well known corners and see what was there. Ah! there was much less difference between the sun and this pitiful little lamp, than between this and pitch darkness.

The clock ticked loudly. The sound hurt Zibal. He seized the pendulum and stopped it.

His mouth was dry. He suffered from thirst. He washed a glass in the wooden trough by the serving counter and tried to pour out some brandy. But the bottle clinked against the glass. These sounds hurt his head so he had to give it up.

He let the glass sink softly in the trough of water and tried to drink from the bottle. Then he put the bottle in its place with a noise that jarred him. He became breathless with terror. He picked up the lamp and placed it upon the projection of a window edge in the passageway; upon the door, the ceiling, and the opposite wall, it threw feeble, vertical lines scarcely bright enough to be seen.

Again Zibal sat down upon the threshold and listened.

Easter bells were pealing from the church upon the heights. It was the signal of the resurrection of the Christ. Midnight then was long past. Day was not so far away. Oh, if the remainder of this night of horror would only slip away.

A crunching of sand under feet! He is in his stockings and has not moved. The sound is repeated,--again--again. Someone is outside--_near_. He stands up, grabs his chest convulsively. He tries to swallow the bunch in his throat. Men are outside.--_George!_

Yes, it is he. The bells have rung out the hour of the resurrection!

They are talking softly--the men.

“_But I tell you that he is asleep!_ I saw him put the light out!”

“All the better--we’ll clean the place out then.”

“I can open the door. I know just how it works. We’ll break one of the little windows in. The bolt is near it--”

Then one heard fingers groping in the darkness--and making measurements. An auger is thrust into the dry oak of the old door and begins to turn. Zibal has to lean against the wall for support; with the left hand he supports himself upon the door, while the right covers his eyes.

Then because of the peculiar working of the brain the ear of Zibal heard distinctly these words: “Leiba, the stage is coming!”

It was Sura’s voice. A beam of hope touched him--a moment of happiness. Leiba draws his left hand back. The point of the auger has come through, it has pierced his hand.

Could he save himself--? Ridiculous thought! In his burning brain that whirling auger he was watching took on startling dimensions. It whirled around and around, and the opening was growing larger and larger. What passed through that brain then transcends the power of human expression. Life had leaped to heights of exaltation from whose vantage point of vision, chaotic complications were displayed.

Outside the work went on methodically. Leiba had watched the auger penetrate in four different places.

“Now hand me the saw,” commanded George.

A slender saw was slipped through the opening and began swiftly to unite the four symmetrical holes made by the auger. Now their plan was clear. Four holes; four corners--to be united by four lines. When this was done the square of wood would fall out, and an opening be made. Through this opening a hand would enter, reach for the bolt and unbar the door--_and the Christians would enter Leiba’s house_.