7
‘A bath in a tub with a shower, please,’ said the man, in a strong Moldavian accent, and handed over two lei. He remained with his hand outstretched, waiting for the change.
It looked rather shabby, but to the Grivița Baths came all varieties of the unwashed. The bath attendant was very proud of the fact that he had been born in Bucharest, although he was short on other merits. On Saturdays in particular, it was crowded, as people came to freshen themselves up, ready for Sunday, and the bath attendant hated Saturdays. And ever since Mayor Robescu started giving out free bath vouchers to the poor, it was dreadful! Not to mention the fact that they were insolent and wrote in the complaints book: ‘He gave me a dirty towel!’ Or ‘Down with the Mayor!’ and ‘Long live the King!’ ‘The bath attendant is foul-tempered!’ One of them had even copied out an obscene joke from The Ant, about a woman who was looking for a watch that had disappeared from her house and just when she thought she had found it in a young man’s trousers, her husband turned up.
Outside the baths it was already pitch black, but luckily inside everything was illumined with electricity, and the freshly painted walls were still clean and white. The reason why all kinds of people flocked to the Grivița Baths was thanks to the advertisement in Universul, a popular newspaper, read, as its editors said, in both working class districts and in palaces; and also thanks to the efforts of Vasiliu the pharmacist, who ran the establishment. As a leading member of Bucharest’s council for hygiene, he had taken his colleagues by surprise when he invested his entire personal fortune in opening a bathhouse with the latest amenities. As the prices were reasonable, it was a place suited to every pocket, and even going second-class, at one leu and ten bani, you could come out looking like new. The bath attendant was happy when, gauging a customer with a single glance, he was able to offer, to those with the means, hydrotherapy, massage and electrotherapy, first-class, of course. Another novelty was the discount for all the members of the City’s pharmaceutical and medical societies. In any event, the bathhouse was more successful than Mr Vasiliu had anticipated, and he had raised the attendant’s wages without the latter having to make any great effort in that direction and without any effect on his general demeanour.
It took the attendant quite a while before he found the 30 bani change and handed over the towel and soap. In the meantime, the Moldavian examined his face, weighing him up. He had with him a large silver-coloured case, and the attendant told him he would have to leave it at the door. The man took him aside and slipped in his pocket an amount that was around twenty times larger than the cost of a first class ticket, causing the attendant to turn red in the face. It was very hot inside as it was, making it a joy to come inside, out of the cold. The Moldavian was afraid the man in the white gown was going to throw a fit, which would have been the last thing he needed right then, but no, after a few moments things returned to normal, and so he went off to take his bath, not in second-class, but in the luxury section. He lingered for almost an hour, delighting in the hot water, which seemed to melt away all the painful knots in his body, and then he went to take a massage. As he was leaving, the attendant gave him a bow, such as he reserved only for distinguished customers. Nobody noticed that the man had arrived with a case and left without it. As for the attendant, he was at that age at which you quickly forget everything non-essential to your life. When he arrived home, he told his wife, who was a housekeeper, that he had come into a sum of money and that for the first time ever they would be able to spend New Year’s Eve in Sinaia at a nice hotel, where they would be treated like boyars.
Sunday, 21 December: A Good Day. With Some Exceptions…
1
Today I experienced a great joy. A surprise. It was about time, otherwise I would have said that I was beginning to resemble Amelia from Vanity Fair, and heaven knows nowadays kind, weepy creatures are more unfashionable than Grandmother’s long nails and her bunches of curls hanging next to her ears!
No sooner did I wake up than I saw rays of light shining through the curtains, dancing on the walls in oblique stripes. They made me smile and then laugh. A breeze was blowing and the rays deftly slid over and beneath each other as if wielded by a master swordsman. It was one of those sunny days that make your soul tingle. I got up, stoked the fire, washed, and chose my blue dress to match the sky. I try to paint the world with the colours of my dresses. Since I was not expecting any visits, I did not put on my corset. When I was little, and our teachers at the Central Girls School forbade us to wear corsets, filling our heads with the reason that they hindered normal bone development, that they caused anaemia, because we would not be able to eat sufficiently, we all used to do exactly the opposite. We wanted to do everything they forbade us to do. If I could not wear a corset in the daytime, lest they caught me, I used to wear one at night and sleep in it, to give myself a slender waist and straight spine. But now, when I am allowed to wear one.
The truth is that Dr Gerota is solely to blame for me not liking them any more. I was at Papa’s surgery two months ago and Dr Gerota came in. I knew him by reputation: thirty-years-old, talented, educated in Paris, and only recently having returned, with plans to change the world from its foundations upward, a lecturer on all the latest medical trends. Papa told me that since October he has taught anatomy at the Academy of Fine Arts. (I would dearly like to attend the Academy, but unfortunately I have no talent. But in any event, I am determined to enrol in a university faculty next year.) Papa calls Dr Gerota by his first name, Dimitrie. And this Dimitrie, who almost made me forget Alexandru, when he saw me encased in a corset — I had not eaten, because there was a party that evening — clasped my waist between his large hands, with his handsome fingers, and saw that it fit there snugly. But instead of complimenting me, as I thought would have been polite, and as Safta and the cook had done at home, he scolded me so severely that the tears came to my eyes.
‘Miss,’ he said, ‘how can your mother allow you to strangulate yourself like this? How old are you? You do not even need a corset: you are slim already, thin even. I think that in the evening your skin must be red and sore, if not bruised, am I right? Have you any idea what you are doing to your internal organs?’
Papa blushed and I felt as if I were suffocating. But Dr Gerota, with his noble fighter’s mien, with his swept-back hair and wilful chin, calmly delivered his damning verdict, without one pang of his physician’s heart: ‘Look at how you are panting, your lungs are imprisoned in a vice. You certainly suffer migraines and faintness, and, I suspect, nasal haemorrhages, and insufficient blood reaches your brain. My esteemed Mr Margulis —’ having finished with me he now took father to task ‘— why do you allow her to subject herself to such torture? For the sake of your daughter, I am going to prepare a lecture on the disadvantages of the corset and I shall send you, your lady wife and your daughter an invitation. Try not to faint, there is no cause for tears, but I ask you to go into the other room this very moment and loosen the laces.’
Rarely have I felt such strength in a man. Papa, although almost twenty years older, was almost completely cowed. I think Gerota is destined for great things.
*
And so, without a corset, I went into the salon. I saw from the pendulum clock that it was quite late. I had slept for a long time — but what should one do on a bright morning such as this? I rushed to open the window, then to the piano, my old, worn-out but trusty Bösendorfer. I picked up an armful of scores, which had started to gather dust, so long had it been since I last touched them. Mama often goes to Graeve’s shop and buys scores for me. I leafed through them, but nothing tempted me, when all of a sudden, as if by magic, I felt drawn to one. It was a transcription for piano of a minuet by Handel. It was as if somebody had guided my hand to pick this one out of the whole sheaf. I had started out with the thought of playing something new, something happy and unpretentious, like the compositions in Le Journal, the review to which Mama subscribes, but nonetheless this page caught my eye. It was the first time I had looked at it; I do not even know when it appeared in the pile. I began to decipher it tentatively, it was in G minor, in three-four time and it was not easy. I kept playing wrong notes, and I could not keep to the right time. And so I fumbled along, but gradually I caught the musical theme and it gave me goose-bumps when I realized what I was playing: it was the music from Jacques’ figurine clock! I had been desperately trying to find out what it was for two years, and nobody, but nobody, had recognized it — no matter whom I had asked — even Mr Wiest! And now, unexpectedly, I had discovered it in my piano pile. Who knows how long it had been there. This is what happens to me: I seek afar and find the desired thing right next to me.