The boy knew the streets of Bucharest well and a large number of their residents knew Nicu well. He had even made friends with some of them, such as the Margulis family on Strada Fântânei. He was an errand boy on whom you could rely, very useful for urgent business that required discretion. Theirs was a dependable firm, his boss used to say, taking upon himself the merits of the five lads in his employ, who were individually responsible for any mistakes. He looked up and by the Central Girls School he saw a police carriage, as red as the cherries in the bottle from which his mother tippled. He once more fixed his eyes on the snow, which after melting in the afternoon, was now beginning to form a crust, like the skin on boiled milk. How was it that ice and the hot skin of boiled milk looked the same if you held them in your hand, and that both turned your skin red? Nicu walked with long strides and kept his eyes on the ground. It was then that he clapped eyes on the most unusual pair of footwear he had ever seen in the eight long (and hard) years since he had come into this world. They did not look like galoshes or overshoes or even the latest styles advertised in Universul. They were neither officers’ boots nor peasants’ bast shoes. There was not even a word for them; they were strange thingies, the likes of which had never been seen.
*
‘They were strange little thingies, the likes of which you’ve never seen, I don’t even know what to call them, brother dear, neither you nor I have ever seen the like,’ recounted Nicu that evening, in Strada Fântânei.
He was dead tired, having been on his feet the whole day, walking through the snow; the driver had not let him board the horse-drawn tram without paying for a ticket, and he had not wanted to waste the fortune in his pocket: ten pennies from tips alone. But his account of how he bumped into the stranger’s legs reinvigorated him. He felt that all of a sudden he had become an important person in the world. It was not every day that you saw wonderful things on the streets of Bucharest.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Jacques, overjoyed. For Jacques, the errand boy’s tales, mostly embellished and exaggerated as they were, were the water of life. Nicu’s homecoming had got him out of bed. ‘What do you mean, thingies, I don’t understand, explain!’
Jacques sat up straight in the deep armchair that all but enveloped him.
‘Just listen,’ answered Nicu, enveloped in the armchair alongside and twisting his head over the velvet armrest, ‘just listen, you’ll never believe it. They were coloured. Coloured!’
‘Colou-r-r-ed?’ marvelled Jacques, who rolled his r’s like a Frenchman. Therre’s no such thing. I’ve never seen footwear that wasn’t black, or brown, or white, in summer.’
‘And they didn’t have buttons, or laces, or hooks. It was like they were glued to his feet. I look up and I see ugly black trousers, without any stripes, and then an ordinary overcoat, like a cast-off, like a second-hand bargain, it didn’t fit in with the rest. And, ah, yes, just listen, for you’ll never believe it: he was bare-headed!’
‘Weren’t you afrraid? I would have run away, I mean…’ said the host and blushed slightly.
Nicu hastened to continue, as if he hadn’t heard.
‘Well, no, but his face was quite nice, like… like your sister’s there,’ said Nicu, pointing to above the sofa, where there was a small pastel portrait. ‘I don’t know why, but it bowled me over. I’ll never forget it as long as I live. Whether he was an angel, whether he was a devil, I liked him a lot; I’ll have you know. May you have a brother like him!’
Although Jacques was accustomed to the way Nicu spoke when he was excited — Nicu was in the habit of addressing himself in the second person — he thought that perhaps here he was referring to him, because he too wanted a brother. ‘He asked me.’
At that moment the “quite nice” face from the portrait above the sofa looked in through the half-open door. The face was rosier in the cheeks than the one in the framed picture, however. Iulia Margulis, wearing a green velvet dress entered, carrying two plates, two silver knives and two red apples. The doctor had demanded that the children eat at least one piece of fruit a day, and in the cellar there was a shelf full of apples, placed a finger’s width from each other lest one spread rot to the others.
‘Wait, I want to hear it too! What did the stranger ask you?’
‘Have you met him?’ marvelled Nicu.
His eyebrows were peaked like the outline of a roof, rather than finely arching, like the Margulis siblings’, and that made him look permanently surprised or perplexed.
‘He said… erm… he said to me: “Just a moment, lad, please. I’m quite cold and I’m afraid to go home.” ‘Why?’ says I. ‘I think somebody’s living there,’ says he. ‘I need a place to sleep. Any idea where?’ That’s what he said, I remember it very welclass="underline" ‘Any idea where?’
‘You should have invited him here!’
‘No, no, no, how could I do that? Nor could I have invited him to my place, because I didn’t even know when my mother would be coming home. When she’s angry, she scares everybody, although she doesn’t do anybody any harm. Since we were near the Icoanei Church, I said to him, the same as Granny would have said: Go inside, bow to the miracle-working icon of the Mother of God, the one cased in silver, and you’ll be granted a miracle. I’ve already been granted one, he said, mockingly. And instead of making the sign of the cross, he asked me whether I had a cigarette. ‘I haven’t taken up smoking yet,’ says I. ‘Then don’t start!’ says he.’
Nicu rose from the soft depths of the armchair, thrust his hand in his trouser pocket, and produced an object.
‘And he gave you this, young man. Look at this!’
It was a toy that almost fit in the palm of his hand, a soft, snow-white cow with pink ears and a black patch over one eye, like a pirate. The cow’s four legs were folded under it, like four hands neatly resting in a lap. Jacques took the object with infinite care, as if it might break, he gazed at it gravely and then solemnly handed it to his sister.
‘Can I examine it?’ asked Iulia. And without waiting for an answer, she lifted one of the legs. When she released it, the leg snapped back in place alongside the other three. The young lady did the same with the other legs, but all four quickly snapped back.
‘Oh, Lord, it is almost alive!’ marvelled Jacques, his eyes bulging.
‘Alive or not, it’s got no udder, I’ve looked,’ mumbled the owner of the animal. ‘Who’s so stupid as to make a cow without an udder? I think the legs have got a spring or something. I’ve seen things like this among the Christmas toys in the newspaper. I’ll show you, I’ve got the issue at home, I asked old man Cercel for one, and because it had toys in it, he gave me it.’ Nicu stretched out his hand for his cow, retrieved it, and hid it rather abruptly in the depths of his pocket.
‘Did the strranger seem sane to you?’