‘Jacques means to say: was he in his right mind?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Nicu lowered his voice. ‘Ever since my mother… ever since they kept her there, I can tell one of them from a mile off…. The doctor says that it’s not right to call them madmen, they’re just ill. Anyways, that gentleman was sound in the head, just like you or me. I waited till he went inside the church. When I looked behind me, the police carriage was slowly approaching, at a walk, I recognized it by the colour: like rotten cherries. It stopped a little way away, by the bell tower, and some guard dogs started barking at it. The cops were on his trail, but I don’t know whether he realized… You don’t like the cops. I wanted to turn back and tell him, but I didn’t have time to spare, I was in a hurry, because I had… a job to do.’
‘I shall leave you now, because the cook is waiting for me, we have to confer about dinner tomorrow, when Mr Costache will be coming as our guest,’ said Iulia, casting Nicu a meaningful glance.
To reassure her, he looked at her serenely and with a smile of perfect innocence. The young woman swiftly left the room, but not before arranging the logs burning in the fireplace with two or three deft jabs of the poker. Nicu congratulated himself on not having delayed his visit to Jacques, as he had been tempted to do, knowing that the door was always open to him. And he decided not to pay a visit to Strada Fântânei the following evening, lest he come face to face with the policeman: it was too soon after the unfortunate accident… the duelling incident. But he said not a word about what had happened with the ice rapier or about the wallet: they were secrets. He could not tell Jacques everything, although he considered him his best friend, because he obeyed strict rules in life, rules laid down by the doctor, ever since Nicu had been left without a father and with a grandmother for a mother, and he could allow himself some liberties. He had only managed to examine an insignificant portion of Strada Teilor, alongside the new houses, before darkness fell. He kept telling himself that he and he alone would be the finger and that the handsome reward surely to be had from that lizard of a young man would crown his efforts.
3
Four windows of the Universul offices were still lit. The newspapermen did not have a fixed schedule, they came at will, depending on how much work they had on any given day, but as for leaving, they left only after they had completed their duties. On the first floor, the room farthest to the left, as you looked from the street at the baroque façade of the building, or to the right, as you climbed the stairs and looked towards Sărindar, was the office of Pavel — Peppin Mirto’s brother — and Neculai Procopiu, the newspaper’s most faithful editor: he had been there for thirteen years, that is, from the very beginning. People treated him as they might a director. The newspaper had steadily increased in importance and had been the first to have a morning edition, and so now it was the most widely read. In the beginning it had been all advertisements, which was how it had accumulated capital, but now it had a little of everything. It did not dabble much in politics; at the most, it published the bare facts. They had tried to do two editions, a Morning Courier and an Evening Courier, but it had not lasted long, because of distribution problems: the newspapers arrived at the same time, and the news items repeated each other. Procopiu and Pavel Mirto had taken responsibility for the issue and so the last of the other staff had left. It was they who liaised with the printing press, located in the same building and extending like a huge train carriage to the bottom of the yard.
A knock caused both to lift their heads simultaneously. Marwan the photographer entered. It was an event: you did not often see photographs at Universul. There were daily illustrations, but of the drawn variety.
‘What have you brought us?’ Procopiu asked him directly and stood up to shake the photographer’s hand.
‘Nothing yet, but I photographed some scenes on the street such as you will never have seen before, on my honour. I waited for hours in the snow, camera at the ready, stalking my prey. And yesterday, I climbed out of the window above the entrance to the National Theatre, I think the roof must be at least fifteen metres high, taking my camera with me, to do a panorama. A good job I don’t get dizzy, not so much for my sake as much as for the camera’s sake, because it’s an expensive model. I’ll bring you the clichés, if you’re interested, I’ll give you them for the New Year issue, but for six lei apiece instead of four, because they’re quality goods,’ said Marwan, trying his luck.
He had a reputation as a bit of a skinflint.
‘Mind you don’t break them, like last time,’ he added with justified sorrow, causing the two other men to glance sideways, one at the wall calendar with lady skaters from Canada, the other at the papers on the desk.
It was an embarrassing memory. Marwan had brought them a glass cliché showing the trial of Dr Bastaki, one of a kind, the printer had dropped it and the glass had cracked in two. They had had to summon one of the three artists from home, a specialist in portraits — none other than Marwan’s rival — interrupting him as he was enjoying a late evening collation with some guests. The artist had joined the two fragments of glass and drawn the image from scratch: the courtroom, with Miss Elena Gorjan in the foreground, wearing a little hat with a feather atop her head, with her nose which, due to the artist’s haste, came out a little too long and drooping, and with the face of a splendidly moustachioed guard behind her, the artist’s own addition. He had not had time to draw the woman’s lover, Dr Bastaki, who was a paterfamilias, or Mr Horia Rosetti, one of the lawyers for the defence, although they could be glimpsed in the cliché, but he had drawn Miss Gorjan previously, her prudish countenance having appeared in the newspaper once before. Marwan had lost his temper and left closing the door very firmly behind him: very firmly indeed. And so now the two editors were eager to placate him.
Marwan sat down in front of Pavel, on the chair with a velvet cushion reserved for important visitors. Pavel took off his round spectacles, which tired his eyes, offered him a cheroot and took one for himself. Mr Procopiu discreetly opened the window a crack, letting in a blast of cold air.
‘What will we be reading in tomorrow’s newspaper?’ asked Marwen, with genuine interest in everything to do with the future.
He had become a photographer from a desire to have at least one foot in the door of the new times.
Unlike his brother, Peppin, who spoke in a loud, melodious voice — a fact appreciated by the director, Signor Luigi, an Italian who missed the beautiful voices of his native land — Pavel Mirto smoked heavily and spoke very softly, so that you had to prick up your ears to understand what he was saying.
‘What will we be reading?’ he whispered. ‘The usual, a small fire on Calea Victoriei, in the chimney of the house of a certain Ciuflea.’
‘What?’
‘Ciuflea. Ciu-flea. It was quickly extinguished by the firemen from the station on Strada Cometei. Then a lost wallet, whose contents seem to be very, very valuable, because the reward is three times bigger than usual — I don’t know what it might be, it’s an unusually closely kept secret — then two fraudsters who have been swindling the gullible, like the notorious Andronic used to do, in other words, he takes all their money to multiply them in a ‘machine’… and what else… a Turkish vessel sunk in the Black Sea. Ah, yes, that was the most important thing: it would seem that the Senate is finally going to propose a law against duelling.’
‘I heard that the Princess sent a cable to Lahovary’s mother, expressing her condolences.’