I was even more reserved toward her in the days that followed. Besides, I didn’t see much of her. Under Pepi’s guidance I had begun to read more systematically and selectively, so my time was taken up, added to which the weather broke at last as the crivetz, a wind from the steppes, howled across the open marshlands surrounding Bucharest and hit the city, whistled remorselessly through its streets and alleyways, presaging the bitter Balkan winter, discouraging all desire to set foot outside the house. I holed up.
Miss Alvaro wasn’t so fortunate; she had to go to her class early each morning, came home then for lunch and disappeared again right afterward, spent her afternoons in some library studying, most probably; and at the dinner table she usually sat with an absent look on her face, seldom spoke, and retired as soon as she finished coffee.
Only once did she take part in a conversation, and that quite heatedly. We were discussing the political situation in Germany. The wrestling troupe had had to cancel a tour in southern Germany and Saxony at the last minute, for the Third Reich authorities had questioned their right to the world championships they claimed, the Nameless One with the Black Mask had been unable to furnish proof of Aryan descent, etc., etc. — the usual story of petty difficulties and preposterous formalities, hardly conducive to showing the “new” Germany in a favorable light. Pepi Olschansky defended the Germans vehemently and ended up by calling the wrestlers “a bunch of loudmouthed fairground barkers,” which wounded Haarmin Vichtonen, the Finnish world champion, so cruelly that tears came brimming to his eyes. Radu Protopopescu rushed to his mighty brother’s aid and boomed that the Rumanians’ sorely tried patience would soon be exhausted if the current megalomania of the “Fatherland” were to increase the already insufferable pretentiousness of its stepchildren living here in their country.
This was just the beginning; the discussion really got under way when Dreher, the putative circus-horse backside, began to question the sincerity of the Nazis’ clarion calls in the cause of socialism.
“Do you consider Russian socialism more social?” Olschansky asked.
“That’s not the point!” the backside bellowed. “I am debating socialism in principle!”
“Without principle would be nearer the mark,” Olschansky answered viciously. “Professing to stamp out poverty but only doing away with the fruits of free enterprise, above all those of the mind. Sacrificing life for an abstract theory. Reducing everything to the lowest possible denominator.”
“You’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” scoffed Dreher grandly.
Olschansky grinned. “Well, up till now I’ve always kidded myself that my field of vision at least stretched as far as Sidoli’s circus ring.”
“What do you mean by that?” Dreher snorted.
“I was attempting to compare our limits of horizon.” Olschansky grinned provocatively.
“Explain yourself!” Dreher demanded.
“Oh, do I have to?” Olschansky sighed, looking round at the others. “I don’t really think anyone here needs an explanation.”
“Well, I do,” Dreher barked, and his gray forelock bobbed dangerously in front of his eyes, which looked daggers at Olschansky.
“Since you insist,” Olschansky spat back, equally venomously, “I’ll put it to you straight: I meant that when one has spent half one’s life with one’s nose up the ass of the man in front, it’s hardly surprising that one thinks as you do.”
“Slander!” Dreher screamed. “I know you all believe this ridiculous story that I was once part of a circus number. It’s all Cherkunof’s doing: he invented it. I shall go to him this minute and demand that he come down and own up right away!”
We had to restrain him from dashing upstairs to get the unwitting sculptor. “Leave him alone!” Iolanthe begged in the midst of the melee. “Dear Mr. Dreher, all these years we’ve thought of you as a horse’s ass and loved you none the less for it. What difference does it make if you’re a professor?”
But Dreher was a difficult man to quieten down.
“I will bring proof of my claim,” he said, threatening Olschansky. “I will force you to corroborate my evidence and make a public announcement reinstating my honor!”
“If only you knew how little I cared,” replied Olschansky wearily. “You could be Lenin himself as far as I’m concerned. You’ll convince only fools and small children that that which is taking place in Germany is not an attempt to do something of decisive importance for the history of man. The salvation of the individual within a socialist structure — no more and no less. If you opened your eyes and exercised your brain instead of letting your emotions run amok, even you would be bound to see it.”
“You really don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” Miss Alvaro suddenly commented.
Olschansky fixed her with a stare. “Do you perhaps know more?” he demanded.
“I’ve just come from there. I was studying in Jena until two weeks ago,” she answered.
“They allowed you to study in Germany even though you’re Jewish?” Olschansky asked incredulously.
“You are mistaken. I’m an Armenian Christian,” she replied, then blushed and bit her lip. After a moment’s obvious unease, she raised her head proudly and said, “I won’t deny that my parents were Jewish, but the fact remained undetected in Jena. And it has nothing to do with the point in hand.”
“In one aspect it certainly does,” Olschansky insisted, “in that one identifies Nazism with the Jewish question. One uses it to divert public attention from the very real revolutionary steps being taken in Germany.”
“It’s my belief — or rather my conviction, based on personal experience — that exactly the opposite is the case. The Nazis are using the so-called Jewish question to cover up far more questionable issues.”
Olschansky grinned his provocative grin again; the points of his nose and chin trembled toward each other; he looked for all the world like a demoniacal Punch. “You mention the so-called Jewish question and more questionable issues in the same breath; an admirable play on words, to be sure. But tell me, do you regard the question itself as a mere red herring, or as being indeed in need of a resolution?”
“The question is of valid importance inasmuch as a small, harmless religious minority is now being held responsible for a thousand years’ faulty German policy. And, as though that weren’t enough, the Nazis pretend that the golden future they promise their countrymen depends solely on the question’s being solved.”
“With our extermination,” Mr. Löwinger added softly.
“Exactly!” exclaimed Dreher, the professor and former horse impersonator. “That’s what’s so deplorably retrogressive, so abysmally medieval about their whole ideology: it leads to religious fanaticism; it encourages the insane belief that one has only to exorcise the devil for heaven on earth to set in.”
“For God’s sake don’t you start preaching,” Olschansky retorted. “If on the one hand you advocate simple rationalism as the new way ahead — you’re a democrat, aren’t you? Then you believe in the people’s right to self-government? Well, then, won’t you concede the Germans the right to remove a few Jews from their ranks if the overwhelming majority are convinced they’ll be able to manage their affairs better without them?”