— Mihai (Mişu), studying Medicine in Paris
— Marioara, divorced, with three children, including twins Anica and Ștefan
— Maria and Hristea, parents of the above
Nicu’s mother, mentally ill washerwoman
Staff of Universul newspaper:
— Old man Cercel, the porter
— Neculai Procopiu, 43, the longest-serving newspaperman at Universul
— The brothers Mirto: Peppin, translator, proof reader, optimist, endowed with an operatic singing voice, and Pavel (Păvălucă), editor, introvert, pessimist, writing a novel
vThe Director, Italian Luigi Cazzavilan
Petre, coachman of Inger the pastry maker
Dr Rosenberg, runs the House of Health establishment on Strada Teilor (Lindens Street)
Mr and Mrs Movileanu, lawyer and his wife, resident on Strada Teilor
Epiharia, devout woman who frequents the Icoanei Church, preparing to become a nun
Fane, alias the Ringster, crook
Episodic characters
George Lahovary, newspaperman, director of the French-language L’Indépendance Roumaine, slain in a duel at the age of 43 by Nicu Filipescu (former Mayor of Bucharest, who ordered the demolition of the Sărindar Church)
Metropolitan Ghenadie, involved in a scandal culminating in the theft of a miracle-working icon
Dimitrie Gerota, physician, friend of Dr Margulis
Vasilica, Iulia’s cousin
Marwan, photographer for Universul
Elena Turnescu, widow of an eminent surgeon, involved in charitable works
Signor Giuseppe, Italian neighbour of the Margulis family
Otto, ethnic German from Transylvania who has come to the capital to work as a church painter
The wounded young aristocrat (Rareş-Ochiu-Zănoagă)
Coachmen: Yevdoshka (Russian Old Believer), Budacu and Ilie (in the employ of the Police)
Toader, servant of the Livezeanu family
Margareta, one of Alexandru Livezeanu’s mistresses
Pet animals
Liza, Costache’s old dog, Lord, General Algiu’s Borzoi hound,
Fira the cow, a fridge magnet, Speckle, Nicu’s pigeon
Unconventional characters
Bucharest, Capital of Romania
Time
Friday, 19 December: An Eventful Day
1.
I like to read in the carriage. Mama takes me to task; Papa, who never forgets, not even en famille, that he is Dr Leon Margulis, primary physician with a surgery behind the National Theatre, says that I will ruin my eyes and give birth to near-sighted children. But I am obstinate and still bring a book with me. Back in their day they probably had the time to read and do lots of other things, but we youngsters have to dole out our hours with care. I could hardly wait to find out what Becky would get up to next in Vanity Fair. Although truth to tell, I think that I am more like that silly Amelia, and I shall end up loving some rascal all my life. Today I had no luck with my reading: firstly, because my hands were frozen; and then, no sooner did we climb into the carriage than Mama and Papa, chopping the subject as finely as our cook does the parsley, began to dissect the case of the unidentified man whom Petre found lying in the snow this morning, in a field near the Băneasa woods and lakes. He was taken to the Prefecture of Police and placed under arrest. Mama, who is up to date on absolutely everything, says he is a fugitive from the madhouse and that he must have been driven insane by too much learning. And here she gave me a minatory look: ‘It is high time that Iulia decided on a decent man to marry.’
Papa examined the stranger at the request of Costache, our friend from the Police, and said that he was not a vagrant, despite his wearing unbelievably odd clothes. Perhaps he is a clown from the circus. He is otherwise clean and has no “physiological” flaws apart from the fact that he does sometimes talk in a garbled way. But if he is a madman, then he is a cultivated madman; he “couches his words nicely”. But when Papa asked him whether he had tuberculosis, the man gave him a scornful look, as if infuriated, and answered cuttingly: ‘You’re a two-bit actor!’ Papa replied, as gravely as he does whatever the situation: ‘Sir, if you please, I am not an actor, but a physician!’ He added that his lungs sounded a little congested, that he was very pale, but that he could not find any serious illness. The man calmed down and said that he would like to smoke. Papa, who is against the habit, nonetheless brought him some fine tobacco and rolling papers from Mr Costache’s desk, but said that the man under arrest, after giving him a savage glance, quite simply turned his back on him. He is ill bred! They retained his valise for examination, and a silver box, like a safe, which indicates that he might be a money forger, but they released him after keeping him under arrest for only an hour, following a brief interrogation by Mr Costache. On finding himself free, he straightaway made himself scarce. But the best coachman in the police force was assigned to follow him unobtrusively.
‘How old is he?’ asked mother, her favourite question.
‘He declares himself forty-three. Well, that would mean he was four years younger than me, but I say he’s lying. I reckon he is no older than thirty or thirty-five. He says that he is a journalist and that he was born here. Dan Kretzu. What surprised me was that he was completely shaven. You see this only with actors who play the rôles of women. Hmm!’ And here Papa stroked the thin blond tuft of his beard, as wispy as maize silk, the cause of a lifetime’s suffering.
‘We shall find out more tomorrow, at dinner, because I have invited Mr Costache.’
Papa noticed that my face was flushed and immediately put his hand to my forehead to see whether I had a temperature. As far as he is concerned, all things have solid, bodily causes. He will not hear of the soul. Although Mama continued to interrogate him for a while, I preferred to take off one glove, now that my hands had warmed up, and to return to Becky. What I like about her is that exactly like me she can speak French and English. What I do not like about her is that exactly like me she has green eyes. I would have liked hazel eyes, the same as Jacques, and blond hair, the same as Becky, but it would seem the factory did not have that model in stock twenty-one years ago, and so I must content myself with black hair. How is it that from the same parents, both with hazel eyes, one child can turn out the same as them, while the other has green or blue eyes? I wish to finish the book by New Year, and so I shall try to write in my diary more seldom. There are still twelve days and a few hours to go.
2.
The people of Bucharest were having a good day. It had snowed, there were still twelve days till the end of the year, and twelve hours till the end of the day. The whiteness, which stretched from one end of the city to the other, from the Cotroceni Palace to the Obor district, and from the Șerban Vodă Cemetery to the flower-beds on the Chaussée, and then onward, into the horizon, was melting in the afternoon sun. The icicles looked as if they were coated in oil and here and there were beginning to drip onto the heads of the passers-by. The streets were quite busy, as they always were on the days before Christmas. Looking up, lest he get wet, Nicu fell head first into the snow, and was as annoyed as when he woke up with his face pressed to the sheet.
‘Looks like you’ve taken another tumble, young man!’ said the boy loudly, shaking off his red commissary’s cap. ‘I’ve told you time after time to look where you step,’ he grumbled in his small voice, but with the tone of a bad-tempered old man. Since the year before, when he started to attend school, that pedantic tone had stuck to his tongue and he could not rid himself of it. But he had been in the habit of talking to himself for as long as he could remember, because to his