Somewhat higher up the hill, about three kilometres from Simion Vlașin’s homestead, was the house of Ionu Stan, known as ‘Son of the Trustworthy One,’ after his late father, who was an industrious and wise peasant, also called Ionu Stan, but whom folk had nicknamed ‘The Trustworthy One,’ because all his life he had been a man in whom trust was placed, in other words, he was a forest warden. A small man, with an unruly beard and a face covered with scratches and scars, made by branches and thorns, with fierce, glowering eyes, he roamed the forest with an old flintlock, longer than him, scaring off poachers, but turning a blind eye when some poor man cut himself a cartload of deadwood to burn in his stove or hunted a rabbit without a licence from the Compossessoratus. His son, Ionu Stan, Son of the Trustworthy One, had, astonishingly, inherited not only the exact same appearance, but also the position, flintlock, gentle nature and wisdom of his father.
Yes, thought Ernst, he would take shelter in his homestead for a few weeks, for a month or two, until the storm passed. It couldn’t last long. After Stalingrad, the Germans were constantly ‘falling back to previously prepared positions, causing the Russian hordes heavy losses,’ as the newspapers put it. And in the spring of that year, 1944, the ‘hordes’ had reached the eastern flanks of the Maramureș Carpathians, beyond Iașina, which is to say, the border of the sub-Carpathian region of the then Hungary, where they had halted, turning their offensive southward, in the direction of Jassy. And the Red Army waited there, over the Carpathians, for many months, until Maramureș, which at the time belonged to Hungary, became Judenfrei, cleansed of Jews…
But Ernst Blumenthal did not know what was to happen in the spring of 1944, he knew only that he should not wait to be enlisted in a forced labour battalion or to have another encounter with young officers who studied art history in Berlin, but rather he should hide, vanish into the mountains he loved and whose turn had come to grant him protection.
Ernst was not superstitious, but it seemed to him that he saw it as a sign from Above, or from Destiny, whatever you choose to call it, when Ionu Son of the Trustworthy One came to his house that very same Friday morning. Friday was the day when Ionu came to market to sell his eggs and sheep’s cheese. Beforehand he paid visits to people he knew, selling them his wares, and then he went to the market to sell what was left over and to buy salt and gas, as they called lamp oil in Maramureș. Ernst took him aside and told him that he was going to come to Agriș, on a lengthier excursion than usual. Ionu blinked his small eyes, which were as dark as peppercorns. He understood very well what Ernst meant. Ernst gave him some money and asked him to buy him some peasant clothes, which should not be too worn: a pair of frieze trousers, a thick homespun shirt, a jerkin, a straw hat with an ostrich feather, of the kind young men wore in the Iza Valley, and a knapsack, of the kind worn slung over one shoulder, with a pouch in front and one behind. And not to say anything to anybody.
The peasant blinked his small, dark peppercorn eyes and by that evening Ernst had a pouch containing the items in his room.
In the Blumenthal household, that Saturday was sad and oppressive. Ernst’s mother sighed, his brothers paced restlessly from room to room, and his old father, with his rosy face framed by grizzled hair and bushy side whiskers à la Franz Josef, stubbornly kept his eyes fastened on a book, without seeing the letters, but only the black of their rows. And all were silent. There was nothing more to be said. On Sunday morning, at the crack of dawn, through the door of the Blumenthal house a peasant slipped outside into the street, a short, sturdy young man, with a bronzed, angular face, as if whittled from oak, and with a jutting jawbone. He was dressed in a coat and trousers of thick frieze and had a knapsack slung over his left shoulder. He turned down the lane that led to Mill Park, which lay at the bottom of Solovan Hill.
The streets were deserted. Silence. The air was fresh and cool. Ernst took a deep breath. He had got off to a good start, a very good start, even. There was nobody out and about at that hour to see him, and even if somebody had seen him, that person would not have seen Ernst Blumenthal, erstwhile student of architecture in Vienna, candidate for a forced labour battalion and mine clearing at the front, but rather a Maramureș peasant, wearing peasant shoes and a straw hat with an ostrich feather, who was on his way to Solovan Hill.
All of a sudden, he felt like laughing. Good God, how many ridiculous mistakes could a man make! First of all, he oughtn’t to have set off on a Sunday of all days. What peasant travels from the town to the village on a Sunday? On Sunday, the peasants of Maramureș, wearing their best clothes, stay in the village, they sit on the benches in front of their houses, or in the road in front of the mayor’s office or the church, and they chat about what is happening in the village and in the town, in the land and in the world. And what peasant carries a heavy knapsack on his back on a Sunday? In the end, if anybody had been curious enough to see what was in that double knapsack, he would have been astounded and prompted to make the sign of the cross: what kind of peasant went around with a toothbrush and tubes of toothpaste in his knapsack? Not to mention novels, the fifth volume of an architectural treatise, sketchbooks and coloured pencils. And a large pair of binoculars… A peasant with binoculars!
But the streets were deserted, all was quiet, and the air was fresh and cool. There was no other soul to be seen, no sound to be heard, not even the sound of Ernst’s footsteps, since he trod on the pillows of leather soles. He walked down a number of side streets, then down the street that led to Morii Park, flanked by lindens and horse chestnuts, and came to the River Iza, which flowed yellow and sluggish at the bottom of Solovan Hill. He climbed the narrow wooden bridge, a cart’s width wide, with the thought of crossing quickly and then vanishing among the paths that wound between the briars and trees, leading up the hill. But reaching the middle of the wooden bridge, he suddenly came to a stop, taking fright. At the other end of the bridge, by the spring of clear water that poured through a small wooden trough at the bottom of Solovan Hill, and which was called Pintea’s Spring, Ernst espied a military tent of dirty khaki. The barrel of a gun poked through the flap of the tent. Ernst stood stock still, as if rooted to the spot. The round steel eye of the gun barrel gazed at him motionlessly. Ernst stood still, as if hypnotised by the gaze. Alone there on the wooden bridge, he was obviously the perfect target in the sights of the carbine. Just one detonation, and his entire journey, barely begun, would be over. There, at the gateway to the town…
Ernst looked into the barrel of the gun. The gun looked back at him, motionless. Yes, it was not moving. Ernst came to his senses. His mind began to work feverishly. It meant that neither was the man behind the gun moving. He plucked up courage, gripped the haft of the hunting knife inside his pocket, and slowly, softly resumed crossing the bridge. In his leather moccasins he trod as if on cotton wool. He made no sound. He moved closer and closer toward the barrel of the carbine. He reached the tent and cast a glance through the flaps. Within, the soldier on guard was lying on the ground, fast asleep, his head resting on the rifle butt. He was a reservist, quite old, in a rumpled and patched honvéd uniform, albeit buttoned up to the neck in regulation fashion. The pointed military cap, with a rosette, was pulled down tightly over the sweating head, and from beneath it, at the temples, poked bristles of grey hair. The face was bony, heavy jawed, deeply furrowed, sunburnt. The face of a peasant from the Panonian steppe.
The man suddenly moved his head and began to breathe like a bellows. Ernst quickly went around the tent and climbed the hill. After reaching the top, by winding paths and shortcuts, he stopped to catch his breath.
From there, in the clear morning air, he could see the town below, with its red roofs of tile or sheet metal coated with red lead, and its white roofs of galvanised zinc. Amid the roofs soared the spires of the churches, the