Painful traces of anger and wet dust were twining on her face.
THE FISHERMAN’S CAP
“What have I done wrong, Costel? Did I upset you in any way? Did I ask you to share the firm between you and me according to the percentage we put into it? Did I hire a lawyer to take care of that? Why don’t you want to talk it over? At least to talk. I might not be right, for all I know.”
“Of course you’re not right, Nicoleta. What percentage are you talking about? This firm’s going bankrupt, you know that. The liquidator’s done his job by the book. What else do you want from me?”
With her hands joined together, with a look pouring out like a steam of blood which is leaving the body, with a voice broken by emotion, Nicoleta was taking great pains to reach the heart of the man who was now pretending he hardly knew her.
Her plumpness was a thing of the past, she was nothing but skin and bone now, only her explosive breasts and sharp eyes reminding one of what she had once looked like. Although her body had somehow shrunk, she still had the stubbornness of a boxer hit by a far stronger opponent—she hit back not wanting to let herself get beaten.
It was very hard to get over her husband’s death. Her man had been as big as a mountain—instead she had a handful of bones buried. One Saturday, at the age of thirty, after the last shovelful of earth had been thrown on his grave, she found herself alone, with two sons, and penniless. Her wealth, which had made her relatives, friends, and the strangers in town jealous, came down to a firm in debt, with her not being able to get its full money’s worth. The bankruptcy adjudged by the Ministry of Finance virtually wiped the memory of the ten years she had spent with Mihai. There were a lot of ambiguities, for he had never explained anything to her about his partnership with Costel and where all that money she spent without counting came from.
After Mihai’s death and the bankruptcy she began to ask questions. How could Mihai have signed the paper giving up the restaurant if he had been confined to bed for half a year and had his pains eased only by morphine?
“You’re asking too many questions and they’re all stupid, Nicoleta! For four years you didn’t find the time to wonder what had happened and now that the liquidator’s sold everything, how should I know what happened? I shared everything with Mihai as if he were my brother—maybe because of his illness he was no longer able to manage his business. So forget it!”
Burly and sluggish but still quick-minded, Costel felt all his cells rebelled each time Nicoleta was in wait for him. He tried hard to stay calm and always looked for a reason to get rid of her. He and Mihai had been partners in several firms for almost ten years. Things went well for quite a while and they even managed to open a restaurant and a hotel in the heart of the town, which was a good stroke of business in a place with about 300,000 inhabitants. As partners they never argued. They had their way of making it up with each other, giving in or getting angry at the same time, always shaking hands at the end.
More often than not, when they appeared in public together they were taken for brothers. How they did business, how they split their money between them was always a secret. They never told or let their wives interfere. As a matter of fact, the two of them breathed out through all their pores their hatred of women, which they often showed by their rough and vulgar attitude towards their wives.
“How come you don’t care about the fate of your former partner’s wife? How come the restaurant belongs only to you and the liquidator’s never touched it? Can’t you see something is wrong here? Aren’t you afraid of God?” Nicoleta insisted as if she had nothing else to lose.
“I agreed to take the restaurant and he the hotel, why don’t you want to understand it? I’ve told you that before, time and again. And now will you excuse me, I want to go fishing. You couldn’t have chosen a worse time to come and nag me,” the man blazed up while loading in the boot of his car the expensive fishing tackle he had brought all the way from Holland.
“The point is how come Mihai’s firm went bankrupt and yours didn’t? How come you two split up after Mihai fell ill? You see, all these questions have been nagging me for quite a while. Don’t you think you’re angering God by not willing to clear this mess up? Isn’t it your duty to dispel my doubts?” Nicoleta tried again to appeal to the emotions of the man who for ten years had entered her house as a great obliging friend.
“Will you leave me alone, woman? That’s God’s work if you ask me.… Sorry, no time to talk. Going fishing.”
For ten long years Mihai and Costel had been inseparable. They had done business and sexual orgies together in accordance with their wishes, time, and power. They had never accounted for anything and had been so close that they even shared, without any scruples, the same prostitutes during the same night. During their bilges the fiddlers played their fiddles so passionately that they broke their strings, while the gypsy women danced in the most luring ways. Long, hard bilges, when they left a restaurant at this end of the town to find themselves in another at the other end, just before dawn.
“You know what I think? I think you forged Mihai’s signature after he fell ill. I think you separated your business from Mihai’s by forging papers,” Nicoleta pressed on to Costel’s despair, the man finding it harder and harder not to punch her in the face. “Think of your children, you’ve got two, like I have, and you promised my husband while he was on his deathbed to take care of us.”
“You crazy woman, I know it’s hard for you, but everything I did I did with Mihai’s consent—he was clear-minded when he signed the papers in front of the notary,” Costel said slowly, trying not to lose control.
“Did he really know what he was signing? Didn’t the notary have a finger in the pie? And what if I sue you? What if I take the case to court?” asked Nicoleta, encouraged by the man’s calm.
“You’re completely out of your mind! The next thing you’ll say will be that I killed your husband! Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you but I didn’t kill him and I didn’t bankrupt the firm either. So, good-bye and good luck.”
“Isn’t it funny that, after he died, only Mihai’s firm went bankrupt? In those moments I didn’t realize it, I was stunned by what was to become of me and the children, what with Mihai’s imminent death and everything.”
Nicoleta and Mihai got married in such a hurry that the eighteen-year-old girl hardly realized it. She was a college freshman majoring in chemistry and met Mihai, who was ten years older than she was, in a student bar where people danced like mad. An ordinary encounter, nothing special. Until they danced an Argentine tango together, he with a rose between his teeth. That dance melted her heart. They met again several evenings in a row, and then other tangos followed while all the others preferred to dance to Metallica. After a month of dancing dates, Mihai, who looked like a very prosperous man, a winner, a man who seemed to know what he wanted, loaded with money, well-connected, and self-confident, proposed to her. Nicoleta said yes in a hoarse voice. She was dying with happiness. Her parents had been torturing her with all kinds of customs and traditions universally recognized by people of the old-fashioned mentality. The girl thought that she would escape from the hell at home and that this marriage was destiny’s lucky break. So they got married in no time, had an almost bourgeois wedding, then she gave up college and changed into an easy-going person, with minor satisfactions. In less than a year the magic love was gone as if it had been just a dream. Now she had to become a perfect housewife, and then a perfect wife. She gave birth to two boys, one after the other, one per year. They came so fast she didn’t even realize what it meant to have two children.
“You know something, Nicoleta? You can talk to the notary if you want, I’ll take you there,” said Costel coming down a peg. “Mihai signed everything in his presence.… I really don’t know who’s pounding these ideas into your head. Sorry again, I must be off, no time for you!”
“Tell me, Costel, who can swear you didn’t bribe the notary? I think I know you well enough, I know what stuff you’re