Radu Anton Roman

RAREST

BUCHAREST

Preambling

Bizarre and piebald, the Bucharest of the ’20-’30 calls out playtime. Pictures snap in and out busy-dizzy, in bazaar logic, as if battered by woozy gusts against a broken teeth city… and will not dovetail, let alone integrate. Sure, a metropolis… yet an odd hoax: at once merrily mottle, thespian-silly, taut and lackadaisical, brainy and primal, obnoxiously classy-crude. These interwars snapshots prompt you to see a messy gag-like world, stingily picturesque and lavishly sickening, modish, gross or gloomy... yet no copy-cat, of self, even! Overexposure is this realm’s only style, disparity its only grammar, change its only constant. The fantasy below is to be taken lightly: giddy zigzags, told by myself… by some gendarme or news monger, by a puber and a gigolo, by the slum belle, the vamp and the Gypsy florist… and by so many others…

It takes all kinds

There used to be quite a number of Bucharests in the ’20’s… no one could tell where the borderline was parting hamlet and fair, across the grassland. The medieval lanes, abutting in Curtea Veche, made up one Bucharest; and jovial little Paris, of the hectic avenues lit a giorno the night through, was another; and yet another was the Bucharest of the basilicas après Byzance and of the gleaming palaces… as also was the singular Bucharest of the endless rows of

2 low cottages, submersed in creeping morning glories, rare pumps at their gates… while the slums, oozing gummy like mud, and spreading plop-plop, avid, near and far, were still… Bucharest. Amazingly, an industrial town grew there, too, by the same name! stuffed to burst with small factories, depots and workers’ homes. The rest of the Bucharests… well, all sorts of everything: like hospitals, mills, army headquarters, monasteries, workshops, vineyards (in Floreasca and Şerban Vodă), camps of Gypsies but shortly set free, marshes, all that and more… like so many huts and then, here and there, a mansion… in the field stretching to the horizon, only disrupted by small rural communities: all of them tomorrow’s early Bucharests. Today’s Obor, literally cattle-fair, used to be a pay-gate railway station, called Moşi Fair… and a wasteland. The place also lodged the largest cattle and grain market, held in spring, on St.Gheorghe’s day, and then in fall, on St.Dumitru’s day, minor fairs in-between. From dawning spring till the crux of fall, farm- carts, droshkies and buggies, breed cattle and tow, fluffy prime wool sheep and scruffy tzurcana… and then tufty, labor-horses, white-star steeds, stallions … all mingled their shadows, darkening the horizon. There was the mob: idly some, but most on business, like buyers, petty- carriers, cattle-breeders, horse-dealers... They never entered town, as if fearing some spooky trap. Obor, a fair for backwoods lads and lasses, at the outskirts of the city; yet… no skin of its teeth, none of its hustle and bustle. Towns will be towns, we kept our ways!

3 Wind roses

Then, as now… there were just two seasons in Bucharest, hung out on the line to dry: winter and spring. As for summer – which you could feel, not see – well, it set in, hot, as early as April! and no one could tell which season ended when. As for fall… what’s to see, for looking? scrawny twigs when the leaves were gone… November nasty drizzle, meanly chomping you soft and rotten, to the last glint in your eyes… so much for seeing things! And then, overnight, wintry hell would break loose over town, snow peeping in through your window panes. The blizzard cropped the snow mounds tall, muffling alleys out of sight – you couldn’t trust your eyes to see such plight. And next… in less than minutes after slushy thaw gave in, crazy weather shook the world free: blooms flooded the earth, and heavenly bright light filled the air, a banquet to sore eyes! For March was a whirl of locust- tree whites and golden shrubs yellows, boughs nothing but burst wild and overflowing verbena shot straight for the roofs! Flights of doves were there and of angels’ wings, twisters of petals, of gillyflowers and rockets, marigolds, downy catkins, primroses, wind flowers, sow thistles… clouds of peonies, balm mints, hyacinths, magnolias, buttercups, blue caps, velvet grass, foxgloves, snapdragons, dandelions, pasque flowers, violets, pansies … parks and gardens caved in with such back-breaking loads, from Floreasca (see? told you!) to Teiul Doamnei and Gălbinaşi Road.

4 Mother Nature – man’s best old friend – was back in town, naughty-naughty! Even the sagest of the matrons, sworn at the church’s door to marital restraint, thought it wiser to tune in with the mind-boggling earthly beauty and come out in the sun, in satin slippers and parasols… rather than languish in dark rooms.

Cock-a-doodle-doo!

So droll… and uproarious, the office holder feeding the in’s and out’s to Bibescu-Vodă Market registers! … plus writing girls’ love letters to rookies. Well, one good turn deserving another… a Hungarian lad from Tazlău Valley, whom some day our clerk had brought wedding bells to, got him this sleek and downy, white, rooster. The submissive fowl would pick grains from men’s palms like from as many pots, winning over people’s hearts, the quill driver’s, too. So the rooster was spared the oven and let flutter spree about the market. Plus the joker crowed when beckoned, or even – to please the ruffians – dripped droppings on some vicious Big-Mamma, for good omen… cruelly crying out loud victory, as the old girl cursed her luck, so like market places! One more thing the bully did, was get pickled on mint brandy. They’d fetch him a thimbleful, like, from Master Iorgu Lickspindle: a few thirsty sips and he’d croak in the gruff voice of one truly smashed… loafers laughed themselves numb to hear such off-cuff opera! Some even tried to filch it, to take to the Circus and shoot an honest buck on… but the market muggers

5 kept so first-class lookout themselves … that the pinchers got caught and beaten blue: blackleg to blackleg, like. Well, one day the merchants saw the light: that fowl was going cuckoo: torpid, eyes stuck on the hens kept in nets… what to do with your freedom if your chicks are locked in the coop? So, by and by, the old boy succumbed, powerless under the stench of such ill suppressed call of the wild.

Cottage uphill

Rickety- rickety, the sluggish streetcar heaves and pants up Batiştei Hill, on rails bending with such frightful heat – better take the stairs than a seat inside the sultry carriage. Such crazy April! You felt giddy just second guessing what to wear… just like Bucharest, pompous Billy-the-liar! the calendar itself a cheat! It is a long ride from Moşilor to Teiul Doamnei. Time enough to read your gazette and munch a pretzel, shoplifted as the streetcar rolls by the corner of the cats- and-dogs market. Heat soaked, your coat dripping… you felt you’d be nowhere nearby, that day. But hey, saved from mean mobbing by the pub round the corner… the bread sniff in the beer curling at your feet, nice doggie, so you can have a sip! here heat even felt like a personal friend of yours. Standard slum cottage: morning-glories, lace curtains, flower front garden, water pump dripping, vines bowers stiff with such vivid light, curled around the twigs still barren... blooming cherry-trees, the balm getting to your head and sending the flighty bees spinning... open window waving to you home sweet home

6 like, coffee on the table, a wasp buzzing well behaved round the jam jar, a water drop trickling down the steamy iced water jug. Racket in the street: coming down the lane all the way from Popp’s, the ale-woman drives donkeys loaded with empty barrels bumping and knocking against each other dreadfully, as bawling curs chase them mad. Silence falls heavy between guest and host… so you break it telling the story of the terrible fray at Filaret… the wardens had their pistols out and firing… to scare off the fuming drivers’ party, who’d battered the ravenous pimps who’d pilfered them, while the girls in frou-frous yelped curses, spite tears running down their cheeks, the tramps! Aroused and amazed, the women around beat their knees… so you simper, condescending: how are such ladies to know what life about town is all about? The sun is as good as gone, soft shadows shred the heat of scatty April… summer is one week old today, the house sinks into obscurity, the world has set. So you pick up where you left, at peak-point where Madame winked and the girls darted, unleashed, upon the warriors, the laps of their flimsy chemises in the air and their assets on the out-and-out, for the vicious taxi drivers to muse. So the battle was off then and there, like hit by fire hose jets… the drivers, bruised blue, fumbling frantic inside their pocket for spare money. Now, again, you stop short, for a wink and a giggle. And then you hear drums and barrel din, coming through the back door. “What? Miu’s organ? Why, brother? It’s not my birthday, you know…”

7 “No, but… it’s spring!” “Cross your heart…?” “Cross my heart!” Here the lady might take your hand, one of, hooting… while your other hand happens to twitch smack onto the nearer of her breasts. So her chaperon jumps to her feet. “Do stay on!” your lady up and says quick. “Can’t” the old hag cackles, prompt to take a hint right “Got me broth boilin’ on the cooker”. An angel passes, the rest is lost into the twilight… and here’s our man, writing music on a sheet of paper (spoiled see-through, with lamp gas) like he could see through walls: the music for a song that, much later, we got to know as Home, sweet nest of homey jest.

Dancing Bears

Bear Macovei, Bear Day, Winter Martini’s and Great Martin used to be days as holy as the saints’ and held in as much awe. Apprehensive of the great mighty beast, our folks would throw meat chops to the streets… and fast. Those days they did no work in the field or at home, nor did they milk the cows till the following day. And old mothers would cast spells, to keep yellow fever away from kids… bear-spells, mostly, smooth-talking the ghastly brute into keeping everybody sound and safe. Can you picture the confusion in the poor saintly woman’s mind, watching the bear-man hug and kiss the growling monster haunting her Pantheon? The world must’ve looked pretty sick, to that old girl in Vitan… and

8 such absorption of culture surely filled her sleepless nights with nightmarish chimeras. Bear-Saturday, on early May, made bear-man happy: each husband had to get him – beast and all – within his household, and pay in loud ringing coins, for only when Old Martin had called on each family was the community to fare well the year round. And when they’d also paid their due to the police and the sanitary offices, bear-men could run the slums over for one whole day. Some horrified old girl might hide behind her bolted gates… for no avail, for the fiend had to have its celebration absolutely everywhere, the welfare of everybody’s chow being at stake. One more thing they knew for sure: it takes a bear stepping on your back to rid you of the pains in your spine! So, aching or downright bent, people lay flat on their bellies for the bear to work them… that is, Big-Foot sort of set its rear paws on either side of (say) some gaunt guy, from Tei, like… and beat his back with its front- paws till he screamed for mercy… oh, Lord, kindly never charge our backs to our deadweight! Naturally, the show was not so much the paid rubdown as the crowd that gathered and gazed, mesmerized, for hours… a Circus thing!

Spring Collections

Merchants’ slum, a tight place… in a borough called, since 1400, Old St. Gheorghe. Here they used to be and here they still are, all trades, gathered round Curtea Veche, like chicks around mother hen… shops on

9 top of more shops. Hardly staying afloat on the tide of rivalry… but keeping prices unrelentingly high! Whole streets and lanes, organized by trade: dye houses and dyers; hawker shops and hawkers; the draper’s and the drapers; the saddler’s and its saddlers. And then the stores: pell-mell honeycombs, throttled and crushed by the inner scaffolding, crammed to burst with stashed stuff… wrestling for a breath of fresh air, ready to kill for one more nail of a square foot of free pavement to display their merchandize on… clawed to the place like to Holy Land. Every merchant had a joke of a one-room second floor, eater and sleeper for masters and servants alike. Old world on the run! The shabby stores of yore were putting on shiny street windows, for they were selling now skirts and lingerie brought from Paris and Sighişoara. Retailers (calling themselves meek-gross – sick sense of humor!) sold Areca German lady’s cotton stockings on coupons, Swedish leather gloves and string garters. Even the pigheaded cloth merchants found themselves cornered to supply fine Liverpool wool fabrics, besides their coarse, Czech and Bulgarian… plus blunt French cutlery, genre nouveau-riche and Opinel case-knives, for cutting vines. Brave new world! For now, besides the old cotton cloth, the linen-man displayed the finest Polish sheets you ever saw, while the curtains sellers doubled their heavy brocade with dainty Muscel and Bruxelles laces. Transylvanians brought to town eiderdawns as large as Spirii Hill and thick woolen bed quilts, like the slum folks had never seen… so they bought like crazy, forgetting their old patchwork…

10 … not without putting up a strife, though, for old is gold – thinks the Bucharesteer – and in the blood… you definitely can’t doff it all! Take candles: for joy, for weddings, for baptisms, for sorrow… no true Romanian can live without his candles. Haberdashers were still in business; as also were silk-mongers, seal and stamp shops, silk passementerie and tufts, shakos and kepis, shops… even – would you believe it! one last chibouk-monger (left for breeding, as the say goes). But hey, the wind of change blustered even through his pipes… he did put on show old Istanbul narghiles, but also shiny brand-new Bavarian pipes. And seamstresses no longer sewed up turbans, but surplices, made – of all things – out of the same precious calamanco. And when wintertime was drawing near, no more kaftans and jubbahs were offered, but trench-coats, anoraks and Canadians… such gibberish mumbo jumbo of a new era, dawning with the thrust of the barbarian hoards’ of old. Lipscani Street was an ants’ hill, round the clock. A gentleman walking down Calea Victoriei wouldn’t be caught dead without his taffeta coat, nor would a lady show up without her mother-of-pearl silk mantle… while the poor worried sick how am I to come out of Febmarch without a thin sheep-skin, or a Bistriţa rough cloak? The Laughin’orGreef tight spot! If you needed anything, anything… from tin-smithing to glass gilding … there you found your tinsmith or your glass-blower. In summertime, shoppers could buy overnight, for no one slept. The master, the counter-boy, the apprentice… all chafferers lisped in numbers their forty winks, eyes glued to the shop-gate, ears on the wait for

11 the faintest click-clack of a pair of shoes approaching… surely a customer who knew his own mind and had his pay to fritter, who else? no one came just to pay visits for fun, on Lipscani!

Marketplace borderlines

Those people’s hearts used to be so soft… they wouldn’t raise fowls like bricks, fifty in a three per three feet coop, nor would they bring hens to market choking, legs tied in raffia rope, ready to go amuck, God forbid! Call me a nostalgic to say so… but see for yourselves how cramped those folks were, on the straw- lain floor of a cart, three layers of plaited reeds tilt… and yet their birds snoozed lucky in large baskets, veiled in cotton nets, so the happy creatures may stay aloof, in the middle of all the broil and jostle of the marketplace. And should you take an even closer look… you would notice the sailing nets wrapping the cage-baskets, meaning that the ducks come from the Danube, from Gălăţui, maybe… and that the wild ducks come from Vlădeni. There may have been some cherry-red chick there, the like folks in Ulmeni and Mănăstirea would raise… or some hissing duckling from Borcea or Borduşani, or red goitered, as large as they grow their water melons at Măgurele, so easy to pluck and trim… or some pintados, masked-like and mean, ready to pinch you – and my, how scrumptious! No wonder chance cut-wing fat pigeons got in, the kind they breed in Căscioarele, so full of jelly they make the gravy as thick as smoked plum marmalade!

12 Such hotchpotch of poultry, like laid by a mill, fed on ground maize and yes, on love… just right and handy for your Sunday guest to pick his choice! Let’s look the snapshots straight in the eyes, again: a lord is a lord, a farmer is a farmer! See how large the gap was, in 1928, already? As for the lamb market… the other way round as with pintados: the interwar was a lot more industrial at it, than we are, now. For half a century have I lived in Bucharest and never saw such a scene: a truck and a yoke, stuck full with skinned lambs, hung in rows, like hares after a hot hunting day… Or was it because they could always feast their Easters free… and we only do that since 1990?

Borsch brewing

Brewing the sour water we call borsch is sheer spring witchcraft. Farm women in slums – and the folks in villages like Vitan and Crângaşi – had heard about Calea Moşilor, but not about Calea Victoriei… and they believed in the magic healing power of borsch. Next- door neighbors, or in small groups, women gathered on the first day of Easter Lent in some hidden place, shielded by mean looks… for the rite of cleaning the casks and the barrels, chanting the barm and the bran laid, and the saintly water poured. Next… for the magic to work and the thing to brew, women went out, in the street, to start a row with some passer by… as it took a man’s spite and anger for the borsch to sour. And then they raced someone up to

13 the pots, to breathe over them. And when that was done, God’s mercy was all it still took, for the mortals were done doing their share.

Smithies Street

Smithies Street was in the middle of the town, under a blockhouse. The smithies called themselves boost names like Iron-Man, Gurau Broths or just Smithy. Smithies were set up where the community field started… which is as much to say as here’s where the town ended, long ago, in Phanar times. Trusty heirs, the Bucharesteers: made and remade the town over… yet the order of old was kept intact! smithies were let live where found … who said only England cared about her past? Day in day out, the well-off craftsmen of the ‘20’s filled in the gaps between the columns of the mansions in the heart of the town with ploughs and all sorts of farming implements... watched over by their helps. They had it all, in fact: all sorts of fishing nets and strainers and stuff (as Bucharests contained multitudes of ponds), wattle and rush baskets, pots pans and kettles, Manila rope, carpentry implements, even spices, at Podsudek’s and Patzac’s. On the very first day of spring they streamed in, smiths, barrellers fishing for hoops, farmers, star- readers… The customer would get inside, poke his nose into every pot, dig out what he was looking for, load his coach-and-four… and was, in no time, home: ploughing and scattering seeds, or pulling ashore his netfuls of fish.

14 Liposhka

If Liposhka happened around teatime, wild horses could not drag them away… a stance called Armenian visit. And they flowed in by thousands: Mother Russia’s muziks hunted down by priests who put the Kazakhs on the trails of these Orthodox Christians. Nice and easy going… but habadnik, sworn to their good old religion. Czar Peter himself, in his time, could not make these old- stylers drop their thirteen days belated calendar, or trim their beards… no one else could, in fact, since they had been Christened, and later. They nestled on Romanian land… in the Danube Delta, most, or wherever they chanced to, don’t we all take the easiest way out? Hired by the day, they earned a living doing small jobs… or simple, like digging… none could beat them at it. They’d fling their spades like sticks, which is why they called them beard excavators. Aloof and bashful, like maids, pure, some called them… or, worse, skopets, eunuchs, like. They didn’t even used to drink, then, until later trapped by this devastating penchant… and only much later did they find out red brandy and met with pljuha and ljura, that is cheap wine. Then, at wartime, they got the hang of a poison named samagon, which they called horilka… decent folks, to trust with these two words: cheap brandy. This is Dudeşti Square… and here they are, sipping tea their way: hot, from the dish, eyes glued to the sugar lump.

15 Fishtail wind

The hottest fishmongers on the market were a gang from Feteşti. Pastrami eaters, tough and fast with their knives, they’d ripped off the competition in totally unorthodox ways. All by themselves, or helped by paid hoodlums, they’d chased away even the Liposhka and the Hahols from Tulcea and Bihorod. So the fishermen set out for the wide world. And the fishes in the Danube Delta or in the Nistru River rambled as far as Ploieşti, even crossed over to Transylvania: for dimes! real money came from Dâmboviţa Valley. Oh, but Bucharesteers know what a true fish dish is! They are babies, for perch… more water in their mouths than in a cat’s! The boaters from Borcea bribed the market guards and officer – my, how they loved to! – and unloaded one truck after another, of large scales fish. And they were in cahoots with another gang, from the salt works, even more violent, if more was possible… but a perch monger is unconceivable without a thug. Helped out by the salt-workers, they forced their way to the dark pantries loaded with barrels of fish pickled in brine, got from the Fish Marketplace (where else?)… and filled up Moldavia with kippers and salted herrings, up north to Chernovtsy, where salty and smoked are in high demand. In Bucharest, they’d only come by night, so the perch would not rot in the heat of the day. They’d cover the merchandize with thick aprons; and they’d fill their tin casks (made in Reşiţa works) with three feet long carps and killer turbots from Siutghiol, the size of a cart wheel. Half a ton beluga from Razelm Lake and Nistru Valley… sturgeons from Suhaia and Ialomiţa, streamed

16 to Bucharest straight from the Danube’s fishpond and lagoons, Severin to Vâlcov … as also did, like from a different river, all sorts of everything, fish eggs and soft roe and fishes, from eight pound old zanders to the very best of ruff in brine. These Feteşti folks also brought the usual small herrings, carps and silure from Galaţi, extra-cheap, for the everyday fish-and-onions dish; whereas the price of the goodies was held high, for in Brăila’s Main Isle hundreds of fish carts traded everything – from loach so fresh you could crunch it raw, to wallers so big that it took innkeepers axes to share! But the fish mongers did not like to sell fish fry – like roach, or cyprinids – much, though the slum populace loved it. Such merchandize took large carts and big horses, to drive inside the marshy land of the delta… besides, thaw time came early and the land was muddy, mostly. So they let the business to the fishmongers in Giurgiu and Olteniţa, who brought the fish pretty much alive and flapping inside huge gourds, as the marketplace ordered… life on Greaca Pond banks refined their taste – fish fry borsch takes fresh, to be the real thing! As for what came from the sea, well, that implied a third party… which the folks in Ialomiţa wished to confront, but it all ended there: how were they, Borcea kids, to thrash the sneaky louts in Constanţa and Balcic, or Levantine high seas ruffians? Anyway, those fish traders in Feteşti got more money than they deserved… and still asked for more: once a brigand, always a brigand! even if well off. The felons cheated on their beluga, filling the fish guts with sand. And the suckers, mad way too late, shrugged… and

17 hoarded back, to buy perch. For Bucharest-upon- Dâmboviţa, life bereft of fish was no life at all… especially on the eve of Epiphany Day.

Contrariwise

The barber was the first to roost a place for himself on top of his shop… tower-like, in feudal sign of magnitude. The beards helped his grungy shop – only one, out of a long row – to crop a bit of bread… not so much for beard cutting, but for being gentlemanly! Anyway he saved every penny… and put up this mammoth of a crumby house. That’s how Bucharest grew upwards. Smashy! He who was one minute smarter than his neighbors licked the cream… laid bricks and plaster, traded his belongings, made a big barn into a town mansion, spurred the rest… who rat-raced: a Bucharesteer would never let a neighbor get the better of him. Not before long, the place got packed with two or three floor dwellings. Looking pathetic? Not good enough reason to think the owners poor. Secretive and sharp, those Bucharesteers! you’d be stunned to see how much a carcass of a shop could turn out! They would not put on airs before they felt at ease with the show… but when they started blowing the horn! You’d get your ears burning and eyes sore, of such big talk and show off!

18 What they would put up by day burnt by night and washed away

Bucharests have, on and again, burnt down. About St Cassian’s Day, not one by one, like this man’s shanty or that keeper’s shop, no… the whole slum caught fire, all at once, in a wink. Like wooden cabins at the mercy of a wild twister, drier than the hot breath of the steppe, inns raised on yew tree logs and evergreen oak, well off mansions built on dry walnut wood… how were they not to catch fire? As if on order, the flames licked the sky – it didn’t take a water-tower to see the show – and before you could say bingo all was cinder and ashes… anyway the thing kept going as long as the wind blew crazy, until, God forsaken, the whole town burnt down… or half of it, a quarter of, one slum… So the slum shunned wood more and more. Around 1920, the town had about ten brick pits delivering. Three in Tei, in-between Floreasca and Colentina, namely Lonola, Lupescu and Tănase. There was one in Cocioc, no-name and rich (like all no-names), then there was Flacs, in Dudeşti, as in Giuleşti Dumitrescu and Neacşu covered the market… and one brick pit more, of Cuţarida, was in Griviţa, by Romanian Star oil-works. Plus there were a few more down the riverbed, by the slaughterhouse, beyond Mărăşeşti Bridge, not far from Văcăreşti town jail. We’re talking of a whole long brick-street, actually called Cărămidari. Unbelievably how much they’d built, in Bucharest, at that time! Still the town kept catching fire… a sneaky flame out of the blue, then, fed by the wind, big enough to eat

19 all up, roofs to roots: walls, ironworks, timber… everything. That’s why Bucharest had lots of firemen, well equipped and aiming to serve. So there would the Christians come back, poke into the cinders, sob… and put up new houses, right on top of the ashes. We have this routine, you know… if not by the fire then by flood, and if not high tides then the king has lost his mind, or the earth quakes and pulls down half of the town, God forbid! Plus we could have parching summers, the kind that make your brains sizzle under your hat and the wine go sour… or five months blizzard for a winter, enough for the national flour reserves to run short… absolutely everything, by the book! So suppose merciful God sees us through all of the above… then there may come the locusts, or world recession, the Tartars or the Turks, the plague, an uprising, the Russians, the Nazi, you name it, never known to have come in scarce. But suppose even these are left behind… then, last but not least, we’ll have war in the Balkans and Socialist governance… all on account of our spot on the world map: open place at crossroads. As I said, the Bucharesteer will lump it, moaning and cursing… then build a new home right on top of the old, gone… as soon as the dire day is out of sight out of mind. No matter how bad he’s hurt, he won’t leave; he’s chained to this town, to Dâmboviţa River, to Calea Victoriei, by oaths sealed in blood. He won’t go to Braşov, where there’s neither flood nor quake. He may die, true… but move to the provinces? He’ll go higher (if not better): have you ever heard of a Bucharesteer moving on beneath Paris, Rome, New York?

20 Post Byzantium

Quotation from myself (Bucharest, NMP):

Early20th century casts a lively scarf, an unexpected magic veil, over Bucharest. All of a sudden, the town was packed with passionately adorned houses, large mansions, fairy tale convoluted palaces made of towers and loggias, staircases and carved stone arches. Unlike the cubism and academism of the day, these new dwellings – floral, dainty, made in glazed bricks and tiles – spell a sort of Byzantium après Byzance. Prince Brâncoveanu, enlightened Renaissance scholar and protector of the arts, started an opus to be now continued. Many of the buildings he founded had already set an original style: carved ornaments, murals, Venetian carved stone, arches and vaults cut into plaited- like stone veins, huge porches, fabulously adorned entrances, decorative visions unleashed into sensuous arabesques, everything attesting – challenging and exultant – the Brancovenesque style: a Wallachian architect’s vision. It makes your heart beat faster to see how, in the midst of French sky-scrapers, neo-Renaissance avenues, baroque neo-Gothic and neo-Romantic buildings, our new-Bucharests have bloomed into neo- Wallachian (if not neo-Romanian) architecture, a mixture of Byzanthine-Brancovenesque peasant house sublimed, with the simple elegant southern style distinctive of the Danube Plain area.

21 Jade-fair

Horses saddled Bucharest, up to the 1930’s. True, the gilded coaches had vanished in locomotive smoke and exhaustion gas. But you couldn’t imagine the town without its two horse-buggies and the coachman holding the reins taut; without the street-car and its gauntly jades pulling uphill Spirii Hill, up Uranus Street way to Frank-Coffee Works; and the swarthy carriers from Prahova Valley and their raunchy horses, lined around Filaret and Obor Railway Stations; without pushcarts come for the fall fairs, waiting by the riverbank; or the overloaded hauling platforms, for Bucharesteers move in September-October like others pick their grapes, or come back from holidays. Suppose you dared venture as far as the outskirts of the town, where really time had no say… well, you could meet two-wheelers pulled by donkeys there, a bounty we were left with at the time of quoted Turkish and Balkan famines and other plagues larger than you would care to believe. There was a stench of farm house jade piss, dung and sweat. Whips whizzed, ugly curses poured on, just like coachers! This Moskal, in particular, might tell you – if you were smashed enough to climb up to him, a bottle of brandy in your hand – how the Bolsheviks’d chased him away from his steppe farm and white-star stallions. But gentlemen only have time for their own predicament, never other people’s… so they’d poke their canes into the coacher’s wide back – ladies would only use silk parasols for the purpose – hit the road, man! the coach heard, and dawdled on, hypnotized.

22 Suppose you were low on cash, you went by street-cars, taking the rear platform, or the upfront stairs, well aired, going places seeing things… the coacher would pull the brakes on call, the iron troika would squeal and screech, the studs neighed and reared, all the neighborhood got to learn that you’re back home. Carts and horses have stayed in time, clutched to Bucharest like to manna, even when there was no more place for them to turn round for cars and tramways crowding the town. Why, you can still see carts and horses today, raced all over the place and back by Gypsies a-hawking for scrap iron or selling potted flower earth, driving crazy the police and the mayors.

Hunch on your back

Street vendors. A storm, a swarm, a flight of nameless people, filling streets, narrow one-way’s and blind alleys, Cişmigiu Gardens and Iancu Crossroads… yelling round the clock, never in one place, always everywhere. Outnumbering the passers-by, half-human, half-merchandize! Never catching roots, by-passing marketplaces, walking the slums over, halting their steps where the poorest of the poor came together, namely about Izvor Bridge, Calea Dudeşti, Mitropolie… As fated by ill-crossed stars, these rundown on the bread line had a tough time making both ends meet and took the long day’s journey into night along the banks of the Dâmboviţa River, or the longest route in- between Văcăreşti, Moşilor Fair and Sării Road, knocking on every door. They ganged with street

23 sergeants, maids and butlers, they shirked tax-collectors, counter-vendors and dogs. And they were underhanded! They trod the road and the soft spots of the green, the weedy, the typo- girls... Babbling unstoppable, they praised their two-dime stuff like pearls! so they would eventually con some fish- mother, slow on her judgment, into buying their medicine for love-pangs, tummy-aches and horns. Steep stories? piece of cake… and about as fast as they could vanish when the gendarmes showed for their rounds. What would the dealer deal, in? Anything! Newspapers, pop-corn, lamp-oil, pretzels, potted earth for flowers, balloons, siskins in cages, boiled maize, scrap iron, roasted chestnuts, zinc buckets, locum, trinkets, cloths hangers, roasted seeds, tubs, St.Valentine soapy stuff, melons, whistles, kippers, fire wood, fruit, rugs, live stock, lamp shades, distillery vessels, hand- woven carpets, vegetables, rags… What could the Jack-of-all-trades do for you? Everything! Replace your broken windows, catch gross beaks for your bird-cages, sing horrendously, solder your leaking pots, work your silver into wedding rings (you can still see people doing that, a valise at hand, full of all sorts of everything, wide open for kibitzers to watch them work), weigh you on worn out scales, sharpen your knives, fix your clogged chimneys, buy old cloths (Ol’clooothza-baaa-yin’!) braze your worn-thin frying- pans, take your picture… Water-carriers and braga-makers and hydromel, cloths-weavers and clothes-hawkers, jewelers and yogurt traders, bird-catchers and glass-mongers, pie bakers and pretzel makers, backwoods carpenters, cutlery merchants

24 and haberdashers, shoemakers, news boys (what’s a town without newspapers?) solders and braziers, barrel grinders, stone carvers from Transylvania and scissors sharpeners, petty sharks, baskets makers, yokers, Gypsy fortune-tellers – babies tied onto their chests, photographers, peddlers of every sort. A pedestrian hoard, fiery and a-fret, soundly feeding the whims and the needs of the town… providers and suppliers – most with bad kidneys and hemorrhoids, long-roads’ malady; confronted with a world of carts, coaches, buggies, handcarts, droshkies, all full to burst, crossing the town in constant humdrum, same customers, same stuff… a-hunch, strapped astride their backs!

Cheesy ways

There was a time when the milkmaid, the yogurt- man and the cheese-dealer brought orders – like postmen get your mail – at your door, on subscription. Besides Brăila cheese (plenty of sweet herbs in it), milk, yogurt and other curdled goodies, there also came (on a daily basis) sour whey (fresh and boiled) for feeding the poultry, the progeny, the kittens, the hubby and whatever more beasts a woman keeps around her household. Fancy yourself the true, chary, Bucharesteer! home-service would’ve been refined beyond imagination: the herd itself would stop at your gate, the milk-maid would milk the sheep or the Nanny-goat in full sight… so you, exacting and capricious, can bet on its freshness and full-cream quality.

25 A beer for my horse

The confectioners, the halvah-makers and the pretzel-bakers fed the town. Early in the morning, when the streetcars shook off the working-class (property is theft), the shop-owners sent an army of street-vendors, pretzel threaded, candy set on large trays, to holler in front of the factory gates: Halvah’nnuts, fillfullyourguts! Nutsydoooughnuts! … or Ho-o-otpies! Sesamepretzels, holesforlove! Caught in the trance of famine, clerks and apprentices approached, sleepwalking, like. Shortly after noon time, the paid army took their places in town, in Cişmigiu Gardens, down the avenues, in railway stations…and, in equal zest at less profit, cleared whatever there was left from the morning tour: regular Buzoian pretzels (round and thin) but also Bucharesteer double-coil (extra-large) meat-French pies, hot cabbage-pies, creamy buns (black cows in Măgurele providing the cream), bigi-bigi on the confectioner’s newspaper spread open, as well as bullets and bombs, fried small doughnuts and dough-pies (freshly come to town, all the way from Banat), threaded lump sugar, nougat, lollipops… straight from the chefs’ hands! As for the halvah-maker, like any Turkey he’d also have locum to offer, sucsuk from Silistra, baklava, sarayli… Some countryside bread-baker would provide what she knew how to knead best: crusty sweet brown bread and all sorts of buns: round or tall, a crown around, plain or glazed, nutty, soaked in honey syrup, with cassia. All sold out as quick as lightening, a prey… for Bucharest was still willing.

26 So… by sunset time, the streets filled up with the working populace who’d got their day’s jobs done. Again, the street-vendors dashed upon them like hawks… and cried victory, who could resist them? Crispy crunches cost next to nothing, bare mouthfuls to cheat on their hunger while waiting for the streetcar to take them the long way home, sweet nest.

The House of the antiquaries

Old books mongers simply couldn’t make it, along Dâmboviţa River banks. Wise as we know our governance to be and bighearted, they must’ve said, to themselves and others: “It wouldn’t do to let our spirit brew in stinky store-places… How are we, the people’s chosen, to let national culture sprawl, like maize porridge, on greasy garlicky plates? We can’t let world wisdom, our breed’s enduring light, rot on shelves, pawned over and over!” “A book is tomorrow’s power and the virtue of the nation”, may have suitably remarked some authority. “And it takes science, art, books… to make nations grow!” “It takes brainpower to rule society, not hairy beastly hands! Mental power drives mankind to plenty, ethics, flourishing toil, sane judgment and the fine skills needed in brave new world!” may have added the king. “Sheer diversion and plotting against the future! How would we, the elite, called to increase the power of learning, rise against old-books places, a thing so western by all standards?” some fierce minister might have remarked.

27 “We won’t! We, Jurors of old time order, swear not to wrong our people, worsening the state of things by such foul action!” could have retorted said governance. Upon which, quick to take action, glorious leaders put up this wonderful hefty home here, for their majesties, the old books, to fare well together with their owners and vendors. And, ever since, all Bucharesteers – readers, teen- agers, pay-desk girls, high-school lovers, college students, teachers, just populace – had a place to go to, for enlightenment, cheap on all days plus extra discount as high as 20% for May 20 to 27, morn till night.

Flying carpets

Besides old cloths, antiques, pawned tit-bits and every second-hand stuff… Dâmboviţa River banks traded the most incredible Oltenian carpets. I mute myself saying that, though I can feel a surge of juicy journalistic nationalismus rise to my head and, jelly-like a-tremble, I crumble under a surcharge of quick Union Jack salaam’s (oops!) But their intricate patterns were microscopically designed, like Arabian nights’ Shiraz; their colors mottle like Finnish sweaters and lively like Navajo blankets… they were hot and dazzling like a set of African rugs, Mexican ponchos and Turkish bohcas, original like Nobel winners… well where are the carpets of yore? What you can see in this eighty years old snapshot has never been seen around, in real life, these fifty! OK, you’ve slept on them, folks, but lift?

28 Florists

On the Dâmboviţa River… florist is an epitome of Bucharest, meaning Gypsy woman. Many think her a funny creature, made of hamlet mire, slum dust and hirelings’ yen… a sort of local mermaid, waist-up dark hag, waist-down balmy brush in bloom, sprawling thin upon the face of the world. So not only are there as many of them as there are holes in the roads… but this Bucharesteer florist of ours is also the stillest thing alive, like the hills and the mountains on the map, some say: once in one place, always there – moving about with the camp is hearsay and a different story anyway. No crossroads without a glossy flower-stack, a swarthy beauty thrust in the middle, floating upon a million motley skirts! Bucharest can tell when spring is come by the snowdrops, violets and daffodils napping at street corners packed around Piranda (this is what we call her…them!) and knows fall to be done when in front of the University there’s no more a chrysanthemum stack built around quoted character, lively kerchief tied round her head. Piranda’s private paradise, though, is old time crossroads, like Rosetti Street crossing Polonă, Mântuleasa, Calea Moşilor, Gramont Gardens… early spring to late fall, day in day out, nights too. Does she ever eat, drink, sleep, take a leak… who’s to tell? Our caryatid stands tall, amidst her crown of flowers… a badge for a town, a face for all seasons. Now these florists come in dynasties, not just families: all females. The florist male – sneaky shadow – you hardly get to see… apparently florist babies are all

29 girls… and even if some be boys, a guy I know once swore they turn into girls as they mature :) So… the clan hand down the rose baskets as others would the crown jewels. The first, old mother of them all, as likely as not a freed slave from monastery Plumbuita, or Văcăreşti, or other… started a market of sward flags on Mogoşoaia Bridge, the crossing point of the roads once leading to Curtea Veche, the other to the northern-side palaces of the town. She’d get a farthing as the coach’n-four rushed on, she’d get to see the king… One hundred years later, her great-great-great- interwars-granddaughters in the pictures, stood upright, baskets on their heads, or sat tight on their asses right on the pavement, selling daisies and hyacinths on the very same spots, under the eaves of the new art-nouveau, or neo-classical, buildings. God helped me get to meet, in time, these latest four generations of them. Izaura’s grandmother gave a violet to me (as always low on cash, around 1968, on Olguţa’s birthday, or was it Lavinia’s?) saying take it anyway and when you get to money, come to me, for flowers, hear me? Can hear you to this day, Granny! My respects, she’s getting her rest in heavens, poor soul. So when I got my first pay, I bought carnations from Sweet-Cherry, Izaura’s blackamoor of a mother. And I bought and bought (when she smelled the dough, she’d worse than clean you dry, she’d shave you clean!) till she, too, passed away. They don’t last long, poor souls, eaten up by our frosty winters and sweltering summers, quick to take turns.

30 Freesias and gerberas I buy from her, Izaura. So when she sees me she trims them ready to take, in cellophane paper, and she speaks, in Gypsy phonetics and a cowboy shriek voice, ’ere’s my boyar from proteevee, come to make me an empress! Five kiddos run around her… one, bit taller than the rest, holding out a Dutch orchid, stiff like cast in glass, chirps here’s one, ten euro only, special for you, Grandpa, ‘cause I know you. I laugh and take her to Scala (so here I am, a Grandpa!) for their profiterol, creamy chocolate special… and watch her fill plastic cups with shares she’d cut it into, for her gang. You, puckish little soap opera, look what you did to me! got tears gushing, dammit! The catch is this job is no gardening – just plain business, as florists buy their flowers! So the young lady in gloves, at 1925 point in time, hears exactly what I hear now and, for millennia on, is everybody going to hear: Take it or leave it… it’s what I get them for!

Parrot planets

At first, parrot planets and street organs were two separate things… not yielding much, as district sergeants licked the pots clean. The thought was simply in the air, for hazard and muse, parrot and music to unite, to join ventures! The grinders of barrels toppled with talking birds took the town in slices: cut to size, after sneaking, or bribing, for fad… In 1928 they even kicked up a row, worse than the beggars’, who ransacked Rahova dumping

31 grounds. The infantry regiment in Ghencea was called, they put up tents, plucked feathers flew in the wind! Well, he who got a good grip, made his dough and got the machine off his chest and onto wheels. And he who didn’t… stooped and wilted under the heavy weight of strolling art. Ground nice and easy, the so-called Bavarian organ, the barrel infused the town with its croaky sore music… heart breaking waltzes and wishy-washy hits, creepily on and off, magnetizing the idlers. Customers willing to find out about their future came in no scarcity. Girls, mostly, of the craftsmen in Vergului, Dudeşti and Domenii, marriageable and waiting for Prince Charming, in guise of an accountant owning a one dorm flat in a building on Brezoianu, or a small room in Popa Nan. One coin or two… and the parrot baptized (by his more or less classy owner) Costica ori Rodolfo picked lucky planets, promising stinky rich husbands in tall hats, lucrative meetings, lucky loves… The girl cried out loud ecstatic, the organ screeched overworked, the music sobbed itself to rust. An employee in Central Works, or maybe an apprentice in Leonida Garages, walking his shoes to hear them squeak, wondering if he could get off the hooked long arm of the army by drinking lemon soda. Meanwhile, the parrot and the barrel promised him, unflinching, the same lavish dark dame, Lica, over and over, in the house of all souls, by night. They lived one day at a time, into old age… or some war… and popped off into thin air, barrel, parrot, wheels and all. No one – not even the planets – ever promised retirement for those poor grinders.

32 White-wash smattering

Nestling safe, like in St. Paraskiva’s bosom, these whitewasher dark ladies come from a long line – today extinct – of painter-Gypsies… such fine craftsmen, a pity their replacements inherited no craftsmanship! The women would line up on the curb, tall pole-brushes in hand, waiting to be bought by the day. The customer would come to take his pick, from a market as good as the next. Take me, boyar, aren’t you mishto! the old girls giggled in a chorus, meaning he alone, of all the boyars they conversed with, was worth looking up to, for he alone was mitt stock, i.e. had a cane. So… the mitt stock priced up his whitewasher by her looks and array, for he wanted her trustworthy… they bargained and that was that, the boyar left, the woman packed up and followed him close. By and by, they got home: a regular ruin, for no decent merchant would call a whitewasher to trim his house. So the woman had to first wash the walls clean, then she whitewashed and got her due, a few coins, some shabby clothes… and she was on her way, to the shed in the pit under Pantelimon Monastery… whitewashers did not camp, you know, but lived in clay shanties, by the marshes, or at the waterside. At sunrise she was to resume her place, in the market!

Collateral damage

Poor old shoemakers, hawkers of shabby shoes… name one thing worse! They set out from a shoemakers’ street (where else?) some place close to Curtea Veche … and spread into the four winds. Worn-out shoes, pairless

33 shoes, cheap shoes… They could fix new soles better than leather dressers sewed thin skins. They even chanced to make it through the winter… at times.

REGULATIONS OF GARDENS’ HOUSE

1. WALKING ON THE GRASS FINE LEI 40 2. SLEEPING ON THE BENCHES 40 3. LETTING IN LOOSE DOGS 40 4. RIDING A BIKE 50 5. DROPPING PAPERS AND LITTER 40 6. STARTING A ROW 200 7. DESTROYING PLANTS 300 8. PICKING FLOWERS 100 9. CARVING BENCHES 100 10.DESTROYING TREES AND BUSHES 5000 11.TAKING PICTURES FROM LAWNS 40 12. CRAMMING PRAMS 40 13.SING DANCE PLAY INSTRUMENTS 40 14. PLAYING MARBLES, GAMBLING 40 15. BEGGING 40 16. PEDDLING 60 17. GLUEING POSTERS 50 THE MANAGEMENT

All in the cards

A photographer’s set up, in a Gypsy camp: the fortuneteller second-guesses (no beans in her hand?) while the boyar, in Sunday clothes, poses, bravely

34 dealing the cards. The background is fabulous: see those portraits, of kids and their bristled father, peeping? Early summers, Gypsy camps all over the Bărăgan Plain would settle by the town’s barriers. The men fixed their tents, then spread into all directions, to solder pans or do chores – helping themselves bold to things they could pinch, their women breastfeeding babies, begging and telling fates. But, as the years passed by, they scraped less and less money… it was a poor world and the slum women learned how to read the secrets of the dame of clubs, of the houses, of Tarot, even. There used to be a place, at the far end of Calea Griviţei, where fortune-tellers Mafalda and Lisabona charmed quarrelling lovers into reunion, even wedlock! They’d also read coffee dregs, palms and buttock skin lines… darn competition!

Post-diluvia

If you boast a feeble stomach… better not see this picture! It’s taken below Lemaître’s, at a stone’s throw from the buttons factory, the cursed place where the slaughterhouse sewers empty the pestilential remains of the day, into the Dâmboviţa River. Here the most unfortunate and starving scraped in the sludge. What could they find in that stinky slush? Minced bits of rotten meat dropped by the butchers: fetid guts, or squalid organs. So the people dug out those filthy dregs to fill in their barrels and baskets. Those muddy waters… they rinsed their rags in, bathed in, drank up and gobbled down! The hidden reeking slaughterhouse sewerage was sheer pest, driving

35 the people out of their minds. How dejected had someone to be, to set out on such miserable hunt? The heel of dearth had pushed them low, but choose such ways? how dark were their souls? what havoc sipped them through? Bursting with glanders, scurf and such like scab (you can easily get the picture of the pustules brewing in their grubby skin and the vermin and the lice swarming in there) they wouldn’t let the boon wash away. Gaunt and shriveled, they cowered and scraped, catching all there was to catch, in line of sickness and disease, spelling epidemic disaster. The establishment pretended not to see; yet, made a fuss at times, even beat them blue…which they couldn’t care less about, bad habits die hard. True, when such people trip up, they tumble down straight into the pigsty. Whichever way, sickness spread by the day, at the foul water mouth. For the godsend was easy, if tarnished; and, pushed by clean famine, the needy gathered in hordes, to rummage that stinky place, round the clock. By clubs and maces did these atrocious people guard what was theirs by right! A muddy spot could cause a fight, some putrid guts – a row, a carcass – a scandal. The gang teemed and swarmed like pests in the mire, ready to toil all it took in the sludge. But hey, they didn’t look like it, not by a far shot: they wore neither rags nor tatters, not even patched up clothes… you could even mistake them for decent people. They didn’t look like anything wrong in particular, let alone starved: the women are somewhat plump, even, housewives like. So what were they there for? Gluttony? for such appetizers?

36 Well, I’m afraid the trick was mighty dirty: what they did not eat they traded! The Obor was at hand, the slow town folks could easily be fooled into buying rotten remains for clean farm pork stuff… see why the pest spread like fire? Nothing much could be done about it, it was like living with the rats. All sorts of good-for-nothing rascals and fickle women, good company for the evil one, dragged the filthy ditches, like wild beasts. Something nice, however, came of it. For Good God did not let a day pass, but you could see – flying over the spires of Văcăreşti Monastery, as coming from Greaca ponds – some snow-white heron, or a common creeper or a red mire drum, shining in the sunset… a long string of guts in its bill, trailing behind like a rat tail… the old men crossed themselves, wondering!

God’s left hand upon her

No matter how good-looking a woman might have been, she could not be given in wedlock without a dowry, for love is one thing, marriage is another. Suppose she was downright poor… even so, no in- between would marry her off, if she didn’t have her stock of embroidered quilts, demi-cotton dresses and blouses, home-woven towels, thin cotton bed sheets and all sorts of spare linen sheets, to fill up the dowry trunk. The girl in the snapshot poses. We won’t venture to guess how the photographer chanced in her room, at night… anyway there she poses, rouge on her lips and blush-ointment on her cheeks, string amber beads around her neck (from some cheap shop near), needlework in her

37 lap. She’s a Bucharesteer from top to toe… neat, long thick eyebrows, dark eyes and curly thick long hair. She’s probably adding up this shiny black muslin quilt to her dowry. And she does as told: sitting – barely touching the couch – propped against a huge embroidered cushion, eyes shyly lowered on her embroidery. The paramount early to bed early to rise poor yet decent girl in the street of the ‘25’s, a-wait, like another thousand, for a marriageable man, to beckon. Well, she’d better not hold her breath, for she’s not exactly a catch… boasting of no shops, stables, real estate or houses to rent. She’s just marriageable: at most, a seamstress or a worker in the paints factory. Every single detail betrays her, especially her overworked hands, nimble and patient. She’s only got her dowry; she will live in her husband’s house, taking nothing there besides herself, except for the dowry trunk. Beggars can’t be choosers! If he’s a guzzler, pickled from Thursday now to January 5th, or all talk, or having a hard job keeping his pants on, or sulky and grumpy… no matter, she’ll marry him anyway, she’ll make an honest housewife by his side! Yet, what if the snapshot is a piece of con-art? What if the deftly lit demoiselle is… you know… what if, sick and tired of languid expectation, she dared, poor thing, meet her destiny head-on, fiery and romantic dark Bucharesteer witch, duped by the almanac demi- mondes… what if she knew the pleasures of life? for richer for poorer letting herself lured into sin and failing her white lace veil? Alas, if so! for she could not harm her mother worse, than having the whole slum gossip and demean

38 her, become a sore harlot at call in the eyes of the gawking female prosecutors! But what if, God forbid, catastrophe! she’s with child? That would make the old hags real euphoric – what windfall on a silver tray! Well, then she could only say good-bye dear life… or put her baby into a basket, leave it on some doorsill and move down town, to Stone Cross (whorehouse). Unless… unless she pulled her net ashore a big fish in it, some gluttonous dirty-minded old crock of a joker, more willing to share everybody’s new cake than eat up, all by himself, an old turd. In few words, some balky wicked dry old stick of a duffer… ready to consort with the devil’s bride and do business in ruined places! he won’t have a chance in hell to escape the red-iron leering slum’s biting masquerade. Nor will the dear girl ever get her peace of mind in such fine company: one minute fly stung, two days squeamish! Doltish or not, he’ll have her get her share of yap and slap: was she loaded? was she a maid? Neither!… just a housewife! And time goes by, the slum has short memory, loose-tongues kick the bucket, or get fresh merchandize to gnaw at…

The doorsill

Here’s a bedful packed tight, if ever there was one! A snapshot taken in an asylum for foundlings… baptized on the doorsill, they called them, for their mothers, bred alike everywhere – maids dishonored,

39 wives deserted or poverty struck, lost women – left their progeny at the gates of churches, mansions, asylums and other philanthropic houses. I never could tell who those women leave their doorsill-babies to: heavens, institutions, mankind itself? Or, maybe, they simply cut themselves loose of all there was theirs to hold: love and betrayal, lust and pangs, reason to live for… And, if so, how do they come alive again?

Twinkle twinkle

I indulge in a surge of idyllismus – my grandfather duly suspected a tear rolls to my chin when I watch parades and Indian movies – and say to myself my, my, how happy this kid looks! Have you noticed the two big dark feet, and the two paws safely clawing the basket handles, the joystick of his life? This moment in time seems to work on the kid’s side!

In denial

I can’t take my eyes off these two Romanians, poorer than the concept of poverty itself: see their composure, his blithe look, her smile to be caught in a picture? They act tender; their poverty does not look like ailment. I almost wish I could find, myself, such contentment in a cup of tea… and, eyes closed upon all there was or is to come, thirst for nothing else but a cup of tea.

40 Everlasting ignominy

Saddles of want, layers of dearth, wicked ways… the evil one is proven here and welcome. Waifs and brats begging in the streets on a daily basis, urchins of cadger Malamos, as well as from the Gypsy camp at its worst: a living hell. Packs of cripples, drawing upon the town like mould and rats, as green as grass and as ghastly as also guileless, doomed to dismay when least expected. Born so deprived that sometimes their twisted mothers sold them for tobacco, or so lame who knows in which God forsaken swamp, or limping from some mean push down a steep slope… they may get into the hands of the camp captain, who has smithy’s pincers to do a good job trimming them maimed for begging. Cock-eyed or one-armed, they hobble, limp, shamble… away from the grimy ghetto-like enclosures in Rahova, Ferentari, Bragadiru, crawling down the avenues. Hardly stepping in their young lives, yet already warped by such tough living, ignorance and fights, they creep towards the glossy wealth of the lit palaces, dragging their scars and trading them, squeezing them for all their worth, in their confessed, crude, nudity… And my, how they drool in front of the shop windows! How to resist walking off with a cracknel, one meager mouthful, for the road? They sicken the passers-by with their ailments, hunger and crudity, hurt people’s feelings with their bawling and get them fuming with pick-pocketing, all for a skimpy copper or two.

41 Then, dog-tired, they drag their feet home – who’s there to hear them whine? – into their natural squalor, the scab and the ugliness of the world… nay, worse, human Godly beings. So I walk down the streets of Bucharest, today… and I hear myself think good God, we’re caught in a freeze.

Dog-gone lives

A collection of suicides’ nooses, picked in various police precincts; would you believe that they get sorted out on rank? Take the poor vagrant: they used horse reins and cattle lines, belts, scarves, waistbands, girdles, rags…. None so clever as the devil! Just as you are about to tackle the powers of the heavens, he is all over you with dirty tricks. You’re this close to a break-through, he asks for your two-farthing jade fee and you have to stop and clear your pockets of chicken feed. Derision is the name of his monomania!

Stormy petrels

New ideas popped up and stuck: gymnastics for health, the spirit of the Olympics, hygiene… In spring and summer, sanitary posses raided the streets, gendarmes in arms and the army barbers enrolled in the local regiment dogging them close. Suppose they caught you unclean, hair unkempt, lice swarming happy about… poor you, they’d shave your skull glinting and

42 soak you, top to toe, in… eau-de-cologne, like? in your dreams! in all sorts of deadly juices! In schools – and in orphanages no less – they preached Swedish gymnastics and human pyramids: human bodies were called to bond for health’s harmony’s, and art’s sake. Yet all that reeked the barracks: order, poverty, uniforms… the war was knock-knocking on all doors.

Let’s party

Kindly consider present snapshot: end of a seven or eight century old story? Let’s begin with the beginning: some presume Bucharests started in the archaic rite of the Moşi, when the small communities on either bank of the Dâmboviţa River, well-off already around 1200 AD, gathered together to set up a common fair. That was legendary Moşi, open from early spring till late fall, in-between Bucureştioara River and Şuţu Lake, close to our Colţea Hospital today. A well-done thing; which, in time, pushed the royal courts to put up a citadel, so they can protect these neighboring villages and lavishly charge customs fees from the foreign merchants based all over the Balkans… Europe, in fact. So this is these voices’ side of the story… pretty slippery, I’d say! Later, when too many buildings had been crammed inside a narrow place, Moşi Fair moved out on the open, where the cowherds were, a thing untouched before the Bolshevik invasion. Well, whatever their story, a hundred years ago Moşi Fair was a paradise revisited of trade and mass

43 entertainment: thousands of merchants, tides of merchandise, zillions of purchasers or idlers, everything you never needed yet bought never thinking twice. The whole country gathered there for kermis-like partying. It took you a whole week if you came from Suceava, Craiova, Arad… but even if you were a Bucharesteer you prepared as for weekends at Sinaia, for it was a long day’s spree. So after a long time advance down Calea Moşilor, by tram, or droshky, or on saintly foot – tough soles are a joy forever – you got out of the town through Moşilor Barrier… and there you entered the fair. It felt as large as life, anyway larger than the town. A few neighbors it did have, though: timber storehouses to the south, Heliade Gardens and the railway station to the east… hidden behind the merry-go-rounds, tall chain swings, huge see- saws packed with nerds and geeks… yes, the motley crowd was the main reason why you couldn’t see farther than the wall of humans around you. And the place was no Calea Victoriei, town clothes and French manners… but common folks in common trousers or whatever other attire fit for their purposes and status. And they came in billows! You got run over by John Doe and you ran over the man in the fair street! Everybody searched the fair like his own pockets, and when the buyer and the loafer bumped into one another, none would give in and take a step back. Stuff, riot, fun, populace… Viennese merry-go- rounds, whistling, jostling, Photo Venice, Dobrudjan bazaar, scandal, Photo Georgescu (cheaper), clerical treasures, laymen, toddlers, foreigners, countless farmers, lost zealots, wives dogging them close, here and there a

44 parasol, well-off people streaming, curses, dusty boots, heat, slum demoiselles, mascara, school-boys, drug- stores, American entertainment, buy cantharides, it’s what love needs! go-betweens, hags, philanderers a-hunt, kerchiefs, pretty hats, gardener girls slaked cigarettes in their mouths, peddlers, barrel grinders, good-for- nothings, mirror-mirror-on-my-wall, creolin stink, unfledged youngsters hollering… in two words: Iancu Caragiale!

Panem? Circensis, Mister!

Who says fair, says circus! not one, but three-four companies at once, the best the world over, like Kratejl, Barnum, Kludski, Franzini, Sidoli… As early as the spring Moşi – after Baba Dochia’s days, around the 40 Martyrs’ – and to autumn Moşi, Samedru Day in late October, there was not a day that the circus wasn’t somewhere or other on the large plain of Obor…if you care to look real close, the train you’ll spot has stopped at the East Station. So when the circus came to town, the very entry was a show in itself! They crossed the town, from Grivţei Barrier to Obor, on stilts, bags and baggage, fifes and trumpets, beasts on chain, dwarfs turning head over heels on the macadam, jugglers doing their thing while pulling faces that made the people split their sides laughing… a two long hours’ earsplitting bedlam parade that spelled out in capital letters here we are folks, the fair is on! Some jokers walked on their hands, jerking their legs in the air, others hid silk scarves and then took them back out of innocent passers-by’s bosoms, to

45 everybody’s loud excitement. The poor went out in the streets, the young ones, the innocent scum of the world, masquerading, making fun and being genuinely happy – how could one not be? It was spring! And when they were finally there, they set their menagerie carriages and their own vans in position, put up their tents and their name boards, for banners…and the show was on, day in day out, till fall… one big party, clowns, acrobats and all sorts of magic, a most astonishing thing. Everybody was there: the slum, the farmers, schoolboys in caps and workers, worn out hats on their heads. Here and there, next to the girls’ parasols, stiff large hats, with ribbons, a la Maurice Chevalier. Trampolines and trapeze flyers, nimble fingers and con-men, all circus artists, whether ugly or handsome, all had their private show to run: ponies, appaloosa American horses, all come see our boneless girl, roll in a ball and then unfurl!… one made you (miracle!) stiffen on blades’ edges, another spat fire, like fast trains! and the rednecks looked him in the mouth and down his throat… no, he didn’t have a hole in the middle, he was only more scarlet and smelled the oil. Flocks of scrawny dwarfish creatures darted in and out, getting in everybody’s way, hassling mannish women, somersaulting and pestering the guys, going like see our man of steel, canon balls he’ll mill! Mad monkey-house! the well-to-do simpered, conversant as they were with Ziegfeld follies, revue, music halls chanteuses and big-bands. Bravo! Well done! yelled the mob, swept off their feet by the hubbub of that booby hatch of a circus.

46 The band – all brass and drums – was hired on place… army band-boys most often, also some Conservatory student, trading his art for his rent pay through winter. The band leader was, invariably, a swarthy trumpeter: hell of a blackamoor, bigger than big Satchmo, gifted, wrapped in silk, with his feet in light summer shoes, bourre de soie! beating the bars. They rigged them a light wooden rostrum, fixed them into kepis, pushed them up there… blow’em mighty loud, lads, if nothin’ better’n that…

Live with the bears, dance with the bears

Pushed westwards by the Tartar migration tides around year one thousand, the so-called bear-men tribes reached here in the rear guard of the barbarian hoards… they and other such like guilds – minstrels, farriers, fortune tellers, goldsmiths, dancers, wood-carvers, army whores or simply beggars – the speckled tetter growing on battalions, pecking tidbits from army’s lavish palm, entertaining the winners and cashing in the corpses. Bear-men beat the tambourine and the wild beast – brutally coached to walk on glowing embers – hopped, while the noble Tartars cheered frantic. They were paid lots, yet more they took: all they could grab, always alert, fierce and greedy, like the beasts they were sworn brothers to. I fear to picture what the bears got for dinner, besides the regular licking… live with the bears, roar with the bears. And when the horns called the retreat and the golden hoards pulled out to their original steppe, Gypsy camps stayed behind all over Europe, like dry mud after

47 the flood… not that they had what to go back to. On a millennial routine of survival – even through slavery – at day one parameters of their life standards, ways and isolation, the Gypsy bear-men dance their beasts, Carpathian by now. Even today, bear-men – by now free householders, bearless and fairless – are sure to be the toughest, most brutal and indomitable of the Gypsies.

St.Johanmas

Wide-awake or unawares, the bear-men jumbled up three antiquities on the Balkans’ Moşilor Fair stages: Athenian wrestling, gladiator’s-meet-the-beast clash, Christians-in-the-lion’s-den tryst. A farthing and any ne'er-do-well could witness – wide awake or unawares – Greek-Roman, Olympic, fights. Moreover (marvel, folks!) the Bucharesteers believe that, should you, on days like St.Johanmas, fight your better, you’d get his might to yourself. Clad into myth, the beast (fore paws into thick leather gloves so claws should not constitute an advantage) and a monster of a hoodlum (rear paws into tight boots) clash in a tricky hug. Circensis all right, says, aloof, Mitică, the town’s wise guy, – but where’s we-the-people’s panem, mon cher?

Therapy

So when the fighter is crushed, the bear – power god for the Romanians, and for the Bucharesteers – wheels the crippled looser! The mob faints breathless at

48 such magnanimous chaperoning, as the starved beast misplaces a blow. In ’26 a quirky bear broke the spine of a bloke from Crângaşi, who nothing but had to tickle it… naughty boy!

Good old customs

After a while the fair no longer attracted audience for the bears, for the jugglers, for puppets Vasilache and Mărioara, for clownery the kind you knocked yourself over laughing, no! they’d stitched in folklore, instead, so the populace and the king might see the mayor was no scoundrel but a nice and popular fellow who just loved the people so. They pieced together this sham-show on Sundays, shortly before noon, fetching real farmers by train, in show-offy costumes, from Cetate and Bistreţ… who did their share of squirming and hopping, no big fun and for no avail (was it any wedding, to do it for?) got their pay (in kind and in pennies) and were off. So much for it! said the mayor’s man, content, been here done that!

The Big Wheel

The Big Wheel did health rides for you, rather than joy! During the Easter Lent, crowds of people, well and unwell, who cared? charged upon the rickety machine to get flown up and down, round and round. The wheel was started on the first lent day and spun to Easter. Folks climbed down battered and woozy

49 with the ride, yet clear in their minds that they’d just bid good riddance to all foreseeable ailments… for the year.

Implementing

Farm stuff trading – mostly barter – was the true soul of Moşi Fair. The villagers walked among small pubs, at times halted their steps to have a sip to their own health, as also might have climbed into the Big Wheel – we live but once – but never really stopped before they reached the east end, the craftsmen’s, for farm implements, different from the town Moşi. There they felt at home, far from the maddening crowd, taking their time picking forks and hay rakes, baskets, butter barrels… Prices were written in large clumsy red or black figures, on plaited rush tilts. Business reckoning was done on an abacus, if available and when instruction afforded… or helped out by some smart school kid around. Payment, cashing in… and off they were. No time for wetting the buy and, anyway, what drinks to buy on the halfpenny left?

Watch it hard!

The rednecks would not venture as deep as Sărindar cinema hall… not even closer, to the halls close to Moşi, Tei, Vergului… and what’s cinema, anyway? not a decent thing, not for the lowlife like ourselves, not ready to go this year, maybe the next… Enough miracle in the rusty eye-boxes wherein they could see, wow! 3D cards, showing Vatra Moldoviţei Mountains!

50 What a gimmick! Now there’s a story to tell back home, at Putna!

Foodstuffs

After such wearisome sauntering you were hungry as a wolf and ready to eat a horse. God be praised, there were enough places ready to meet your appetites and pluck your pockets clean for it! But, at Moşi, the pub man counted for less that the confectioner, for it was ruled that you were to quench your hunger for gingerbread, sugar wad and lollipops… and you had your fill for the whole year to come! Even Herdan bread factory had a shop there, at the heart of the fair, selling biscuits and Râşnov bread. The fair was flooded with fat lady-bakers’ dough fries, whether pancakes – thin and thick and cheese filled – or noodles, or jam filled rolls, as they are in high demand in Transylvania, or Banat, provinces… yet our people preferred pop corn and pretzels. At times barbecue graters and bucketfuls of coals, or hot tiles, were taken out for meats and pastramis… only when the heat abated and the fair time drew to its end. Thousands of confectioners and pretzel-bakers swarmed about the fair, calling out and praising their merchandise, getting under your skin, stuffing you if only they could! Nor had the poor Gypsy mothers a moment of peace, their hands blistered as they fried seeds and called out come to mamma’s hot pop-corn! In August, after St.Mary’s, there came the smelters’ hussies, swarthy, tall and so gorgeous that you’d gladly have stolen one for yourself, to keep under

51 lock. They passed by, buckets of boiled young corn cobs on their heads, calling out, in raucous voices, all come get my salty corn, come to mamma-crow, get warm, swaying their skirts, as their heavy breasts swung… each took them at their words, whatever it was that they heard. Also, about the same time, the brave weaver-women showed up… large buttocks, munching pumpkin seeds and doughnuts filled with wax cherries jam. So, you see, foodstuff was never scarce about that place, all you needed was money for the buy! But business was not so good… for most people trimmed down expenses as hard as they could, and came to fair, their sacks filled with bread crusts and cheap wine, to help them through the long Moşi day. Who cares what a man’s stuffed his belly with day before yesterday?

Drinks, dry and soft

He who eats must also drink, right? So… if not fussy – who is, at fair time? – he gets lukewarm lemonade served on a table corner, or home-made syrup and water… wishy-washy, no smell, just sugary. Besides syrups, Moşi Fair displayed sour wines and fresh plum juice, grapes must and Salatruc sweet new wine. Brandy, as little as it was, was taken in custody by the street sergeants and gendarmes… that is, by those who were not in cahoots with the spirits distillers, so rows don’t get their natural fuel. Cheap spirits? Streaming in plenty! Lowlifes from Cuţarida smuggled it and sold in phials and small glasses: grapes dregs brandy, cherry and wild-rose

52 brandy… even worse, mixed up with syrups, remember the house rule? Moşi fair wants it sweet! But! it so happened that said fair raised different type of Jack-of-all-trades, too…who, better than others, knew the ways of the world. He got all sorts of dregs, out of thrice boiled dry roasted pod crumbs which he drained … then poured that black juice in cups, as dandy as at the sultan’s court. A Bucharesteer couldn’t say no to such treat. Kahve, please?

Brave newcomers

All right, so you peeped through the peeping hole, the wheel turned, American gimmick: horsemen darted, shot silent pistols and rifle shots, rolled over and died, as large as life... or not? This old trick, moving pictures, could only take in kids, those days… or a soldier or some teenager (plump, shy, beret pulled down her eyebrows, all alone, poor thing)! Around 1929 even the zombiest of a Bucharesteer knew what movies were! Yet the thing cut tremendous business! So how many, of the people in Moşi Fair, were still Bucharesteers, do you think?

Fortune Wheel

Besides the Big Wheel and the merry-go-rounds, there were all sorts of machines meant to pick your pocket, geared wood frames for lucky shots, or trite American novelties, most cast in iron. Fritting away a few coins could make you feel like Morgan leaving his

53 million dollars in casinos! It only had to be unique, new, arcane: old Bucharest’s mechanics era. You picked up a rifle, took aim from about a foot away… and shot. If you touched the target, you got a lollipop… and a Gypsy – lost by his camp to the quick sands of show-biz and gambling – went into raptures over your perfect aim, that he’d never seen the like of, in the fair. So, of course, you tried again… the sly fox had you where he wanted! And when you were through being Winetou and Iancu Jianu, the lottery got the best of you. The stand, the silver globe, quality props, the man in a tie, a decent mug on… all spelled out modernity. You played; you got one cup, two, three… five… till you got fed up with and let others go for the ebony lid glazed jug and get the luck you didn’t. Come see, all, the lucky ball! roared a guy in want for customers… so you went, why not, his wheel was so much like Tom Mix’s, in the movie, where the gangsters break into the saloon and, cards marked, sweep the board clean. No wonder our man, used to easy money, did as much… no matter how long the wheel was spinning, fixed to only stop where due. But you kept mum, for the stakes were chicken-feed and the lenient Bucharesteer’s jingle is, what else, live and let live.

Man of the day

You put all your heart and might into the sledgehammer, you hit hard the machine called Never cower, try your power… and you could not make it, ever, the coin didn’t fall for you to have. You smashed the

54 spike, the flying puck crashed against the ceiling and even stayed there, squashed… nothing! On the bright side: Colentina pit, producing magnificent beauties, soap- makers and whitewashers, who happened around and saw you in action… also, the new light your old girl could see you clad in.

Postcards

You had this fantasy, that you were Papană, or Jean Calcianu… no matter, you were still BrokePop,Esq., not affording new shoes, let alone an airplane. Oh, but you had Moşi Fair! Three farthings and you were on: racing Paris-Dakkar, or looping above Băneasa airdrome, wife and kids around you. Next you sent your card to your clan, in Târgu-Jiu, for them to see who you were, how well-off, high and mighty… make them proud of back-home poor you, such a big-shot in Bucharest now!

Kindly a bit longer

But the juiced cars were the real thing, a call of the wild, enticing like sin! Century 20’s break-through, unheard of and never seen before, stirred up surprising sensations in the average Bucharesteer. You may have been an Errol Flynn and your fiancée a Pola Negri, come out to put on airs; or just Mitică and his gang of loafers, a-courting and set for pranks; or a soldier on leave and his pretty little missus from Lugoj; or an officer and wife, on a Sunday trip to Moşi… the same spell bound you all.

55 So you sank deep into your seat, waited till enough guys filled up enough cars… uptight, for the insolent public winked and made fun, as it happens in manly milieus, where maidens are scarce! A honk, then a roaring rattle… the machine jerked under you and off you were, like triggered! yet you stayed in control, could turn in place, whiz, stop short, all up to you. But the best part was how real mean you could get to others! You bumped into them and watched them spread near and far, like chicks! it was all right for you to … you picked your man and ran into him, car and all, literally knocked him over, he never knew what hit him so hard! When the juice got cut and you froze in place you felt empty inside… and asked for more, you would’ve practically paid all it took and more, just to be left start over again, a bit longer, please…

A divan for Ivan

A terribly trendy thing of the ‘30’s – like gliders now, or bungee-jumping – sheer living-on-the-edge as mechanical 19th century slipped into the 20th… was the miracle wheel, or the divan, on account of its margins being sort of lined with sofas. You will recall that lots of knocking out wheels were in use, at that time… meant to squeeze you dry of adrenaline. Some survived, even, like the death wheel, a cage wherein loco bikers beat gravity at its own game… or the chain wheel, or the big wheel, still present in today’s fairs in Bolintin. The guys on the divan are no fair rednecks, beggars and wasters… as the divan doesn’t come cheap,

56 it stays outside the reach of dropouts! tramps can hang it, hankering at the front door. And there’s no lady on the divan… it was still a while before the time of the (much scoffed at) muscled feminists and brassy suffragettes in knickerbockers. This nameless experience only inveigled true townsmen in smart ties and ironed trousers… clerks in the local administration, college students on grants, paid hands, with the telephone palace or with the new cigarettes factory, middle-school students, some elderly Don Juan in a black-ribbon felt hat, some Tommy lost in the risky area of Moşilor Fair, Mr. Church Mouse… all small fries, all alike, fishes in the ocean! Who knows, Mitică might be there as well, how could the best man of the slum balls and of the main avenues not be there? He doesn’t know what’s in store for him, yet, he just got wind about the divan being something lush and last minute… so he ought to try on, for size, this bon ton thing. They experience a worldly oddball and it feels fine, makes them feel special… you can hear, I hope, the Maake– Taake jokes they crack? And then… freeze! a stone jiffy, after the wheel’s mad race. Faint, or just shaky, our crude slum heroes open their eyes wide upon a different world, barring out the memory of an overwhelming fact of life. What a spin, mon cher! a joker speaks. This marble moment, this skeptical bafflement at wake up time, must make the wheel a miracle. Divan for pondering, at scales-even point of the balance… which could prompt wisdom, even. So… what now? what will they recall? what story will they tell their covetous dames waiting for delight?

57 All we can do is imagine them somehow pulling themselves together, shaking off the dust and… taking their leave, tongue-tied, embarrassed, almost.

Pull over!

In interwars Bucharest, the driver too quick to go on stupid strikes or too fast across town, infringing common sense and also road safety, was in for double trouble! For not only did they give him jail, fine absurdly and overcharge him – like they would any regular offender – with damage he never caused… but they loved to demean him! Once the culprit was apprehended and cuffed, the gendarme walked him about the streets, for everybody to get a good sight… of him and the plate they hung down his neck, reading DRIVER, horrid word meant to shame him over eternity. Also, if, at some crossroads, the zealous rookie chanced upon a large audience, he would slap our fellow a good one, for the road… not much stood between the poor devil and impalement, thanks goodness it never happened!

Bread-Van Street

Let’s face it, politics counted for little: Bucharest outgrew its own hunger and thirst! It was the mills and the oil presses, later the breweries and the distilleries, that cut a way for western ingenuity to rush in. In street called to this day (what else?) Breadvan, close to Liseanu Street, Assan’s Mill had its first steam

58 engine (brought from Vienna) set the heavy mill and press stones rolling, like toys. It was 1853. Witchcraft! the poor workers crossed themselves, watching, dizzy, the machine steal their jobs (damned concoction!). A pit from hell! cursed the old women, sitting on St.Dumitru’s Church stairs, spitting over the shoulder as they heard the cast iron piping whistle loud. So it was not due to governmental caring that the town entered its modern era, but owing to the pungent flour dust of the grist the workers breathed in, which ruined their lungs worse than coal… they even said that, when dead dusty and buried at Revival’s, they might miss Doomsday, being out for a bath. Which makes sense because, believe it: Bucharest is a wheat field town and, today like yesteryear, people have bread to every dish.

Shimmering the night away

When night fell, a queer fellow materialized some place in-between Calea Victoriei and Ioanid park. He carried a sort of a slim long mace in his hand. Yet he was no hoodlum out for a fight, no raider out for mugging, not even a common street-man. He wore a tunic and a kepi, he was a valiant state employee… and his end-tasseled May pole was a prized implement. Since the Town Hall started burning gas in street lamps, the torch-men – running across Bucharest in front of the coaches they lit the roads for – simply vanished… and the job itself slipped into a cleaner, less smoky, variant: street-lamper!

59 The marvels of technical advance required a pro, coached and skilled in high vocational schools. The shadows of the night curled around his rod ended in a wick, a flint-steel fixed to it so the man-of-the-future could sparkle it by clever handling. Shimmering lights lit the face of tomorrow’s Romanian worker. We live in the light of the future, newspapers wrote, inflamed by such novelty. Europe keeps wide open eyes on the glittering galaxies lit by our scholars. At night fall, Gas State Administration man in a kepi and badge made his tour, sparkling ablaze the lights of the future… not even the street sergeant, clan member and beau of the maids, was so popular and looked up to! At dawn, the same person resumed his sleep-walk tour, to put out the lamp-lights, one by one, same pole- trick, keeping good company with the moon-struck boozers and losers, the bridge-women and the rotten philanderers of Bucharest’s nights.

Canal pixies

Here’s one more new position: sewerage-officer! No more carters, no more rack-carts and ditches flowing into Gârliţa dung-hole! See these two guys, zipped up, in kepis and hip-belts, see their American cold-flame lamp and the concrete fortress around? Doesn’t it pretty much look like Bucharest’s scum got distilled salubrious and lost to the future modern industrialismus?

Main Road jamming One day the Town Hall decided to do something to stop yoke-trading: those folks simply asked for it, so

60 much litter they left behind… and they were so many, the town shook as they passed! Catastrophe for the greengrocers and for the fruit dealers… but, fair is fair, the town folks were right, all decayed merchandize was left behind to rot. Sunshine itself stank from the mounds of over-matured live matter brewing on the sidewalks. Reeking cabbages, squashed marrows, fetid potatoes, putrid apples… a layer of thin spread monkey business covered the town, and the stench would grow so horrid that the town couldn’t live with it. The banning struck like lightening. Not that the poor Oltenians made much of the business anyway, but now they were clean out of it. The gendarmes stopped them at the town barriers and tomatoes were kept at bayonet’s length… no Sunday-hot-Monday-forgot thing, but a true diktatum, posted on all posts, like army stuff. The mayor had to be stopped, the poor fellows saved. So a lawyer showed up – reddish and also on the black list at Precincts Two – and a good job he did of it. So the Oltenians rinsed the mud off their feet, put on Sunday cloths, embroidered shirts and cinctures… then marched themselves, in thousands, likely, to get their go-aheads from the police. They trimmed their yokes with the very best of everything, like tufty leeks, crispy pears, carmine like painted May radishes, purple plums just picked… flowers, shiny coppers for small change, hats on their heads, making their passage down the most squeamish areas of Bucharest, in sheer fiesta. It was like infantry on parade, waltzing their way on the beat and swaying their yokes! Sure the town folks went beyond themselves scoffing… and mockery flowed

61 free and high like Jiu River, but don’t Bucharesteers always do that, as a habit? Yet, the truth is they liked what they saw. Even the Town Hall decided the green-mongers deserved a second chance. And there they were, again, in the streets… until they were to fall back on their old ways… just like Oltenians!

Industrial age gimmicks

The background of these pictures is staggering: we’re back in 1920… and here’s techno-hawking already, in Bucharest’s streets and fairs… our peddling medieval Phanar turned into a western world’s herald. Techno-hawkers plunged deep and fast into the landscape, developing into our new statues-on-duty. So long, bear-men, jugglers adieu! A seven to eight centuries old world lost its regulars and cruelly popped off. In a matter of months, Moşi Fair and Cişmigiu Gardens were one with their new symbols: the balloons man, the instant snapshot guy, the weighing scales officer at the gate. They were so there you didn’t even see them… and when they were not, the world went out of hinges! They filled the gazettes, the almanacs and the singers’ hits. As they lived long, only minor adjustments part today’s electronic weighing scales, Polaroid and helium from then’s quoted tricks, turned mere extras after they’d gracefully slipped off stage and into history. Does anyone remember the interwars actors? Is emotion sickly, or a finicky province teenager?

62 Sweltering summer, mon cher!

Bathing places did, for Bucharesteers, what oases did for the Berbers of the deserts: revealed Fata Morganas and saved lives. As soon as the June sun was in the sky, shimmering heat rolled down Dâmboviţa River, heavy like oozy lead. Nowhere could you hide all the summer long, for it would get you wherever, even in your darkest and coolest room! The only way out were the ponds, cheering the town with green patches where least expected… and Dâmboviţa, especially Dâmboviţa, always refreshing! In 1920, all the good bathing spots were uptown, as downtown they got filthy with gutter dejections… but around Cocioc, beyond the ammunition works, the water was crystal clear! Take Ciurel Mill’s, where the whirlpool was: everybody went there, for richer for poorer. Some had striped fine cotton bathing trunks on, all by the book, to make the mob stare. Others bathed in their homespun drawers and huge shirts, coming out cleaner than they got in. And he who had nothing else to boast… bathed naked, who cared? The water hugged them all, off the sweat and the blazing heat…

Water, water, water!

In summer… willy-nilly, Bucharest fumes. So imagine it one hundred years ago: people dropped flat, parched! the Town Hall had no money to install pump- fountains but, for a favor, it did have scorching heat: the water carriers ruled!

63 Over sizzling August, they carried drinking water from whatever wells they might’ve known of… plus there was Dâmboviţa and the springs of Bucureştioara, one leu the barrel. They also retailed, a few coppers the mug, for the thirstiest of passers by, which at the end of the day proved bad business. The state administrations – the water office, too – had barely been set up… and water taps invaded the city. Water carriers grew out of demand and water barrels grew mould… which gave way to saloop sellers, millet beer and lemon. The saloop was a girls’ sugary drink… it also cost a lot, as you had to pay for the salep meal, the sesame seeds meal, the honey… Millet beer was too thick and the honey in it didn’t help much to slake your thirst, yet it messed with your brains instead… you felt like sipping millet oil! Jam or locum-and-water hid in the guests’ room, shunning the open… so lemonade, alone, was left to take care of the thirsty streets. They prepared syrups and fresh sweet juices out of anything – lemons, oranges, apricots, melons and watermelons, gooseberries and currants, peaches, summer wax cherries (too syrupy for wine), even wild raspberries… all of which screamed for cold water! The lads carried the water caskets on their backs and kept on the lurk for clients, like hawks! Soon after, they started capping the bottles, the French way… and they kept them in icy water tubs. In frosty winters though, when embers froze in the hearth, you could hear the racket of handcarts wheeling by, loaded with wicker bottles of hot brandy and wine, spiced with cinnamon, cloves and pepper, wrapped up in blankets and hidden in straw… the boys

64 would not stop except at places crammed with freezing, lavish, people … that was some thirst!

Novel ways

The Bucharesteers didn’t play tipcat anymore, neither rounders, nor catch ball… not even driving horses on the sly, for new times ask for new ways. So they stopped competing in throwing stones the farthest, in holding their breath underwater the longest… nor would they wish to catch-as-catch-can as before, let alone prove the best in ploughing and sowing! Those days, bravery was as plump as the muscles you could grow, bulgy and no use, just for the hack of it. Like today, the pioneers went up and down town, in halls and arenas, on show-tours, like breed steeds, switching stances and mesmerizing the demoiselles. The fashion set in… and soon after the slum beaus dropped their long embroidered shirts, even their drawers! and undressed close to blatant naked, for all eyes to see them footballing and boxing, to spite the old men and be spit by their hags, shame on them! One more fancy thing you might do, those days, was lye in the sun, bare buttocks up, about noontime, sweating in the heat and tanning beyond recognition, so no one could tell if you were a dutiful husband or a Gypsy woman dozing off on her trivet.

Saturday night tonight!

There’s one more thing the Bucharesteers loved: the Main Road taverns, the slum pubs… like One Copper

65 Sausage, Cock-a-doodle-do, Auntie Elvira’s, Cold Vault, Seven Brothers’… Pubs all right, but in style! by no means honky tonks for ragamuffins and blockheads, or cathouses or, worse, dens, for priggers… eaters, rather, with band music! Haughty public houses till midnight, chantands later, with girls, fiddlers and the regulars. The place, loved by the well-off (or striving to seem so) was prim and neat: you could always bring your dame along, no brawls ever happened, as the sergeant was on a year basis pay-roll and a few slackers smoked aloof nearby, like they didn’t belong there. Displaying finesse bred in the bone, the Bucharesteer pub offered the Frenchest of hors d’oeuvres, hot cheeses and drinks. Suppose you were the most pernickety person alive, ever… and, say, found your beef burnt! Her Highness, the hostess, got you another, fast, and counted your appetizers on the house, like she already heard this weird, new, western, logo: We aim to please! Sure they served up bitter new wines and local brandy, too, as a true Bucharesteer won’t chase old habits out of his flesh… yet dainty glasses replaced the old jugs and phials. They also had soda water with wine and beer, 10 lei a Luther mug… good life is a joy forever, how was a true Bucharesteer to miss it? Take Fanfan, in Tei: they cooked – outrage! – wether chops in salty butter, dished with pickles in plum vinegar! or veal gammon, cured tender in oils and Pietroasa sweet wine, baked whole, on lovage leaves bed, on an open hearth, feeding sweet beech wood to the fire. So you got your dishes – how could you resist? and follies to go with. When there was no man waiting for the girls at the stage back door, they crammed

66 together – five or six – to fill a coach full and end the night in the slum, for bit of butter on their bread, bit of a rent, of a smart rag… sure the slum provided no ministers or businessmen, but, what the heck, same dolts all around. Sheltered by mother night, swarthy fiddlers left their nooks and came out, like ghosts – this is Bucharest, remember? – and then to see them party! It’s what we call white nights, for the banquets ended at the break of day… when coaches full to burst took the boozers home, dogged close by the Gypsy band, in a droshky, playing their hearts out and singing shameless songs, under the threat Keep it loud, nigger, or you get your fiddle curled round your neck. As likely as not, their beloved hit Rarest Bucharest, poorest but cheerest would be today queerest and leeriest.

All shepherd Bucur’s Chillum

The street picked its own heroes, in Bucharest, to push them into myth and even into the dictionary. A laundress from Moreni had a daughter who was to be a king’s whore, a coachman’s lover, a general’s wife but, best of all, a biker! as, yes, she had this childish joy… all of which added up into the spicy cheery epitome of Mitzah the Biker. Tănase, the head of all the needy, the prince of all beggars, pickpockets and whores, generated immortal phrases granting him eternity... like stay wooden-Tănase, for petrify, as the prince had a wooden leg; or loafer- Tănase, kind of self-explained.

67 As for boyar Marghiloman: so much rum he boiled in his coffee that they say famous Pastorel, once, in Capşa, authored a particularly savory witticism, urging his drunken friend not to breath over the coffee, or it’d turn into marghiloman, today’s rum-coffee. Gogea Mitu, seven or eight ft tall, lived all of his life among shorties. And they so walked him about and took pictures of him and shown him around, that the word coşcogeamite, meaning as large as life, saw the light of day... true, they also say the word comes from Serbian or Bulgarian, but I’m partial to the concept that we were first and they followed. I ignore the whereabouts of the catch-phrase here’s old me’n auntie Lina... still diggin’...

Total exposure

Sizzling hot, the bankers set up sporting places even by the barracks and the military schools of our capital! So, absolutely out of the blue, a swimming pool appeared by the Elefterie waste ground… a pond, rather, cramped among a number of mansions. A tight place, many lads, few girls… army like! They sweated as much, the heat stayed as scorching; a brief dip was all it amounted to… but, well, as compared to naught…

Beer necessity

And there came a day – in March, in May, no matter – when summer crashed the gates of all beer- houses. As soon as the sun took over, the breweries flooded Bucharest with a beer Danube! Carts and trucks

68 were already loaded at first cock’s crow, with brass-tank beer, cold, blond, foamy, barreled but shortly before drawn. They left the plants (Griviţa-Luther, Gib-Opler and Bragadiru, shrewdly located one behind a railway station, the other close to the officers school and one more by the college!) and were so loud they woke up the whole dog race alive, Bucharest to Giurgiu, the say goes. The humblest of the slum, or parish, had its own round the corner beer house. The elite, like Gambrinus and Beer Cart, where the teachers went and also the mashers, were so endearing they simply cried take me home! The brainiest guys in town owned them… and kept them afloat so they had people around to speak to (and get back slander), feeding them dishes and buckets of black coffee, customer is sacred! All day long, the Bucharesteers, hot with cruel summertime, stopped for a mug and shouted jug of beer, here, boy! The appetizers waited on plates, quite a mean summer catch, for, of all things, here’s what it was: feta in super-brine, kippers, pickled olives, carp, smoked beluga and even gray mullet fish eggs, on brown buns. So you took a salty bite, moaned, then drank your heart out… in two words, smart business! There was a big icehouse, some place in Floreasca vineyards… they brought the ice in carts, by night, down to the pubs, about three tubs each, to play safe. The beer barrels floated in melting ice, beer turned into icicles, in August! when your brains grew mould with the heat… how could you not have one beer mug? We ought to say as much for ourselves: none of us drank himself wet, to stink a mile away, like shit from

69 two hospitals cesspits have just been rinsed off there. Beer houses were no place for shabby dirty smashed old boys… or brawlers, God forbid! The Bucharesteer used to be pacific, all on the out and out, big mouth, easy going and erratic… lip servicing his drink and barely skimming the foam off his one or two mugs a day… far from, say, the German heavy drinker and his one yard long row of mugs. Who went out for a beer? Clerks, traders, employees, renters, owners, the brainy (the lowlife had brandy to lose themselves faster)… slapping was the tops risk and bloodshed, of the loudest scuffles. Slap, smack… and that was that, rarely ever; people stared hard like they didn’t even see… no follow up, simply closing one topic to start up another. The snifter was just to tease, to keep up the spirit and pitch high the discourse. Verbal fights and wreathes, snaps and fireworks, the hub and the rub. And the place was the crossing point, the focus, of dispute, of hearsay, of chitchat – where else could you, in summer, cool off your anger, happy? Beer house sessions were no partying, but politics… you talked justice there, righted the wrongs, and humbled a wise guy, the king… God! You crushed the guileless, sang praises to the smart and the overachiever and made the others keep up with you, all to the benefit of our dear motherland. In Bucharest you did politics in Capşa, voted in the House and lived like an eternal hurricane in the beer house… where Mitică did no revelry, sang no bruderschaft, but saved his world.

70 Summertime for all

Which better way for the Town Hall to go about the wasteland around Şosea area, than make it into a pool? Not a kneading trough, no… as Bucharest never does anything below world size! They scraped their pockets and found the money to crop up a spa better looking than Amara. A field stretching far and wide was made into a sandy beach… one whole year’s cartfuls of sand was relocated from Neajlov and Ciorogârla Rivers. Then they put up two floor shops, eaters and cabins – sheer vernacular cubism, or American building! – trampoline, sports ground, showers, tie and tails a must, Europe never saw such a grand sight! The whole town’s populace could’ve stripped there. And they did stream in like the Black Sea was round the corner, said the pro-power gazettes… while the opposition squeezed dry the innuendos in the juicy phrase public shit hole.

Ashore

There were marshes and ponds in-between the seven hillocks Bucharest is built on… and, yes, a couple of crazy rivulets: in summer, when everybody was parched with the field works, they ran dry, while in spring they flooded the slums. Before 1900, you could sail down Bucureştioara, from Batiştei to Curtea Veche, past Brâncoveanu Palaces. And in-between North Station and today’s Press Market there were muddy pools, pits, lacustrian households and thieves’ hide-outs, like Ouatu’s pit and Cuţarida slum. And from Crângaşi Road, actually

71 from Ciurel, to Calea Plevnei and Grozăveşti, there were ponds and back-rivulets meandering among eyots… all the folks there were fishermen, unless they got to be railway men first. Dudeştii were still fens and you could float your boat from Filaret Station to Silver Knife, steering clear from aits and through the water-lily ponds. Only after WWI did the mayors start cleaning their front and back yards, drain the marshes, cover the peat bogs and clean the ponds into pleasurable lakes. But it was such scamped work and overnight (this is Bucharest, remember?) for, unbelievably, you could go to bed wasted, on a sopping muddy floor, like… and wake up in the morning parched, on dry land!

Hot tarts

In only a matter of hours, our Oltenian gardner – rushed hither from Dăbuleni, of all places – sold his cartful of juicy melons, the earliest in 1927, like hot tarts. His purse full to burst, he decided to enact – before he was too old to – an eerie fantasy he’d had, a madman’s old whim, a daydream fed by shredded pages he found in local trains, torn from Morning Gazette and Illustrated Reality: to paint the town red, like any true born Gentleman! He did not care what it cost, he did not care what he wore, he ran to notoriously perilous Stone Cross, to live, in his flesh, voluptuousness urban, sophisticated, wicked, lush, supreme! The place did measure up to his expectations: a true palace, huge framed looking glasses, a wall-piano,

72 terra-cotta chimney, mysterious women in black silk, curly and sweet smelling and their nails long and painted. Upper-class excellence and opulence… little mattered the scruffy chairs, the rugs, the home-spun towels beautifying the pictures. They showed him in all right, if not tongue in the cheek, and served like pros – brothel noblesse oblige – but he didn’t notice: he was in the temple of aristocratic pleasure, a nest of all wishes come true, of style, of free will! He threw his money left and right, on Luther beer, on dames, adrift with the flow of guilty mean delight… and, for the first time in his life, he danced! not a round, but cheek to cheek. He left as barefoot as he came, yet one-night richer: an odd fascinating night to remember.

Far from the manacling world

See these two rare birds, dining on the lake, in King Carol park, so the town can get a good look? Well… maybe wild, but maybe not! Maybe a frail one-of-a-kind split sec… or true love euphoria, so much easier to spell out in a crowd… or the sensuous light wind, cooling – like apology – the heat of the moment… or the impish satisfaction of turning their other cheeks – and their backs – to manacling world.

Doggone water

There came a time when neither Colentina nor Dâmboviţa River sufficed any more. Whether because of the blazing heat or because of the tempting models,

73 architects and engineers – barely back from rich modern world – made rivers run foamy around the blocks of flats, frail boats steering among rose bowers and flower ewers, my, how exciting! How odd! no one seems to remember the canalets running round Colosseum Arenas, no book and no almanac mentions them! But here’s this ideal snapshot: a rounded stern, like a Venetian gondola’s, way too solid for this frail boat, the topper on young Goe’s head, the stiff boater on Daddy’s… or else I would’ve never learnt about the torrent in the middle of the town. Uncanny, too, how no one remembers the artesian fountains in markets, refreshing the dry hot air, tall lace columns rising to heaven. Two scores of years I’ve lived in Bucharest and yet never saw crystal water rise higher than man in a hat’s height… before I ran into this one hundred years old picture!

Lido

When you lisped Lido you pictured unleashed magnificence, the highest of the stairway step the tandem money-delight could take you. The pool surface creased by waves, especially, turned quoted hotel into some mythical alcove, for gods (and goddesses!) only… The slum yearned and daydreamt, the VIP’s refreshed, the foreigners mused… nous sommes ici aux portes de l’Orient…

Pleasure boats Old Bucharest’s profligates, lost to solitude and libertine exploits, would not stand up to the novel urban

74 racket. So they backed away, to places where they could co-rule with spleen only. True, they had bad days, plenty of… but on their good days, these spoiled rotten soakers of the town walked aboard some launch… and pushed upstream Dâmboviţa River, or drifted down, cutting across the vast waste land around. They were a terrible mix of Byzantine exarches and runaway odalisques, surviving progeny of banned sultans and Circassian bondwomen. Ruined, in and out, by the vices in their blood, interbreed since Phanar times, ready for acts the mind hurts to even imagine, these philanderers gave themselves up for lost to blighters. Sucked clean of their might and possessions traded for the worst debauched of the fallen creatures in Rahova or Cuţarida, they had but one coin left: the Styx crossing fare. But… fall is what they loved! And they fell and fell, as if forever lower, to where pleasure and rapture cajole perfection, lunacy and the evil one. The voyage dared the heavens; the boatmen and the go-betweens couldn’t possibly care less. Should the town have known an iota of what they did! My, the tittle-tattle, the scandal!

Fiestas

Double band-music and singing! said the ads and the posters calling to public parties: bucolic celebrations, charity festivals, if-not-there-you-don’t-exist taxing balls, like Iron’nWood, held at Green Tree Hall in Bărăţiei, or Mine’nForest, in French Street... to reassure the crowds

75 that they’ll get their money’s worth of ear-splitting whiz and sole-splitting beats! The reunited brass bands, of infantry, bakery, armory and border guards, broke out about brunch time. People gathered in font of the Military Circle and all traffic down Calea Victoriei froze up. The mob jostled for no other reason but see the rookies blow their hearts out through the trombones valves… or in ad-hoc chorus hollering Wake up Romanian, Cross the Carpathians, Romanian battalions! so sensitive that our empathetic Bucharesteers could only burst into tears, or cheers: dear Romania had but shortly before expanded to full size! Next, about noon time, the footers came marching in, bawling a slightly different kind of a hit:

if you want a chick, do come down Stephen the Mighty Street! sure she’ll be swept off her feet if she gets a sip of rum, so be smart, you little cheat!

Laughter peals rolled over the patriotismus wave… just like us! Then, around sunset, the telescopes in front of the Military Circle brought heavens a bit closer. The bands withdrew to cafes and athenaeums; the time was come for sweet classicismus. Mellow-hearted veterans cropped up orchestras, for a hobby, tenderly waltzing peripatetic Bucharest into twilight. Any violinist did his duty to at least once try THE Ballad for feeling… which, barely started up, deduced the unmistakable announcement It’s Ciprian Porumbescu’s Ballad! duly called out by

76 someone in the audience… Mitică, always at hand, cutting in My, what quick ear, mon cher! As for fiddlers’ bands… they vied – where else? – around pubs and inns. Trimmed prim for holidays in whatever Sunday clothes they had left, fiddlers called time through the blue night parties. And, as sunset streamed into night, Gypsy fiddles got where they belonged, i.e. this close to customers’ ears, with the bluest songs that ever lived, like Tell me true poor old man or Play your kobsa hard for me, in highest demand though dried up with overplaying. Zavaidoc was best with tangos and Jean Moscopol’s romance ballads, at Yellow Inn and at The Hut, or in more central restaurants with classy clients, exclusive whores and amazing liaisons… You wouldn’t believe how many governs slipped into history down some well-cut sleeve, at Cina… or how much virtuous faithlessness and heroic duplicity flew deep down the Continental! how many fortunes vanished up the sleeveless jacket of Miss Zozo of Mon Jardin… if you just knew, my dears, how much history the tough waiters in Athenaeum Palace made! and what cruel derision and charade all solid, history-making, things, flow down our dry Bucureştioara River valley… best kind of music to Bucharesteers’ ears, sorry to say!

Faster than lightening

Around 1920, speed was a trend, engines a hobby and champs were national heroes… or, better, demi-gods. Most awfully hit were – who’d’ve thought? – the ladies! Worse than suffragettes, well-bred meddlesome

77 Romanian girls messed with manly jobs, the riskiest! It felt kinky to break your neck in naphtha stench, nothing more chic and de bon ton than greasy nimble fingers! The girls tried everything on for size, on turns or all at once, at will: gliding, yachting, cycling, parachuting, racing! The gazettes trumpeted: dry land, water-surface, the heavens… all filled up with Romanian Misses! As for the Misters… Bugatti had Jean Calcianu for a pilot, and Petre Cristea won Monte Cristo ralley and also Nurburgring, wouldn’t give anyone a chance! There was no new car not tried in Bucharest as well. His Royal Highness, Prince Bibescu (they say cars got the better of him) founded a car club, third worldwide; Leonida Works maintained Studebacker’s and Daimler-Benz’s, at a time when no one else did; Ford was at home on Brătianu and in Foreasca Vineyards, close to the mill. The western world shot its novelties fresh over Bucharest, pushing them hard… dusty, smoky, screechy, scary, for horses and decent folks alike. Like nowadays, some shiny sedan may have got baptized on Calea Victoriei, before it was seen, on all fours, Down Berliner Strasse or Seven Street! How is the mob to get headaches knowing you for what you are, if not by your one of a kind Bently? All sorts of cars ran up and down Bucharest: market’s, coupes, breaks, berlines... As for the make, Fiat, Dodge, Mathis, Renault, Lincolns and Buick rode shoulder to shoulder with lush Rolls Royce. On Sundays, when there were no horse races, the Bucharesteers thirsting for occidental entertainment, rushed for the flight parade, or to sporting cars races down Jianu Street, in-between Piaţa Victoriei and

78 Băneasa hippodrome. As for the race Bucharest-Braşov, reputed as chancy, nuts cases from all over the faster and faster world flew hither, like flies to honey, to attend. You’d say cars were expected in Bucharest since Genesis day seven… launched from up there, landing among carts and donkeys, an as good a place as any, since always till forever and one day. Remarkably, the car grew as legitimate as family… sort of an Uncle Sam you had to have your picture taken with, as you had with wife: moral wedlock plus eternal worship token.

Regardless

Two days absent down Calea Victoriei, the one and only boulevard, you were reported sick or else dead... once a true Bucharesteer, you couldn’t skip the roll-call We’re talking about the heart of the town: say Calea Victoriei, say Bucharest, is there anything else? Well-off tradesman, lawyer, top executive? no matter: you did not exist, if not seen down Calea Victoriei, or at least somewhere in-between the Athenaeum and the Military Circle! Call it a forum, an agora, mystic trip, pilgrimage, whatever: Bucharesteers belonged there, with the best of possible avenues eyewitnessing to their lives. You could own five mattressfuls of banknotes, or real estate from Crângaşi to Tisa River, or ten factories in Dudeşti and two naphtha rigs in Ploieşti! If you did not pass by Capşa, nice and easy, eyes wide open, God forbid you overlooked someone... you ceased to matter, you slipped into oblivion. They say the man in the street once

79 asked, as addressing a politician: Never mind all that, but do you call on Capşa? Not even tramps paraded in shabby plain clothes, everybody dressed up. Whether a clerk, a student, a standard employee, a regular poor guy… you found your 3000 lei worth suit plus hat, as interwars Bucharesteers’d keep their summer-winter hat on, down Calea Victoriei. The walk took you well into night. A crude remark, bit of flirting, Don Juan winks, smooth talk, rancor, schemes, grudges, conniving, dames on high horses… never amounting to much! Why, a maid would get home intact after her night walk down said boulevard, the king himself did as much, a-courting in the crowd, so what was to fear? Such round trips were also the cheapest dream- fun in Bucharest: but the joy such folks experienced, for meeting, for shaking howdy! Sure, they might as well have had hatred in their souls, blackmail, gossip, dirty plots… that was the best place where they shared, learning of each other’s foul cancans, Frenchy bugs or leechy hot-shots. So they were none the better and none the worse for the walk, which soft-pedaled no adoration and no odium, no merging and no parting! But the gentlemen’s agreement was that they were going to keep an eye on each other, as all of the above were going their appointed course. Nothing more democratic than the grand perambulation! Slums and palaces drained up, to flow into one avenue… beyond custom! sheer law.

80

Mon Jardin

What magic does the Bucharesteer do, to turn the blazing summer heat into infinite delight? How can he lay down all his troubles and worry, as soon as he gets his two gridiron meatballs on a plate? How could he, long time since, rig a laughing masque, if not a stand, between himself and sweltering warmth? What flimsy wonder-timer works for him, so that sizzling cruelty dies down into motherly kindness? A two-word answer: Mon Jardin! the magic realm where the leaden heat of July and August – which unmistaken sets Bucharest ablaze – was part and parcel of stingy man’s bliss: the juicy bliss of gridiron meatballs and cold wine, bairams, fiddlers and rich balmy shade. Poisoned with stifling indoors, sentenced to sickeningly searing outdoors, wary caviler Bucharesteer had his seventh heaven safe at hand. As soon as he stepped inside the silken poplar shade of the Cold Vault, or steered among the tables – once sizzling in the hot sunset, twice tempered in beer froth – of Monte Carlo or Buffet, he forgot his predicament, easily lost into his private paradise. And there was the The Log, a pocket- size pub, actually an old tree – foliage and all, in Cişmigiu Gardens – impersonating a millet beer booth. Good-bye, niggling and spite! So long dry cracked huts and sheds… a beer mug made up for it all and was true deliverance! The sun itself – thus far a sworn enemy – was now his chum, as the embers under the gridiron and the bubbles in the wine glass projected flickering lights gathering on top of his head into a halo.

81 The juicy, huge, roast beef, already a brand near and far, was no dish to him: it was the Eucharist. Inhaled inside the dusty field summer, like little fish inside the Leviathan, Bucharesteers moon walked to some Mon Jardin or other, taking a thirsty long day’s passage into night, leaving behind the town’s mess of terrible fevers and sticky sweat: for a matching boon. This extra-temporal, anomic, carnival oasis, this total elsewhere, may have been Oteteleşanu Gardens at the heart of the town (famous out-doors academy and brain smokehouse, catwalk of derision and swank stage for loud mouths)… or The Hut, on the lake border, tables littered with catkins, young women voices attending… or Lion & Sausage and God’s Eye, a three chair abuse on the sidewalk… the future and the salvation of the big town, most popular institution, over Bucharesteer’s long dry dog-days interspersed with hurricanes. The gardens were no manly pub, but family agora: taking your woman there was a rite, immovability certificate and public pronouncement here on earth as it was in heaven. If both a man and a Bucharesteer, you owe your woman three sacrosanct acts, i.e. for better for worse, marry her in church, concede her your name and body… plus, summers, take her out to the gardens, weekly will do. You may never buy her a mink, a veil-hat or a bracelet at Papazian’s, you may not take her to Căciulata spa… but not to the gardens?!...

Front stage Absent down Calea Victoriei meant missing in combat, but absent from the hippodrome spelled out

82 bankruptcy… like shouting into the four winds that you no longer had a shirt on your back! Suppose you were there, as a man: feet in shoes, hat on your head… enough fret. But if you were a lady… ocean froth to put on would not have been too gaudy, so crucial had the ladies’ agreement ruled it. Indeed, the sacred place of yore, supremely masculine, got to be a feminine fashion contest arena… for who would still watch the jades, with such beauties around? Crème de la crème of women society met for the Băneasa tournament. Dresses were at stake, flounces, coronets, the ladies’ very standing of best-dressed divas… and, as anywhere else, the winner took it all. How should I look this Sunday? Smart? Well, I don’t know, consort might run for office, again, so… Chic, like barely back from Paris? Well, wouldn’t I look cheap girl or working class? …? Then how about lavishly romantic? Yeah, right, me and one hundred mistresses and old crocks’ kept women! Enough to go nuts. You didn’t go to the milliner, you sent your britzka for her, as the deal had to be hush-hush. Here she comes, to your place: you ask, demand, beg, roar, pay! work the poor girl for all she’s worth, push her to extremes, sprinkle her with promises lined with lurking threat… to maybe eventually get a droplet of a something as yet unseen, just right and not too perfect, not costly yet classy, not made on purpose yet first night, in agreed good taste yet unique, diplomatic yet brilliant, for all folks to see and tabloids to write about. Dressing up for the hippodrome was you alone against the whole world. You knew you could lose, but you had worse worries than that: cold shivers ran down

83 your spine thinking others might wear laces like yours, or buttons your buttons shade. Now that was shame! You’d hang the girl by your pick-a-boo ribbon, thrash her, nail up, then forget all about it. Whereas your rival… you could legitimately hate her till Jesus comes, great was her guilt and she well knew what she was up to!

Clean slates

Since year 1200 (evidenced, some claim) to this day, on the Saturday before Whitsuntide, known as Summer Moşi day, the slums were all for giving away: not milk and wine for charity, neither green squash and cabbage stew, nor regular old mothers’ alms at churchs’ gates... but pots! Horezu and Pucheni pots, Buzău Mountains pots, Bihor County pots… Corond, too. In early May the potters showed up and displayed their offering in waves of burnt red clay, motley and glazed jugs, plates, bowls, cups… as cheap as millet beer! They didn’t sell per piece or per the baker’s dozen, but by the heap. So the market cleared before you could say George Jackson… for no one bothered to keep track of the in’s and out’s balancing (or not?) the balance sheet – Whitsuntide was round the corner! And everybody bought and gave away, profusely, getting back as much, with a margin. No matter how many pots broke the year round, enough extras, stashed away from the show-room, came up-front instead.

84 Hamlet breeds eternity

Folklore festivals grew to be a must… as was dancing Căluşul! So greedy for love, dear motherland! asking you to show your feelings, like have a tear roll down your cheek as the flag rises to the sky or flutters in the middle of a table, among pots and pans… taking for granted your cursing like coachmen down Gârliţa and crossing yourself after good old tradition, deep an large, when praying in church, when playing cards, when a- courting… demanding that you proclaim the people to rule the nation and ourselves to serve, regardless. What acts of faith would be an advantage? Well, chiding whoever let foreigners rob us clean for one thousand years now and served Transylvania on a silver plate to the Magyar… or praising whatever is Romanian ergo perfect over eternity… and your chin had better tremble while at it! Declaring yourself a sworn heir to the antique heroes Decebal and Trojan would be a noble deed, which per se would slip into pronouncing Roman civilization above all others, Dacian included, literally, to breed the noblest of clans: ours, the Latin Kin. Well, as I said, here’s a new act on the block, the deepest genuinest love act, for kin and motherland: to join their royal majesties and the government, in the front line, for the folklore festivals. Since Dimitrie Gusti’s time, teachers near Bucharest heaped peasant houses, tools, attire, into a Village Museum … ever since people from all walks of life rush in, even from as far as Paris, the town had a hard job hosting them.

85 How could the true Bucharesteer woman miss such a sublime chance? Fashion was quick to adapt and adopt: embroidered scarves and blouses, vernacular moccasins… all made into haute couture. A happy case of joint pleasure and business: in those exotic garments, the high society ladies both looked pretty and proved themselves patriotic. And truly patriotic gentlemen started showing up in homespun trousers and homey sheepskin vests, even in the House of the Commons.

Clothes make the man

At first, folklore was consigned to the stages in Carol Park, Village Museum and Moşi Fair. By and by, it climbed down in the street, spreading spree over stadiums, markets, avenues… meanwhile climbing up fast the status steps: village attire, folklore garment, national apparel… ahem… politics!

Dancing in the street

In ten peace years, the Bucharesteers were quicker than the French to learn day dancing. They used to only dance by teasing guilty candlelight; now they danced at midday, sun full their eyes. You danced if you ordered McMahons for the girls (Seltz water came from Oradea, via Oteteleşanu) and wine in the ice bucket for the boys. Between this hot foxtrot and the next, the garcon brought extras, like lemon juice with a squeeze of lemon liqueur, mazagran or, for novices, cappuccinos, so people can wonder.

86 Young men liked their coffee strong, with a small cognac by the side and crunches for energizers. Cheek-to-cheek dancing was in vogue. There was a hit, Of a wild woman I would be fond, to be more specific one full of yearning, a brunette or a blonde… movies being still black and white, the pink novels (15 lei series) knew of no ginger, auburn and such like, yet. The band played on and on (stirring, to say the least); and the flaming day sizzled quenched, as if dipped into the blues oozing on purpose out of the sax and the trumpet muted on and off. You’d’ve been de bon ton, buddy, if you smelled patchouli, flimsy manly like in soap gazette series, your eyes hot, your hairs dressed shiny with brilliantine, walking poker stiff, looking faultless… your grenadine navy-blue suit cut just perfect, your life depending on the flawlessness of your kasha crème suit. As for you, Missy, you’d’ve had your hair brashly short-cropped like Mary Pikford’s, and your flaxen white dress strewn with marquisette bows; plus would’ve been way too young for the languor of the sensuous clangor in tangos… meaning it would’ve embarrassed you, rather than arouse. Your sister would’ve been on the rink herself, in a narrow rim hat I’m afraid made on order rather than bought, she’s your elder… as younger sister and two little brothers watch tight from a near by table. So sorry Grandpa’s not here to acknowledge Hey, that’s how it was! I wish it felt good for you… while it lasted!

87

Summer’s last

In Bucharest, long hot summer’s day lasted till the night they stashed away the chairs in Cişmigiu Gardens and at Şosea... or till some noon, when picking chairs under a slaked sun rolling across a cloudless sky meant imminent rain.

Fall trips

Here is the old wood carver, shaking with the cold of his October stand still day. WEhere did he spend his night, I wonder? in a third class carriage, all the way from Pietroşiţa? in some meager cart, taking a shorter trip, from Bulbucata and Teişori only, where a clan of wood carvers settled of late? on some market long table, snug in his shabby sheepskin, wise bird to catch the early worm? Who cares? It’s a great market day, booming 1928’s ladies have a jarriade a-coming. If he’s quick, by noon enough odd money would’ve flow in, to pay him a mug of hot brandy and a bowl of steamy pluck broth, plus cash for a few ticks more, down his whishing list. He’d discount – in downtown almost void streets – his schnitzel beaters, hangers, rolling pins, stuff he put in one whole summer carving… and get home tonight, tomorrow… some day, as soon as he was sold out: he had a family, you know, waiting for him like fledglings in the nest, beaks wide open. Win some, lose some, a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do!

88 Shepherd Bucur’s happy day

In Bucharest fall happens like tripping back in time. At last you can wallow in the soapy flames of crude original pleasures. Feral with lust, the town lives the frenzied expectation of grapes-must houses to open! Your soles carried you to your old folks’ little cottage uphill. You took up where you left with your betrothed old love, over a millenarian recipe of pastrami, or polenta (corn, not millet, though) or, of course, of must, drunk in a new clay pot like Decebalus must have, though he was a king of old, and a founding father. It only took one wine season day for the town to thatch through and over, while the mixed up tangs of barrel brew and salty roast fumed to the sky, to meet there the loud merry making and the cheery hoarse shouts of the wine growers everywhere. Still soft pastramis and syrupy rosy grapes climbed down mountains and hills to join the town in its timeless religion of affluence. Imagine, kindly, one late September night, such as it was: Cârstov Vineyards people already leaving; Drăgăşani folks barely come in the day before, in grapes carts from Crâmpoşie and Braghina; tied in long ropes to the huge oak wood wine presses, peaceful oxen munching in the dell near the High Road bordered with tufty patches of reeds… which get into your eyes, but if you look up you almost can hear the zillion stars in sight click, as they twinkle… no, it’s not the stars, it’s only the chestnut tree leaves, rustling dry… and also one more thing, like muffled chirp of crickets: the must! Must hot breath, in thatched barrels, brewing, maturing! Polentas and pastramis smell like the hot place

89 they evoke, fresh hogget spine and gammon just licked by the fire flames, whole lambs, carried on their backs by Muscellan shepherds from Argeşel Valley… all such and more fume on the long log tables. The fiddles play rattling hot folk dance music and, as likely as not, will keep it up till they drop, breathless! The guests chip in, lame like famed one- legged fiends. We are immortal one day at a time.

Eat your cake and have it

Not many dealt in garlic… closest to Bucharest, the folks in Teleorman, also those about Jiu River Valley, up to Cetate. This garlic was special, small and so hollering hot you jumped through your hat at the first bite! Garlic farmers – fast rich, like it was diamonds they bred – plaited it into two-meter long ropes and carried it to town, to a place called Winter Flowers Market. They stashed or carried it round their necks, placidly awaiting for the time to sell off. And there comes a day for everything! Bit before St.Andrew’s – day when winter ghosts show up, blown in by the first cold gusts – the north wind pushes like the icy breath of specters, my what terror! Bucharesteers run amok, grabbing more garlic than they know what to do with. What they do do, they smear in garlic squash entrance ports, like doorsills… then hid garlic so it’d come in handy, like under their pillows, under their undershirts, in their mouths, in-between breasts, in- between thighs, in-between…! Sweet and balmy must’ve been those love nights!

90 Anyway, St.Andrew’s night came for them to stand vigil… by their garlic. So they gathered in friends’ houses and partied all night long, or told wild stories and did whatever witchcraft they knew how, love stuff mostly. They socialized so hot that in a short while they couldn’t tell themselves apart, as in who’s a virgin and who a wife, which a practicing husband and which not! It is not for anyone to remember what happens then, to which evil extremes poor Romanians overreach for the purpose of keeping the ghosts that side of their doors. True, at dawn they squirm with hangover and reek garlic, being, once more, impure… yet delivered! So they head for churches to ask for heaven’s mercy, loaded with remorse to last them the year through… till the next night when gods cross eternity, on an hourly basis.

Here comes the slum bride

I so love this snapshot! What steadfast grit and yet how introvert, these slum double-daters, part in farming, part in… I cannot tell what, yet. Crafts, maybe! Owning their business, working apprentices for pay, well off enough to have bought themselves, for cash, the Wolf Trap carpentry shop in Dristor, for instance; mature enough to do business with the local government in constructions, or with the central, in ammunitions. Could they be merchants? owning a shop in Vineyards Road, trading farming implements, about to acquire a grains store house in September 13 Street, by

91 the barrier, close to the Shooting Grounds… even, maybe, a small cattle market place, near the Chiristigii. Well, one thing is sure: they’re firm on their feet and whatever it is they’ll be doing from now on, it’ll be rock solid and worth carrying on. Middle sized and a bit heavy, the givers-in-God froze in position, fists tight, like two drowsy logs upright. Ready-made cheap cloth suits, hardly ironed, bit tight, barely holding in place, listen hard and you hear the seams crack. The tall candles, rather, make the feast: lavishly trimmed with vine leaves and garden flowers, Indian summer dahlias and chrysanthemums bit wilted. The spouses retain the youthful grace that makes the picture vibrate. They are caught into this wedlock, the four of them, sworn to make it, together.

Sâmedru pyres

In principle around St.Dumitru’s, or a bit later, or in early October already, if the fine weather was gone too soon, Bucharesteers would light Sâmedru fires in all the large market places of the town. It was a sort of pre- Thanksgiving: they lit purifying pyres, fueled by the heaps of ruined baskets and crates still rotting with the summer juices and heat they lived through, at the Royal Palace Bibescu, at Ghica Halls and in the Grand Market, to the benefit of up-coming munificent fall. Only post-fire could housewives start worrying for their winter preserves jars and reserves! Only then started the yoke men swarm around, bringing bladder cheese of Câmpulung and Penteleu, or filling the cellars with loads of onions, carrots, potatoes and sweet pie

92 pumpkins. Then was the time they took out the lids from Transylvanian Sibiu and Macedonian Dobrudja feta, barrels. Then was the time when mixed up smokes blew over Dâmboviţa River valley, as women boiled fruit into jams, pickled greens in brine or vinegar, stewed vegetables in oil, grilled pastramis, pressed grapes and brew beer and wine. It was the very best time of Valea Călugărească and Vânju Mare old wines, in barrels, of Drăgăşani new wine, in casks, of tzuika brandy kept inside dry pumpkin shells, in Vălenii de Munte… Should angels have happened at such place in time, they would’ve dropped faint with craving!

Market pubs

Let me tell you about the market pubs, sort of crazy pell-mell popular taverns… not one, not seven, but scores! Imagine the market places closed in by drinking holes, like monasteries by their cells, God forgive such heretical simile! These smelly saloons never closed: early in the morning the whitewasher women gave the place a quick wash-up, steering among the swarthy kobsars snoring sprawled on tables after a night’s toil on the strings, attending some late weirdo or other, till dawn. Then the yoke men charged in, taking the place over, to gulp down some cheap chicken borsch… plus rare sleepy footmen, eager to chip in, for a good start up of the business day. Three tables outside and two in: Nae’s Belly’s, Three Skilly’s, Rag Fair’s, even Death on Leave’s! peas in the pod, you had to look pretty close to tell them apart.

93 Still some canopy above – priceless in both dry and wet weather – lured the best clients to one place rather than the next. But if you were just anybody, you crashed in a chair, whichever, you wolfed down whatever they scraped their pots of, for you, wondering why so much ado for so little! Yet, even in places like Bucharest’s beer holes, it paid for you to be a pro: you could lord it and also bequeath to your heirs a wisdom book on the topic! All pub kitchens displayed the same cheap basic pots: extra sour borsches, garlic lamb and chicken stews, fat meaty farragoes… still each pub man had it his own way with the dishes! Take tripe stews and giblets or gizzard broth… why, they never come out twice alike, not even in the same house! Willy-nilly, chefs were born who knew their own tricks… the rub was for you to find out who was wielding and who yielding, takes more than good will to make a fine dish. As for pricing… you got your three farthings’ worth and a bit more! Some pubs even posted a half-belly slogan, meaning that if you were so poor it showed from a mile off, you could order half a helping… and once a week, other pubsters took out, to the street, the poor’s broth tank, for the penniless to get their helpings free. Philanthropy, do you think? I guess not; even if openhanded, pub men never squander! Fact is, they were, literally, the lean-on’s of the butchers’ tables and of the green-grocers’: when customers had taken their pick, the leftovers came for chicken feed and coppers two. There was waste stuff people didn’t buy – like pluck and vulvets, soft tallow and marrow, lamb thymus ram testicles and cow dug – as good as free and just right

94 for the pubs’ smoked greasy pots, which never needed watering, enough meaty stuff was there and a-coming… The same with the juicy green stuff: fall itself made it come free, for when the maids had made their rounds and picked only crisp, the mellow, overripe leftovers came in just fine for stews and farragoes. Tomatoes and green peppers from the Bulgarian gardeners’ in Giurgiu; cucumbers and chili peppers from Adunaţii Copăceni; aubergines from Moviliţa and Coşereni; potatoes and white or red cabbages from Lunguleţu… pumpkins and plaited strings of onions and garlic, carried in crammed full yokes by an army of Oltenians… give the grower a bowl of thick meaty broth and a loaf of Assan brown bread (Herdan white was for the better off) to lick the fat clean by, and he’d leave behind three basketfuls of greens, picked by your maid! Pubs served simple nourishing dishes, as colonial goods didn’t come cheap and no one could afford overseas caviar and such like. What they all liked, and kept the business afloat on, was broth so thick the spoon stood on end while you said your prayers; porkling stew; big steaks grilled fat with extra marrow; garlic and Buzău onions... plus new wine of Piteşti, and Vrancea tart must, twenty lei a bellyful (what they called a leather-bagful), plus warm bread, brought from the nearby bakery. When Make Dragomiroiu made tripe stew, at Trojan Halls, the whole town could tell by the nose and craved to tears; the mayor too, stuck in some council. At Matache Măcelaru’s, the first fumes of the new day rose about noon: stuffed porkling stomach on sauerkraut bed, seasoned with bean tressel and chili peppers. It was a sight to watch the newly rich and the churls, the picky

95 gentlemen and the loafers… gather like saintly relics on show for them to touch! the high life and the scum, no matter if well dressed or tattered, rubbed shoulders round the pot. Bit before dinnertime, there would come out – like cockroaches – dark and ugly dulcimers and incredible chanteuses from Bolintin and Clejani. It worked like magic, for food to slake at booze and fine- spread time! It was junket at its worst: mugs and jugs gulped down empty, then smashed against the sidewalk, barrels upturned by frenzied depraved mad caps… especially if the cunning pub man doctored his wine’n soda with rot-gut! Now that was calamity, for folks started losing it and any cheap brandy tasted to them like Câmpulung tzuika or cherry liqueur from Baia de Aramă! Then it may often have happened for the pub men to have their fiery wives around: too lustful not to collect, gross heavy like melted lead, razzing with every passage… and customers yelled here comes Missus to get lip and her slippers go slip-slip. One of them was Mimi Iron Ass, no paraphrase needed; another was Fangless Flower, a wicked old girl in Dudeşti; then there was Madam Zamfira, better known as Slouchy Zizi, a bride available on public call, in a pub called Confusion, in Antonie the Great Market. Now and then the strumpet got the stick, for even pathetic, her man had his pride, but… tanned as she was, she could not help herself. Poor man, hypnotized, cuckold, scorned and coveted… he made his money but lost his joy, grew miserly but bought a two-floor house, took a mistress, got a car, a German driver to go with… and all sorts of other

96 such fittings, to soothe his heartache. Well, no use, he could not forget his own personal harlot – just like life! One war later, these pubs were gone. But how unlike the picturesque perpetual feasts of yore, in Dudeşti and Piaţa Mare, Trojan Halls and Obor, Ghica, Vodă Bibescu and Matache Măcelaru, the soul doctor... is today’s market fast-food! feel sick to even think of it…Carnaxî!

Dura lex

Bucharest Month was an exacting exhibition: everybody was to be there! Even the police: they had a pavilion assigned for honorable uniforms display. Master Puppeteer did his best to concoct realistic man-size dummies, out of modern stuff like celluloid, cardboard, Rhine glues and Farben paints. The snapshot here freezes the flitting moment when decent clothes started being slipped on the naked nudes. In his enthusiasm, our Master puppeteer wished dummies to credibly embody the guardians of our wealth and health… so he cropped moustaches on the street sergeants’ faces, plucked bald spots on the quaestors’ heads, carved youthful mugs for the green deputy- inspectors… and, upon request, supplied kepis to the wards, made the big-shots cross their legs and dressed up the deputy-police inspector in a gala uniform, sword, passementerie and all. Center front stage was saved for the brave policeman, nitty-gritty of public order: street sergeant brandishing club, work stance, if I may say so.

97 Remember Delilah?

After yesterday’s Greta Garbo movie at Trocadero, Madam found a billet-doux in his husband’s vest, smelling sweet Opoponax! She ordered her brougham ready, sank into the soft cushions and called out take her to The Beer, down the boulevard, Johnny boy! She walked resolute into the new hairdresser’s, she whispered a firm, if sad, parapanghelos! and cut her forty years since untouched plaited hair, dying and curling it after 1926 fashion. Next, somewhat embarrassed, she took the Maestro’s advice (imagine him as a hygiene instructor in Bâncoveanu Houses)… and plucked her moustaches. Nervy about the brand new fixtures of this lab- like place, she left a huge tip, commensurate with the expectation of the barbers turned overnight feminine hairdressers, seventy years later to be dubbed as stylists.

Cats gray by night

For richer for poorer, all people were equal inside the dark cinema halls, the same romances and westerns being on in the slums and down Elisabeta Avenue. As of now, the high society and the mob saw the world alike and absorbed the same discourse, attending the same American school. Come to think of it, in Bucharest, democracy did not start with a Magna Charta, liberal constitutions and socialist governance… but with cinema halls and Rudolf Valentino! how bizarre!

98 Fare thee well, my little bride

Two wedding styles parted Bucharest. The former stretched languid pre-WWI style into present day’s new veils and flower wreathes. The latter, yet little present, boomed frolicsome, at one with the interwars crazy years. Who were the fans of sweet romantic wedding minutia of yore? The high life… they had to! parting with good old time tradition would have meant scandal! The lieutenant married the colonel’s daughter, whose mother was heard thanking heavens for one more nubile married-off in the nuptial car heading for the North Station. Also, good family sensitive poor girls, married off with elderly gentlemen who owned a seat in the Parliament and real estate in Cioplani… all dreamy lovers, stirred by tantalizing pages in pink cover two- word title novels like Passion Castellan, Pleasure Night, Perdition Slave. Then there were the show-offy marriages of the new intelligentsia, doctor Popescu’s daughter and professor Ionescu’s son uniting in holy matrimony on waves of see-through old lace and twilight poetry. The women, especially, daydreamt, wistful, in muslins, long locks disheveled at midnight… tropical flowers showers, half-whispers, veils and the chiaroscuro covering for mystery, innuendo and solitude. Breaking with all of the above, the rebellious vanguard generation doffed feminine trimmings, bobbed girls’ hair hideous, a la garcon, making it all into a mere dancing: no flowers, no veils, no gurgling songs, no

99 virginal coronet, no sweet shy paillasse covered walls, no richly carved furniture, no tall and handsome bridegroom. All alike, guests in tails sitting on the floor, ladies going around clothed as if about to take a dip… can you hear sassy jazz tam-tam? see the Injuns hop? But do these newly wed, lost among their guests, actually get ready for their honeymoon? Should there be some flimsy camisole hid in a valise, for giddy first night… or is their first night, God forbid, history?

Little mouth and green her eyes

Nothing of the pell-mell lush soapy mystification, or the glittering blast of spangles and celluloid, of Miss America! The end of year collective album picture, rather, of a girls’ high, belles-letters… the kind you know it is all of you there, yet cannot put your finger on anyone in particular. This snapshot is taken at the ball closing a long and tiresome ceremonial, Miss Romania, held in the Bucharest of the crazy ‘20’s. Again, as I said, a graduation school festival, rather, of boarding-school nice girls. Hands decently set on their decently covered knees, uniform-like scarves, the Magister (Prime-Minister Alexandru Vaida-Voievod himself!) center front-stage, smack in the middle of the scholarly flock, supremely decent… how boring! Back- stage, however, jokey faces bespeak, in all likelihood, of students crashing the sanctuary gates. They’ll probably take a Charleston to the street, or a cotillion, decent enough both.

100 Early at dawn, back in the saddle, Miss Romanaţi, (or Miss Muscel, or even Miss Romania) went back to wherever she belonged. No follow-up… and Hollywood was like on a different timeline. Ramon Navaro was not going to be her partner in any film not shot together, no advertising contract expected her, no world tour… all she got was a fast train ticket, second-class. And what the Carpathians’ beauty queen was to get, back home, was atrocious envy, endless gossip, a picture album and souvenirs growing old at the rate she did, grow old. At best, a good marriage… based not so much on her winning a beauty contest as on circumstantial criteria. Was a moment’s triumph worth so much spite? The girlies in the picture seem to speak up a loud, unanimous, yes sir!

Play ball

Suppose you were a VIP: you simply had to attend wherever you got a formal note from, inviting you to: weekly banquets, meetings, lunches, conferences, dinners, balls, suppers, councils, cocktails, receptions… to be held at some palace, ministry, home, club, hotel, all of high repute. You knew it was going to be so tedious it will hurt… yet you went, for it would not do not to. They started up with long snorting discourses you needed like Vodă Caragea’s pest. Then, when just about to whisper a Hail Mary that they are done, you found yourself pushed onto a rock hard chair and kept there by some squealing viola or a primadonna of a tenor, if you get my drift. You felt a yawn coming, but, hey, the elite

101 might see! So you clutched your teeth hard and held your breath, best till the music was through… and then you felt so sickened to your stomach that you lost all interest in anything, supper included. But suppose you got safe to munching time: no big deal either, it just could not come out right! The guest on your left elbowed you blue, your speaking neighbor on the right did as much plus mumbled last year’s news into your ear, the Fransee chef’s dishes were beneath your hunger... But suppose good food had been on the table: how could you set your teeth hard into it, when etiquette asks that you merely nibble at it? so that you did, fantasizing about your own well assorted cellar. Le plan de table was most often than not a total fiasco: a Frenchy near a German, a banker near one bankrupt… you heard yourself speak, you listened with a deaf ear. And talks sprawled thick, like goats’ mange, for hours on end, mean babble and cheap smooth talk. The king may have chanced there, himself… now that was a sight! the waiters could not serve for the circus the people made, talking themselves senseless so his majesty might hear them out and meet their needs! It wore you down and it felt nauseating beyond endurance, but the doors were locked and the hosts had swallowed the key, or else their ball might have ended before the ball next door… so you stayed and lumped it. That’s why I say being invited places was tough luck. One thing was worse than that, and that was not being invited.

102 Still life

Here is a glimpse of interwars power structure in Romania: the king, the government, the army and the clergy. Plenty of uniforms, medals, galloons, kamelavkions, solemnity, discourses, stuff like that. Did they march after St.Dumitru’s relics, were the State men in council? army leaders and the clergy walked by their side, displaying Byzantine glamour heritage: gold thread embroidered canonicals, stoles, censing. The clergy found out the obvious: in God interwars Bucharest trusted. They knew all they had was a few years’ time peace at hand, so they wished to spend it in prayer. For the clergy, this was a godsend to put to good use: the surplices co-worked with the parishioners, climbing down from the pulpit to core strategic spots: the street and the flight of stairs.

Winter checked in last night

Let’s say you wondered has Bucharesteer winter come or not? Well, it’s like this: if the girls in the street had their muffs on, then it was time for winter to break loose… for, on drizzly, wet icy windy, weather, hands in gloves had a sweet smart fur shelter, bought at Dudu’s. You may think me naive and too easily led by the nose down the slippery road to the will-o’-the-wisps Bucharesteers love so: in truth I tell you that these diminutive live beings have a mind of their own, finding their way to paradise through the black loud inferno just unleashed.

103 So the miracle is this: no sooner did young ladies’ little hands get inside their fur nests, the wind slowed down, the drizzle appeased! How can you not falter, how are you to resist such dainty fallacy?

Shut-down sell out

Before recession, everything was in such spoil- rotten plenty that you almost felt guilty… like taking heaven’s hint of upcoming calamity, like at the heart of affluence slept paucity, like it was in the nature of the pinnacle to breed the downfall! But no sixth sense signaled out to people’s minds the catastrophe round the corner, as seize the day only pleaded for living happy the blessed privileged prosperity of all. Take the sausage market: after wintry St.Ignatus, waves of both familiar and never seen before sausages and salamis flowed in unstoppable, for all tastes and walks of life! You saw mounds of meek winter delicacies ready to come level with any and all expectations: of bigheaded go-getters; of supercilious princely progeny, addicted to perplexing tangs; of the most deprived and least educated, for what is theirs no one else wants anyway, alas! Briefly, shop boards moaned overloaded with goodies up to the keeper’s eyes. It wasn’t long since Transylvania became part of monarchic Romania and Bucharesteers still had tasty fatty surprises coming their way from beyond the mountains… like ten inches thick bacon hunks, unmistakably Transylvanian: salty, home smoked in the attic main chimney, a pale rosy streak in the middle, a

104 last sign of the life immolated at Christmas time. Or Szeckler Bazna porker wen, richly garlicky, boiled in red sauerkraut brine and dressed in ground chili. Or Chamois and Haţeg golden virsli; thrice smoked black pudding from Sibiu; overcooked liverwurst from Lăpuş Valley; thick sausage filled in Făgăraş buffalo guts – called pot pork pudding by its poorest fans; Swabish Tomnatec greasy smelly-smoked sausages; bear sausages, from Bârgaie, still smelling the beast… the biggest eater alive failed to cope! As for Walachian and Moldavian meaty stuff… bit different but as richly flavored: thinner Ialomiţa bacon and thick from Orhei, kept in brine till the rind got as soft as peach skin; Pleşcoi chili hot sausages filled in thin bull guts, or thick, from Hotin, made of mixed veal and venison like deer and wild boar; Oltenian garlicky piglet sausages, or hogget, chili hot, from Malu Spart. And delights as old as Caragea Vodă and Manuc Bey time, fared pretty well themselves: Coletina carriers brought in flat mutton salami from Basarabi, dried up on reeds bed, among sand stones, tasting like lean beef, actually mixed up with mule meat, bit of a secret. And the stout swarthy merchants in Constanţa brought to Obor Balkan stuff like barrel feta in brine; kefir from Cadrilater, thick and cheesy; tender pastramis, wet dressed in ground chili, which sold with wethers in halves, plus crisp dry mutton sausages, Turkish yet home made in Dobrudja, of freshly slaughtered large Macedonian lambs and Cavarna Bulgarian goats. Amazingly, all such fine merchandize sold cheap! For next to nothing came the gendarmes, short hard sausages of Corabia, endless rows of them covered

105 the four walls of the shop; they vanished in a matter of minutes, for it was what the slums most wanted: long chew, almost as good as eat, what a bluff! Still, in terms of demand, thick and juicy patricians beat all: not meant for family meals, but for public use, glazed with lots of chitchat and beer flowing free… the pub men bought them, en gros. Other fatty meaty stuff you could buy, especially in Bibescu market, were the Transylvanian Saxon salamis, half raw and seasoned with ground caraway seeds; kaiser, five meaty streaks in it and torpedo ball- salami, both made in Braşov area; also, meaty pudding, made in Moldavia. Was there anything for the dainty stomachs, too? Sure thing: smoked ham from Bihor, scarlet with hot chili powder made in Oradea; classy mould Sibiu salami; and Giarmata smoked gammon On top of everything, bones – democracy, shall we call it? – for the stingiest of buyers, one dime the helping: marrow bones, hock bones, ribs and such like. Care taken of the buyers’ pence made the sellers’ pounds, everybody happy… and then the crisis struck, mon cher, worse then the pest: banks locked up their purses, State Administrations ran bankrupt, people were left in the streets, standard interventionism printed paper money, big money for small use… and everything went to the dogs, large noble savings and pocket survival money alike. Helpless, people turned their eyes again – what were they to do? – to madmen and war… which did not take long to show up.

106 Slippery thin ice

In principle the Bucharesteers loathed winter… on account of a gut feeling making them dream of wolves and holler in their sleep. But they loved snow! especially the children and the well off, who would never guess what making it to spring means… so their winter was a long merry Christmas. As soon as the snow and the ice were ten inches thick, on earth and water, they rushed to Cişmigiu Gardens, or to Carol Park, for snowball fights. On cold sunny days, gentlemen themselves went out, to see what it was all about. And, as we all know, winter does not crash in the streets, but on the fields and woods! So Bucharesteers started going for long walks to wild places, like the grove and the swamps of Bordeiu, near Herăstrău Road… or closer, to Filipescu Park and Bouffet coppice, riskily cut by Kiseleff Alley. And, in the midst of the host of kids and their loud play, there chanced – like dropped from the moon – a real skater. Rare bird, he let himself gazed at long, then pulled two-three graceful stunts, copiously displaying his Swiss (or Austrian) smart trendy skating outfit… which, believe me, was two hands full: laced tall soft boots (Russian leather and vernacular) with neat hard soles, to hold the clasps safe; baggy trousers and Tyrolese high socks; double-knit Indian white shawl over an Angora warm pullover, low neck enough to let us see he wears a tie; a belt keeping things in place; and a pilot’s helmet. If you did not dress up like that you were no skater! Fashion is like a ticket – have, get in; have not, stay out till you do.

107 Last call

In 1928 the small factories, mills and shops in Bucharest were already doing pretty well for themselves, as against the European background and assessment grid. Enough foreign capital had flown in, joint ventures were started up, based outside and offshore, Romanian- American, Romanian-German, Romanian – God Only Knows… and trade was being done worldwide. The GNP seemed high enough for us to set up a home stock market, yet low enough for it not to be so sensitive to the outer world doings, as to fall on famed terrible Black Thursday crisis. Even if all eyes were glued to London and New York, we were about as (in)significant as we are now… which should have kept us, in an odd way and by our standards, self-governing. At the critical point in time 1930, Doamnei, Smârdan and Ion Ghica streets were far enough from Wall Street for our banks not to go into bankruptcy, yet close enough for many Romanians to lose their cash forever. And it happened as it does at war break point: easy come, easy gone. The losers took out, to the street, their little stuff left, to sell. The sharks’ anteroom filled up with debtors, as did the tax collectors’ pockets of baksheesh… when time is ripe for you to learn Turkish, you just do! Some took whatever they still owned to monasteries and put themselves in the hands of God (or so they thought). Enough knew how to make huge fortunes of others’ misfortunes. And there were hare- brains pushed over the edge, who jumped over border fences, to scatter the remains of their lives into the four

108 winds, stupidly frittering the little money saved from the fire and their youth to go with.

Winter Eden

Look at her! a sort of a girl and fire sricks. You can’t tell which of the two hurts more, feeling hopeless and helpless, the child or the mother. The place beyond the front window is called – what else? – Children’s Eden.

Snowstorm, do get warm

When snow was thick over town and no one thought of moving house anymore, the cart men and the coachers were still in business: the Town Hall hired them, for pay plus dry hay for the horse. As soon as the streets were out of sight under such snow mounds that it was no easy job telling where you were, hundreds of carts lined up and carried firewood to people’s houses and the snow in the streets to the outskirts of the town, where it belonged, on the road to Popeşti and close to the greens gardens, below the buttons factory. So, wild as the snowstorm may have roared in town, there were no snow mounds in sight… or else the mayor would have beed put to shame, over those elections and the next! Which better stumbling stone, than helplessness and neglect, of local authority, as clashing with emergency?

109 Fare thee well!

Here’s a sturdy fellow… well, how else could he dare the sickening poverty of the slum? He has it in written too, posted right above the counter: Be my friend but show me the money. He moves house, says the notice… giving up the easy money he’d make on account of it’s around Christmas, now there’s a brave man! So what is he going to take along, do you think? The money-case? Empty anyway, he’s sold nothing these three days. The rafter? Run down, derelict ready to fall apart, he’d have to pay someone to take it off his back – how did he keep afloat, in that ravine? Does he consider saving the merchandize? Stale salamis, dry stuff, mould. Bottles half empty, reeking oil. Dirt turned into crust, the drippings – hardened. All size jars and boxes, toppled with a layer of dust thickening since Genesis day one. Grimy trays and remains; half a loaf of bread, musty; fly shit freckled lollypops, carobs, sevruga salty eggs, pickled chili peppers, empty wooden bowls. Stomach-turning smelly floor planks, acrid wine, cheap brandy, smoke, stinky sausage, vinegar, pungent beer; slum stench, urban or rural. We can almost see the clay shanties around, dilapidated, ruined… this Bucharest seems to have skinned its knees crawling to the barrier… Behold… plenty of bottles, two shelves full. One fir-tree planks table, dressed in oilcloth… and three chairs, not two alike. This is what he’s worth. A Christian, too! He’s nailed a fir twig to the rafter and trimmed it… with a tinfoil wrapped bar of salami, for decorum.

110 December ring

Bucharest in wintertime – you should have seen that! Streets packed so tight with hollering carolers that frost itself had a problem getting in there. A terrible army of snipper-snappers took the boulevards, the parks, the trams… station halls and buildings rooms filled up with little jesters, pubs walls swelled with hoarse singing, croaking or whining. In villages, the imps restrained themselves to only come out on Christmas Eve and on New Year’s Eve, squeaking in twos and threes, from one house to the next. Whereas in town, brats rolled on, in waves! a flood and an invasion all at once, for they streamed in, from the slums – hundreds of little men or packs of little monsters and even lads – to bang on your gate, to carol below your window, to pat you on your back, at your door, in your shop, in your beer house, wherever you were… scab, not kids! They grabbed buns, nuts and apples, to fill their meager sacks… and fished for coppers, for which they were all over you, pulling at your coat, getting you by your trousers, while promising you the kingdom the power and the glory! The fret would start long before St.Nicholas, practically as soon as it snowed… and kept going up to Epiphany Day, put out slow, in whimpers, bit bitter and unhappy. The first thing the town children did – all, except maybe the crippled or the babies – when big enough to walk in the street, swarthy or just poor, they plaited thin leather threads into whips, pinched cow bells and learnt to sing best wishes songs. Ready-made sorcova’s sold well on the market, like onions and

111 cabbages, though they were nothing but corrugated paper trimmed sticks that tradition asked as accessory to wishing. The progeny of the Gypsy camp, or the offspring of the deprived, alike, knew no old carol. The head of the reunited gangs made up some loose lyrics on the spot, fit for all, some whimpering like Merciful Lord bit louder, ending more explicit with a line about money rolling in. Then the teams – age packs, street flocks, slum collection – split and took the boulevard and the rich mansions in the city. The notion of richness worked like magic. They jumped upon passers by in fur coats, they acted little angels helping the boyar lose a bit of weight and gain a bit of moral altitude, like zealous missionaries set out for forced salvation of lost souls, through oration and archaic prayer, oddly matching the tunes and the savage beats and hops. Suppose you took your lady to the Botanical Gardens… they jumped in from tree holes, apparently, from inside of huge cacti, meager, dark, hands held out, the heavens heard their voices, they made you believe, they could put in a good word for you, up there! You took the passage through, down Academy Street, to have a bite at Comedia, down Calea Victoriei, to have a cup of coffee… a midget clutched hard at your leg, why, he was one step on your stairway to the Almighty, he was your prop upwards! You stopped a coach, you had paper work to fix in the Town Hall… they jumped on the coach flaps, ready to break their necks rather than miss the chance to save your soul!

112 It was the day when all the Bucharest’s toddlers came out, shouting, roaring, yelling into God’s ear… a pictorial crusaders’ march, trading their power to save the world for small change.

Shiny star shooting far

Christmas used to mean street mass carnival! Home made or ready made, stars were the first to beget. People started making them around St.Nicholas day and were hectic at it. A star was sheer poetry: glittering stuff, crepe satin and crepe de Chine, tassels, little icons and a zillion poppy-seed like glass beads! A star cost you as much as your Christmas suit… and, well, not everybody could afford one, the lads down a whole street might’ve had to chip in to get one, for caroling under. And they were right to: for one thing, a gaudy star attracted gifts like a magnet… and for another, God loves better those who exert themselves. Then masques: they may have been ready made, too, or borrowed, or, yes, made ad-hoc, the best everyone knew how. And you should have seen the outcome! Tow yarn long beards badly glued, crowns as tall as Colţea Tower, enthroning nightmarish kings, gilded shoddy clothes and silvery fancy-court masks, muddle-headed characters and weirdoes, spun out of nightly chimeras. A confused motley crowd, if ever there was one, hard to imagine a lot worse assorted with our Lord’s birthday! On Christmas Eve, Bucharesteers set out, in large numbers, for Mitropoliei Hill. Some masqueraded, others just dressed up in Sunday clothes, one an archon (in a thick cloth coat, collar lined in Astrakhan fur and white

113 shawl) the other a dropout (bare chest and running pockets), all present to get their share of eternity, jostling for a better visibility over the feast bringing new hope. It all happened under the vigil eye of the street sergeants (the expert airs always tells them apart, besides their moustaches) whose job was to save the Archbishop from nudging people, as he announced the holy good news… and the people from trampling over each other in the process.

Black or white

The young ladies loaded themselves with frills and trimmings by the rate the gentlemen stripped those off… for the fashion prescribed austerity for men, there was a war knocking on their door. Yet women were still granted the playful joy of overdressing and heaping trinkets, knick-knacks and cheap finery. Careful with the units, the men dried up hurrying into somber uniforms, crying out loud for moderation. Women instead, oh, my! they made up and painted themselves in all styles at once, digging out cheap jewelry where least expected, or looked up for. Suppose you chose not to dress up: a sign of clear defy! You would’ve got yourself a bad name for not being fussy but rude and boorish! Indeed, crazy years!

Swap and scrap

Terrible crisis, mon cher! our Leu is a joke! Yesterday, 3 lei a kilo of potatoes, tomorrow 2 lei a quince! All you hear around is stagflation and sacrifice

114 curves! He who is not low is downright bankrupt; he who is not in the street is being released! All is topsy-turvy and you do not know which side is up! A man has a job in the morning, sweats himself numb for the little pay he gets… and, around noontime, he’s laid off. King of the jobless – enough to run wild! For a while he rambles around seeking work… he borrows money, he buys on credit, he begs… And when he can do none of the above, he takes to the river border whatever junk stuff he can lay hands on, or starve. The junk market has sprawled along Dâmboviţa River, from Elefterie right to Piaţa Mare, beyond Izvor Bridge, up to the old junk stuff shop, called Father Lazarus. There, in kalamandros… anything is worth something, except the close to nothing leu. An Armenian salami bar, at Dragomir Niculescu’s, is worth a double- velvet (moleskin they call it) smoking, at uncle Gherase’s. A Muscel homespun bed cover or a Făgăraş carpet, of best prime wool or long stapled, tzurcana, could be swapped for a full gas tank plus a sack of carobs, yet tender. You could swap a bottle of mastic for as much as a pair of slippers, made of twisted flock silk, painted shiny red in State Dye Works; and you could barter a keg of stinky plum brandy for two gray mullets and enough rind to go with, lifted from Civil Guard headquarters (thou shalt not drop what thou did lift!). Yuft boots are costly, for they last till two Sundays come together (think of brothers Surdu’s cardboard sole clouts – dead man soles they’d call them) so you do not get them for less than three pounds of fresh fish eggs, or a yew ledge new barrel of Brăila rock hard cheese, smut and hot with ground black pepper.

115 As for paintings… ardent Gypsy women with big tits, mostly, or glazed plaster cast bayadères… tough luck! art is in no demand over hard times. Haggling was neat: no deposits, no watering, no signed papers, gentlemen’s agreement like! Harech! bawled the mob, crudely mocking the solemn switchers, as passing from one heap of junk to the next. Have any idea what it took to get a petromax gas lamp (interwars high tech marvel, they lit them at Tănase Follies) knowing our junk market standards?

Brave new world

Top shops, you say? No front windows, not even real shops. True, they were in the city (who is not wearing a tall hat in Griviţei slum, or in Christmas Field?) yet not down the boulevard: side alleys lodged them or Curtea Veche shopping streets, you should have been a Bucharesteer to find them out. They traded good quality merchandize, from good name suppliers. Tall hats would have been surely the real thing if bought at Ţicu the Weaver’s, on Văcăreşti Street, or at Byer House, based in Sibiu. Was this one crisscross fabric? Was it pure atlas? Was the edge lining ribbon thin silk? Yes, yes, yes, to be sure, the fellow in the snapshot knows what he’s up against to: see how his vest matches his split bamboo cane, silk handkerchief and dark crème trousers? and his slanting stripes tie, a shade lighter than his blue vest? He’s the kind who pays what it takes! The counter boys… clean shaved, short cropped hair, white shirt and a tie… a pleasure shopping there, then be seen to the door with a curtsy and low bows…

116 But if you wanted a true top shop… you went to Fărcea’s... or jumped into a coach and went to Cadeca’s or Negrescu’s... or down the boulevard, at Elisabeta’s, Czechoslovakian’s, Papazian’s, Sabego’s! Now there were front windows! Whitewashers took one whole day’s rubbing to only clean one! Young ladies and students in Belle Arte prettified the shop fronts with veils, trinkets, corrugated paper flowers and cardboard dolls… we’re talking metropolitan shop windows, lit day and night, gaudy-gaudy and breathtaking. As for the insides… so chic you most fainted! Flowery armchairs, haughty ladies, vast mirrors, oriental drapes, French perfumes, jewelry cases, booths… you were entertained spoiled, for just shopping there! As soon as you’d rung the bell, the boy met you, a tray in his hands, a cup of fresh made coffee and a glass of champagne on it, the bottle at hand for you to see! Suppose you were elderly and they second-guessed about your old habits… well then, you got one-inch thick cream on top of your coffee and a sip of sweet Segarcea wine to go with. Or if you were a lady, you got a bit of wild cherry (or rose petals) jam and iced water. Such airs and frills! Now that you were hooked, they sent for the girls. What followed was sheer terror: Madame or Maître made their most prized merchandize parade in front of you, live: gorgeous malteh gowns, stud with small and large spangles, not to mention the show-offy flounces, folded straight or soleil; Bukowina thin leather gloves and Prague mittens, camel hair cloth coats, Cordoba leather boots, long straight skirts, milino charleston, combed wool tailor-made costumes… Parisian mascara in turtle

117 shell boxes, Guban patent-leather shoes, made in Timişoara, Bruges laces, ivory cigarette cases... And if you were truly addicted to shopping, they ransacked their storerooms, elbow deep in mothballs, to come up with Muscovite and Quebecois chinchilla and polar fox fur coats, the finest Persian and Armenian carpets (a most knowledgeable Turkish merchant, Curgioglu, brought them)… even rare gems and special diamonds, from Amsterdam, or gold diamond rings. They sensed your soft spot half a mile away… so there they pressed their point, had you where they wanted and you pretty thanked them for it! Were you miserly and bitter? No problem, they softened and sweetened you, with Ada-Kaleh cigarettes and, while you were sipping your coffee, they paraded their models under your nose. Did they see you vain and conceited? Then they never stopped telling you how handsome you were and what a precious gift to this ugly world of ours! And if they felt you, an old stick but still yearning, fishing for chicks… you were lost, for they had the right wench handy and a pro at it! she had you at a clap and made you pay through your nose, such goodies never come for free! You had no choice but buy and buy, they’d been so nice to you! how could you, after such zealous endeavor, cut it to the door, like nothing was up to your taste? No breech in the perfect act they put on, you were trapped, your money to go with. The war was over, so here came the damage bill: My bank (you cursed), God forbid! You left broke! Some well-off backwoods old boy would come to town to take a mistress – like the farm girls back home

118 no longer made him happy! So there they were, playing the buy-out game, he foamy, rolling over on the Persian carpet, eyes glued to the bill, still unable to bring himself to believe it true!

Old Ikons

Why don’t we – tears in our eyes – climb and line up onto this throne dressed in hand woven carpets?

Fluffy snowflakes whirl outside, hot inside the house the fire. By our mother we abide, a bit wiser, a bit shyer…

…remember? But could you forget, having such a snapshot to remind you? Nice try: the grays in the image, orphan kids’ clothes, hair bobbed, against the serene beauty of the old mother amidst her embroideries and antiquated napkins. Here is day one of all such shows on their march to the TV productions… blame it all on the photographer!

Dilemma

Yes, we do have one all of our own: monastery press or rotary printing press? Not much to say, except that there have been conjunctions and disjunctions. They co-lived apart, in feigned ignorance of one another, not long since and up to now. So we set our clocks and pitched our steps whichever however, turning into – and praying to – whatever. Is it right? Is it wrong? Will

119 anyone dare find out, ever… and tell us (how much) more and how come?

Rag Fair

Recession was still on… but, for a change – say something bad and it happens – it brought about war, both the Russians an the Germans were breathing hard behind our gates. After 1939, raving and flurried world had gone mad: out of the blue, everybody sold out, everybody else cleared the market! Junk stuff unlimited, prices cut as low as it gets, slack demand, rich yet mean offer. Outgrowing itself, the Rag Fair had to leave the water border and move on to Piaţa Mare waste grounds, sprawling sideways shamelessly. Such deals you never saw: the hawker brought there his whole household, tipped whomever took whatever and the little money he got he gave for a counter… whereat he could proudly start really waiting for the real business to start! This fellow only had a purse with coppers two… and got that fellow’s whole lot. Anything and everything was good enough to pass from hand to hand, the hell of need and the heaven of bargain hunters! Besides the heaps of trifles, costly things were swapped for close-to- nothings costly at their time of glory: long furred jackets, collar fox skins, Sevres and Hanovra china coffee sets, muslin scarves and kerchiefs, German silver chandeliers and candle holders, English cloth trousers and Angora fabric, dusty old time rifles of haughty bankrupt boyars, brand new McPherlans from Liverpool, and Astrakhan

120 furred long coats, as worn by Russian women down the Volga River valley. The young men sold their dibs, the old men sold their slippers. Ruined teachers and elderly students brought out their old books, but who needed books when the specter of famine, and such like, haunted the place? Mounds of stuff, matching fleecing and bleeding: a purseful of money, your silk kerchief or your hat straight off your head, the dress you were wearing – a priceless Kashmir dyed a heavenly blue… for three farthings, for a favor, just this once! Handkerchief, monocle, the iron teeth off your mouth, the soles off your shoes… and there you were, stripped and baffled in the mean wind of fate and of the worldwide decay. All was a con game, you simply couldn’t win. Suppose you cropped a little dough: as soon as you were out of the market the rascals caught you in the middle and fished the money out of your chest pocket and the wedding ring off your finger! Such incredible times! Well, if the poor hoaxed still had a little something saved, he rushed it to his cellar or larder: only long lasting foods, for the hard times a-coming: fry in brine and smoked dry, Transylvanian chick peas, sacks of flour and French barley, tanks of pumpkin seed oil, of lard and of dry plum jam, smoked ham, all sorts of. Empty dowry casks now lodged tall gray peas jars (coffee might run short, you know) and sweets: Szeckler tarts, raisins, Turkish locum, Mangalia khalva and Carmen Sylva… need I tell you how much Stella cake soap was sold for? The bargain fisher pushed doors open into the highlife, to sell for a profit his easy come goodies, but…

121 the blueblood are not so easily fooled! they knew a thing or two, or didn’t? Too much, churl! So see him cut his prices and take what was offered, anyway five times what he’d paid in the first place… and jart! He is off, back to the fair, like chicken filchers who only know one round route, coop to trough and back. And then there were the house-hunters, who ran a terrible foul play, going on about this place. They’d pace up and down the fair to detect owners likely to be in a tight spot… and when they’d spot them, they’d smooth talk them into signing giving-up papers! Soldiers guarded the place with rifles… for no avail, as these bastards were doing nothing illegal – no stealing, no threatening, no faking or rigging. Leave it to me, I’ll sell it three times your price, the conman swore. You sign it out to me, I’ll take good care of you, then bury you, buy you three services, he’d push his luck. And, would you believe, this bury stuff hit them where they hurt. They gave in and sold themselves out to these scoundrels; who, once given the titles of property, didn’t give a fig on agreements, but put the poor naïve to the street, ripping, if possible, even their burial places off them. And when the poor man saw himself thrown to the streets, with no burial ground patiently waiting for him… he lost his mind. Barred coaches took him to Mărcuţa and oftentimes he put himself out of his misery, taking his life… How are we to judge such an epoch?

Newly baptized In Bucharest, the rite of fishing the cross out of the icy Danube tide was taken to the slums, where well-

122 off true believers enacted it. See them? No silly lads in drawers, but family men, bread winners and society’s mainstays. So… on Epiphany Day they came in front of God, graciously clad in flax embroidered long shirts. They may have never come out of the water, but they would have saved the cross!

Checking out

And all was done at the frosty time of the Epiphany. The Christmas tree, stripped and no use, was kicked in the street, you wandered, now and again, what the heck they cut it for at all, in the first place. Each shopkeeper took good care that the priest called on him and blessed his house and his business. Carried round in a wooden pail or a bucket, kirie eleison, the altar water washed unquestionably the carnival sins and profligacy. And everybody could sigh a deep sigh – they’d left behind all feasting folly and now all things were falling in place, as due.

The snows of yore

God had a hard job making Bucharesteers trust Him with seasons being four and made for people to live through, round the wind-rose! Well, fuddy-duddy as they are, avid and childlike, too, the joy of life is still all theirs, summer and winter, midnight to sunrise, Romanian for north and east. They are steep and wild… when winter’s here spring can be far behind and fall is the only face of never-ending heaven, they think.

123 Whereas about Michaelmas, steering clear from tart thick-wine jugs and smoked pastramis, they’re adamant that the light of late Indian Summer is everlasting! Wrong side out and up side down people, they horror-struck expect murky heinous frosty winter… yet delight like no other in the fluffy snowflakes storming their light near and far over the city. All February long – when blizzards bite worst – they swear like troopers damn if I ever again take shade from sunshine! But here’s summertime and they’re down with burning heat, rolling over in wine cellars or under shady walnut trees, feeling sorry for themselves over a mug of steamy cold beer or wine and soda. Unable to seize the day, they tick off the heavens for things not being what they should… as, in their minds, today is less, worse and doggone, if judged against yesterday when their troubles were so far away. So… what they actually do… they scrape up, for themselves, a perfect spring, to come no later than tomorrow… and they live on miserably merry, niggardly enjoying life and cropping all they say and do into a hymn of praise – to fizzy squeaky human nature… and to almighty Providence.

124