The prefect was practically glowing with joy at how vividly he had been able to summon the character of the man he claimed to know so well. “Of course, it was his pride that drove him to that act of insanity, the pride that had always been his most prominent trait — just like his nose. But it was a clown’s nose, you understand, a bluff, a joke for its own sake. By the same token, his pride was not that of a gentleman; it was the vanity of a great bluffer and prankster … the pride of a clown. Once more, and for the last time: he was never anything else but the wild man of the woods who climbed down from the mountains to live among people: a half-child with a fairy-tale imagination, a primitive peasant with a knack for hatching devilishly cunning plots and ruses, and intricate schemes that took a long time to devise and a long time to develop. He was a man full of superstitions, given to drastic images, unbridled emotions, plagued by twisted passions, a soul as coarse and colorful as a wood-block print from a calendar, full of uncouth humor and wily schemes. Ah, I always loved him, this prankster of my homeland, this great and fundamentally humble swindler. Yes, humble. Because what we see as pride was actually his humbleness before the world that he wanted to conquer. And his fear came from this exposed humility. Săndrel Paşcanu’s intended scam with the jewels was a childishly primitive attempt at saving himself from ridicule. It was his fear of being unmasked. He feared the spirit of Czernopoclass="underline" the lurking vigilance so eager to reduce every claim to greatness to its true measure — to the satisfaction of all who are lowly — all in the service of one great unembellished reality. I know of no more potent form of blackmail than this spirit of watchfulness. It extorts tribute from everyone, and especially from those who have managed to deceive it for a while by giving it the run-around. It is a vicious profiteer, and whoever attempts to buy its respect winds up squandering all he possesses and sinking into debts no fortune can pay off. Whoever makes a pact with this spirit is bound to go under, just like Săndrel Paşcanu. Didn’t it come to fetch old Paşcanu exactly like the devil comes to fetch a soul? He died on a great slide into the hell of ridicule, and his death was ghastly and grotesque — and thus only then did he finally achieve symbolic status … Ah …” said Herr Tarangolian, “I see that you don’t understand me …” He waved his heavily ringed hand in a gesture that was almost dismissive, and then draped his hands over the back of the chair, dandy-like, so that his pretty fingers with their clawlike nails dangled in the air.
“We are trying with all our might to understand meaning of what you say,” said Uncle Sergei. “But as you know: tout comprendre, c’est tout mépriser …”
Herr Tarangolian stared at him for a while with inscrutably melancholic eyes. “I think I understand what you mean,” he said. “But is there any other way to understand something except by interpreting it through our own person, or in other words, by uncovering in it the secret we are not willing to reveal about ourselves? Be that as it may, this misunderstanding, if you care to call it that, still gives us information about ourselves. And what else is there, I ask you, that we truly want to understand? What I meant to say was quite simple. I found myself moved by Paşcanu’s tragedy, by his figure’s tragic stature. Because in essence he was anything but the conscienceless rogue, the predator that people make him out to be. Essentially he was soft and gullible and compliant, so compliant that he was all too willing to become what the world he inhabited expected of a man. He was not the vulture that his nose suggested. Quite the contrary: he was a dove — one of the wild and shy doves that live in our forests and that occasionally fly past the city of Czernopol. One could have tamed him and placed him in a garden as a kind of ornament.”
At the time, we were enrolled in Madame Fiokla Aritonovich’s Institute, which Uncle Sergei had recommended to our parents as an excellent educational institution. In this matter, our easygoing and charming relative found an unwavering advocate in Herr Tarangolian, much to everyone’s surprise.
Madame Aritonovich was a Russian whom Uncle Sergei knew from St. Petersburg, where she had been married to a fabulously wealthy Armenian from Tbilisi and had presided over a large household.
“If I tell you,” Uncle Sergei declared, turning to our father, who as a result of this description later had cause to say of course it was all to be foreseen—“if I tell you, a salon. Not only société but artists as well. Writers, intellectuals, theater, ballet, the choice is yours. She has been at university herself, Fiokla Ignatieva, she is very educated person, she knows life, is talented, une artiste, she has for instance a certain faible for my voice, wanted me to train for the opera, à tout prix. She danced, as well, naturally not on the public stage, only in private circles, but for experts and connoisseurs — just ask Krupenski, ask Dolgoruki, ask any of my countrymen here, she had great talent. Legat knew her and was great fan; Cecchetti was an intimate friend: he said it was tragedy that he could not get her for the Maryinsky. She spent thousands on her collections, poets — whatever you wish. Et une belle femme! Her neck — I can see like today — her neck was most elegant neck in all Petersburg. Un cou de cygne. Nefertiti is nothing compared to her, nothing at all. A neck that makes you wish you were an executioner—vous comprenez?”
Herr Tarangolian completed this sketch by saying: “Fiokla Aritonovich is undoubtedly a personality. I have been her friend for years. And”—he said in English—“she is a lady. You will not regret your decision.”
Because after the debacle with Herr Alexianu, the question of our further education had become critical. When they implored Miss Rappaport to come back she declined, saying that unfortunately she was about to accompany three charming children of an officer of the British Colonial Army to India. Apart from a postcard with a picture of the Taj Mahal, which we knew well enough anyway from the little forest at Horecea, we never heard another word from her, and because Uncle Sergei assured us that she could not possibly have been devoured by a “tyiger” because tigers despise Jewish flesh, and also even the fiercest beast would be afraid of her, we had to assume that she was grateful to have half the planet between us, and were probably correct.