Ismaïl is made up of eyes, sideburns, and a dress, and can be found with the greatest difficulty these days. Time was when Ismaïl grew in botanical gardens as well, but then, more recently and thanks to the advances of modern science, one has been synthesized chemically. Ismaïl never walks all by himself. He may be seen about 5:30 early in the morning, walking in a zig-zag line on Arioanoaia street, in the company of a badger to which he is leashed by a streamer cable and which he eats raw after he was ripped its ears off and squeezed some lemon on… Ismaïl raises badgers in a seed-bed in the bottom of a hole in Dobrodgea until they are 16 years old and have grown fuller; then, shielded from every kind of penal responsibility, he sets upon dishonoring them, one after another, without the smallest qualm of conscience. For the greatest part of every year no one knows where Ismaïl lives. It is believed that he spends his time preserved inside a jar in the attic of his dear father's house, his father being a nice old man, his nose pulled through a press and surrounded by a fence made of twigs. He keeps Ismaïl thus sequestered, it is said, so he will not be stung by bees or be reached by the corruption of our electoral mores. Still Ismaïl manages to get away during the three winter months of every year when it is his greatest pleasure to don a gala dress made of quilted bedding with large brick-red flowers, climb on the beams of various duplexes on national Putty Day with the sole purpose of being offered by the owners to the workers to share and thus, hopefully, contribute to a significant extent to a solution of the labor issue… Ismaïl gives audiences too but only on top of the hill near the badger seed bed. Hundreds of job applicants, grants-in-aid, and firewood are first stuck under an enormous lampshade where they have to hatch four eggs each. They are then loaded into town-hall garbage carts and carried with breathtaking speed up to Ismaïl by a certain friend of his who also helps him to a salami called Turnavitu, a strange character who at the time of the ascent has the bad habit of asking the job applicants to promise they'll send him love letters, upon threat of overturning them. Turnavitu for a long time was but a simple air fan in the various dirty Greek coffee houses on Covaci and Gabroveni streets. Unable to stand the odor he was forced to breathe in those places, Turnavitu, went into politics for a long stretch of time and succeeded in being named a fan of the FederalState at the Radu Vodă fire department kitchens. He met Ismaïl at an evening dancing party. Laying out before him the terrible state he was in on account of his frequent gyrations, soft-hearted Ismaïl took him under his wing. Turnavitu was promised to begin getting 50 cents daily plus a per diem, his only obligation being to serve as Ismaïl's chamberlain at the badgers' place; likewise to appear before him every morning on Arionoaia street and to step on the badger's tail only to make profuse apologies for his carelessness, compliment Ismaïl on his dress by swabbing rape oil on him with a pompom, and wish him success and happiness… That his friend might like him better still, Turnavitu would take, once a year, the form of a jerry-can; if he was filled with gas to the top he would take a long trip customarily to Majorca and Minorca; most of these trips consisting of a going, the hanging of a lizard on the Port Captain's doorknob, and the return home…On the way back from one of these trips Turnavitu contracted such an unsufferable case of the common cold which he passed on to the badgers that, because of their endless sneezing, Ismaïl couldn't have them at his beck and call any more. Turnavitu was instantly fired from the job. A being uncommonly sensitive and incapable of tolerating this kind of humiliation, Turnavitu began setting his macabre suicide plan in motion, but not before seeing tot the extraction of the four canines in his mouth. Before passing on, he took his terrible revenge on Ismaïl by having all of his dresses stolen, pouring gas over them out of himself, and setting fire to them in a vacant lot. Reduced to the depressed state of being just eyes and sideburn, Ismaïl could just scarcely creep to the edge of the seed-bed with the badgers where he went into decrepitude and has remained so to this very day… English version by Stavros DELIGIORGIS The versions signed by Stavros DELIGIORGIS taken from Urmuz, Pagini Bizare. Weird Pages,Ed. Cartea Românească, 1985
by Urmuz (Dem. Dumitrescu-Buzău) (1883-1923)
