Ismail And Turnavitu

excerpt Ismail is made up of eyes, whiskers and an evening gown and nowadays he is in very short supply in the market.Formerly, he used to grow in the Botanical Garden too, and later on, thanks to the progress of modern science, one has managed to produce one chemically, through synthèse.Ismail never walks alone. Yet one may find him at about half past five a.m., wandering in zigzag along Arionoaia Street, accompanied by a badger, to which he is closely bound with a ship's cable and which during the night he eats, raw and alive, having first pulled off its ears and squeezed a little lemon on it… Other badgers are cultivated by Ismail in a nursery situated at the bottom of a pit in the Dobrudja, where he supports them until they reach the age of 16 and become more shapely, when exonerated from any personal responsibility, he deflowers them in turn and without the least compunction. For the most part of the year, Ismail's residence is unknown. It is believed that he lies preserved in a jar located in the attic of his beloved father, a nice old man whose nose is thinned in a pressing machine and surrounded by a small hedge. The story goes it is out of exaggerate parental care that the old man keeps Ismail succeeds in escaping the place three months every year, in winter time, when his greatest pleasure is to dress in a gala evening gown, made of a counterpane with large brick-colored flowers, and then to climb up the beams of scaffoldings on the day when mortar-laying is celebrated, for the sole purpose of being offered by the proprietor as a reward for the workers and distributed among them. It is in this way he hopes to contribute substantially to the solution of the working-class issue… Ismail also grants audiences, but only on top of the hill close to his badger nursery. Hundreds of applicants for jobs, relief and firewood are first introduced under a gigantic abat-jour where each of them is compelled to hatch a set of four eggs. Then they are put up on a dust cart of the mayoralty and pulled at breathtaking speed up to Ismail, by a friend of his – also employed by him as salami – called Turnavitu, a strange character who during the ascent indulges in his nauseating habit of asking applicants to promise him billets-doux, or else threatens to upturn the carts.For quite a long time Turnavitu was no more than a mere electric fan in various dingy & Greek coffee houses in the Covaci and Gabroveni streets in Bucharest. Being no longer able to put up with the stench that he was forced to aspire there, for a while Turnavitu mixed in politics and thus managed to be appointed a government electric fan, at the scullery of the "Radu Vodă" fire brigade.It was during a dancing party that he had met Ismail. Having heard of the miserable state to which Turnavitu had been driven by such rapid rotations, charitable Ismail took him under his protection. He promised Turnavitu to serve him half a leu in cash and a portion of food a day, in exchange for the man's pledge to serve Ismail as a chamberlain for the latter's badgers; he also accepted the obligation to meet him half way in Arionoaia street every morning and pretending not to notice him, to tread on the badger's tail, only in order to apologize for his absentmindness and to flatter Ismail on his dress with a shaving brush dipped in rape-seed oil, wishing him prosperity and happiness. It is also in order to please his good friend and protector that once a year Turnavitu assumes the shape of a canister and, if he is filled with kerosene up to the brim, he takes a long voyage, usually to Majorce and Minorca: most of these trips are made up of the out voyage, the hanging of a lizard from the door handle of the harbormaster's office, and then the return voyage…During one of these trips, Turnavitu caught a horrible coryza which on his return contaminated all badgers so badly that, because of their frequent sneezing, Ismail could no longer enjoy their services freely at all times. So he immediately dismissed Turnavitu.Being extremely sensitive, Turnavitu could not put up with such humiliation so he immediately carried out the tragic plan for suicide, having first taken the precaution of pulling out all his canines…Before dying, he took an awful revenge on Ismail for, having somebody steal all the latter's dresses, he set them all ablaze on a vacant plot ground with a kerosene inside him. Seeing himself reduced to the miserable condition of being made up merely of eyes and whiskers, Ismail hardly had enough strength to crawl up to the edge of his badger nursery: it is there that he fell into decrepitude and such is the state in which he has remained to this day…


by Urmuz (Dem. Dumitrescu-Buzău) (1883-1923)