by Mihail Drumeş (1901-1982)
excerpt A NIGHT OF WAKING After the dinner party we go out into the hospital courtyard. Dusk is descending. A strong smell of carbolic acid tickles our nostrils. The boys are gathering round me. I tell them: "Look. Let's all go to the cemetery." "What should we do there at this hour?" they wonder. "We're going to have a wake till tomorrow morning at Shoimaru's grave. We can't leave him alone, you see, on the first night. We have to keep him company. For the dead, the first night in the cemetery is something terrible, frightening. After that they get used to it gradually. Shoimaru himself told me that. So are we understood? Off we go now!" I order them in a Napoleonic fashion. We creep like shadows through the deserted narrow lanes of the village, all the way to the cemetery. None of us is comfortable with the idea of spending a night in the company of the dead, but we've got no choice. An order is an order. Macaque is trying to crack a joke. "I think my gall bladder's going to burst inside of me at midnight." "But what goes on at midnight?" Asclepius asks, full of curiosity. "What, you don't know? The ghosts come out and start doing the priests' dance on the graves." "Shut your gobs!" Tarzan mumbles, upset. "Stop talking nonsense." "Just let any ghosts come out of their holes, and I'll show them." "What are you going to do to them, Bass?" "I'll skin them alive." "Just drop it, your Excellency," Gypsy laughs in his face. "Or your gall bladder might burst too." We sit around Shoimaru's grave, Macaque and Bedbug light matches at the crosses so as to read the names of the dead. All of a sudden we can hear peals of laughter. "What are you giggling about there? Will you stop it now?" Tarzan shouts. "Your Excellencies, just come over and see who's resting here." Gypsy and Bass go. More peals of laughter break out. Then they all get closer. "What are you all laughing about, you lepers?" Tarzan snaps at them. "According to this, here lies the regretted Iancu Droppings," says Macaque and starts cackling again. Great joker, this one: he's dead and he can still make people laugh. "Macaque, you and the others, stop this nonsense," I scold them harshly. "We should be serious in this place. For God's sake, can you not behave?" "What are we going to do till dawn? We don't even have litter to sift." "Here's what we'll do: we'll all tell stories about Shoimaru: anecdotes, incidents, conversations, anything we might remember. I want to resurrect him like that, to feel him alive among us." "We could always try," some of them mumble skeptically. I start telling them about how I met him on the corridors of our high-school, on the very first day of classes, how we happened to sit next to each other at the consecration mass, how we became friends and all the discussions about the world and existence we used to have on the bench in the Orphanage garden. Most anecdotes come from Asclepius because he's some kind of distant relative. This is how I find out something new, namely that Shoimaru was 17, and not 16 as I thought. He'd missed a year because he'd been ill. Sometimes the conversation slips and we find ourselves in Grigorida-land, walking down the streets of the capital, which has to necessarily look like Batavia, out-pass it even. I decide on the spot that we have to give our capital Shoimaru's name. The RATErs agree enthusiastically. "Shoimaru, that was a pretty dumb move, my friend!" Bass cries frustrated. "You'll never get to see the city bearing your name." I admonish Bass for his irreverent exclamation and I add: "De mortuis nihil nisi bene." Macaque is quick to correct me – or so he thinks: "That's not what you say, it's De mortuis nihil sine deo!" The boys start chuckling again. "Ministers," I shout angrily, "if any one of you makes another stupid or not-so-stupid joke and fails to be appropriately reverential, I will immediately exclude them from the government and even from RATE. I hope I've made myself clear." For a few minutes nobody dares utter a syllable. Then we start chatting again, talking relentlessly about the expedition. It's fair to say that one thousand and one nights would still not be enough for this topic, let alone one. Every now and then we check the time, though the crowing of roosters keeps us equally well informed about the passage of the hours. It's strange that from 1 to 4 a.m. none of us felt the need to look at our watches, that's how caught up we were in the discussion. "See, no ghost's come out!" Asclepius cries with satisfaction. "Don't worry, there's still time," Gypsy puts him right. Macaque starts telling an anecdote that – he claims – took place in his village twenty years ago, when he was a boy. Apparently one farmer bet another a demijohn of wine that he wouldn't have enough balls to go into the cemetery at midnight and thrust his knife into a grave. The fellow does indeed go, wading through the snowdrifts, until he makes it to the graveyard and there he thrusts his blade into the earth. He wants to leave but he realizes something's grabbed at the lower part of his long fur coat. Imagining it's the deceased man's grip, he cries out in terror and drops dead. The following day, people find him lying lifeless by the side of the grave, his own knife pinning down the hem of his fur coat. We feel cold shivers running down our spines. "Stop telling scary stories, our hair's standing up on end!" Asclepius says. We go back to talking about the expedition. But it's getting colder and we all start shivering. Some of us are hopping about and pounding the ground to get warm. All of a sudden, Bass sneezes and all the RATErs startle, frightened. When they realize that the cause of the scare was only a ridiculous sneeze they start laughing again, but straight away pretend to be coughing, so as not to upset me again. A streak of pale light, coming from below the earth, comes to life in the sky and grows quickly, turns white as milk, till it floods the east. Then it turns red, as if the lap of the sky had caught fire and was burning away in big flames. The silver nails that keep the huge cloak of darkness pinned to the firmament are melted by the heat, the darkness fades and the dawn spills its armies of light which take over the whole world without any rattle of swords, in the quietest of mysteries. "Who's there, good Christians?" a thick voice can be heard in the early morning. Some of us startle, frightened. We turn our heads. A colossus in black emerges from among the bare trees and approaches slowly. He must be the priest who's risen with the dawn. The priest's house is near the church and the cemetery stretches over a narrow strip in the church's backyard. "Who are you and why are you not responding?" the priest cries out again. "We're good people, father, Orthodox Christians," Macaque answers. The priest comes closer, like a patriarchal apparition of olden days. "You seem to be school boys. What are you doing here, at the crack of dawn?" "We haven't just come, we've been here since last night," I enlighten him. "Since last night? Are you mad? Or have you nowhere to rest your bones?" "No, father, we just thought it would be nice to keep Shoimaru, our classmate, company tonight." "Keep him company?" the priest wondered. "God in heavens, I've never heard such nonsense! I wouldn't have thought of something like that. You should know the dead aren't lonely here, they're together, they know each other and communicate without words. But it is still a Christian deed that you did with your wake." We say good-bye to Shoimaru and then we set off. It's a long way back into town. The brisk walk warms us up and in an hour we're at the town's limit. A whiff of warm bread tickles our nostrils. We rush into the bakery and then carry on, each with a freshly baked loaf, out of which we bite ravenously. When we meet later in class, and get caught back up in the daily grind, last night's adventure turns into something strange and unbelievable.
by Mihail Drumeş (1901-1982)
by Mihail Drumeş (1901-1982)