understood that Monsieur and Madame Marchais, having come to Roumania to buy folk art, had, eventually, to go and buy it. Still, he did not look forward to the excursion.
The driver told them his name was Octavian. A candidate, Serebin thought, for the oiliest man in Bucharest, which was no small distinction. His mustache was oiled to sharply pointed ends, oily curls sprang loose from his hair. Octavian welcomed them to his humble car-an old but highly polished Citroen with a plume of rich, blue smoke throbbing from its tailpipe, rubbed his hands like a concert pianist, grasped the wheel firmly and, after a moment of meditation, began to drive.
The road to Brasov took them through Ploesti, as it happened, where army officers manned checkpoints and demanded a special pass, required to enter the city, which they did not have. Octavian went off for a private chat with the commanding officer, then returned to the car and told Serebin what it cost. Could it be that much? Marie- Galante shrugged. Roumanian army officers were paid a daily wage of thirty lei, about six cents in American money, so bribery was a way of life. It had always been a poor country, too often conquered, too often plundered. The Russian General Kutuzov, preparing to invade Roumania in 1810, said of the Roumanians that he “would leave them only their eyes to weep with.”
Driving through Ploesti they could, now and again, get a view of the oil fields in the distant haze: the tops of the towers, and the natural gas flares, seen as wobbling air against a pale sky. A mile further on they reached the final checkpoint, at the northern edge of the city, with the usual crowd of Roumanian soldiers supplemented by two German SS officers. The Germans were curious, took the passports and examined them at length, made notes in a ledger, asked what brought them this way, and why no pass. Better not to have it, Serebin realized. Better to be hapless art dealers, confused and uncertain when it came to official papers and difficult things like that. The taller of the SS men was affable enough, until he asked Serebin for his wife’s maiden name. Serebin laughed nervously, then gave the name that Marie-Galante had insisted he memorize. “So,” she said as they drove away, “now you see.”
The road narrowed after Ploesti and wound through woods and farmland, the Carpathians looming high in the distance. Serebin’s spirits rose, it always surprised him how much he needed fields and trees. A city dweller, he thought himself, craving places where they kept cafes and conversations and books and love affairs. But he did not take sufficient account of his Odessan heart, eternally warm for a city that had, with its dirt streets and wild gardens and leaning shacks overgrown with vines, its own heart in the countryside. Marie-Galante felt his mood change, and took his hand in both of hers. At which moment Octavian met Serebin’s eyes in the rearview mirror and gave him an immensely oily and conspiratorial smile. Women, always women, only women.
Brasov was a small city, still, at its center, more or less in the thirteenth century. “See there,” Octavian said. “The Black Church. Very famous.” It was black, an ashy black, like charcoal. “Toasted by the Austrians in 1689,” he explained, his French failing him for a moment.
In a narrow lane behind the church they found a row of antique shops, the owners, not expecting much business in January and civil war, called down to do business by Octavian shouting in the street. Serebin and Marie-Galante bought a large wooden trunk plastered with the labels of long-vanished steamships, then looked for folk art to pack inside, Octavian sometimes signaling to them with agonized glances when the price was too high.
Serebin bought toys. A wooden ball bound to a stick with a cord-though how a child would contrive to play with such a thing was completely beyond him, and a variety of spinning tops. Also wood carvings: a hut, a sheep, a few saints, and several hounds, some lying with crossed paws, others bounding after prey. Marie-Galante added embroidered vests, wooden and ceramic bowls, and a set of woodworker’s tools that could have been centuries old, then bought a Persian lamb hat for herself. She tried it on, setting it at various angles, as Octavian and the shopkeeper and Serebin looked on, and asked them did it look better like this? Or this?
Serebin had called the number earlier, with no success, and drawn a line through the entry: Gheorghe Musa- senior civil servant. On the right-hand side of the page, no indication of payment. Now, the morning after they returned from Brasov, he tried one last time. Dialed, then stared out the window and waited as the double ring, a dry whispery vibrato, repeated itself again and again. It would, he knew, never be answered.
But it was.
“Yes? Who’s calling, please.” It was the voice of an old man. Perhaps, Serebin thought, an old man whose phone had not rung for a long time.
“I hope I’m not intruding,” Serebin said.
“No, sir, you are not.”
“My name is Marchais, I happen to be in Bucharest, and I’m calling at the suggestion of a friend in Paris.”
“Marchais.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
In the silence on the telephone Serebin could hear the silence of the old man’s apartment. He knows, Serebin thought. Knows perfectly well what kind of telephone call this is, and he’s thinking it over. At last, a voice. “How may I help you?”
“Would it be convenient for us to speak in person?”
Another pause. “All right. Would you want to come here?”
Serebin said he did, and Musa gave him a tram number, a stop, and an address.
The apartment occupied an entire floor, up six steep flights of stairs. Inside it was dark, and so quiet that Serebin was conscious of the sound of his footsteps. It immediately occurred to him, though he could not have said how he knew, that no woman had ever lived there. Gheorghe Musa was a small man, frail, with a few wisps of white hair and a pleasant smile. “You are a rare visitor,” he said. For the visit, or perhaps it was his usual habit, he had dressed formally; a heavy, wool suit, of a style popular in the 1920s, a white shirt with a high collar, a gray tie.
Musa walked slowly to a room lined with bookcases that reached the ceiling. When he turned on a lamp, Serebin could see, by his chair, well-used editions of Balzac and Proust, a Latin dictionary, a set of German encyclopedias.
“And, so, what brings you to Bucharest?”
Serebin mentioned folk art, Brasov, then DeHaas.
“Oh yes,” Musa said. “Some years ago, I used to see a gentleman who worked for that organization. Owned by-he calls himself Baron Kostyka now, I believe. We used to pass information to them, now and then. Depending on what we wanted them to do.” His smile broadened in recollection. “Influence,” he said. “A ministry word.”
“We?”
“Oh I worked for several ministries, over the years. I was at Interior for a long time, then, eventually, the Foreign Ministry, with various titles, until I retired. 1932, that was.”
“It’s that old?”
“DeHaas? Oh yes, very old, and venerable. A local institution, really. And why not? Kostyka’s financial arrangements were large enough to have an effect here, in this country. We tried to make sure his manipulations were favorable to Roumania. We didn’t always succeed, but that’s the game, as I’m sure you know. One must always try.”
“So, you’re retired.” Serebin prepared to leave.
“Yes. For a time I stayed active-a special assignment, once in a while, but that’s all gone now. I’m a Jew, you see, and that’s entirely out of fashion here.”
“Like Germany.”
“Not quite that bad, not yet. But there are, restrictions. I had to give up my radio, last month, and one does miss it terribly. But you wouldn’t want Jews having radios, would you. We are also forbidden servants, and, lately, there’s talk about housing. I have no idea where I’ll go if they take this place away from me.”
“What would they do with it?”
“Give it to their friends. It’s a way they’ve found to improve their lives. You’re surprised?”
“Unfortunately, no. It’s everywhere, Germany’s influence.”
“Yes, that, but we have our own enthusiasts. The Legion staged a grand event last November, the Day of the Martyrs they called it. The remains of Codreanu and his henchmen were supposedly dug up, two years after their execution, and reinterred, here in Bucharest. Fifty-five thousand Iron Guardsmen marched and a hundred thousand sympathizers cheered them on. The schools were closed, Codreanu and his thirteen followers were declared
