beaten man got scared. He couldn’t afford to pay anything. What money? The money he got from working by the day? So he found his voice again:
“I went to the pub and bought a packet of cigarettes. Then I went home and tried to find a candle and, while trying to find the damned candle, I caught them in the act.”
“Who did you catch in the act?” the policeman asked calmly.
“My wife, Agapita. She was having sex with my older son.”
Stupefaction impressed itself on everyone’s face instantly. The air seemed to have been whipped by the man’s words. So it had been more than an ordinary fight. It had been incest.
“And what did you do?” the policeman asked.
“What did I do? I saw red and started to hit them. Then I chased them throughout the yard, that’s what I did.”
“But how did you come to get beaten?”
“Well, at one time Agapita grabbed a shovel and hit me hard. First in the back, and then in the head.”
“I see. Can you be more specific about what you saw?”
“The two of them were lying in bed, she only with her bra on. When I started to fight with the boy, she rushed out. She put on a dressing gown, grabbed the shovel and started to hit me.”
Indeed, the last blow had been terrible. It had knocked him down. He didn’t move until the ambulance came.
The man’s confession set the policemen on motion and soon a police car left for the village, for Valentin’s house. The medical staff changed their attitude towards Valentin and began to deal with him more friendlily. Relieved by the confession, Valentin slept like a top.
The Arghire family lived from hand to mouth. There were seven of them, staying in two rooms and a small kitchen: the parents, Valentin and Agapita, two boys and three girls. The mother, the older boy, and the girls worked by the day in the field. The head of the family, Valentin, no longer brought any money home. More often than not he came home drunk from the pub and beat his wife and children.
When the police got there, tranquility had set in the village. The cattle and sheep were coming back after the day’s grazing.
“When was the last time he beat you?” a policeman asked Agapita.
“Well, it was yesterday, when he got back drunk from the pub, that’s where he spends all day, damn him,” Agapita waved her hand, sick of everything.
“Doesn’t he work anywhere?”
“He work? Work no—brandy yes, every day. Once in a while he gets asked by one neighbor or another to help them, takes the money and spends it on drink. That’s the man!”
“I see. Let me tell you what he said you were doing yesterday, when he got home.”
“He must have said a lot, the bastard.… He’s good with words.”
“He said he caught you having sex with your older son.”
Despite the smothering heat, the air in the house turned to ice. The woman dressed in shabby clothes opened her large mouth as if to say something and stayed like that, agape and about to burst, her eyes big as cart wheels.
“What?! Sex with my son?! God knows how hard it was for me to raise him and the others, I moiled and toiled for them, to do what? Sin with one of my sons? How could he say such a thing?”
“He said he’d caught you in the act and that’s why you and your older son beat him.”
“Poor me, poor me! Such a blasphemy coming from that animal who doesn’t even know which way to turn. The thought of it!”
The policemen were looking at the woman both distrustfully and compassionately. They had reached a stage when they couldn’t believe either story. The truth could be his or hers.
“I beat him, I admit I hit him.… I could no longer stand it. It was the first time I hit back. I usually stood there like a fool and he kept buffeting me. I just watched how he was hiding the children. And then we took refuge in the lane, all of us.”
“Is he that violent?”
“Only to us, officer. Otherwise, everyone else mocks at him. A while ago his brother stabbed him and the best thing my husband could do was say he was sorry. He does the grand only with us—but yesterday I could no longer stand it.”
Her children were all around her now and, hearing what the policemen were saying, began to shout, angry, hard to control. Dressed in rags and barefoot, they made up a pathetic picture. A policeman took Catalin, the younger brother, aside and asked him:
“Tell me, what happened yesterday? When your father came home, did he really find your mother lying in bed with Emil, naked, doing silly things with Emil? Did you see that?”
“No, I didn’t. Pa came home drunk, hit Emil and then Ma, and then he and Ma chased and hit each other in the yard.”
“Do your father and mother fight very often?”
“Yes, when Pa has a drink or two, or when Ma has a drink or two…but Ma didn’t do any foolish things with Emil, ever!”
The children were telling the truth. The couple fought all the time. It was the wife and the children that got beaten. Until now, when Agapita no longer stood it and grabbed the shovel.…
“I think he was ashamed, he didn’t want anyone to know his wife had beaten him,” said one of the policemen on their way back. “So he made up this story.”
“The thing is he got his first beating from his wife. Which set a precedent,” another policeman said, laughing. “From now on, who knows.…”
“The frozen limit would be if the bastard lodged a complaint. Then we’d have to take the case to court.”
“I’ll go talk to him tomorrow, at the hospital. I’ll persuade him to do nothing of the kind,” said the mustachioed policeman.
While the police car was driving away to town, in the middle of the village Agapita was weeping furiously, digging a hole in the ground. She was saying in tearful bursts to those who were watching her:
“When I hit him with the shovel.… I killed him…even if he was still alive and they took him to hospital to patch him up.… When he comes back…I’ll bury him here.… God forgive him!”
Painful traces of anger and wet dust were twining on her face.
THE FISHERMAN’S CAP
“What have I done wrong, Costel? Did I upset you in any way? Did I ask you to share the firm between you and me according to the percentage we put into it? Did I hire a lawyer to take care of that? Why don’t you want to talk it over? At least to talk. I might not be right, for all I know.”
“Of course you’re not right, Nicoleta. What percentage are you talking about? This firm’s going bankrupt, you know that. The liquidator’s done his job by the book. What else do you want from
