Raluca asked from her hospital bed.
“I didn’t want to upset you. It was so foolish of me.”
“I think you wanted to cure yourself of Mirela, of her memory.… But why did you have to do it by sacrificing me?”
“It just didn’t occur to me such a tragedy might happen.”
“When I’m out of hospital, I’ll be like new, cured of burns and of you.…”
From hospital, Raluca went straight to her parents’. The divorce was consumed in no time.
* * * *
In Bucharest, Mirela became bank manager, married a colleague, and gave birth to two boys. She made a great career and had a great family. She never met Ionut or Victor again.
Bent on climbing up the ladder of success, Ionut made a very good match marrying the mayor’s daughter. A few years later he caught her in the act in their own bed with a friend of his. He divorced her and, as a result, his former father-in-law did his best to make him lose his job. He started to drink heavily and borrow money which he never returned. He owed money even to the woman who sold newspapers.
For a long time Victor tried to find an explanation of what had happened to him. He lived like a lonely wolf. Sometimes he said loudly: “Surely he who benefited from the fear in my thoughts must be rich now!” And he hummed the tune to which he had once cut out a slice of the cake during a wedding in the forest.…
THE PHOTO ON THE DESK
They carried a stiff upper lip for three days, turning down every invitation, pretending they didn’t get any hint, and making fun of the judges’ and local authorities’ almost desperate attempts to corrupt them in one way or another, or to tempt them with a special meal in the hope that they would soften their hearts. The two inspectors, representing the Court of Appeal, with three counties under their jurisdiction, were checking up the Municipal Court following a more or less serious complaint.
At the age of fifty-five they had a long career behind them, being real celebrities in their trade. They were an odd couple: one was the scourge of court rooms, cold, impenetrable, and ruthless; the other sluggish, ironic, sometimes lenient, and with a bent for rather listening than talking.
Jean Gulerez was the sort of magistrate who considered Justice blind, deaf and dumb, the only holder of truth. Unlike him, Vasile Lazar believed that there was always room for interpretation, that every law had its unseen side which could be put to good use. Both of them settled their cases in the same office for no other judge would have enjoyed working in Jean Gulerez’s presence. Not that Vasile Lazar hadn’t needed quite a few years to discover his colleague’s true nature, other than being a low-spirited man, grumpy, always frowning, and never willing to give in.
Gulerez was a penologist, Lazar a common law judge. The penologist was hardly an attractive man, with one leg shorter than the other, and a squint. Though quite short, the common law judge was very likeable, wore a big beard, and women fell for him in a big way. To Gulerez, women were of no substance, he considered them all treacherous and interested. Vasile Lazar picked them carefully, often saying that for a mug of milk one didn’t have to buy a cow.
Under the circumstances, the fact that the couple was inspecting a court was frightening, the agitation in the town verging on paranoia. The couple’s reputation was strengthened now, after three days of inspection—except for the odd cup of coffee, they had turned down everything else. On the fourth day, however, the tension faded away and a general relief, like a cool summer breeze, flooded the court. The inspectors had accepted the invitation of Viorel Opris, chairman of the County Council, to have dinner at a motel about two miles from the town, on the road to the capital.
“They’ve got an excellent chef there, his venison is a wonder! It’d be a shame to miss such an opportunity, the more so as the chef’s going to leave the place soon. He’s going to work in a big restaurant in Italy, you know,” the chairman overdid it.
“Ah, venison,” Vasile Lazar exclaimed, laughing up his sleeve.
“Deer, boar?” Jean Gulerez looked interested, to the local official’s surprise.
“Everything, even bear paw stew! As a matter of fact, that’s the specialty of the house.”
They left the court in the chairman’s car. So as untouchable they had seemed while checking everything up, placing law before everything else, as human they proved to be during the meal. They enjoyed the food, the drinks, and the smutty jokes. It was an evening beyond expectation, a real feast.
In the almost empty restaurant, at a remote table, there were other important people, at least that was what the attention the staff were paying to them gave everyone else to understand. The two groups ignored each other, although the chairman commuted between the two tables. The judges were not curious to know who those people were, one thing that couldn’t be said about the other group, intrigued by the staff acting so obligingly and by their rivals not minding them.
After having several glasses, flushed with wine, Jean Gulerez felt the need to go to the toilette. He stood up, a little unsteady, and instead of heading for the gents’, he opened the first door he bumped into and found himself on the balcony.
“Hey, asshole, that’s the balcony, the john’s in the opposite direction,” shouted one of the people at the other table to the others’ roars of laughter.
Gulerez had never been insulted like that before. He turned around red with anger and said:
“Look who’s talking! A beast’s asshole! Why do you care where I want to go or what doors I open?”
“Watch your mouth, you, mutant, or I’ll measure your length on the floor!”
“Well, if I’m a mutant, you’re a bloody drinking mutant!”
The chairman jumped between them. Choking with embarrassment, he tried to settle the conflict.
“Gentlemen, please, don’t forget you’re public figures, you’re in high positions, you aren’t supposed to make a rumpus in such a place!”
Too late. The two men broke loose, swearing at and threatening each other. It took the chairman quite a while to calm them down. When the judge returned from the toilette, Viorel Opris came to his table together with the man who had aggressed him verbally.
“I think I should introduce you to each other, after all. This is Judge Jean Gulerez, inspecting our county. This is—”
“Ion Cristian, the county Prefect.”
Both parties were taken aback. The judges hadn’t expected the boor to be such a high official. Jean Gulerez came down a peg and shook the prefect’s hand.
Everyone sighed with relief when the prefect sat down at the judges’ table. He was a stout man, a little bit overweight, russet- to fair-haired or the other way round, a man who breathed out prosperity.
“Gentlemen, it just happens when you’ve had a glass too many! I apologize for the coarse language. Since it was I who started it, I’d like to be the one to end it.”
“I admit I overdid it too,” said Jean Gulerez.
“It must have been the bear paw, I’ve never tasted anything like that before,” his colleague
