else, I ask myself, should I now be writing about my life with Rudolf Peterson, who was born Rudi Petrescu? Walking the five miles back from the dentist’s today, at my usual brisk pace, in light rain, I realized that I had said goodbye to his receptionist in Romanian. La revedere: these were my last words to my father, spoken with a sob as the train drew out of the Gare du Nord in Paris, on the morning of the twenty-third of February, 1937. I went on waving to him until he and I were out of each other’s sight. Although I was sad to be parted from him, I was also happily innocent of his impending plan to disappear.
—Your uncle will take care of you, Andrei. For the time being – weeks, maybe months. No longer, dear one, I promise. This will be a holiday for you. Rudi is an amusing man. He will make you laugh. He has stories at his fingertips.
My father entrusted me to the care of a guard, with whom he communicated in French and a few, telling signs. The man nodded his understanding of the task ahead of him, muttering Oui, Monsieur and Je comprends and, finally, Merci beaucoup, Monsieur when he accepted the francs my father offered him. He was to deliver me, petit Andrei – Andrei, Andrei, my father repeated – into the hands of Maestro Rudolf Peterson, who would be waiting for his nephew on the station platform in London. Then my father produced from the inside pocket of his best overcoat a photograph of my uncle dressed, I think, as a pirate, with a bandanna on his head, large rings in his ears and a cutlass in his belt. My father entreated the guard to study the maestro’s face, and nothing else. The man did so, and smiled. The maestro, my father insisted, would be wearing ordinary clothes. Not très ordinaire, but ordinaire. No earrings; no sword. The man nodded vigorously, still smiling.
—La revedere, Tata, I managed to say, although I was choking with fear and anticipation. I did not want this holiday. I wanted to be with my mother and father, from whom I had never been separated. Yet I also wanted to meet my famous Uncle Rudolf – to listen to the stories he had at his fingertips; to have him sing for me.
I have Jewish blood in my veins, but I can’t ascertain how much. Does it constitute a third, a quarter, a half of me? A sixteenth, perhaps, or less? Will it ever be possible to quantify a person’s blood – to say, with conviction, that those drops are Norse, those Gallic, those Latin, those Tatar? Mine has yet to be quantified, but what is certain is that some of it is Jewish.
My mother’s father was a Jew. He was known in the town, even after his death – which happened before I was born – as the Debt Collector. My maternal grandmother enraged and upset her parents when she declared her love for him. She was stubborn, and had her way, against all their modest hopes and wishes for her. She stated, quite calmly, that she would end her life if she could not marry him. And he, in turn, angered his own family by saying that no other girl but Doina would ever make him happy.
They were married in a nearby city, to escape the gossip in the town. It was said that he renounced his faith, but he had no faith to renounce. He was a freethinker, an atheist, and might have been a professor or a scholar if his father had not died suddenly. He became a reluctant middleman instead, collecting money from the peasants who lived and toiled on the Haşdeu estate. It was necessary for him to earn a living, and – like a fool, he said afterwards – he allowed himself to continue the family tradition. The eldest son – and he was an only child – was expected to be the next intermediary, doing the landowner’s nasty work for him. And that is what my grandfather did, with much sorrow and anguish, my mother told me.
He was already dead when, in 1935, the saviour of the Romanian people, the Pied Piper who would lead them to a Balkan paradise, stood on the steps of the courthouse and exhorted his disciples to free themselves from the Jewish yoke. My mother and father were among the crowd who listened to Corneliu Zelea Codreanu as he recounted how he had stood before an icon of the Archangel Michael in the chapel of the prison at Vacareşti and received immediate and lasting inspiration. The tall, dark Codreanu had the blazing eyes, the trumpet-like voice of a prophet, my father revealed to me later. His kind of prophet was best left in the wilderness, talking to stones and trees and passing birds, but alas Codreanu was not in the wilderness, my father complained. He was here, there and everywhere, in the very heart of the country.
Thinking of the Pied Piper and what he represented, I am driven to set down a scene from childhood – my only childhood, I hope. It is a Thursday morning in early September. The year is 1936. I am with my mother at the market in the town square. The weather has turned chilly. She has a scarf on her head and a shawl about her shoulders, and I am sweltering inside the lamb’s wool jacket she has forced me to wear. She is bartering with the stallholder who sells cabbages, as is the custom. She wants the firmest, greenest cabbage he has, at a price she can afford. Cabbage soup is her husband’s favourite dish, she tells the stallholder, who remarks that without cabbage soup he would have no business. My mother brings out her purse; she haggles a little more; the stallholder observes, as he observes to all the women on every market day, that she will make a pauper of him, and then her lip is trembling, and her hands are shaking, and I am suddenly afraid for her. She has just heard a woman behind her say:
—That’s the Debt Collector’s daughter, damn her, striking a hard bargain.
My mother gives the stallholder the coins and rushes off. I pick up the purse she has dropped, and take the cabbage she has bought, and look at the woman who caused my mother to shake and tremble and run away. She is fat and red-faced and she is gloating – yes, that is the word I can use of her now, but did not know then – she is gloating with pride at the harm she has done. I stare at her. Do I want her to call me the Debt Collector’s grandson? I wait. I want her to give me a reason to spit at her. Her gaze shifts to the stallholder, and I hear her telling him his cabbages are too costly, in almost the same words my mother had spoken a minute earlier.
My mother was devoutly Orthodox. My father would joke that there weren’t enough saints’ days in the year to satisfy her. On the day of the cabbage she came home and prayed to the icon of the Virgin and Child for what seemed hours. I heard her implore the Holy Mother to forgive the woman who had insulted her and her dear father’s memory, and to cleanse the minds and hearts of all those in the town who thought the same.
Our dinner that evening was, naturally, cabbage soup, into which my mother stirred a generous dollop of soured cream, to please my father. I kept my promise and did not mention the woman in the market. We ate contentedly. Many years later, I saw a picture in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, by one of the minor Dutch masters, that might have captured the three of us – a happy trinity – at table. There was the tureen; there were the bowls, and there were the father, the mother and the greedy little boy, whose own empty bowl would soon, he hoped, be filled again. They were bathed in a light that reflected their beatific state, while the room behind them was in darkness. A warm darkness, I thought, into which you could steal with safety.
—What is so special about Mr De Witt’s picture, Andrew? There are hundreds like it here.
—It appeals to me, Uncle. It speaks to me, as you say. I find it rather moving.
—If you find that moving, you will be overwhelmed by the Rembrandts, should we ever get to them, you young slowcoach. I can confidently predict that your emotional floodgates will open and burst. Leave those humble folk to their soup, Andrew. Come along.
I could not tell him that the picture had sent me drifting back to the peaceful evening of the cabbage soup and the terrible day of the cabbage which preceded it. That’s the Debt Collector’s daughter, damn her, striking a hard bargain – the woman’s voice was in my head as I walked beside Uncle Rudolf, who was impatient to show me real masterpieces. Those persons for ever unknown made off with the Debt Collector’s daughter, not my devout and innocent mother.
I squeezed my protector’s arm, very gently, when we came to a stop in front of The Night Watch, in unsaid gratitude for his protection.
The
