Read Online The Days of the King by Filip Florian - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Filip Florian
Tags: Fiction, Literary, Humorous, Historical, History, Satire, Europe, Modern, 19th century, Eastern
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one such day, luminous only in things holy, boots sank into muddy puddles and hurried carriages splashed capes with splatters of brown. Time was measured in different ways in Bucuresci, and this year the Catholic Christmas Eve, when wet, skinny dogs had been lured to the Lipscani quarter by the scent of roast goose, baked carp,
cozonac,
and gingerbread, coincided, in the Julian calendar, with the feast of Saint Spyridon, which maddened the cats, for it fell in the fifth week of the Orthodox fast, bringing a dispensation to eat fish. And so it came about, when December 24 and December 12 were one and the same day, that the different calendars, one Western and the other Eastern, one Papist and Protestant, the other Orthodox, were at peace as never before. The two separate holy days did not merge into one common feast, but at least the shutters of all the shops remained closed. As a good Catholic, Joseph Strauss, the dentist, whose surgery was, it goes without saying, closed, said his prayers, and then leaned on the sill of an upper-floor window to gaze at the clouds, crows, gray roofs, and the smoke that rose from the chimneys and dissolved to the north. He nibbled on a sweet-cheese strudel, feeling languid from the heat of the stoves and the tidiness that the woman who came to do the cleaning, infirm as she was, had managed to instill in his bachelor rooms. In the six months he had been living there, he had learned sounds and distances, details and echoes, so that the first bell he recognized, in the cold drizzle of that morning (not quite sleet, not quite hail), was that of the church at the end of Podul MogoÅoaiei, joyfully chiming to announce the feast of its patron. And because all things can be divided into old and new, not only calendars, shoes, reigns, maids, potatoes, and mistresses, immediately after the soft, delicate chimes from the old Church of Saint Spyridon there resounded the long, booming clangs of the new Church of Saint Spyridon, at the foot of Metropolia Hill, where the celebration was officiated with greater pomp. Then, one after the other, each of the bells of the city began to chime, until they were all ringing in unison, summoning folk to the liturgy and love of God, a reminder that in that land the Orthodox faith was strong and the founders of churches who dreamed of forgiveness for their sins were countless. Unawares, Herr Strauss murmured something hard to make out, a passage from the
Dominus dixit ad me,
and out of the blue, or out of the damp gray sky, he glimpsed another Joseph, thinner, shorter, with a shrill voice and flushed face, in the balcony of the Sankt-Hedwigs-Kathedrale on Bebelplatz, in the third row of the choir. For a few moments the doctor once more inhabited the child's body. And he was happy. Then, still with the strudel in his hand, his upper lip dusted with icing sugar, he listened to the majestic voices of the humming and vibrating brass. His thoughts were borne off on the wind, southward, past the churches of Saint Anthony the Great, Saint Demetrios, and Saint John the New, they skirted Stavropoleos Monastery, by the banks of the dirty, sluggish river they met the spires of the Dormition of the Mother of God, of the Holy Apostles and Princess BÄlaÅa, they found, on the right hand and the left hand of the Metropolia, Antim Monastery, Mihai Voda Monastery, and the Nuns' Hermitage (where he had bought a carpet in September), and the churches of Saint Nicholas VlÄdica, Slobozia, and Saint Catherine. Climbing to the east, as if his ears were following a course opposite that of the sun, he wandered in his mind to Saint Venera, Saint Mina, Old Saint George, RÄsvani, and New Saint George. Soon he veered northward and smiled to realize that in the part of the city that corresponded to the cardinal point cursed with cold and shadow, the names of laymen and things were favored for churches above those of the saints: ColÅ¢ei ("pitchfork"), Scaune ("thrones"), Kalinderu
cozonac,
and gingerbread, coincided, in the Julian calendar, with the feast of Saint Spyridon, which maddened the cats, for it fell in the fifth week of the Orthodox fast, bringing a dispensation to eat fish. And so it came about, when December 24 and December 12 were one and the same day, that the different calendars, one Western and the other Eastern, one Papist and Protestant, the other Orthodox, were at peace as never before. The two separate holy days did not merge into one common feast, but at least the shutters of all the shops remained closed. As a good Catholic, Joseph Strauss, the dentist, whose surgery was, it goes without saying, closed, said his prayers, and then leaned on the sill of an upper-floor window to gaze at the clouds, crows, gray roofs, and the smoke that rose from the chimneys and dissolved to the north. He nibbled on a sweet-cheese strudel, feeling languid from the heat of the stoves and the tidiness that the woman who came to do the cleaning, infirm as she was, had managed to instill in his bachelor rooms. In the six months he had been living there, he had learned sounds and distances, details and echoes, so that the first bell he recognized, in the cold drizzle of that morning (not quite sleet, not quite hail), was that of the church at the end of Podul MogoÅoaiei, joyfully chiming to announce the feast of its patron. And because all things can be divided into old and new, not only calendars, shoes, reigns, maids, potatoes, and mistresses, immediately after the soft, delicate chimes from the old Church of Saint Spyridon there resounded the long, booming clangs of the new Church of Saint Spyridon, at the foot of Metropolia Hill, where the celebration was officiated with greater pomp. Then, one after the other, each of the bells of the city began to chime, until they were all ringing in unison, summoning folk to the liturgy and love of God, a reminder that in that land the Orthodox faith was strong and the founders of churches who dreamed of forgiveness for their sins were countless. Unawares, Herr Strauss murmured something hard to make out, a passage from the
Dominus dixit ad me,
and out of the blue, or out of the damp gray sky, he glimpsed another Joseph, thinner, shorter, with a shrill voice and flushed face, in the balcony of the Sankt-Hedwigs-Kathedrale on Bebelplatz, in the third row of the choir. For a few moments the doctor once more inhabited the child's body. And he was happy. Then, still with the strudel in his hand, his upper lip dusted with icing sugar, he listened to the majestic voices of the humming and vibrating brass. His thoughts were borne off on the wind, southward, past the churches of Saint Anthony the Great, Saint Demetrios, and Saint John the New, they skirted Stavropoleos Monastery, by the banks of the dirty, sluggish river they met the spires of the Dormition of the Mother of God, of the Holy Apostles and Princess BÄlaÅa, they found, on the right hand and the left hand of the Metropolia, Antim Monastery, Mihai Voda Monastery, and the Nuns' Hermitage (where he had bought a carpet in September), and the churches of Saint Nicholas VlÄdica, Slobozia, and Saint Catherine. Climbing to the east, as if his ears were following a course opposite that of the sun, he wandered in his mind to Saint Venera, Saint Mina, Old Saint George, RÄsvani, and New Saint George. Soon he veered northward and smiled to realize that in the part of the city that corresponded to the cardinal point cursed with cold and shadow, the names of laymen and things were favored for churches above those of the saints: ColÅ¢ei ("pitchfork"), Scaune ("thrones"), Kalinderu
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