Anton Varga

It walked with you from before you knew what you were. It grew old for both of you: the white muzzle, the shortened step, the eyes that still found you first. One morning it does not get up. It was the last witness to your first years, and it could tell no one. Where do you bury it? A Face dies: strike it out.

Csobán was not entirely mine: by day he slept at the house of Miklós Fenyes, who signed the papers I could not sign at that hour, and at night he waited for me by the gate with his ears already deaf. He died in March of '74. I buried him in the notary's courtyard, against the north wall, where the shade holds until eleven and I could sit a while without being charged for it. I dug with the coal shovel because the ground still had frost inside it. Miklós watched from the window with the pen in his hand, eighty-one years old, and did not come down to help me. In June they buried him, five paces further north. There was no one left to sign for me by day.

The north wall in Brassó, where the shade held until eleven.

The danger comes measured in weeks: a levy, a plague, a hunt you cannot dodge awake. So you learn to sink into sleep on purpose, the way a diver goes under and counts. You prepare the hiding place, the signal that will wake you, the lie for your return. What is the going-down like? Write the Trace of that moment.

I went down in October of '88, with the levy drums sounding up the Olt valley. The Béldi crypt had gone forty years without a visitor: cobwebs with old dust in them, a vase of dry stalks, the surname eaten away by lichen. I put the chest under the back of my neck. I tied a cord to the grille, taut as a lute string, so the snap would wake me if anyone came in. The lie for my return was already written and in my pocket: nephew of myself, arrived from Trieste, bills of exchange in order. Then I counted backward from three hundred, the way a man steps into a river, and the cold of the stone climbed my spine in no hurry at all.

I counted back from three hundred and never reached two hundred.

You wake starved for air, your mouth full of half-names. The danger has passed; so has the payment. You reach for a memory you left down there, on the underside of sleep, and it is gone: only the warm hollow, shaped like you. When exactly do you notice what's missing? A whole Echo slips away: surrender it.

I woke twenty-one years later with my mouth full of half-names. I noticed it at the customs post at Turnu, giving the false one: it came out perfect, round, without a stumble. And behind it there was no other. The true one had stayed down there, in the warm hollow shaped like me.

I said the false name without effort. Behind it there was no longer any.

You come back after fifty years. The city has grown upward and inward; you walk streets you remember and the streets no longer agree with you. Only the foundations know you: a worn threshold, the bend of the river. You stop where something of yours used to be. What stood there, and what stands there now? Write the Trace of that moment.

I came back to Brassó in '58. I went looking for the notary's courtyard and found a girls' school: two floors of new brick, a green railing, a linden that was not mine. The north wall was still standing — I knew it by the saltpeter stain shaped like a sickle — but it was the wall of the woodshed now. Underneath was Csobán, and above him four cords of beech stacked to the eaves. I stood with my back against that wall until the night watchman asked whether I was waiting for someone. I told him yes. It was true, even if I was fifty years late.

A saltpeter stain shaped like a sickle: that is how I knew the wall.

They arrive clumsy-handed and hungry to learn, and you decide to teach them truly: the whole craft, minus the essential. They learn fast. Soon they copy your gestures, guess what you are about to say, watch you when they think you cannot see. What do you teach first, and what lie holds up everything else? Give them a name: create that mortal Face.

Dinu Pascu turned up at seventeen with his nails bitten down, nephew of my landlady on Șelari street. First I taught him to listen: good coin falls and sings, filed coin sounds like wet stone. Then the weights, the discounting of bills, the three exchange rates of the day. He learned it all in a year and a half and began correcting my florin before I did. The lie was simple and he never touched it: a liver complaint that binds me to the night and to smoked glass, and the Mister Varga of before was my father. Within two years he was parting his hair like mine, on the same side. That I did not teach him.

He combed his hair like mine, and nobody had ever told him to.

You buy the pawnshop for the mezzanine no one knows exists, and you stay for the business: nobody looks twice at a pale moneylender who works late, and everything the city wants to forget crosses your counter with a date and a signature. Create the fixed Tether of the mezzanine and the Gift of the pawnbroker's trade.

I bought the house on Lipscani in '71 for what was not in the deed. It was Dinu who found it, measuring the premises: between the ceiling of the shop and the floor above there were four paces by six going spare, no window, the way in behind the clock cabinet. The chest fit, and a chair, and me. The business came of itself: nobody looks twice at a pale moneylender who closes late. And in two winters I learned the one thing in the trade that is worth anything: you do not appraise the object, you appraise the hour it is brought in at. A watch at ten in the morning is worth twice the same watch at seven in the evening.

Four paces by six, no window, behind the clock cabinet.

You go looking for the last corner left on your old map and find scaffolding and fresh dust. What you kept of this city was only true for as long as the city agreed to remain it. It no longer agrees. Who do you speak to under your breath as you walk away down streets that do not know you? Surrender a Tether along the way.

In '84 they pulled down the whole block to open the boulevard. I had the chest under the floor of the Gabroveni storehouse, where it had been for twenty-three years, and when I got there at night all that was left was a pit of foundations with dirty water in it and a wooden crane asleep on top. The soil of my own ground went off in carts, mixed with lime and broken brick, to fill a railway embankment out toward Chitila. What I kept was what was sewn into the lining of my coat: four little sacks the size of a fist. I walked home down straight streets that did not know me and heard myself talking to the dog under my breath. He was deaf, and a hundred years dead. He was the only one who knew the old way.

It went off in carts, mixed with lime, to a railway embankment.

There is a man who has signed for you by daylight for thirty years: contracts, customs, burials of your former names. He knows enough and keeps all of it, with the loyalty of one who chose not to ask. You bring him new pens; he keeps for you the afternoons you cannot see. Give him his name at last: create that mortal Face.

Aurel Stoica has signed for me since '75; Dinu's son brought him in when his father could no longer manage the books. Solicitor, hard hat, a tobacco cough you hear before his footsteps. He never asked why the appointments are at nine at night, or why the portrait of the grandfather has my face. I bring him pens: a Waterman every Christmas. He keeps my afternoons for me — auctions, customs, two burials under names of mine — thirty years of afternoons that he saw and I did not.

He kept the pens in a drawer, lined up by the year I gave them.

You pay for his retirement: the house with a garden, the doctors, an annuity his granddaughter will inherit. He thanks you, and to you it sounds like your own mockery: you have bought him everything except the years he spent waiting up for you. One evening you dare to ask whether he would take the post again. What does he answer? Write the Trace of his answer.

I bought him the house in Sinaia with a garden and two plum trees, the doctors paid in advance, and an annuity in the name of his granddaughter Ilinca, who was six then and afraid of me. Aurel thanked me standing, hat in his hands, as though I were a tribunal. That afternoon — the only time I ever saw him by daylight, from behind a curtain — I wanted at last to tell him what my first night had been like, the one where the pulse fell behind, so he would know what he had spent thirty years signing for. I opened my mouth and there was nothing to take out. I know it happened, the way you know the date of somebody else's battle. So instead I asked him whether he would take the post again. He said yes without thinking, and then, looking at the plum trees, added that this time he would ask for the mornings.

«This time I would ask him for the mornings,» he said, and laughed to himself.

You open accounts that know how to sleep: a bank in every port, chained wills in which you inherit from yourself under successive names, an attorney who on dying hands the keys to the next. Money learns to wait for you like a good servant: no questions, the lamp kept lit. That architecture of paper holds you up and holds you fast: create a Tether.

Trieste, Hamburg, Marseille, Galați: in every port an account that knows how to sleep and a file that wakes it. Anton Varga bequeaths to Andrei Vargha, who bequeaths to Antal Vári, who bequeaths to a nephew out of Trieste; each attorney hands the keys to the next before a notary and charges for doing it. I call it the staircase. It climbs on its own and I ride inside it, still, like water in a pipe.

The staircase of names: each inherits from the last, and all of them are me.

They send for you one winter night before dawn, and you arrive in time — for this, there is time. He asks you not to fake the heartbeat now: he wants to say goodbye to what you are, not to the costume. You hold his cold hand with your colder one until the room is left with a single silence, yours. A Face dies: strike it out.

There were four before her in two centuries; the last one I called Veta. Veta Munteanu opened the service door of the Colțea for me through twenty-six winters, at the hour when nobody asks anything. They sent for me at four on a January morning with ice on the tram rails and I got there in time, because for that there is always time. She asked me not to fake the heartbeat. She had listened to me do it for years — the thumb against the wrist, the breath taken every so often — and she wanted to say goodbye to what I am, not to the costume. I let go of her hand a moment so as to stop lying, and took it again. Then the room was left with a single silence, and it was mine.

She asked me not to fake the heartbeat, and I did as she asked.

The plague enters the city, and for once no one notices your hours: everyone lives behind shut doors, in mourning, windows veiled. You could cross the empty streets at noon, if noon would have you. The alibi is perfect, and it collects in acquaintances: the bell keeps tolling, and one of those times it tolls for someone of yours. A Face dies: strike it out.

The influenza of eighteen emptied the streets at midday and made me a present of an alibi I had no use for. The bell tolled for Iosif Grün on the ninth of November. Thirty-one years taking my measurements and not once did he look up.

He knew my measurements by heart and never once looked at my face.

You hear yourself telling it again, the old anecdote, and halfway through you notice the ending changes with the audience: one heroic, one comic, one sad. All three sound true to you. All three sound worn. Which do you tell tonight, and to please whom? Write the Trace of the version you choose.

The duel with the hussar, in the courtyard of the inn at Făgăraș. At the Cantacuzinos' house I tell it heroic: I took the saber out of his hand in three moves. With merchants I tell it comic: I slipped in the dung and won by accident. With widows I tell it sad: he was a boy, and I did not know how to stop in time. Tonight, for a table of engineers who were bored, I chose the comic one. They laughed loudly and poured me a wine I did not drink. And while I was listening to myself, underneath, something else went: the one who made me this way had a reason and told it to me that night, his mouth against my ear. I no longer know what it was. Nor what he was called. The anecdote took the place and stayed on to live in it.

They laughed at the part with the dung. I laughed too.

Years later you go looking for the true ending and it isn't there: you covered it with your own voices, coat over coat, until you had painted it over whole. You keep the version that flatters you, and you know exactly what that costs. Say aloud what you sacrifice to come out well in your own story. Fade one Trace from an Echo.

I went looking for the true ending and found three coats of my own voice, and nothing underneath. I kept the heroic one, which leaves me looking best. The bill was charged against something else: there was a letter of mine, from when I still beat, folded inside the bible of a family in Zărnești, and I knew the line that began with «mother». Tonight I know there is a letter and I know there is a bible. The line I painted over without noticing, with my own hand, so as to come out well in my own story.

I know there is a letter. I no longer know what the line said.

The little sacks yield less each year, like any old coin, and the exact ground of your birth lies an ocean or a war away. You may undertake the resupply journey — long, costly, undignified, and necessary: kindle two Gifts — or ration what remains and learn to sleep hungry for soil: the body endures, the memory pays. Surrender an Echo.

The ground was eighty kilometers away and a whole world away. They collectivized the valley in '52, put a cooperative on top of my father's house and a militia post at the pass; going there with my papers would have been a gift to them. So I rationed: half a spoonful per sleep, and slept hungry for soil, which is not pain but a dull burning in the long bones, all night, all decade. The body held. It was paid for somewhere else: the letter went entirely, and the bible, and the village, and even the certainty of ever having written to anyone at all. I wake with no debts, which is the elegant way of saying with no proof.

Half a spoonful per sleep, and the burning in the long bones.

You decide that one of your miracles no longer deserves a body. Not because it fails — because its era died, and carrying it wears you thin. You run through it one last time, whole, the way one folds a flag. Then you let it go on purpose, as an organ is donated. Which do you choose, and what do you spend its last use on? A Gift goes dark for good: surrender it.

The one I put out was the talking. It served two hundred years: a sentence on the threshold, the head tilted, and the door gave way on its own. There are no thresholds left that turn on a sentence; there are wickets, numbers, forms in triplicate. I spent it entire one Tuesday in May of '68, in the passport office on Nicolae Iorga street, in front of a lieutenant who kept a photograph of his son under the glass of his desk. I talked for forty minutes. Ilinca Stoica and her daughter got out in August. Back home I tried it in the mirror and what came out was a salesman's voice. I folded it the way you fold a flag and let it go.

The son's photograph under the glass: that is where I got in, the last time.

You understand the new world a little late and a little sideways, an eternal tourist on your own street. You no longer learn the year's language: you point, you smile, you overpay at the counter so you'll be forgiven. Today someone helps you with a patience that humiliates and saves you in the same gesture. What were you trying to do? Write the Trace of that scene.

I wanted to pay the electricity. The window does not exist anymore; there is a machine that asks for a barcode and a card, and I had a paper folded in four and banknotes. A girl with blue nails sorted it out for me in eleven seconds without mocking me, explaining slowly, the way you explain things to a grandfather. I thanked her twice. I remembered the voice I used to have, the one that opened doors, and I was glad it was no longer there to be used on her.

Eleven seconds. It would have taken me the whole night.

You still carry things that serve a world now closed: keys to demolished doors, papers of an extinct worth, a device whose music no one knows how to wake anymore. Today the weight is too much. You empty the bag onto the table and decide what keeps traveling with you. What do you leave, and into whose hands? Surrender a Tether along the way.

It all ended up on the table together: the keys to the Gabroveni storehouse, which has been a parking lot since '94; eight hundred lei of the Kingdom with King Carol's face on them; a crank gramophone with no needles; the breviary with its endpapers scraped and the Béldi signet ring. I kept the breviary, which still knows how to weigh in a pocket. The ring I left at a pawnshop on Mariahilfer Straße, with a thirty-year-old appraiser who read the arms upside down and offered me four hundred euros for the gold. I let him have it for three hundred and never went back for it. It closed the circle: I too had lived off what nobody was coming back to collect.

He read the arms upside down and offered me the price of the gold.

Without the Gift, what it remembered is orphaned: written gestures your hands no longer know how to make. Rereading those lines hurts more than the surrender did. You choose one and let it go as well, so the cut heals clean and the chronicle tells no lies. Which do you strike, and what do you keep in its place? Fade one Trace from an Echo.

I struck out the one about the lieutenant and his son's photograph. That was the Gift's hand, not mine. I kept the dog's name: Csobán. That one I say on my own, with nobody's help.

Csobán. I still say it right.

The miracle keeps business hours: you board at sundown on one continent and descend, still in darkness, onto another. Your kind took centuries to cross the sea in crates; now you do it in a seat, your first earth checked in the hold beneath you, as near as it was on that ship. Create the Gift of the perfect night itinerary.

Autumn, Otopeni, boarding at a quarter past seven; Montreal at ten at night the same day, six hours won going west, the sun always behind me. I learned to read it the way you read tides: which leg, which stopover, how many minutes of margin at Frankfurt so the connection does not catch me in a sunrise, which seat sits farthest from the window over the wing. The little sacks traveled below, in a toolbox declared as mineral samples. My kind took centuries to cross the sea inside a crate. I asked for the aisle.

I asked for the aisle. The soil of my own ground traveled as mineral samples.

You no longer hide: you let yourself be seen exactly enough. The neighborhood files you where it files its harmless ones — the odd old man with impossible hours, the house nobody visits. Being their tame madman shields you better than any crypt, and it costs something: the strangeness must be kept up, and it sticks. What habit do you cultivate for their benefit until it is truly yours? The condition marks you: create a Stigma.

I made myself the odd old man of Bélanger street: the one who sweeps the sidewalk at three in the morning and talks to the cats. The sweeping explains the noise and the hour. Counting the boards out loud I added so it would sound like a harmless mania, and it stuck to me. Now I count. The steps, the bottles in the bin, people's teeth when they laugh. Nineteen boards, always nineteen, and if I lose my place I start again. Mister Bertrand, at 6412, told me last autumn to come by whenever I like, that he never locks up. He said it out of pity. I kept the sentence, which is the only thing I need from anyone.

The count starts on its own and has to be finished. Nineteen, always nineteen.

A stranger sorts her family album on a screen and the machine, helpful, clusters the faces: yours, identical, at a wedding in 1948, at a fair in 1983, in the background of last year's christening. She has written to you: "who is this man?". You may dismantle the whole archive, photo by photo, server by server — kindle two Gifts — or move cities, centuries, and habits all at once: surrender your fixed Tether.

The Stoica album, uploaded by Ilinca's great-granddaughter: the wedding of forty-eight, the Sinaia fair of eighty-three, a christening from last year, and in all three the same man in the background with the same face. The machine grouped them on its own, helpfully, and gave him a number. Undoing it took me seven months. First the paperwork: which studio held the negatives, which fund had bought it out, on what server in Utah the copy was sleeping and in whose name. That I did with what I learned keeping books under three different crowns, and it was spent: today I add up like anybody else. The other part was a single night, in a depot in Longueuil, with a guard who saw me coming and threw himself at me. The hand did the only thing it knew how to do: the distance, the step back, the wrist. Nothing happened to him. That old skill of mine ran out as well, and I do not miss it so much.

I took him apart without hurting him, and knew it was the last time.

You decide to answer with something else: that the man in the photos is a tradition — a look-alike relative born each generation, a family joke of the surname. She doesn't quite believe you, and her disbelief is curious rather than hostile: she begins writing to you every week. Create that mortal Face.

I wrote back that the man in the photographs is a habit of the house: every generation turns out one just like him and he gets called uncle Anton. She did not quite believe me. Her name is Delia Stoica, she is thirty-nine, she teaches chemistry at Laval and she writes to me on Tuesdays. She sends me undated photographs so that I can date them for her. I always get it right, and she answers with three question marks.

Three question marks every time I get the year right.

It gained ground the way water gains a ship's hold: quietly, a finger per decade. The rules fell one by one — the ledger's, the threshold's, the one you swore that first night — and today you watch your own hands run the hunt without consulting you. The thirst no longer needs you for anything, and it knows. Whatever walks tomorrow in your body will hunt well, sleep dry, last centuries. It just won't be you. Write the final Leaf while the hand still obeys: whom you warn, what you lock away, and the last thing you do by your own decision.

To Delia I wrote on paper, so that it arrives late and I cannot take it back: do not come, do not look for me, stop sending me photographs. Then I went down to the cellar and locked away what is left — the breviary, the little sacks, the toolbox, this notebook where I keep the count — and dropped the key through the drain grating. I heard it land in water. I no longer remember my mother, or the night, or the one who made me, or what I wrote that letter for. I remember a wall with saltpeter shaped like a sickle and a deaf dog waiting for me at the gate. I will go with that. I am going to sweep until three, I am going to count the nineteen boards, and at ten past three I will sit on the bench across from 6412, where Mister Bertrand never locks his door and serves me tea on Sundays, and I will not cross the street. That is the last thing I do myself. Whatever walks tomorrow in my body will cross it. It will do it well, and it will not know what for.