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Authors: Rolf Bauerdick
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baptismal font, which gave Kora Konstantin another chance to be indignant to the marrow.
Once the Gypsies had celebrated their new role as children of God for three days, the church of Baia Luna would almost burst at the seams on Sundays. A half hour before the bells tolled, the
Gabors were already waiting in front of the entrance, intent on receiving the Body of Christ. In the course of time, however, their zeal for the sacred magic cooled rapidly. Once they discovered
that, despite incense, holy water, and the blessing of the priest, their everyday cares continued undiminished, the rituals of the Mass began to bore them.
Except for Dimitru.
I cannot remember ever not seeing him in church on Sunday except in the summer when opaque business dealings forced him to travel. Whenever Johannes Baptiste ascended to his pulpit, Dimitru sat
in the front pew next to his friend Ilja with his mouth agape. I watched Dimitru practically ingesting every word that fell from the pulpit, unlike Grandfather, who sometimes nodded off during the
sermon.
With the tragedy at the river, a friendship had developed between the two men, a spiritual fraternity which—if I may be allowed to anticipate—would survive the storms of time, even
if Grandfather didn’t know very much about Dimitru’s life.
“By the way, can you swim?” he had asked the Gypsy years after they had jumped into the icy Tirnava together.
“I should hope so,” Dimitru answered. “I was already a fish in my mother’s belly.” Yet everyone in the village knew that the scaredy-cat Dimitru even feared
splashing some puddle water into his shoe when it rained.
Grandfather was of the opinion that Dimitru had developed a serious streak while mourning the death of his father, while I thought his flightiness prevented it from being very well grounded.
Nevertheless, baptism must have activated a real passionate impulse to pursue life’s most basic questions.
And certainly the paternalistic friendship of Johannes Baptiste was also a contributing factor. The Benedictine made the books he had brought with him from Austria to Baia Luna available to all
in a kind of public library in the rectory, which was almost never used by the villagers. And if anyone ever did use it, they didn’t go to the priest to ask for permission but to Dimitru, who
in the course of two decades advanced to the post of Lord of the Library.
In summer you could see him lying on the green grass of the rectory garden with his nose in a book; in winter a light burned in the library even at night because Dimitru was pursuing his studies
by the shine of a kerosene lamp. To make it easier for him to read, Johannes Baptiste had had an old red divan and a warm featherbed moved to the library.
When the men of Baia Luna called him the Black philosopher, it might have sounded like an expression of respect but was closer to mockery. That didn’t bother Dimitru in the slightest. He
served himself generous portions from the pots of human knowledge, sampled here, snacked there, and in the end mixed it all together as he saw fit. He cared nothing for logical coherence.
“Either/or” didn’t count for much with him; he preferred “both/and.” Whenever he got hopelessly tangled up in logical inconsistencies, he would cut the Gordian knot of
his contradictions the very next day from some new vantage point. Something that was true today could be false tomorrow and vice versa. Dimitru learned by heart the most important sayings of the
great scholars without caring a fig about the correct sequence of thinkers and their thoughts. It was Liviu Brancusi who dubbed him “the blabbermouth” after Pater Johannes had taught
Dimitru a few scraps of Latin. Grandfather Ilja had advised his friend not to throw around such difficult terms so much but just slip one in from time to time to give people the impression they
were dealing with an educated man. Dimitru took the advice to heart but continued to
Once the Gypsies had celebrated their new role as children of God for three days, the church of Baia Luna would almost burst at the seams on Sundays. A half hour before the bells tolled, the
Gabors were already waiting in front of the entrance, intent on receiving the Body of Christ. In the course of time, however, their zeal for the sacred magic cooled rapidly. Once they discovered
that, despite incense, holy water, and the blessing of the priest, their everyday cares continued undiminished, the rituals of the Mass began to bore them.
Except for Dimitru.
I cannot remember ever not seeing him in church on Sunday except in the summer when opaque business dealings forced him to travel. Whenever Johannes Baptiste ascended to his pulpit, Dimitru sat
in the front pew next to his friend Ilja with his mouth agape. I watched Dimitru practically ingesting every word that fell from the pulpit, unlike Grandfather, who sometimes nodded off during the
sermon.
With the tragedy at the river, a friendship had developed between the two men, a spiritual fraternity which—if I may be allowed to anticipate—would survive the storms of time, even
if Grandfather didn’t know very much about Dimitru’s life.
“By the way, can you swim?” he had asked the Gypsy years after they had jumped into the icy Tirnava together.
“I should hope so,” Dimitru answered. “I was already a fish in my mother’s belly.” Yet everyone in the village knew that the scaredy-cat Dimitru even feared
splashing some puddle water into his shoe when it rained.
Grandfather was of the opinion that Dimitru had developed a serious streak while mourning the death of his father, while I thought his flightiness prevented it from being very well grounded.
Nevertheless, baptism must have activated a real passionate impulse to pursue life’s most basic questions.
And certainly the paternalistic friendship of Johannes Baptiste was also a contributing factor. The Benedictine made the books he had brought with him from Austria to Baia Luna available to all
in a kind of public library in the rectory, which was almost never used by the villagers. And if anyone ever did use it, they didn’t go to the priest to ask for permission but to Dimitru, who
in the course of two decades advanced to the post of Lord of the Library.
In summer you could see him lying on the green grass of the rectory garden with his nose in a book; in winter a light burned in the library even at night because Dimitru was pursuing his studies
by the shine of a kerosene lamp. To make it easier for him to read, Johannes Baptiste had had an old red divan and a warm featherbed moved to the library.
When the men of Baia Luna called him the Black philosopher, it might have sounded like an expression of respect but was closer to mockery. That didn’t bother Dimitru in the slightest. He
served himself generous portions from the pots of human knowledge, sampled here, snacked there, and in the end mixed it all together as he saw fit. He cared nothing for logical coherence.
“Either/or” didn’t count for much with him; he preferred “both/and.” Whenever he got hopelessly tangled up in logical inconsistencies, he would cut the Gordian knot of
his contradictions the very next day from some new vantage point. Something that was true today could be false tomorrow and vice versa. Dimitru learned by heart the most important sayings of the
great scholars without caring a fig about the correct sequence of thinkers and their thoughts. It was Liviu Brancusi who dubbed him “the blabbermouth” after Pater Johannes had taught
Dimitru a few scraps of Latin. Grandfather Ilja had advised his friend not to throw around such difficult terms so much but just slip one in from time to time to give people the impression they
were dealing with an educated man. Dimitru took the advice to heart but continued to
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