I once saw a wounded crane, dying, on the edge of a forest where he had fallen while his friends were dashing away to the horizon, like a black arrow. The bright eye that ripped the horizon was shaded little by little, his long, powerful legs were sinking into the dust, and his wings, as if for a last soaring movement, tried to stretch out, then they fell, and the carcass remained there forgotten, until that bunch of bones was whitened by the sun. Anyway, it is better like that than to be left alone and lingering, among strangers. Death cures and the hospitable dust, wherever you are, covers you with the same indifference. So, hearing a song in a concert cafe, I remembered the weird face of a stranger who had taken shelter in Iasi. He was what they call in ordinary speech a tapeur de café-chantant. Owing to who knows what game of chance, for love perhaps, some people say, or other youthful madness, this lost man, who still showed the traces of a sophisticated education, had started out on a European tour one day with a cluster of stars, and, after many stops, he ended up in Iasi. At that time, people threw money away easily and the stars had the success they deserved. One party after another, good wine, and the easy friendship of carousers sweetened our Frenchman. And I do not know how, after the beauties shone for one second on our sky and then got out of style, they disappeared one after another, with their red, green, or blue dresses, going away to follow their fatal trajectory. The improvised tapeur soon forgot his vagrant female friends, and he decided to go back to his country with the money he had. However, an unexpected party made him postpone his departure for a while, and then months went by, and the months turned into years, and the vagrant grew roots behind his piano, his feet frozen in the pedals, his hands shaking on the keys, always looking as if trying to move a diabolical machine that would take him back to his forgotten country. Near him was a little wine bottle and an eternal glass that tinkled with every move. His face scarlet, his eyes dead and expressionless, apparently not seeing anything, because what could be of interest to him in this world these days? On the small podium, under the lamps, ridiculous beings showed up, blond and dark wigs, fallen women wearing jazzy dresses, coarse voices singing lewd arias in all idioms, saying the same obscenities, winking in the same stupid way, the same calls to the baseness of the senses, to the bestiality that sleeps in every man. He kept on playing, with automatic gestures, again and again, the romance songs sung hundreds of times, and he seemed not to see the fretting legs, the calling hands, or the baring breasts before greedy eyes, not to feel the strong perfumes that came to him, and he was not thrilled by the dizzying smiles of the painted mouths. In that promiscuity and noise, he was interested in one thing only: his bottle and glass. From time to time, his head turned to look at the bottle as if it was a manometer, and then he stopped playing for a moment, until the bottle got filled up again. And the stars kept changing all the time, others came in, stayed there for a second, then disappeared. Some, after a lengthy rotation, reappeared one day, and familiar as they were, they were happy as if they had found an old friend, and old acquaintance. But he was not touched by their caresses, as far as he was concerned those beings were just the sound of a key, some note, a podium reflex. He stayed put for ever, and late at night when there were fewer people and the exhausted sweeties sat down around the tables to eat the mandatory chicken and empty the countless wine or champagne bottles that the boss sentenced these unfortunate beings to, in that clatter of drunk and loose people, the tapeur sat down as well, a silent and sad guest, nodding indifferently to all questions, eating and drinking silently, until he remained the last man in the joint. He must have thought about something in his silence, he must have dreamt of something, he sometimes rebelled, he sometimes remembered his country, nobody knows! But what I do know is that he never left and one day his chair behind the piano where night would find him, his feet pressing the pedals, moving the keys with his heavy hands, like a man who wanted to start a diabolical machine, that chair remained empty and that evening the stars were eclipsed from the rostrum, in mourning. And so, death cured him too, finally giving rest to his always fretting hands, and our hospitable dust covered him the way it covers so many vagrants, with the same indifference. 1911
by Dimitrie Anghel
