pinch.
He dusted the snow off his coat, cast a glance of vexation at the patch of ice on which he had slipped, and at a trot arrived under the clock with the mechanical soldier above the door of L’Indépnedance Roumaine newspaper offices. At twelve on the dot, the chimes began to sound. Nicu always tried to be in time to see the soldier. It was not easy, because he had to tell the time by the sun and the length of the shadows. This time the lad’s attention was caught by something else. On the ground, right in front of him, was a splendid icicle, more than a metre long, perfect for a sword. He picked it up and stroked its slightly rippled surface, oblivious to the chill of the ice. Holding it in both hands, he lowered it to his hip, raised it, still in a two-handed grip, and with a roar made a swordsman’s lunge at an unseen enemy. Unfortunately, the icicle, probably inured to the greater peace and quiet at the edge of the roof, struck where it ought not to: to a man in military uniform, holding a silver-handled cane; a gentleman of middling height who was just emerging through the door beneath the clock. He was the Prefect of Police’s right-hand man: the Chief of Public Security, Costache Boerescu, a man always in a hurry, his short legs rapidly scything the air. In that period he visited the Frenchmen’s newspaper two or three times a day, ever since the director, Mr Lahovary, had been slain in a duel by “that pig-headed Filipescu,” the director of the Epoca newspaper. And so the policeman was in the mood for anything but a duel, irritated as he was by the investigation, which was going nowhere, and by voices from the press, who were persecuting him ever more sorely. He could no longer stand newspapermen: when he did something good, they ignored him, but when he failed to solve some matter swiftly enough, they jumped on him and blackened his name using his own words, but truncating and turning them upside down. Whenever he had occasion and only men were present, he would cool off by calling the press a “painted whore.” Otherwise, he lived alone, and the brothel at Stone Cross had special reduced rates for him, should he so desire. He had visited the establishment both as a policeman and as a customer.
The cursed child ran off before the policeman could grab him by the ear. He made a suicidal dash across the road, dodging the carriages and sleighs, in the direction of Sărindar, not before being cursed by a number of coachmen heading in a column towards the Capșa restaurant, then by those on the other side, on their way towards the Dâmbovița River; one after the other, they had to pull on their reins, lest they crash into each other. The lad looked behind him at the same instant that the copper waved his stick at him threateningly. Nicu then put the incident out of his mind and headed towards the Prefecture, a few minutes’ walk away.
‘You were almost done for there, young man. Mr Costache won’t forget you, he never forgets anything, and he’s as cunning as a snake, he is. You’ve been getting into nothing but scrapes today,’ said the lad, addressing a large snow-laden bush that grew slantwise in a shady spot next to a wall. Some sparrows were hopping with abrupt, bullet-like movements from one branch to another, then lingering a little, touching the thick whiteness of the snow with their plump bellies, and scattering the flakes, before moving to another storey of the bush, as if it were a house. Nicu wondered why they moved around so much, since they did not seem to be following or looking for anything, unlike him. He had a precise goal, which loomed tall in front of him: the entrance of Universul, Bucharest’s most read newspaper. Granted, the men from Adevĕrul said otherwise, but they said everything otherwise. He stepped forward, having swiftly shaken all the sparrows off the bush.
He entered by the door on the left. The doorman shook his hand as if he was a grown-up. Old man Cercel told him that he would have to wait: the parcels had not yet been brought from the “distribution bee-oo-row.” Nicu sat down in his usual place. He was most satisfied. Conversations with old man Cercel were always instructive, because the doorman read the paper every day and kept him up to date with the news. Nicu asked him whether he had decided to play the big New Year’s lottery; the jackpot was ten thousand lei. Six numbers had to be chosen, and the lad had asked to try his luck, without any claim on the prize (although the money would not have gone amiss), just so that he could lend a helping hand. Nicu knew that as far as he was concerned, his choice was nine and eight, because next year would be 1898, and the doorman would choose the remaining numbers, except that he would make his mind up one day, only to change it the next. Old man Cercel replied yet again that it was no joking matter and he would have to think carefully. From today’s paper he had a news item even better than the one about Jack the Ripper, who had thitherto reigned supreme over the headlines.
The doorman picked up Universul, held it rather a long way from his eyes, and read slowly, syllabically: “Sundry items. From Bor-del-... Bor-der-and... Bor-der-land magazine. The planet Mars and the Martians.” ‘Hear that?’ And then he read on, slipping in his own comments, as he always did: “The Martians do not eat meat, but use mam-moths as beasts of burden. Their horses are no larger than our ponies.” As large as our ponies – what ponies? “Their oxen are smaller – in other words, we have larger oxen, and so where we are, if you’re an ox, you’re a big ox – and have just one horn. The Martians have very pen-et-rat-ive eyesight. They have learned how to fly, but only for short distances. They walk on water with the same ease as they do on land. War has been ab-ol-ished on Mars. The Government is the-o-crat-ic. They have twelve states. They have no private property.” Then I’m not going to Mars. This is my country here, my private property, my house, my garden, my wife, my pigeons, and my plum trees,’ said the doorman, folding up the newspaper thus ending all discussion, having been fully enlightened as to the Martians.’
Nicu did not agree. He was something of a Liberal. He knew very well that the Martians could fly and walk on water and that they rode mammoths, as he had seen the drawings in Universul Ilustrat. And so in that respect, the same as in many others, he could not share Cercel’s opinion, although the old man’s broad face and splayed nose, beneath which grew a shaving brush of a moustache, demanded respect.
Nicu said diplomatically: ‘I for one would go, if it were possible! I’d go to have a look and if it wasn’t any good, I’d come back straight away.’
‘For the time being, run and deliver these papers!’
Probably annoyed at having been contradicted, the doorman rather brusquely took the newspapers from the hand of the man who signed himself Peppin Mirto. Mirto was employed as a translator and proof reader, and was recently given the responsibility of dispatching the Gazette to important clients, if it included important articles: Mayor Robescu; Petre Grădișteanu, the director of the National Theatre; the Royal Palace; Caton Lecca, the Prefect of Police; and the directors of the other newspapers, even those with which Universul was at war. Nicu ran errands for the paper, earning five lei a month, paid on the first of each month, plus tips, in addition to his usual wage as a commissary. He had to deliver parcels containing all kinds of small items, which were sold from the newspaper premises. The items were kept in untidy heaps in the administrative office downstairs and in the director’s office upstairs, since the director himself was more likely to be found at home or at his club than on newspaper premises. Nicu worked for two hours a day at most, straight after school. He clandestinely hitched rides on the back of carriages and sometimes even the horse-drawn tram, when there was a lot of traffic and he could pass unnoticed. But it was rare that he had such luck.
‘How are you, laddie?’ asked Pepin Mirto, in his sonorous, operatic voice, and Nicu doffed his cap by way of greeting. He was about to tell him about his plans to go to Mars, but the man quite simply turned his back on him, shouting a ‘Be on your way now!’ that boomed as far as the courtyard. Why did people ask you questions if they did not wait for the answer? True, here at Universul you saw only men who were in twice as much of a hurry as Nicu’s other acquaintances. They were like Martians, the lot of them, but without their good qualities! As he was leaving with the parcel tied up with string, he almost collided with a young man who had slipped lizard-like through the door and was asking old man Cercel how he could place a small ad. He was agitated and kept knocking his gloved hands together, jerking his head.
‘Good day, young gentleman,’ said the doorman, still in the same voice as when he had been spelling out the words in the newspaper.
‘Good day, young gentleman,’ Nicu seconded, but without doffing his cap this time.
Too agitated to reply to these greetings, the young