Free The Days of the King by Filip Florian Page A

to cough): about how the pumpkins grow, how for eleven years he had held services in a sheepfold, how they planted peppers and cauliflowers, how he administered the sacraments, how he scared away the crows, how he arranged christenings, and how, day after day, he confidently awaited a letter from the magnanimous and kind Pius IX, in reply to the one hundred and seventy-six epistles he had sent to the Vatican. At a crossroads shaded by tall poplars, the two hunters, a dentist and a baker, subjects of that same Pope, discovered to their astonishment that the ramshackle structure before them, with an iron cross on the peak of its roof, bore a blessed name: the Virgin Mary Queen of the Holy Rosary. It was a church of planks and earth, clad with reeds, Catholic in accordance with the desire of those peasants who had arrived from south of the Danube in 1828, during times of war. In his warm room, Herr Strauss also glimpsed the churchyard, swarming with sparrows as if there were grains of millet strewn throughout the grass. In the end, he did not find the path that led to sleep, and so, enervated, heemerged from between the sheets as the light outside was beginning to fade. He heated some water, readied his razor, shaving brush, soap, two towels, and clean linen. He washed thoroughly and shaved with care, meeting his hazel eyes in the mirror, eyes free of sadness and worry. When he went out the front door, he was wearing a gray coat, hat, and galoshes, and the hour hand of the pendulum clock rested halfway between five and six. Beneath the drizzle, Lipscani Street resembled a river, along whose course calmly flowed not water (puddles and pools), but people. Joseph walked side by side with the others, warmed by the throng. He heard snatches of conversation, replies, stray whispers, many in German, but plenty in Italian, Hungarian, and Polish, and even the laughter of some young ladies, whom he avoided. At one point, the river split into two branches, one swerving strangely uphill, as no river can do, toward the Lutheran church, the other flowing onward, down a gentle slope. And outside the walls of the Catholic Church there had gathered so many souls that for a few moments he could hardly believe his eyes. He found a place to one side of the door, out of the way of those who were still arriving. He climbed onto a heap of coal and looked out, scanning the fresh darkness. Amid the wet capes, umbrellas, and cloaks, he descried the profile of Mathilde Vogel, now cured of the chicken pox. At that distance he could not make out much, but it appeared to him that her cheeks were rosy and her chestnut curls were touching her earlobe. He wondered whether it was worth pushing his way through the crowd, whether the cold raindrops bathed her or bothered her, whether her boots were dry, whether her calves were quivering and puckering. He was thinking of many things and standing motionless when the first bell chimed loudly, the largest bell, donated to that church, Sancta Maria Gratiarum (Holy Mary Mother of Grace), by none other than Franz Josef, the emperor in Vienna. Soon, in the white tower, the smaller bells also began to ring, bells fashioned at the behest of the august sovereign Archduke Franz Karl and Princess Sophie, bidding peace between couples and contraries, and after them, the smallest bell, a gift from Maximilian, brother of the Austrian emperor and an emperor in his own right, at the other end of the world, in Mexico. The chimes heralding Christmas Eve pierced the clouds above Bucharest and, the dentist thought, dissolved in the glassy firmament, rising to the stars. Also there rose the music from the beginning of the Liturgy of Angels,
Filius meus es tu, ego hodie genui te,
and the chords of the organ struck the windows of the cathedral, then trickled through the wide-open doors, touched the bowed heads of the crowd, kindling voices and hearts, and in a corner of the churchyard, by the gate, tears gleamed on the face of Herr