Rakes of the Old Court by Mateiu I. Caragiale;

Author:Mateiu I. Caragiale; [Caragiale, Mateiu I.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Distribution Center (CDC Presses)

* * *

He motioned for the bill to the waiter circling us. The establishment had emptied. We left as well. Outside, the sky was clear and the air was cold.

* * *

“Yes, amice,” he said, after a few steps, “the inheritance! If not for that, I would never have returned. The 1907 émeute gave me pause for thought, and so, to relieve my heart of the continual fear of losing my estate, I decided, finally, this year, this spring, to return and to sell it, to sell even at a loss. I’ve received ridiculous offers, and from whom do you imagine? Peasants! It must be written in the stars that I would make these people rich; no, sincerely, you don’t know how brazen they are, and on my word, how different they are from those I knew in my childhood at Cişmeaua Roşie, who hung around like dogs at the foot of the stairs, in front of Aunt Smaranda, almost blinded by her greatness; and today their children are the new leaders, fixing their gazes on me and speaking man to man. And I wonder where their community acquired so much cash that they can buy up thirty-eight thousand pogoane of land like it was nothing. I had imagined that the buildings in Bucharest would go just as easily, and I was pitifully mistaken; the most run-down property, a poor hovel on Bărăţie, has been the topic of eight months of conversation between me and some desperate merchant-types; not even when I sold my petroleum stocks in Amsterdam—petroleum that brought me over seventy-five percent profit—was there such haggling. They can sense I’m in a hurry.

“Even with the charm of these dear memories, my stay in this city has seemed, from the hour I arrived, a state of exile, as any place is, wherever I am on dry land; only my love of flowers brings me peace, the only passion my longing for the sea could not overcome. Like my great-grandmother Păuna, who was the first to bring several varieties into Wallachia and sowed them over many pogoane at Pajera, I am wild about flowers; for my orchids, not for me—I am only their guest—I purchased the manueline quinta which, on the shore of the ocean, in a paradisiacal Lusitanian corner, once gave refuge to a royal love. In the balsam humidity of its great evenings, with apiaries and quick waters, I dream, between two departures; in the lap of its hanging gardens, as soon as I feel my end is coming, I will embark on my final voyage . . .

. . . “But why is everything closed, is it really that late?” And looking at the glittering November sky: yes, it was very late; the hunter with golden weapons, Orion, was setting, fearful of the Scorpion that scuttled across the threshold of the East. Dawn, however, was still a ways off, it was time to go to my place to drink.

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