The spring they had me guard corpses I finally got the chance to meet Connie Illafeld—but it didn't give me much pleasure. By then she couldn't talk straight in any language, she mixed them all up. To understand her one had to know Ukrainian, German, Romanian and Hungarian equally well; and it didn't hurt to be familiar with certain Ruthenian and Saxon dialects, either. There were few such people in the Dobrin forest range; my old friend Doc Oleinek, chief bearkeeper at the nature preserve, was one of them.

Connie Illafeld was an artist's pseudonym; the woman, a descendant of the Illarion clan, who were Bukovina boyars, lived among simple mountain folk on what had once been her family's estate. Cornelia Illarion was her real name. You could, I suppose, come across two different people having these two names; but the two together had to belong to that one person.

So when I caught sight of Cornelia Illarion's name on a folder with red cross markings that had been placed on the clerk's desk, and noticed next to her name, between inverted commas, her pseudonym as well, written with a flourish in red ink, I knew it had to be her. In a way she was almost family—my foster son's one-time love. I was dying to lay eyes on the creature that years ago had driven him wild.

At the time I worked for a unit of mountain riflemen in Dobrin as a civilian auxiliary; besides carrying out various secret assignments for them, I was the local coroner's assistant, a "corpse guard," as they called it here. The morgue was set up in a damp, moss-covered corner of the barracks yard; when the little chamber was empty, meaning they had no work for me there, I helped out Colonel Titus Tomoioaga in the office. The entire area was under the jurisdiction of the armed mountaineers; his job was to register the people who were sent to Dobrin, and assign the newcomers to work details. Yet he himself was just another lumbering, dreamy and taciturn mountaineer, capable of staring out the window for hours, at gray clouds passing over the black pines, or at birds in flight. Even reading those terse referrals took a lot out of him.

On the day in question the first warm wind laden with heavy fragrances tumbled across the southern mountain range, the still icy crests; petals and pollen swirled over the waterways. Somebody said it was Orthodox Easter Day. Along with spring two new internees arrived in Dobrin.

When I entered the dingy office, still dazed by the brilliant sunshine, the floating anther dust, and noticed the folder with the red crosses on it, I thought it was my sudden bedazzlement that made me see the name. But there it was, even the letters of her pseudonym neatly drawn and shaded, and made all the more conspicuous by those glaring red crosses, indicating that she'd been transferred from the Sinistra Colonia hospital.

I always thought of myself as a cool, level-headed man, but now I got all anxious. And did what in places like this is not at all customary: I pumped Colonel Titus Tomoioaga for information. How did she end up here? And who was she, anyway?

"Oh, nobody," he muttered, a bit sleepy. "We got her from the Yellows; they sent her over, out of sheer kindness. If you are that much interested, you'll get to meet her soon enough. You'll be taking down her particulars."

And that's how matters stood that day. Colonia Sinistra, incidentally, was a well-known place. The various wings of the mental hospital—even people who never saw it knew this—were all painted yellow, they glowed in the dark. Among ourselves we referred to the attendants and administrators of the place as the "Yellows."

"And what do you have in mind for her?" I inquired. "You already know where you'll place her?"

"More or less. Colonel Coca Mavrodin-Mahmudia wants to send her straight to the bears, though she's in pretty bad shape. But with Doc Oleinek there, she'll get by. Just think: she talks in all sorts of languages, mixing them up as only crazy people can."

So Coca Mavrodin wanted her to be with the bears. My face must have shown that I wasn't exactly unfazed by this, because Colonel Titus Tomoioaga added reassuringly:

"It's going to be all right, you'll see. Doc knows every language under the sun, they'll get along fine."

Before her treatment Connie Illafeld lived in a community high in the mountains. Her house stood at the upper end of Punte Sinistra, near a watershed and right next the railroad station. It wasn't a real station, only a small junction, with double tracks, plus a short siding where the trains, after making their slow ascent of either side of the mountain, came to a halt, the engine got its fill of water, and waited for the next scheduled train to arrive. On the northern slope the track soon disappeared in a tunnel. The mouth of the tunnel kept belching purplish clouds of smoke for hours after a train passed through it. Smoke stains were visible on the northern wall of Connie Illafeld's house.

Connie Illafeld, as mentioned, was a pseudonym. This reclusive woman, the last of the Illarions, was a glass painter. She daubed antique scenes as well as pictures of cozy life from bygone days on pieces of glass small enough to fit in one's pocket. Orders for these paintings were placed mostly by Jews from Czernowitz and Lemberg, though nobody knew how she managed to get them to her customers across the border.

The woman was well over forty, with green eyes, white skin, and black hair. Forest rangers, road engineers, professional hunters passing through the region tried to get close to her now and then, but it looked as if she was saving herself for someone else. The man who guarded the tunnel, and who never closed his eyes, claimed that some travelling salesman had cozied up to her—on his way back from Galicia he would cross the Tisza river at night and pay her secret visits. But this could well have been the fabrication of an insomniac railroad guard. Everybody knew that impenetrable barbed wire lined the riverbank where the frontier ran. In any case, even if Connie Illafeld did have a secret paramour, he was sent packing that spring. That's when the love of her life appeared on the scene: Béla Bundasian, my foster son.

One evening the long-distance passenger train pulled into Punte Sinistra. Béla Bundasian got off without his luggage, only to get a drink of water—a fresh stream bubbled near the tracks. As he bent over the water, the shirt on his back rode up, his jacket collar lapped over his neck and covered his ears, so he didn't hear the stones crackle under the crossties, or the train either as it began to move. At this elevation the track in both directions inclined downward; when the trainman was ready to go, all he did was release the brakes and the cars began to roll. That day for some reason he didn't wait for the other train to come in before pushing off, so when my foster son straightened out, ready to wipe his mouth, he saw the last cars disappear in the tunnel.

There was only one passenger train a day on that line; anyone who missed it and didn't want to change his travel plans had to wait a whole day for the next one.

It was springtime then too, Palm Sunday, or some such thing; heady fragrances filled the air, and the dark pine forest beyond the clearing echoed with the clatter of birds even after the sun went down. With her skirt hitched up, Connie Illafeld was kneeling on her windowsill and cleaning the panes; her white arm glowed in the twilight. The sound made by the damp paper skidding over the glass must have also seemed alluring. I can just imagine Béla Bundasian, like a sheriff, stopping dead in his tracks in front of her house.

Did Connie Illafeld catch his drift? She certainly did. The hand rubbing the glass relaxed a bit, through her half-closed mouth her pointy white teeth, bathed now in sweet saliva, became visible, her green eyes glittered with unabashed joy—all this was clearly meant for my foster son. Béla Bundasian, being half-Armenian, had skin the colour of vellum, the white of his eyes glistened like oil, his eyebrows were already bushy—one look and anyone would have fallen for him. He knew this about himself and was soon telling people the story of how he got stranded. He was on his way to Moldova, to the Putna paper mill to buy music-paper when, as bad luck would have it (though he wasn't sure about that anymore), he got off the train for a drink of water. And that's how it happened, Connie Illafeld herself could attest to it. Indeed, she had invited him in, told him to take a little rest—and if he was still thirsty, she said, he could help himself, the bucket of water was right there.

The floor in her house was covered with thick woolen blankets. Béla Bundasian politely left his shoes at the door, and as he proceeded in his stockings he accidentally stepped on Connie Illafeld's bare foot—but it felt so nice, he didn't bother to remove it. The walls, the rough-hewn furniture, the cushions, the homespuns all exuded the enticing smell of fresh dough. Cornelia Illarion herself smelled of dough, her downy armpits did, and her chunky, pearl-white thighs, though as to her age, she could have been Béla Bundasian's mother. Unbridled desire was what he smelled, which now, like dough big with rising, spilled out of her. Moments later they were all over each other.

In one of her drawers Connie Illafeld kept a bag of pot pourri; she now scattered the dried flowers, leaves and crushed stems on the blankets, and they luxuriated in this pungently intoxicating smell for several weeks without a break; the windows misted over with emanations of their love. Much later—everything had long been over between them—I took a look at Béla Bundasian's diary, in which he kept a record of those amorous weeks and months—that's how I know all the details. He wrote that he simply couldn't get enough, he just looked at her and got the feeling that she had hungry little pussies even between her toes. He'd just as soon devour her, gulp her down as he would a cup of water. Such love affairs, of course, have their secret way of coming to an end.

In those days I didn't see much of my foster son. When he travelled to Moldova to buy music-paper—he worked as a copyist, actually—he'd stay away for weeks at a time. I was fond of the boy, but I let him live his life, pay his dues; besides, he wasn't my flesh and blood. I firmly believed that you interfered only as a last resort.

But that time came. During one of his long absences a pale-faced stranger came looking for him. He had yellowish eyes, thin lips, and he left a package for him wrapped in newspaper and tied with a string. As soon as the pale-faced stranger left, I opened the package: it contained mimeographed pamphlets written in Polish. Needless to say, I burned the stuff right away, dissolved the ash in water and sprinkled it in the garden. But none of that made any difference: Béla Bundasian had clearly got himself mixed up in something.

After the Polish pamphlet incident, my foster son failed to turn up. I had my suspicions from the start, but where was I going to look for him? I got on the slow train headed for Moldova, and after travelling a whole day arrived in Punta Sinistra, where the air, though freezing cold, was filled with the overpowering smell of hay. By evening the wind had subsided, the warm scent of hay rose from the stables and spread across the hoar-froasted fields. Nevertheless, I was apprehensive; in the light cast by the train rolling toward the tunnel, I could see that her front door had been taped up and sealed; a red cross ribbon on the doorknob was flapping in the wind. At the time, anyone whose place had that sort of signature had to be in a bad way. A red cross on a door or gate was the worst possible sign.

The man guarding the tunnel wasn't in a talkative mood, but he did tell me that she lived there all right, Cornelia Illarion did, in that dark house across the way; or used to, anyway. Not long ago, couldn't be more than a few days, a week at the outside, two men came with an official paper that said she was crazy. They took her away, too, for treatment in the hospital they call Colonia Sinistra.

As for my foster son, Béla Bundasian, I saw him again four years later, here on the Dobrin reservation, in the house of Géza Hutira, the meteorologist. It turned out that the day they had taken Cornelia Illarion away, his old patron, Colonel Velman, arrived on the evening train, and waited for him at the station. Velman was a good friend, one of those uninvited guardian angels who turned up unexpectedly from time to time, to give him all sorts of good advice in the strictest confidence. This time he made no mention of the Polish pamphlets, but he did warn him that his objectionable affairs could have unpleasant repercussions. Rumour had it, he went on, that he spent his time in the country these days, sleeping in the house of a female of unsound mind (whether or not in the same bed remained to be seen), which came perilously close to what the law calls indecent assault. He, old friend that he was, would try to smooth things over, and he may get off with just a few years' internment.

This is as much as I knew about Connie Illafeld when I noticed her name on that folder; soon after that I had her whole file spread out before me. Thus I was able to review comfortably everything that happened, including Colonel Coca Mavrodin's wish to put her on the reservation, with the bears.

Béla Bundasian lived there too now, up near the timber line, with the meteorologist. He learned to read data off the instruments, knew what the position of the weather vanes meant, so that even when he got a pass to go off the premises —once every six months or so, on holidays—he stayed put. On his days off he would visit the bearkeepers and roll dice with them, or play cards, or even tiddlywinks.

It's going to be all right, you'll see." That's what Colonel Titus Tomoioaga told me.

"Still," I said, and would have continued, but stopped, unsure of myself.

"What is it, what's the matter with you?" Colonel Titus Tomoioaga asked, eyeing me now a little more suspiciously.

"Nothing."

I went over the hospital release forms again, then asked for permission to go to the bathroom, which was at the end of the corridor. The truth is I was seized with curiosity, interested no end in that often-imagined, fragrant fleshpot, my foster son's voluptuous woman, a woman I had never seen, though while reading his diary I almost felt jealous.

I accomplished nothing. Out in the corridor all I saw was a sallow-skinned, coughing man in a miner's helmet stretched out on a bench, and next to him, in a tattered quilted jacket, a disheveled, hirsute character at prayer. Both the clasped hands and face of this overgrown fuzzball were covered with a continuous layer of hair.

"Listen," I said to Colonel Titus Tomoioaga, "I don't know what kind of woman we are talking about here. There's no skirt out there. Maybe she bolted."

"She's there, all right."

"All I saw was some miner, and this real shaggy type. There's no one besides those two."

"Well, then she is there."

Connie Illafeld was there, waiting in the corridor. Titus Tomoioaga himself led her in. He had first tried to call her by her name but then realized that she might not recognize it, so she went out, slipped his hands under her arms and helped her in. It was the shaggy one.

Her face, too, was covered with a silky coat of hair; burning between all that facial fuzz were her green eyes. So she didn't even know her name. I tried to see levity in all this, seeking out Colonel Titus Tomoioaga's eyes for a quick, knowing glance. And though my heart wasn't in it, I even cracked a smile, as one does when seeing an obvious mental case.

"In that place you forget everything," explained Colonel Titus Tomoioaga. "It flows out of you like loose shit."

"But that she should forget her own..."

"Maybe that's not even so bad."

"And another thing. You may see it differently, but the hair is a bit much for my taste."

"No question about it," winked Colonel Titus Tomoioaga. "That was some treatment. Must have got an overdose of something. I wouldn't be surprised if she grew more hair somewhere else."

"On her pussy, you mean?"

"There. Maybe someone will help her look for it."

When I was done with the paperwork, Colonel Titus Tomoioaga asked me to take the future bearkeeper over to the workshop. That's where they made the metal nametags which she, too, was going to wear now around her neck.

Just then Doc Oleinek, the chief bearkeeper, the man who was supposed to be proficient in every known language, walked into the office. He struck up a conversation with Connie Illafeld, and they seemed to understand each other pretty well. He ended up walking her over to the shop.

"I can see you are nervous," Colonel Titus Tomoioaga said to me. "But there is nothing to be nervous about. She'll be in good hands."

"Like hell..." I blurted out, careless again.

"What was that?"

"Nothing, honest."

When Cornelia Illarion came back with Doc Oleinek, she was already wearing the shiny nametag around her hairy neck; it hung on a brand new chain, the ends of which were soldered to make sure that tag would never come off. The name once worn by a luscious seductress now belonged to—let's face it—an animal.

Before their departure, Doc Oleinek, my old drinking companion, turned to me for a few minutes. I learned from him that my foster son, Béla Bundasian, got a special leave for the day, though he wasn't even due for one. They drove down together from the reservation in a railcar, and right now he was having a drink at the station—the forest rangers were given a little wood alcohol there every afternoon.

"Come with us if you want to see him," Doc Oleinek said on his way out. "The two of you can have a sip or two. Today is Orthodox Easter."

"No, I don't feel like it today," I said.

"You have a message for him, then?"

"No, nothing right now."

Doc Oleinek began walking down the corridor, and shaggy Connie Illafeld followed him like a faithful dog, her nametag dangling from her neck. The little metal plate gleamed in the sunny courtyard, its reflection dancing on the wall and the trees—it was brand new. From now on anyone looking at her would immediately know who they were dealing with. The two were heading toward the narrow-gauge railway station, where my foster son, Béla Bundasian, was waiting by the railcar.

Before long my days as a corpse guard were over; I was sacked and had to hand my place over to my successor, Toni Tescovina. The morning I let him in on the tricks of the trade I found the body of Connie Illafeld, alias Cornelia Illarion laid out on the gray stone slab. The blood on her neck, from which the nameplate had been ripped off by someone—in a rage, I should think—was dark blue, the colour of congealed blueberry juice, or of, say, Ruthenian boyars' blood —Illarion blood. By the time she was brought into that dark chamber her stiff, filthy rags had been cut off her body with a knife or with scissors. When you touched her, she felt colder than the stone slab she lay on. Her fuzz, having lost its sheen, was like a layer of black hoarfrost that with a faint rustle kept flaking off. By the end of our shift she lay there completely naked.

"Where do you usually wash up?" Toni Tescovina asked as we walked out. "I am going into town. Géza Kökény said on the way here that tomorrow is the second day of Easter. And I've got all this hair on me."

"Oh damn," I grumbled. "Had enough of Easter. As for the hair, people around you better get used to it. Let‘em find out that working here can get... well, hairy." ß

Translated by Ivan Sanders