Doris Plantus-Runey 5,542 words

1230 E. South Blvd.

Troy, MI 48085

Druney5884@wideopenwest.com

The Easter Candle

Leiba Zibal, the innkeeper at Podeni, was lost in thought at a table under the awning in front of the dughiană, waiting for the coach that should have arrived by now. It is overdue by nearly an hour.

The story of Zibal’s life is a long and not so happy history, but when he is given to one of his bouts of fever it is something of a distraction for him to sort out, one by one, the more significant events of it…

Huckster, peddler of small goods, hustler (sometimes even worse, maybe), hawker of old clothes; after that a tailor and shoe-shiner in a dismal little alley in Iaşi—he tried them all following the accident that caused him to lose his job as stock boy at a large wine cellar and shop.

Two porters, of the most common sort, were lowering a cask of wine on a yoke into the cellar under the supervision of the young Zibal. A misunderstanding had erupted between them over how to divide the wages, when one of them had grabbed a hunk of wood that lay nearby and struck the forehead of his comrade, the latter falling dazed and full of blood to the ground.

The boy, seeing such savagery, had let out a cry of alarm, but the thug had raised his hand in a threatening manner as he hurried past him out of the courtyard, and Zibal had fainted from fright. When he finally returned to his employer after languishing in bed for some months, his place had been filled.

Then the great battle for life had begun, compounded further by his marriage to Sura. Patience, however, can tire out even a cruel fate, for Sura’s brother, the innkeeper at Podeni, had died and the inn, the cellar and the wine store was left to Zibal, who took over the business and ran it on his own account.

Here he found himself for the past five years.

He has a tidy sum of money saved, and a good wine inventory too, the kind of stock that always fetches a decent profit. Yes, Leiba had escaped poverty, but they are all sickly, he, his wife and child, all three—yellow fever.

…And the people of Podeni are bad and quarrelsome! …curses, insults, offences, poisonous accusations through vitriol…But, oh—the threats!

A threat is worse than a blow to a soul who trembles easily. That which presently tries Leiba more than his fit of fever is a threat.

"Ah! goi ticălos!" he thinks to himself, sighing.

The miscreant Gentile is Gheorghe—wherever he might be—a man with whom Ziebal had had a most unpleasant exchange.

Gheorghe, you see, had come to the inn one fall morning, weary of the road. He had just been released from the hospital (so he said), and was looking for work. The innkeeper, Zibal, hired him. But Gheorghe soon revealed himself to be a morose and uncouth man. He swore constantly and mumbled to himself in the courtyard. Indeed, he was a bad servant, lazy and rude…and he stole.

One day he had threatened the Jewish housewife, already overburdened (and who happened to be swearing at him, but justifiably so), with a blow to the stomach…another time he set the hound upon little Strul.

Well, Leiba immediately made him an accounting and sent him packing. But Gheorghe didn’t want to go; violently he insisted that he had been contracted for a year. Then the innkeeper said he is going up the hill to the town hall to request help from the local authorities to have him removed. Poised to attack his master, Gheorghe quickly reached his hand inside his vest, yelling: "Iuda!"

Fortunately, a coach full of customers was arriving. Gheorghe began to smirk, saying,

"Ah, but what has frightened you, Master Leiba? …Look, I’m leaving now." And then leaning over the counter looking grimly toward Leiba, who had shrunk back as far as he could, he whispered to him:

"Wait for me on Easter night, Master Leiba, we will crack red eggs together…and by the way…you should know that I too have made an accounting of you!"

Then the customers had entered the wine shop.

"May we see each other again in good health on the night of the Resurrection, Master Leiba!" added Gheorghe as he departed.

Leiba went to the town hall, and then to the sub-prefect to file a complaint against the man who threatened him, asking for protection. The local deputy, a young and cheerful man, accepted first the modest peşcheş Leiba Zibal had brought, afterwards, he began to laugh at the frightened Jew and made fun of him. Leiba warmly insisted on making him understand the gravity of the situation, how the inn was isolated far from the village and such a ways off from the road besides. But the deputy, now with a more serious air, counseled him to behave himself; why, he shouldn’t even dare think such a thing, lest it come true, in a village where people are already bad, and poor, and easily incited.

A few days later, it so happened that a functionary and two assistants on horseback came inquiring after Gheorghe—of all people. Seems he was suspected of some offense. Ah, if only Leiba had been more patient, at least until the arrival of these men!...But Gheorghe was who knows where, by now…

Even though this had happened a while ago, still, in the mind of a shivering man

gripped with fever, Gheorghe’s actions had now repeated themselves, the fresh, clear impressions, of the movement of his hand wanting to retrieve something from inside his vest, his threatening words. How was such a memory aroused so casually?

It was Easter Saturday.

Up on the hill, in a village some two kilometers’ remove through ponds, the church bells were ringing…and you hear them so strangely you have feverish chills: now very loud, now hardly at all...The night that approached was Easter night; the due date of Gheorghe’s promise…

"But perhaps they have caught him by now!"

…Anyway Zibal would remain at Podeni only until the next quarter when he paid off his lease. Then, with his capital, he could open a beautiful business in Iaşi. There, in the marketplace, health willing, he would dwell close to the commissioner, and he would honor him, the deputy, the sergeant…whoever pays, afterall, is watched over well, protected, as it were.

In a marketplace that big, the night is full of noise and light, not darkness and silence as in the lonely valley of the Podeni. In fact, there is an inn in Iaşi—there on the corner oh, what a great spot for a wine cellar—a tavern where the girls sing at the Café Chantan all night long. What a noisy happy life! There you find at any hour, day or night, the commissioner with the girls and other big shots.

Who needs this headache here where business is declining steadily since the laying of train tracks that avoid the bogs and marshes?

"Leiba," Sura called from inside, "the bells. The coach is arriving."

The Podeni Valley is a gorge closed by four sides of thick-wooded hills. On the more sunken southern side, there is a cluster of deep marshes above which rise thick brushes of sedge from the gushing springs beneath the hills. There, in the middle of the valley, between the swampy side and the higher rise toward the north, stands Leiba’s inn. It is an old structure of stone, healthy like a small fortress, but even though the earth is marshy, the inn has very dry walls and cellars.

At the sound of Sura’s voice, Leibal rises heavily off the chair, stretching his tired limbs: he looks long toward the horizon in the east; not so much as a mention of a carriage.

"It’s not coming, he answered the balabustă, "it just seemed so to you..." And he sat himself down again. Very fatigued, the man crosses his arms on the table, and lays his head down, which is burning with fever.

The heat of the spring sun had begun to warm the surface of the swamps, a pleasant lethargy invaded the man’s nerves, and his mind began to wind around the spindle of his infirmed conscience slower and slower, little by little, soaking up the forms and colors of his imaginings…

He nodded off…

…Sura had been missing from the house with the child for a long time. Leiba walked through the door of the tavern to look for her in the street. On the wide road there is lots of live traffic, an uninterrupted hum of wheels on coach springs, accompanied by the rhythmic knocking of the shoe-shod hooves on the gleam of the asphalt.

At once, however, the circulation stops suddenly and he sees a great throng of people from the Copou neighborhood walking, gesticulating and yelling with great animation.

The crowd seemed to be escorting someone: soldiers and a sentinel and all manner of people. Curious onlookers crowded into all the doorways of the shops.

"Aha!" thinks Leiba, "they have nabbed a thief!"

The procession drew near. Sura peels herself from the multitude and climbs up next to Leiba on the steps of the tavern.

"What is happening, Sura?"

"It’s a madman escaped from Golia."

"We should close the shop so he doesn’t get in."

"He is bound now; but just recently he got loose. He fought with all the soldiers…a wretched Gentile from the crowd shoved some poor Jew into the lunatic, the lunatic bit the Jew’s cheek."

From the steps Leiba had a good vantage point. On the step below Sura watches with her child in her arms.

Truly it is a furious madman that two men are holding on either side; his fists are tied tight with heavy leather, one over the other. He is a man with a huge build, the head of a bull, black hair, thick, the beard and the mustache coarse and scraggly. His shirt, open and disheveled from the fight, reveals a broad chest covered like his head, with bushy hair. He is barelegged, his mouth is full of blood as continues chewing the strands of hair he had ripped with his teeth from the beard of the Jew.

Then everyone stops…why?

The gendarmes untie the lunatic’s hands.

The crowd stands aside making a large space around him. The madman casts his eyes about and finally arrests his burning gaze upon Zeibal’s door; he gnashes his teeth, he aims rapidly towards the three steps and, in an instant, he attacks the child’s head with his right hand, and with the left, Sura’s, cracking one against the other with such force that he confounds them like two soft-boiled eggs…just like that. And the sound of those two skulls smacking into each other makes a loud cracking sound, with which nothing can quite compare.

Leiba, with his heart in knots, like a man falling from an immeasurable height, was given to call out:

"An entire world intentionally leaves me the bait of a madman!"

But his mute voice did not obey his will.

"Get up, Jew!" someone yelled, cracking a wicker switch loudly on the table top." "What a cruel joke," said Sura from the doorway of the shop, "you stupid peasant—scaring a man like that who’s asleep!"

Leiba jumped to his feet.

"Did I scare you, Jew?" asked the prankster laughing. You sleep at lunchtime, eh? Better get up because your customers are coming. Look! The mail coach is arriving.

And then, as was his stupid custom (which irritated the Jew), he seized Leiba in his arms and began to tickle him.

"Leave me in peace!" yelled the innkeeper, tearing himself away and heaving him off with all his might. Can’t you see I’m not well? Let me be!"

The coach finally arrives, almost three hours behind. There are two travelers who invite the coach driver to join them at the same table. According to their conversation, the circumstances were soon perfectly understood. Overnight, at a postal stop higher up, an attack and a murder took place at the inn of a Jew. The murdered Jew also boarded horses there for exchange. The thieves had robbed him too, and before others in the village would find out, these (curious) travelers were able to investigate the crime scene at their leisure.

Five victims. But oh, the details! If they hadn’t had found them robbed as they were, one would have conjectured it was an act of cruel revenge or the work of religious fanatics. In anecdotes about illuminated sectarians they sometimes discuss the execution of such absurd and savage crimes.

Leiba shuddered, shaken by a violent bout of fever, and listened madly.

But then something followed that should have filled the coach driver with respect. The two youths were, in point of fact, students—one in philosophy, one in medicine. They were on their way to their hometowns for a holiday. But now, they were engaged in a heated academic debate about the crime and its motives. The medical student (if we must be just), was better prepared than the philosopher.

Atavism…alcoholism, with its subsequent pathology…birth defect…deformity… paludism…and then neurosis! So many and so many conquests of modern science…but the possibility of a case of devolution!

Darwin; Haeckel… Lombroso…

At the mention of reversion the driver made some big eyes, in which shined a profound admiration for modern scientific advances.

"It is evident," adds the medical student. "That’s why the actual criminal, taken as a type, has arms that are too long and legs that are too short, a narrow, rounded forehead, overdeveloped occipital; his form is of a characteristic bestiality and harshness, with thrashing, loosened eyes; he is a rudiment of man: he is, how should I say, a beast who, only of late, managed to stand upright on just two legs and lift his head up, to the sky, toward the light!"

At 20 years of age, after so much emotion, after a wonderful serving of wine so well born and well raised as Zibal’s wine, a phrase of lyrical nuance, even on the part of a medical student, is fitting: (between Darwin and Lombroso, the enthusiastic youth had found time to take a whiff of a little Schopenhauer)—"to the sky, toward the light!"

Zibal was, of course, far from apprehending the "luminous" theory, whose lofty words and subtleties of thought tumbled about in the humid air of the Podeni, maybe for the very first time.

That which Leiba did understand, however, better than anyone, better even than the present orator, was the striking illustration of the theory. The case of atavism, or reversion, was something Leiba was all too well acquainted with in meat and bone: it was the portrait of Gheorghe. This portrait, which until only recently possessed the most fundamental of lines, now re-awoke in spirit with a perfect palpability down to the most insignificant detail.

The coach was now far away. Leiba had followed it with his gaze until, cornering to the left, it disappeared after the hill. The sun also slipped behind the western ridge, and night began to spin a web of sweet forms of the valley of the Podeni.

The morose innkeeper fell upon many ruminations in his mind over everything he had heard…In the still of the night, lost in darkness, one man, two women and two fragile children, were taken without warning from the wholesome arms of sleep by the beast’s hand with the human body, and sacrificed one by one…The insane cries of the child from the sharp pain of the cut that split open his stomach…the throat lacerated with an axe, from whose gaping wound a deafening death rattle followed every gurgling spurt of blood…and the last sacrifice which, disoriented in a corner, assisted in all of this by waiting its turn…The process worse than the execution, the Jew without protection in the hands of the Gentiles…the crania too weak for the invincible hands of the mad man of late.

Leiba’s lips, trembling quickly and parched with fever, followed the mechanical thought. A powerful spasm seized him from the back of his neck; he entered the corridor of the inn with braided steps.

Without doubt—thinks Sura—Leiba is not well at all, he is very sick; Leiba has "ideas in his head"…otherwise, what other possible meaning could his every actions have had the past few days, and especially what he did today?

He closed the bar before lighting the lamps, exactly when the Sabbath had ended. Three times customers, recognized by their voices, beat on the door of the inn, shouting, "open up!" With every startling rap he jumped and stopped Sura slowly, and with frightened eyes said:

"Don’t you move…I don’t want the Gentiles to enter here."

He passed under the beam in the corridor leading to the inn and set himself to sharpen an axe for cutting wood on the stone step. He shook so that he couldn’t stand on his feet but he didn’t want to rest. That which is most worrisome of all is, he, Leiba, at her persistent questions, responded harshly and sent the balabusta to sleep, commanding her to extinguish the light directly. At first she protested, but so curtly did the man repeat his command, that she, in all bitterness, had to submit, resigning to postpone the meaning of these circumstances for later.

Sura put out the light and lay down to sleep next to Strul.

The woman had a point...Leiba was in truth, sick.

It is the full of night. Zibal is sitting for a long time in the doorway that gives way to the corridor and he listens…

Uncertain noises come from far off…seems like hoof-beats of horses, drowned, rumbling, mysterious and agitated conversations. Such a high tension of attentiveness sharpens the sense of hearing in the loneliness of night: when the eye is unarmed and unable, the hearing seems to fight as if to see also.

But it is not an opinion...On the road coming from the street is the beating of hooves. Zibal gets up and wants to move closer to the large door of the corridor. The door is closed tight with a heavy wooden crossbeam, whose two ends are further set in holes in the walls at either side of the hallway. At the first step, grains of sand under his shoe makes too indiscreet a grinding sound. Zibal removes his feet from his shoes and is left in his stockings. In this way, without an appreciable sound to an ear that hasn’t been alerted, he goes to the door of the corridor precisely when the riders dismount on the right, in keeping with the horses’ steps. They speak very quietly, but not so much so that Leiba cannot apprehend very well these few words:

"He’s gone to bed early…"

"But if he is gone somewhere?"

"His turn will come another time…but I would have liked…"

Nothing else could be understood; those people moved too far away.

A crushing exhaustion settled on the nape of Zibal’s neck

Leiba had felt his strength give out and he sat down on the threshold. Between the oppressive thoughts that rolled around in his head, he wasn’t able capture even one entire idea, not one decision. Distracted, he entered the tavern, struck a match and lit a little lamp with petrol.

It is but an idea of light; the wick was so low that the flame stayed hidden in the interior of the zinc and copper capsule; only by the grace of the machine did some very thin vertical bands of a light appear all around, nearly completely dead…but it is enough to see the familiar corners of the inn well enough. Ah! It is a much smaller difference between the sun and the smallest spark than between this and the total darkness.

The clock was ticking on the wall. This monotonous sound irritated Zibal. Our man put his hand on the pendulum that swayed and arrested its movement. His mouth was dry. He was thirsty. He washed a little glass in the sink with three legs next to the makeshift table, and wanted to pour a shot of good whiskey from a flask, but the neck of the bottle clinked loudly against the lip of the glass…these sounds were even more enervating. But with all the will he could summon to overcome his feebleness, his second try had no greater success.

Then he renounced the glass, letting it to fall lazily back into the water, and swallowed a few times right from the flask. He put the bottle back in its place which, touching the wooden board, produced a frightful knock. He stopped a moment, drowning with fear. After, he took the lamp and put it on the recessed window sill, which was carved into the wall toward the corridor. On the door, on the block and on the wall opposite the corridor some wide bands of a light appeared painted with little more than an imagining.

Zibal again sat by the threshold, pricking his ears in reconnaissance.

Then the crunching sound of sand crushed beneath the sole of a foot. But he is in his stockings and didn’t even move so much as his foot…The second sound of pulverized grains of sand…and then more…it is certain that someone is outside, here, very close. Leiba gets up pressing his chest with his hand, trying to turn back a rebel knot that rose in his throat.

They speak softly.

"Didn’t I say he’s sleeping—didn’t I say so? I saw when he put out the light."

"So much the better. We’ll catch the whole nest."

"I’ll open the door. I know his ways. We’ll take care of the window…the crossbar passes here…"

And he felt the man’s fingers tracing the plan from the outside, measuring distances on the wood.

A large drill could be heard gnawing the thick dry board of old oak….Zibal needs to lean against something; he props himself with his left palm against the door and with the right he covers his eyes. Then, by way of an inexplicable caprice of the most intimate game, the following words were heard in the ears of our man inside, very loudly and quite clearly:

It was undoubtedly Sura’s voice…a warm ray of hope…a moment of blessing…again it is just another dream!...Suddenly Leiba pulls back his left hand: the tip of the instrument penetrating the wood pricked his palm.

In the brain that burns with fire, the sight of the drill took on some inconceivable dimensions. The tool, rotating continuously, grew infinitely, and the bore hole became bigger and bigger, so big, finally, that in its round frame, the monster could appear standing on its feet without having to bend down. That which went on in that brain exceeded the sphere of human thought: life had risen up to a level of exaltation in which everything could be seen, everything heard, everything felt enormously tactile in chaotic proportions.

…The work outside continues with method and perseverance. Four times in a row Leiba saw the twisted metal teeth boring through to his side of the door, and pulling back out again.

"Now, bring the saw…" said Gheorghe.

The thin tongue of the saw passes through the first bore hole and begins to chew in fast and regular movements. The plan was easy to understand: four holes in four corners of a square; between them the saw cuts the lines; the drill is lodged in the center of the square; when the piece is totally freed from the entire body of the wood, it is pulled out; in the empty space remaining, a strong hand is introduced, it seizes the crossbar, gives it to one side and…the Gentiles are in Leiba’s house.

And in a few minutes, that same drill bit will be the instrument of torture for Zibal and all of his kind…two lashes will hold the victim down cruciform, and Gheorghe, with his heel on their stomach, will slowly force the drill bit into the live bone of his chest, as into a timber of dead wood, churning still deeper, ever deeper, until it touches the heart, whose wild palpitations it will stop and, thus, fix it to the spot.

A death sweat washed over Zibal’s whole body: the man’s joints are drenched in it and slowly he falls to his knees, like a bull that collapses beneath the blow to its neck so penetrating, that it must abandon itself.

"Do it! Fix it to the spot!...he thought lost…do it! Fix it to the spot.!"

And he had remained dumfounded with his eyes bulging toward the light from the window. For a few moments he stood stone-still in another world, but suddenly at the same time:

"Go ahead," he repeated smiling with a furious blink; "go ahead! Fix it to the spot!"

And then a strange phenomenon took place in this being, this man, a complete upheaval; his trembling stopped, his anguish disappeared and, his person, now decomposed as a result of such a long crisis, had taken on a bizarre serenity.

He stood erect with the confidence of a strong and healthy man who aims at a target easily acquired.

A line between the two superior points of the square was nearly done. Leiba draws closer to observe the play of the tool with genuine curiosity. His grin now characterizes him with even greater definition. He moves his head as if he would say:

The saw was gnawing the last fibers next to the hole toward which it aimed and then began work on the inferior holes.

"There are three more!" thought Leiba, and with a precaution of the most challenged hunter he entered smartly into the tavern. He searched beneath the makeshift table, took something, went back with the same tact, hiding the object he held in his hand, as if he feared the indiscretion of the walls, and went by his creeping fingertips to the door.

But then, something queer: the work outside stopped completely…nothing more is heard.

"What’s this? Could they have left? Did they go?" These thoughts flashed like lightning through the mind of the man inside. And at this possibility, he bit his lower lip, overtaken by a desolation, the likes of which have never been heard.

"Haha!" It was an ugly illusion: the work starts once more, and he sets himself to continue his study with the heartbeats of one possessed of the warmest interest. Resolved, our man was worked over by an incomprehensible wish to see the job done as quickly as possible.

"Faster," thought Leiba, with impatience, "faster!"

Now the bells were ringing once more on the hill.

"Faster, man, daybreak is upon us!" said a voice outside, emboldened almost by the will of the man inside.

The worker started with greater activity. A little more movement and all the holes of the square are united.

At last!

The drill bit slowly eases the square out from its four corners…A large and muscular hand enters…before it can touch the crossbeam it is searching after, two cries ring out as Zibal had forcefully wrapped the free broad end of the log fixed to the door frame with a rope…

The free broad end was an ingenious combination: a long rope tied to the end of the log: at an appropriate distance, in the place where the cut out square would disappear, Leiba held a loop open with his left hand, during which time he held taught the other end with his right hand. At the appointed moment, Zibal let go of the loop and, with both hands, seized the other end rapidly and, with a swift supreme tug, pulled the entire arm inside.

…In an instant the operation was completed… Two shouts joined in, one of perish, the other of triumph: the hand was now to fixed the spot.

After that, one could hear the sound of quickening footsteps running away. Gheorghe’s comrades had deserted Zibal’s prey, snared with stunning intelligence.

The Jew had hastened into the tavern, took the lamp, and with a sure twist raised the wick as high as it would go: the captive lights between the grates poured out cheerfully and victoriously, giving life decidedly back to the nebulous forms in his surroundings.

Zibal went with the lamp into the corridor. The thief moaned heavily; by the spasm of the arm, it was clear he had renounced a useless struggle. The hand was swollen and the fingers arced….it seemed as though they wanted to strike. The Jew moved closer to it with the lamp…A chill: the fevers returned again—he had held the light too close, so that in his trembling, he had touched the hand of the thief with the hot glass: a violent searing and contraction of the fingers occurred followed by a deafening shriek.

At the sight of this phenomenon Zibal came around…his eyes betrayed an eccentric inspiration. He started to laugh with such power that the beam over the corridor shook, and he hurried back into the tavern.

Day was breaking.

Sura awoke at once…in her sleep it seemed she had heard some horrible howls. Leiba wasn’t in the room. Everything that had happened earlier in the day returned to her mind. Something bad had happened. She had lept out of bed and made some light. Leiba’s bed was untouched. He had not slept at all.

Where was he? The woman cast her eyes to the window; on the hill in the front, a swarm of small, lively lights that moved, flickered, jumped, here hiding themselves, there appearing again. They were coming from the Resurrection service.

Sura cracked open the window just a little and heard muffled sounds at the door. Nervously, she descended the stairs in great haste. The corridor was brightly lit. Coming toward the threshold, she had been struck by a terrible sight.

There sat Zeibal on a wooden chair, with his elbows on his knees and his chin propped in his hands, like a sage who was trying to apprehend the subtle secret of nature from a mixture of many elements that has eluded him for so long and vexes him. His gaze was fastened on a hanged object, black and of ambiguous form, under which, on another chair at an appropriate height, burns a big torch.

Zibal gazes without blinking at the process of decomposition of a hand that surely would not have spared him. He didn’t hear the howls from the unfortunate wretch outside; for the moment he was too interested in what he could see than to hear anything. He followed every contortion insatiably, all the strange contractions of the fingers, afterwards, the numbness overcoming each digit, one by one; they were like the appendages of a roach that cringe tightly, then stretch, agitating in extravagant movements, more exaggerated, more renounced, until diminished to slow stiffening at the mercy of a cruel child playing a cruel game.

It was over. The hand had been cooked and swelled slowly without making a move.

Sura shrieked.

Zibal made her sign not to disturb him. The heavy smell of burned meat permeated the corridor; there were small popping sounds and hissing.

"Leiba! What is it?" asked the woman.

Day was fully breaking…Sura leaped and pulled open the crossbar. The door opened from the wall, dragging Gheorghe’s body, hanged by its right arm, behind it. The crowd of villagers, still holding their burning Easter candles, poured inside.

"What is it? What is it?"

At once they understood what had happened.

Zibal who, until now had not moved, rose gravely to his feet. He made himself room to pass, quietly pushing people aside, out of his way.

"What was the reason for this, Jew?" someone asked.

"Leiba Zibal," said the innkeeper with a high tone and gesture, "is going to Iaşi to tell the rabbi that Leiba Zibal is not a Jew. Leiba Zibal is a Gentile, because Leiba Zibal lit an Easter candle for Christ!"

And the man went slowly toward the hill in the east, like a worthy traveler who knows that a long journey does not begin with a hasty step.

Caragiale

Bucovina Mica