Lex Luthor
Cap. 1
It was more about dusk. It was about sunset. The sky had grown red,
but now it started to darken. The sun had gone down. The air was
red-hot. All was reddened. Not the sky, the sky was dark. Because
the sunset. But the rest was reddened. Nay, ‘t was so reddened as of
a burning heat, like a torpor, ‘t was a wilted orangish as of a
strong heat. It had been a strong heat all the weeks before and it
still was an intense heat, it seemed to maintain so, it didn’t
cease, and as for the colours, ‘t was more of a reddened
red-orangish such. And this ‘gish was yielding a state of torpor but
not of numbness, ‘t was so hot that you couldn’t remain wilted for
that torpor that was benumbing you mildly. At first it was easy. And
a sunset, that was driving you crazy. Completely. People were
looking in the shine and they couldn’t see the horizon line. Because
of the thermic shock everything seemed more reddened and you were
looking ten meters distance and the air was boiling up all-around,
so it was a damn thermic shock that you couldn’t mark out the sharp,
the distinction between forms, as for the photos, none made out a
sharp image, that’s why you can’t find photos of that time, or to
join them end to end. You’re looking at somebody near you and it was
like looking in a stove. You’ve looked in the stove, you were
pissing in the bed at night. Well, it depends on the stove, but at
that time all stoves were red-hot. Everything was red-hot. And when
you’re looking this burnings, the eyes were burned in your head. The
eye sockets were as holes punched by bright kindled embers, but you
could see through that light. I can’t say what you’ve seen because
it blinded you completely and you could see nothingghhh. But a red,
warm light. And the air, nobody was breathing, you couldn’t breathe
that air because of the burning heat. And an
orange-stunk-up-with-red atmosphere. But not only the sky and not
only the air and the eyes and the stoves were red-hot. The women
were also hot. The savarin, at least, you couldn’t find it at all,
not at all, nothingghh. Or if you’ve found it, it was without that
red jelly over for it couldn’t be seen because all the cakes were
red. All Bucharest was like this. In the whole Bucharest, in all
sweetshops you could find nothing but those red cakes. You didn’t’
make any difference between choux-a-la-crème and éclair or éclair
and Negro cake with a tower. The same for the sweet cherries. They
were red. And the greenish fondants were also red. Or something like
a pink-stunk-up-with-red. And it seemed that because of heat it
dropped I don’t know how some orange more
orange-to-pink-stunk-up-with-red-in-it. But I can’t explain how it
reached, that red in that pink, who was pouring it out, somebody
must have put it in there, so that it was like this when it
appeared. And there is another aspect. Nobody ever saw anything like
this red, neither before nor after. Formerly you could make the
distinction. Now, we can’t even talk about it. It’s impossible, you
can’t make any distinction, I think it remained so because of the
heat. The colours mix thermically and they all seem to you mixed
with red. In which you pour out, just as an illusion, some
orange-to-pink-stunk-up-with-red-in-it. To your sorrow. And that red
was redder more towards the twilight and especially at the North
Station. There were the flames bigger. In the rest they were
smaller, more smouldering because there were bornbandments* in the
last days. I think that in Berceni there were no flames because it
wasn’t in the city area. It was the parish of Berceni. And when you
arrived in the city you entered through Vergului, Vergului
Athenaeum, respectively today it’s written there Milion Sexi Bar,
but everybody knows what it really was there. In that part the
flames were smaller. But that redness was all the same, everywhere,
and that heat was there, that burning heat was there. It was on
23-rd of August 1944. At that time Lex Luthor was born...
Cap.2
About that time Lex
Luthor was born. In America. His parents got
lost when they were coming with the emigrants boat Barlad to America
and aftathat** his mother gave him birth at one of their aunts in
America and when he grew up a little after a while those ships
Barlad were still coming with emigrants in Memphis and Lex Luthor
who was at his tender age he was just a child living at his aunt he
was going to watch them and one day he remembered something from the
past and as he was looking at the Barlad that returned loaded with
sand at last he got lost on a ship and the ship Barlad not noticing
that Lex Luthor was aboard the captain commanded the sailing and
after a short supply in La Venta port where it is said that the
captain had a mistress they didn’t stop till Zanzibar where they
took Cocofifi and finally they landed on the Romanian shore, near
Calarasi. In Zanzibar they made a hairbreadth escape from a group of
ships of a group of pirates, which were much likely of a grouping.
That’s the reason they escaped. Well, let’s forget about Zanzibar
and his parents who probably about that time lost their way at the
carnival in New Orleans, ‘t happened in a Mardi Gras Thursday, the
carnival. There were in that time groups of critics and puritanical
organizations that were criticizing the carnival, mostly after the
arriving of those girls from Cuba, and they were saying this
carnival was much of a mass-media success and anyway it is facile to
make a carnival. Later there were others who reflected more and they
said maybe it is not facile. The girls from Cuba were anyhow
criticized by the girls from the French Quarter. ‘T wasn’t an easy
job.
Nevertheless Lex went in Calarasi with Cocofifi and later when
they’ve grown up they’ve married and they lived peacefully nearby
Calarasi, in a locality. Someday Lex Luthor*.
Till one day when Cocofifi returned from Calarasi and brought some
bread and fish packed in an Austrian magazine. The fish was some
Danube blue mackerel and shark bought from the alimentary shop in
Techirghiol and the bread was fresh bread. In a word, turtz
brand***, well, Lex Luthor took everything and unpacked and started
to read the Austrian magazine. It was called Austernibelungen and he
was going to find out that at that time of contemporary art this was
considered a kind of Flashout well known in all Austria, Europe and
America and even in Milano. Cocofifi prepared the dinner and after
they’ve eaten they both started to read from the magazine about
contemporary art in the world. All over the world. And they liked it
and after that they subscribed and they’ve read more and more,
because they liked it. They were sitting on the verandah and they
were talking about their readings and they were looking as the sun
was going down on the Bulgarian shore and the water became blue, it
was a strange bluishness to a vague greenish and it went to
turquoises shaded in blue as the sun set down and it became vaguely
blue from the sunset so. And the blue went darkened slowly slowly
over the choir of the greenish frogs from the surroundings lakes.
One day Cocofifi told Lex Luthor that it isn’t anymore space in the
house because of the magazines. Well, it would have been enough
space but anyway a new stage started in Lex Luthor’s life. And
Cocofifi’s.
They thought what to do. And they thought about going in Bucharest
to see anyhow how things went on for they’ve been reading in the
issues of the Austrian magazine about the artists from Bucharest. In
any case, it was worthing. It was worthing selling everything and
leaving the place. They couldn’t sell the house for it hadn’t
windows, it had only some boards nailed in the windows, but it was a
matter of feeling so they’ve decided to sell a part of the Austrian
magazines namely the publicity part and that with the writings of
our critics.
And they’ve sold it through the Internet from their place at that
time to an American company interested in it.
It was 1946. Just when they arrived in the front of the North
Station in Bucharest, there was great ebullition in town, it was a
big banner in front of the station, which was written on it about
the inauguration of the “Muzeul de Arta Moderna”**** of the town and
the peasants from Berceni called it stupidly Moma instead of Mamo.
They went together with a flood of people at the Museum to see the
inauguration and they were thinking how lucky they were to arrive
here just when such event took place. People came from all over the
world. Among the international presences they’ve remarked those whom
they knew from Austernibelungen magazine there were surrealists lead
by Breton who was saying that in ’47 the surrealism would move to
Bucharest, there were also the American abstractionists de Kooning
and Pollock and Guston, there were also some cubists who were
standing together with the others Romanians and they were in great
fashion and totally out of fashion, there were as well officials of
the Pertu Gorza government who had received a medal of friend of the
arts fact that it would be proved in ’48 when he had already said
that he would sent in jail the whole generation of surrealists,
actually very few went to jail for some of them have turned on to
realism and others have moved to other places, and others more
skillfully have succeeded to find their way somehow. And there was
also Mondrian and it was beautiful and a lot of people and a nice
weather and the building was a famous palace that just has been
restored and it has been added a brand new ultramodern wing. Pollock
has been staying for a while in a residence where he organized some
workshops about the beginnings of the performance in his painting.
Knowing all these Lex Luthor and Cocofifi applied for Pollock’s
workshop particularly because a scholarship was offered and a
lodging and free of charge Internet at the new opened library at
Mamo. It has been an extraordinary month. They’ve met a lot of young
guys and had many long discussions and there were some poets and
talked about the death of the surrealism. Through the poets Dinu
Marinescu and Lucian Tanasescu they contacted some American poets
who were talking about a new concept, postmodernism, there were
sayings in some circles about the necessity of a Museum of
Postmodernism in town or at least it was imperative to create a
center to deal with it. Lex Luthor and Cocofifi were staying calm
and were continuing their studies on the theories applicability and
information delivery.
They’ve rent a house with an attic close to the tower near the Greek
Embassy and they were looking at the little Greek temple nearby and
they’re thinking how Petre Antonescu’s project would stand there
where once it had been The People House. It has been built there as
well a nice esplanade where the two young people although they were
extremely young went in the evening to look together with other
young people at the beautiful view of the town offered by that
place. However the esplanade has been criticized for its resemblance
with the image of Via del Babuino seen from the left side as you
have Piazza del Popolo behind. A bunch of imbeciles, those critics,
considered our young people, but anyhow they were only a few so they
didn’t matter, those imbeciles.
Mamo was functioning excellent, a succession of interesting exhibits
have been continuing and a new generation was already expected, that
was trying to destroy the frontiers between art and life already
weakened and wheezed by the generation between the two wars. The
faint air which had dominated town in the years of war made its
absence felt. Everybody knew that in the upcoming years there it
would be great changings in directions, tendencies and ideologies.
Notes
* see bombardments
** see after that
*** plum brandy
**** see MAMO (Muzeul de Arta Moderna) (rum.); MOMA (Modern Art
Museum) (eng.)
nicolae & floe