Set in Romania in the 1950s, this is the story of two people, Augustin and Safta, who are both very different and yet very closely linked. Safta is the daughter of the big house, while Augustin is the deaf mute illegitimate son of the cook. Safta’s mother, high-minded, overly religious since the death of a baby, disappointed in her marriage, takes Augustin into the schoolroom until it becomes clear that while the boy has an impressive artistic talent he can learn nothing, and so he is returned to the stables.
War comes, the house is dismantled, Safta, mourning her lost love, leaves the countryside and becomes a nurse and Augustin is left with the remaining servants and the dogs.
The story is told back and forth between the 1950s (written in the irritating present tense) and the time before the war.
Where the book succeeds is in evoking the atmospheres of the old, luxurious, idle life, the crumbling of the status quo and the overtaking of a new order.
Before the war there are servants, picnics, rides on Lipizzaners. It is a world of light, verandas, enfilades. Afterwards it is one of increasing fear, of sugar and flour stashed behind fake walls, chickens and pigs hidden in the forest. In the city the people also live in fear, feeling watched, mourning the missing and the dead. While some of the plot is clichéd — soldiers take over the big house, destroy the pictures, shoot the chandelier, rape a girl in the fields, accidentally kill a servant — there is still a pervading melancholy in the decay of beauty which lingers in the mind.
There is melancholy too in Tinu (Augustin)’s story, until the frankly unlikely happy ending in which he really does ride off into the sunset.
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