Once upon a time...well, it was more like 1944...in an Eastern european capital, Bucharest, people were having the blast of their lives, even among and under the most fierceful American bombardaments like they'd had for the last twenty years...From the Opera House to the most humble pub in the slums...Take a look...The song was aso very famous... My grandfather used to sing it sometimes...
Food was cheap, hotels hospitable and summer restaurants were the main attraction with their jazz bands or the local folk bands...The clients were always happy to party, and very often you could see German officers accompanied by "luxury women"..."boneless women", as someone called them...
One of these women was Zaraza, precisely Zarada, a traditional gipsy name. It means The Wonderful.
The story starts now, when this young woman enters The Red Fox, a restaurant on the Selari street, arm in arm with some insignificant man, part of a jolly bunch of people. She was indeed a gipsy, her face looked rough, her lips seemed those of a sensual man and her hair was so black and shiny that she must have poured lots of nut oil on it.
At some point of the show presented in the restaurant, here he was, the most applauded singer of the city, Cristian Vasile. The audience was delirious. Everybody was coming there for him...though there was another band with another singer in some other restaurant...Zavaidoc...Both Zavaidoc and Cristian used to pay low life gangs for protection and sometimes there were fights with knives and swords for artistic supremacy...But that night they were at peace...
That night he sang a brand new song...no, his voice was just beautiful, not like on those old Pathe disks we all know...The audience was fascinated, many of them didn't dare breathing and they all had long forgotten all about their food and drink...Most women were crying...Zaraza felt very surprised feeling tears coming out of her eyes and she couldn't remember the last time she had felt a tear finding its way down on her face...
She followed him in the back, she sat in front of him and they had a drink and talked for hours and hours and late in the night they left together and for the next two years they were inseparable. He used to call her "his adored lunatic"...He wrote a song about her...
When you come, senorita, in the evening in the park
With lilly petals all around you,
You have sweet passions in your eyes and sinful sparks
and your body is that of a feline snake.
Your mouth is a poem of crazy desires,
your breast a sublime treasure
You're a daemon from my dreams, who torments me and lie to me
But you have the smile of an angel.
Here's the song and his voice recorded back then....
This song was on everyone's lips and Zaraza was now as famous as her "celeberrimo" lover...But...the other singer, Zavaidoc, was losing clients...He tried to beat Cristian at his own game by fair methods, spending hours and hours in front of his piano...He even stole one of Sinatra's songs and got blamed for it. The boss of the gang he was paying for protection came out with a plan...He said Cristian had an angel's voice so he couldn't kill him...but an artist without his muse is nothing...
So the next evening, when Zaraza went out to buy cigarettes for her lover she was attacked and killed...They cut her throat...She was found in the morning, after a night of search with her dress soaked in blood...The police said Cristian had a mad look in his eyes...She was incinerated and he took her ashes home with him...and that very evening he started a ritual who would last for the next four months and which is difficult to be described...and understood...every evening he used to eat one teaspoon of her ashes...until they were gone...
Then he poured turpentine down his throat, burning his throat and never being able to sing again...and then he vanished from the real Bucharest as well as from people's memory...
They say that in 1959 there was this man, looking like a homeless man, who was working at the theatre in Piatra Neamt as a machinist and everyone was saying his name was Cristian Vasile and that he was famous once...
I want you to tell me, beautiful Zaraza,
Who loved you before,
How many have cried for you like mad men
And how many have died for you.
I want your sweet mouth, Zaraza,
To always get me drunk
By your kisses, Zaraza,
I want to die too...
