Since we have been speaking about Brâncoveanu’s Mulberry Tree, let us remain in the same area. After the disappearance of the infatuated Marco, a friend of his moved into the same house—one I have written about before (The Checkered Shirt). His name was Iane.
In the eighteenth century, many young men—emancipated and drawn to mysteries—went to Pavia to study pharmacy. Iane was among them, newly settled on Batiște Street. Unlike the former owner of the house, he took no interest in the mulberry tree. From the very first days, he nailed a plaque to the door, inscribed in both Greek and Latin letters: Iane the Pharmacist. He disliked the word apothecary, especially since Bucharest had filled up with men selling balms for baldness, pills for potency, and love elixirs, going door to door or trading from carts covered with painted awnings and ribbons.
Iane wanted people to call him the pharmacist and to recognize him as the city’s only true one.
His house stood on Batiște Street, but the yard stretched far back, almost to where today stands the National Theatre, enclosing within it a pond.
The chief concern of this solitary—one might even say misanthropic—man was to discover a remedy for sadness, which is why he spent long hours in his laboratory.
Records of his activities have survived, since he was later accused of “impure deeds.” Do not expect anything devilish, though. He made soap and perfumes—delicate products—mixing essences, plant juices, fungi, and oils extracted with skill from the most unexpected sources.
For those who do not know, the area was full of soap-makers, since at that time only spendthrifts bought imported soap: the Constantinople kind, inferior to local soap, and the Cretan kind, expensive and thus affordable to few—none of them writers, which is why we know almost nothing about it, except that it smelled of lemon.
Soap-making required little formal learning, so around the ponds small cauldrons boiled constantly, into which everyone added plants at the end—especially wormwood, cornflowers, cranberries, or elecampane root.
But Iane’s soap was different from that of the neighborhood folk: you washed with it once and immediately gained confidence. He had soap for sleep, for rejuvenation, for nail fungus, for warts. And he also sold perfumes, which awakened a zest for life, the longed-for love, and a certain eloquence difficult to attain by natural means.
His perfumes—more often oils or salves—had scents that seeped into the skin and then into the mind. They were long-lasting: the fragrance did not dissipate easily but lingered for days. For these reasons they were in great demand. Among them was one initially called the Imperial Elixir, later known as the Liquor of Death. You smelled it and felt happy, serene—and after a while you could no longer live without it. It was expensive: a small vial cost as much as a turkey. Despite the steep price, demand was so high that Iane hired a servant to keep lists of requests.
Then things began to go wrong.
First, a woman died. No one knew exactly what had happened to her, but her house smelled exactly like Iane’s. She loved perfumes, and the gossipers believed they had caused her death. Then Maria Văcărescu, married to a Filipescu, was banished to her estate at Ciorogârla, where she lived for more than a decade. Her husband forgave her only on his deathbed, so as not to depart this world burdened with sin. Her crime? She had spent a fortune on Iane’s perfumes—something Filipescu considered worse than any infidelity.
Around the same time, there were other minor incidents: a woman taken by force to a monastery, a child frozen in place before Iane’s house.
Women were especially drawn to the perfumes—but not only they.
A chancery official, fond of ornate writing and long-winded phrases, filed a complaint against the pharmacist directly to the prince—at the time, Alexander Ypsilantis. In his petition he recounted much of what you have just read. He accused Iane of having brought into his house gray phantoms and coral-colored goblins—though he admitted the perfumes were pleasant—from which he could no longer rid himself.
At first they came only at night, around his bed. Then they took over the parlor and the kitchen. They burrowed into clothes chests, onto divans, into the wall hangings. Even his fez, once a bright red, was now dusted with ash. Their numbers grew alarmingly. Some of the phantoms, he claimed, followed him to the chancery, nearly occupying it. There was no file they had not touched, no paper left without their traces—from smeared ink to tiny flies settling on every page. Sometimes such a creature would fall directly onto the sheet he was writing on. Some drank the ink; many had already made their way toward the Divan hall, even toward the apartments of Ypsilantis himself.
After reading this detailed complaint, the ruler took urgent measures. Iane was summoned to give explanations, and since he was, as I said, a solitary man, there was no one to defend him. His house was confiscated, and he was exiled to the islands—meaning the Delta—from which he never returned.
Wild grass overtook his courtyard, and no one has lived there since—not even in our own time. Yet if you pass by the National Theatre today, right at the exit, you may sometimes hear whispers—perhaps echoes from performances, perhaps remnants of the first pharmacist of Bucharest, a man named Iane.
