Răzvan Petrescu – Wedding Photos

Weddings have a tendency of bringing out the worst in us when they should encourage our best. The term “Bridezilla” has entered the lexicon, and it seems that hen's nights and buck's parties are becoming increasingly rowdy, expensive, over the top and, ultimately, regrettable in their excess. A young couple must make the choice between the wedding they “should” have or a deposit on a house – and too often they choose the former. In Răzvan Petrescu's short story, Wedding Photos, the problem is less the expense of the wedding (though the cost seems high), than the run of bad luck that proceeds and finally engulfs it. Everything that can go wrong does; what begins as a series of unfortunate events turns into a litany of ridiculous, exaggerated, awful situations where one can laugh in retrospect, but at the time – catastrophe.

The story begins with an apartment flood two weeks before the wedding, which is followed up with the neighbour who caused the flood accidentally painting the wrong room. It's a small mistake, one that can be overlooked, for now the place looks stunning, if a bit odd. The narrator

...fell asleep with a paper painter's hat on my head and a whitewashing brush in one hand – and a lit cigarette in the other. It fell, as might be expected. The carpet caught fire. I escaped only a bit disfigured, but my neighbour was taken to hospital, where the doctors all shook their heads. They didn't think he would make it to my wedding.

From these unfortunate beginnings, Petrescu guides us through a series of increasingly unlikely mishaps which often, but not always, conclude with the groom becoming hurt or disfigured in some way. Everything that can go wrong does, but there is a cheerful sense of excitement and goodwill throughout the text. The narrator is getting married after all – he won't let little things like a knocked out tooth, burns, broken wedding gifts, absent flowers, missing friends or scratches all over his face and tears along his suit ruin the day.

The day arrives, and then the hour. Petrescu increases the intensity and frequency of the narrator's misfortune, which culminates in:

We'd missed our scheduled time, and so we were forced to go last. I was bugged by the zipper thing but also the fact that my future bride wasn't wearing a bra, and not only that – her dress was completely transparent. The people waiting in the yard were sweating from looking at her for so long, and seemed to want to have Mariana for themselves, if not forever, at least for a few moments. I whispered to her to put a handkerchief on her cleavage, then, under an obvious pretext, I hid, embarrassed, in the bushes.

Wedding Photos is clearly a farce, and it's often very funny. Misfortune piles on misfortune, but unfortunately Petrescu fails to take advantage of the situation he has created. Weddings are inherently stressful situations, which makes the narrator's goodwill in the face of so much adversity an interesting and appealing subversion of the expect reaction of bride and groom, but we are left wanting more. We want more crazy things to happen, not less. We want more damage, death, pain, destruction, and embarrassment, but it seems that just when Petrescu is about to attain a great height of zany hijinks he pulls back, shifting down a register when he should ratchet up the wackiness.

Perhaps the best and funniest scene comes right near the end, when the lull following the wedding picks up a moment before the story finishes on an oddly tender vein (more about that later). It is the wedding night, the newly married couple are exhausted, but, it's their special night, and so:

We talked it over a bit and decided to try and do something memorable on this special night, something that would remain engraved in our minds until our ripe old age. But it was impossible to pull off the babshabarishkrata, the amorous position in which both partners have to stand on their heads, eyes closed, arms behind them, spinal columns flexed in such a way that your navel touches the top of your nose, legs crossed, fingers spread out.

The narrator concludes that perhaps they were unable to make the babshabarishkrata position succeed because they were still wearing their coats – or because they screwed up the Indian translation. It's funny, and it shows just how ridiculous the author is willing to be with his story, but, again, it doesn't quite go far enough. This late in the piece, we expect pyrotechnics, explosions, rubber chickens, accidental death - something. What we get is good, and makes us laugh, but it doesn't seem enough. The entirety of Wedding Photos is one long promise that almost, but not quite, delivers.

Wedding Photos ends tenderly, with the narrator remembering back to his wedding day as he examines photos of a time that has long past. It ends absurdly, too, because the narrator is, we are to believe, examining these photos from the comfort of his coffin, into which he has recently been placed following his death. It's a pleasantly farcical way to end the story, but it's unfortunate that the zany middle never quite reaches the heights to which it so clearly aspires.

Author	Răzvan Petrescu
Title	Wedding Photos
Translators	Jim Brown and Ehren Schimmel
Nationality	Romanian
Publisher	The Dalkey Archive Press
Availability: ---Amazon (US) ---Amazon (UK) ---Fishpond (AU)

See Also

Other stories from the The Review of Contemporary Fiction Vol. XXX, #1 Writing From Postcommunist Romania issue include:
---Adameşteanu, Gabriela - The Hour Commute
---Blandiana, Ana - The Open Window
---Suceavă, Bogdan - Daddy Wants TV Saturday Night

Also of interest:
---Other titles under review from The Dalkey Archive Press
---Index of short stories under review