by Paul Park
There was a nightstand with a basin, a pitcher of water. Beside it on a shelf, several pots of unguents, skin cream, and perfume, which obviously had no effect. The old woman’s skin was like leather. But there was no altar, no statue of the goddess. Only the cross of King Jesus on the wall over the bed.
The baroness returned to the front room. She sat down again on the ledge of the hearth. Now suddenly she was filled with sadness. “I understand what you must feel,” she said. “I understand how you must want to protect your niece. But there’s no reason to be afraid. I myself would never hurt a child. I am a mother, after all—did you know that? My son lives in an institution in the city. It is very expensive. And I don’t understand how in the book you wrote, the shelter you made for Miranda Popescu, you still made it possible for doctors to blame a woman for her son’s illness and keep her from him, chase her away. How is it possible that anyone could love him more than I?”
The princess had said nothing, but now she spoke. “The book is longer than we wrote.”
“Talk to me—yes. Thank you for talking to me. And you must explain to me this uncertainty, because—yes, I admit it, you are wiser than I am. And you must explain to me why though I follow your instructions, I do not get your results. My husband also made a mess of his alchemical experiments. You alone make no mistake—is it because you pray to God? Sennacherib—where is the altar? Where is Venus’s fountain? I feel I must drink from it, just a little drink. You wouldn’t deny some water to a woman like me?”
“This place is free to all.”
“No, but it’s not free. What’s the money for?” And when she didn’t answer, the baroness explained: “The money in your room. What’s it for?”
The woman lay on the floor, staring at her with her intolerable eyes. When she didn’t answer, the baroness went on. “It was a condition that was his since birth. He didn’t learn to speak. Normal and affectionate, I mean in his bones and body. He was my boy, only they took him away. What can they do for him that I can’t do? They said it was my fault.”
She felt the pressure of the rage inside of her. “What’s left for me to do but pay and pay? Oh, you,” she said, as she sat down on the hearth. She put her face into her hands. Then she looked down into the princess’s narrow, unblinking eyes, and remembered why she’d come. “Like you I hate what has happened to my country. I hate what General Antonescu has done to us. The rich live in palaces while the poor cannot afford a crust of bread. Do you understand how someone like myself could yearn for the white tyger, could imagine how Miranda Popescu might be the one to help us? Is it such a crime to have brought her back? Now will you promise not to struggle or cry out, so that I can untie you, and we can sit together and discuss this, and discuss what must be done?”
The princess stared at her. “I did not kill your husband,” she said. A pause, then: “Though I did not mourn his death. The laws he wrote, they have destroyed us. I think he was driven mad by guilt. As for these men of yours, not all of them are dead, I think. You’re wrong—I make my full share of mistakes. All of us are fumbling in the dark. I pray my niece is safe, that’s all.”
Again the baroness felt her heart swell with rage. Was it possible the old woman told the truth? No, she was a liar, like all of them. The baroness stood up, stood over her, and brought back her boot to kick her in the side. Then, overcome with self-disgust, with hatred for those yellow, dark, unblinking eyes, she pulled herself away, pulled open the door to let in the night air.
She staggered out the door and stood with the back of her head pressed against the stone wall of the house. She stood there a long time, waiting for her nausea to subside. And as she stood, a new suspicion occurred to her.
It had been from the princess’s papers that she’d learned about the girl and how to bring her home. But the text had been mistaken in one single detail. The baroness had thought she could bring back the white tyger straight to Bucharest, to her husband’s laboratory. No, she had been led to think that, and if she’d sent Raevsky and his men to North America, that had been her decision, her insight, her stab of brilliance.
But that Jew Gregor Splaa had lived there long enough to build a house. So Aegypta Schenck had known the girl would come that way. And if she’d suggested something else in her papers, she’d been lying. And if she was lying, then she’d meant them to be read by someone else, used by someone else. And if that were so, maybe those descriptions of the absurd dictator had been meant to goad her. What is it the old woman had said—that the name Ceausescu had not even been mentioned in the early drafts? So was it she who had been meant to find the papers and follow the instructions that now seemed so carefully laid out?
A suspicion took hold of her, that she had been manipulated and duped. When she heard a noise, she peered around the edge of the door frame. She saw the Princess Schenck von Schenck sitting upright by the hearth.
She had managed to seize hold of the stiletto; she was holding it between her wrists while she was cutting at the ropes around her feet; now her feet were free. But the knot was still hanging from her neck. The baroness leapt on her and pulled it tight, and then watched herself keep pulling and pulling with all the force and strength of a soldier or a criminal or a murderer—how was it possible? How could she be capable of such violence? Surely this was not part of her plan—until the woman’s eyes bulged and the cord cut into her throat and she was still.
“Traitor,” said the baroness. “You traitor. Hypocrite.” Suddenly horrified, she stepped backward, stepped through the curtain into the inner room. Without thinking, she found herself ransacking the armoire, searching among the dresses for some clue, while at the same time she looked for refuge in the Winter Keep, away from this place, far away. She found herself sitting in one of the smoking rooms, sprawled in a leather armchair while Mlle. Corelli sat on the footstool, peering up at her and talking, talking. Kepler’s Eye shone on her forehead, a stone that seemed now like an eye indeed, a third, unblinking eye that burned with many colors, though the core of it was dark.
“That year I ran away from boarding school,” said Mlle. Corelli. “I slept out in the woods for two nights until the policemen brought me back. I don’t know what I was thinking. Now, it seems strange. But I think you can’t just accept the life that people give you, that people just assume…”
No help there. When the baroness came back, she was knocking her head against the door of the armoire. Clutched in her hand was the old woman’s store of money, a canvas bag filled with banknotes and coins. The baroness forced herself to get up, forced herself into the main room again, where she found her own leather bag and pushed the smaller bag into it. She looked for anything she might have dropped. She decided to leave the stiletto. She didn’t want to touch it.
She didn’t want to look at the princess’s body. She didn’t want to look at the mouth of the corpse where now a shape was gathering. The mouth was open and the image of an animal was there on the gray tongue. And it wasn’t some worm or duplicitous snake, some violent monster. But instead there was a bundle of translucent feathers made of air and breath and spit, and then a tiny bird flew straight and sure out the open door and up into the night, a brandywine bird, pretty and innocent.
She followed the bird out. Then she was leaning in the same place she had stood a few minutes earlier, except all had changed. And now she could see the entrance to the grotto, a hole in the cliff. The night was cold and still.
“I’ve thought about marriage,” said Mlle. Corelli in the smoking room. “My father has some officers in his regiment. But you give up so much freedom, and for what? No—to tell the truth, I’ve been so miserable. I hate my father; he would beat me if he knew I had taken his precious jewel. He’ll know tomorrow. I swear he cares more for it than he does for me. If I had money of my own, I’d run away to Paris. In some ways I couldn’t forgive you for marrying that old man, especially since it meant you gave up working—and for what? You must understand I have an artist’s heart.”
Wreathed in coils of steam, the shrine rose from the center of the pool, a gold statue of the goddess. She had left her clothes on a heap on the rocks, had let her hair down and strode naked across the pool, which was as still as a mirror of glass. This was an image from the life of Venus. Once she had appeared in this place to an ancient king of Dacia who had wept for shame.
Now the baroness found herself stripping off her clothes. Now she stood up to her knees in the scalding water, scrubbing her shoulders and her back until they burned. Sobs choked her, tears ran down her face, because she was mourning Aegypta Schenck von Schenck, a princess of the old blood who had not deserved to die like this, strangled by a worthless murderer. In the days when she was rich, she had used her money to help those in need. The baroness herself, one night when she was eleven years old, had come into the Children’s Hospital in Bucharest with blood poisoning and a broken, abscessed foot, and the women had taken her in for more than a week. They had fed her and washed her and let her sleep in a real bed—why had she held back the memory until now? But she remembered the cross above her bed. She’d had no money. “Thank the princess,” they had said, and this was how she’d thanked her. “Oh,” she murmured, imagining the white silk cord pressing into the soft neck.
When her brother was murdered, and her friends left her, and she was dispossessed of all she owned, the princess had not stooped to robbery and conniving. The proof was in her spirit image, the brandywine bird, who sang so sweetly in the hedgerows in the early morning.
And when her brother was struck down, his men had been amazed to see a butterfly trembling on his lips. Some said it was golden, some said it was blue, but all had been astonished that such a man, the greatest general of the age, had been able to summon from his last breath so pure an image.
The baroness could already recognize her own spirit beast. She had seen it when she glanced sidelong at mirrors. Doubtless it was here in the surface of the pool, but broken up and made unrecognizable by her flailing. Maybe a pig like her husband, or else a flea-bitten, baggy-kneed, mangy old cat, though now as she stood here in the pool, she knew she was as beautiful as the goddess herself.
This was the fountain that took away sins. She had imagined the water would be sweet to drink. But she bent down and with her cupped hands she skimmed up a draught of the sulphurous, nauseating liquid. She stood with the hot water dripping from her fingers, and then she raised her head. She heard a dog barking.
Always she had hated dogs.
She leapt from the pool onto the greasy floor. For a moment she stood listening, and then she scrambled for her clothes. It was good to be quick but not careless; she pulled on her pants and boots, her undershirt, and all the rest. She pulled on her pilgrim’s robe and hid the bag of money under it. Then she was out in the cold night, striding along the path the way she’d come. The barking was in the woods behind her. She thought she’d avoid it, until she saw the flicker of torches through the trees.
Should she step away from the path and try to hide among the bushes or the pine trees? Probably, but she did not. To hide would be to proclaim her guilt, and besides, the dog might find her. It was her custom to confront trouble, and so she drew her hood over her wet face and pressed on, pigeon-toed, flat-footed, whistling, until she met a dozen or so men and women. They were carrying torches, wreaths, and dried bouquets. She stood aside to let them pass, but they’d have none of that. They were in a joyful mood. One reached up to seize her by the sleeve.
“Sir,” he said, “have you come from Mother Egypt’s house? Is she awake? My friends are coming from their wedding feast, and they need her blessing.”
He spoke in a whistling, high voice. He was drunk. There was the bride, hideous in her embroidered, country clothes, her face painted like a doll’s, although no paint could change her round, flat face. There was the groom, cheeks wan as yellow apples; the baroness put her hand out. “I congratulate you,” she said in her hoarse soldier’s voice. “As for the keeper of the shrine, she’s gone to bed.”
Two small young boys were walking hand in hand. “You can see the light,” chimed one, pointing down the path toward the little stone house. “And the dog is barking.”
They took off at a run. The baroness cursed under her breath. “Please,” she said. “I have to make my train.” It didn’t matter. None of them were paying attention. Instead they were singing songs and making jokes; she slipped away. But since she’d mentioned the train, she couldn’t take it, and it was a long night’s walk into the town from Mogosoaia. Again she cursed herself, hurrying along the path, waiting at each moment for the sound of shouting. How could she be so stupid? When she reached the burned ruins of the house, she paused, fumbling among the timbers for the coat that she had left hanging there. But it was gone.
8
The Wild Men
“MIND THE DOG,” said Captain Raevsky. “I will shoot.”
Miranda stood up, yanked up her pants. Then without thinking she turned and took hold of the long barrel of Raevsky’s pistol as it moved past her toward Andromeda. The dog had bared her teeth, was bounding toward them with a look of great ferocity, which changed.
Another man came out of the bushes. He wore a green woolen jacket with the insignia of the red pig. He carried a rifle, and as he raised it, the dog hurtled past Miranda, hurtled past Raevsky into the undergrowth and disappeared.
Miranda saw this. She heard the crashing in the bushes while she wrestled for the gun. Raevsky wanted to capture her, not shoot her, which gave her an advantage. His finger wasn’t even on the trigger as she twisted the gun down.
But he had hold of her now. Miranda stomped on his foot, and though he grimaced, licked his lips, he didn’t budge. Her face was near his face, his grizzled beard. She could see the scab on his ear where she had bitten him.
Then Peter came scrambling up the riverbank. “Get away!” he said. “Get back!” A man was chasing him and tried to grab him by the waist and pull him down. But Peter slipped through his arms somehow, and the man went sprawling in the weeds.
She kneed Raevsky in what she hoped were his testicles, but he didn’t move. He yanked the gun away from her and pointed it toward Peter as another soldier clubbed at him with his rifle. Peter clutched the stock as it came around, but the man behind him had gotten to his feet. He hit Peter with a paddle on the back of his head and knocked him to his knees.
“Stop!” she cried. She’d gotten hold of Raevsky’s gun again. But where was Gregor Splaa? There he was, standing on the gravel bank. His pack was gone, but he did nothing.
Had he led them into a trap? Had all that crying over Blind Rodica been just bullshit? His face was white with fear, and there was a man behind him with a gun, and he was just a stupid idiot after all.
Miranda turned to Peter, and she had the strange impression he was happy. Unarmed, he was fighting the two soldiers, but he took the time to glance at her and give her a fierce smile. Raevsky was yelling something in Roumanian while the man with the rifle swung it round again. He was the man Blind Rodica had dragged into the house, which meant this was his second try at Peter. But he wasn’t having much more luck, because Peter caught his rifle stock again and was twisting it away when the man with the paddle swatted him across the back of the head.
Raevsky pulled the gun away from her. Try as she might, she could not budge his arm. He was too strong. He was behind her now with his arm crushing her chest and his beard scratching her ear. “Please stop,” she said. The man with the paddle raised it up again above Peter’s h
ead. Then it came down, and for a moment no one moved. The air was warm. The snow was soft in the undergrowth. In places it had melted to reveal the starved, yellow stems.
“What will you do?” Raevsky muttered in her ear. “This is your fault.”
Was that true? She was a fool to have trusted Gregor Splaa and not herself. That much was true.
Peter lay on his back in the wet weeds. His eyes were open, and there was a red welt on his forehead. And the soldier with the paddle raised it again. “Stop it!” she cried. “I give up.”
And Raevsky grunted something more, and the soldier paused. He was a young man in gold-rimmed spectacles, and he stopped with the paddle above his head.
“Enough,” Raevsky said in English. He let go his grasp, then pulled her forward by one arm, his pistol pointed toward the sky. “Enough of this.”
He pulled her down the slope. And they weren’t taking any chances with Peter. The man with the spectacles stood with his paddle raised, while the other man pointed his rifle. She tried to catch Peter’s eye; she wished he could say something, but he was stunned. He was looking at the sky. Andromeda had run away, though. She had escaped, so that was something.
Now she could see the river between the trees, and the beach that undercut the bank. Gregor Splaa was there with his hands tied in front of him. And the fourth soldier, with his pistol drawn, was coming up the bank with a length of rope in his other hand—she didn’t like the look of that. So in a trampled patch of undergrowth she tried a second time to pull away. But Raevsky grasped her from behind again while the other man came toward—he was not dressed like the others. He was wearing a leather shirt and had an Asiatic face. She didn’t want him to touch her. But the soldier with the spectacles had his paddle raised. And she couldn’t let him bring it down again. She felt Raevsky’s arms across her breasts as the Asian man tied her wrists in front of her with many loops of coarse twine.
