A Princess of Roumania

by Paul Park

  Some in the crowd recognized it. “It is her sister’s cross,” one said. The baroness also had seen it before, on Princess Clara’s neck before she fled to Germany. Then once more in a photograph of Miranda Popescu.

  Around her men and women had fallen to their knees. She herself felt suddenly conspicuous. Full of regret, she glared up at the bird’s sharp, mindless head. Aegypta Schenck had been well loved. She had not deserved to die at the hands of a whore’s daughter, who so often acted without thinking.

  Blinded by tears, she pushed her way out of the crowd and across the street. She pushed past Domnul Luckacz, who raised his hat. What was he doing there? She couldn’t think about it. She was too upset. Nor had she regained her composure by the time she had reached Cathedral Walk, a promenade along the river bank, lined with restaurants and shops. Herr Greuben was waiting for her under the lamppost.

  The baroness had put on a small disguise. She was dressed in a green jacket such as a student might wear. A woolen scarf was knotted around her neck, and she wore gold-rimmed spectacles. She had expected that Herr Greuben would sit with her in a quiet corner of the promenade, looking out over the barges and houseboats.

  In summer bourgeois families strolled up and down. The cafés and restaurants put tables on the street. In winter only the hardy stayed outdoors, and she imagined Herr Greuben would prefer the privacy. She was surprised, therefore, when he led her across the street to a German restaurant in the center of the block, where the lamps were already lit inside the plate-glass windows. “Would you like some good German pastry?” he asked. And she followed him inside, and the first thing that happened was her spectacles fogged up suddenly; the place was oppressively hot. Oppressively loud, also, and full of happy people smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee and schnapps.

  Herr Greuben indicated a small, circular table against the wall, and she sat down. She stripped off her gloves, wiped her spectacles with her pocket handkerchief, while he raised his hand for service. “Why are we here?” she asked in French.

  “It doesn’t matter. Talk between friends. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” Then a fat-faced, moustachioed waiter was there, and Herr Greuben was whispering to him behind his hand. At a neighboring table an old woman cut into a small meat pie. The baroness felt light-headed, hungry, faint.

  The waiter smoothed the palms of his hands down the front of his white apron. He looked attentively at the baroness, who turned away. “Monsieur,” he said to her, “we have a table in the back. We are honored.”

  Her face felt greasy, hot. She scarcely knew what he was saying. “Monsieur,” she thought, confused. But she allowed Greuben to take her by the elbow; hadn’t he just asked her to sit down? Now he led her to the back of the café, down the hall toward the washroom. There was another little room with the walls painted red. No one was in it except for a man reading a newspaper at a small table. He stood up to greet her. “Madame la Baronne,” he said, bending down over her naked hand. “I am very pleased.”

  She saw the bald patch in the middle of his head, his straight black hair combed back to hide it. When he straightened up she recognized him, a small man elegantly dressed in black, his face ugly enough to seem deformed. His skin was covered with small lumps and splotches.

  “Your grace,” she murmured.

  He was the Elector of Ratisbon. “I was in town when my secretary informed me. Please, would you care for…?” And then he was fussing around her, drawing her down into a cane-backed chair, talking about nothing while the waiter brought coffee and an assortment of sweet cakes. With a kind of wonder she studied his disgusting face, not listening until he drew his chair toward hers. “My secretary informed me there is something you might know concerning Miranda Popescu.”

  He blinked, opened his eyes, which had been hidden before. To her they seemed enormous, scarcely human: an animal’s eyes, a cow’s or a horse’s. Vulnerable, she thought. She peered into them, timidly at first. Herr Greuben stood at the door, pretending not to listen.

  There was nothing to listen to. Ratisbon turned away. “Please, you must try one of these small tortes. They are from Bavaria.…” Then he was off again, prattling about this and that as if he’d known her for years, when she could only remember having met him twice years before, at official functions in a crowd of people. But she had read in the newspaper that he’d been expected. He was staying at the Athenée Palace Hotel. She wondered why he hadn’t been at the empress’s reception.

  “Yes, I would have liked to have gone,” he said as if he’d read her mind. “It was part of the reason for my visit. Particularly since relations between our countries are so tiresomely low. But then came that news about the shopkeepers in Bucovina—did you hear? They had a small social club, open to anyone of German ancestry. Just some old men, did you hear? Two nights ago it burned. Hungarian emigrés, mostly, but local people, too; they burned some of the shops. So I thought it would be difficult for me to attend under the circumstances, and besides, I had a migraine. All week I have been meeting with the German Friendship Union, very boring, I must tell you, and a visit to the palace would have been a welcome respite. Especially since I hear I missed the opportunity to see you dance in public! The thought of that alone has made me miserable. I remember I saw you in Berlin at the Federal Opera House before your retirement. It must have been, dear me, more than fifteen years ago. I was still a young man!”

  Throughout this speech the baroness had been watching his hands. They were expressive and beautiful, and he used them when he spoke. He made delicate gestures in the air, while at the same time his face remained quiet and dispassionate. It was as if he didn’t want to bring attention to himself even by smiling. In the Roumanian press there was some speculation about what was wrong with him. Leprosy was one suggestion. Smallpox seemed more likely.

  He paused, picked up his knife and fork, and she admired the way he now consumed a cream-filled éclair, cutting it into tiny pieces that he ate one by one. When he was finished, not a speck of cream or pastry remained on his plate. Even his knife looked clean and polished, while she had, through her nervousness, made a mess of her own torte. It would not do, she thought, to pick it up, so she had reduced it to crumbs under her fork without managing to trap a single bite.

  Was he a buffoon? she thought. No, he was one of the most powerful men in Germany. His cuffs were white as cream, and his hands tinged with a rosy color. His nails were trimmed and manicured, and he wore no jewelry except for a gold signet ring, incised with a small pattern of interlocking circles. It was a pattern she remembered from her husband’s notes in his laboratory, part of a page in his handwriting in a code she had never been able to decipher. And then that symbol of seven interlocking rings.

  “You think I’m a buffoon?” he asked. She could have sworn he spoke, and that only his tone was different now, serious and grave. But she realized she was looking at his mouth as he devoured the last of his cream éclair. The ring was on his right hand, which was holding his fork. Now she heard his other voice start to prattle on again about this and that, while the question remained. Unnerved, she glanced up at his eyes again. They were huge and brown and vulnerable.

  He was a conjurer. That much was clear. But why did he bother with this double way of talking, this empty chatter? Surely it wasn’t for Herr Greuben’s benefit. And the waiter had already left the room.

  No, it was a demonstration of seriousness, of power. His eyes looked as big as caves. For a moment, stupidly, she imagined herself wandering across the ruined landscape of his cheeks, coming to his eye and then peering inside.

  “I know Miranda Popescu is alive,” he said, while with his other voice he started to chatter and complain about the bitter weather that was colder than he’d expected. “I have known it all these years. Her mother is my guest. But the daughter escaped. For years Aegypta Schenck von Schenck kept me out of this place, but now she’s dead. She is dead, and Greuben tells me that you know about the girl. Is it a coincidence?”
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  The baroness mashed her torte under her fork. Then she threw it down and took a sip of coffee. What did he mean about Aegypta Schenck keeping him away? He had been to Bucharest many times on the night train. But perhaps only the prattling man had come, and the conjurer inside of him had stayed away.

  “I was curious to see you,” said the Elector of Ratisbon. “Not because of your idiotic performances. I take no interest in the fine arts,” he said, even though the prattling man at the same moment was describing with many subtle gestures of his hands a concert he’d attended the week before. “Your husband’s corner was empty for a long time. Now you have occupied it. And if you are fumbling and clumsy at first, it’s natural. Because you are a woman. Tell me, where is Miranda Popescu?” he said, while at the same time the prattling man was asking her another question which she supposed could be answered with the same answer: “Tell me, I had heard that Franjo Bozic was working on another symphony. Is that possible?” he asked, referring to a Serbian composer who’d abandoned his career years before, the result of a mental break.

  “I don’t know. I had heard rumors.…” Uncertain, she let her voice trail away.

  “You must not tell me you don’t know. I have searched for years. Make no mistake. Roumania will yield whether I have that girl in my hands or not. The important thing is to avoid bloodshed. Aegypta Schenck von Schenck is dead, and this morning I woke up with a picture in my looking-glass, a little Roumanian cottage in the snow. Diamond-paned windows, a stream and a wooden bridge without a railing. A small lake and a crack in the ice. The pine trees are all broken and the door stands open. Is that where she has hidden all these years? No—yesterday Greuben tells me you know where the girl is. This morning Princess Schenck von Schenck is dead. Is that why you were making such a spectacle of yourself last night? So that no one would suspect you were not there at all?”

  At the same time the prattling man had asked her a question at least partly in a foreign language—Russian, perhaps. It was as if he were anticipating in advance her stammering excuses. “I-I don’t know what you mean,” she said. She pretended to take a sip of coffee, although her demitasse was already empty.

  “Please, how rude of me,” said the prattling man. “The baroness’s cup is empty. Greuben, please signal the waiter.” And he went on and on about this and that until the waiter had come and gone, and the Elector of Ratisbon spoke again. His enormous, liquid eyes seemed full of tears.

  “Let me tell you this is not a game we are playing. This is no place for a stupid woman, playing with forces she doesn’t understand. I’ve had enough of ignorant women—let me tell you I’m prepared to be generous. I will grant you a safe-conduct to Vienna and an annuity of three quarters of a million francs.”

  The baroness stared at the hands of the prattling man. He also was offering terms, suggesting that for a large sum she could be coaxed out of retirement for a series of performances abroad.

  “Why would I accept?” she found herself murmuring. “Everything I have is here.”

  Now for a moment she was horrified because she had been tricked into suggesting that at least she did know something. No, not horrified. She looked down at her own hands, motionless in her lap. They were not trembling. She was not afraid. For a moment she tried to imagine what she was feeling. After all, she had come here willing to beg for a safe-conduct, willing to leave Bucharest that day with nothing but a stolen jewel, a cheque from a murdered man, and a bag of stolen currency that she had not even counted. But perhaps she felt this secret she’d discovered—the fate of Miranda Popescu—was the only thing that still belonged to her, and without it she had nothing.

  And yet if she had managed to capture the girl, would she not have gladly sold her to this man? Why was she so stubborn—why did she feel now she would rather die than give him anything? “I will send my people throughout Europe looking for that little cottage,” said the elector. “I will find it. Only you will make the job easier, which is why I will pay you. If not…” He shrugged. At the same time the prattling man had coughed into his napkin and murmured something inaudible.

  “What?”

  The elector’s tears seemed to tremble on his eyelids, but they never fell. “Greuben tells me you’ve been useful to us. But you must understand you have been useful to yourself, because a war is coming. So you and all those who have something to offer me, you must remember what is best for you. I would prefer not to mention what I know. Let me just say this. Since Greuben spoke to me, I’ve had you watched. And since Aegypta Schenck has died, I know what you are. I know what you’ve been playing at.”

  The baroness stared at him, stared into his liquid eyes. Now she was listening to the prattling man. “If I had known what I was missing, I would never have stayed away from the reception. The chance to see you dancing with that charming jeweler, Monsieur Spitz. You spoke to that charming young lady whose family stole one of my country’s greatest treasures. You shared Spitz’s carriage, did you not? Who later turned up dead of a gunshot wound? You saw the paper. You are not a woman who goes unnoticed, and that dress, my dear!”

  The baroness tried to understand what she was feeling. Anger, certainly. Yet there was danger here. These German pigs—the prattling man continued: “No, but my migraines. I had to send my secretary for laudanum, to the institute on the Soseaua Kiseleff. That’s where your son is staying, is it not?”

  In that red room she felt a chill.

  There was no reason to be stubborn, she reflected. The elector was right. It was important to remember what was in her interest. “New England,” she almost said. The words trembled on her lips. But as she looked into his liquid eyes, she realized suddenly she didn’t believe him. There was no possibility of trusting him, even in a bargain between murderers. Anyone who so blithely threatened her, threatened her son, would never waste three quarters of a million francs a year on her after she gave him what he wanted.

  Too late. “New England,” the elector said. And the prattling man paused in midsentence to stare at her. “Where—what do you mean?”

  She would say nothing else. She felt as if the prattling man had reached into her with his silver fork, his elegant hand, and snatched something away. She wouldn’t tell him any more, though doubtless it wouldn’t take long to find out where the girl was hiding. “You think it will be easy,” she said. “The Austrians gave up without a shot. The Hungarians surrendered in six weeks. Now it’s our turn. We will fight you,” she said, her cheeks burning with embarrassment, because she knew that he knew that she cared nothing for Roumania. She would have sold him the white tyger without compunction if the terms had been right.

  Nevertheless, the words made her feel better. “You miserable potato-eater,” she said. “You odious, disgusting man. You must know our men will crush you, as they did at Kaposvar…,” and then she stopped because the prattling man was laughing at her, and at the door, Herr Greuben was laughing, too.

  “Dear lady,” said the prattling man. “Dear lady, please. I would love to stay and chat with you, but alas! I am a busy man. You see it has given me so much pleasure—something to tell my friends, I can assure you, that I had coffee with the great Nicola Ceausescu! Now please, my government would like to offer you some further payment, though the annuity we spoke of is, alas, out of the question. But Greuben will write you a cheque. What do you say to fifty francs?”

  Later, after she left the room, as she plunged through the overheated restaurant, she imagined all the conversation had stopped, and all the patrons and the staff were staring at her. Then she plunged into the cold afternoon. She turned away from the riverbank, crossed the Esplanade, and found the tangle of old streets that led uphill to the temple of Jupiter.

  The streets were frozen mud laid with duckboards. The houses were wooden cottages joined together at the eaves. Ramshackle wooden fences divided the backyards, where there were washrooms and latrines.

  The baroness had not been this way in years. She knew the streets. When she was
a child, when she had just begun to find work as an artist’s model, she had often slept in the porch of the temple looking down over the lights of the Plevnei bridge.

  Now she climbed uphill. Because of the small streets, the temple wasn’t even visible until you stood outside its gates. Nor was it obvious when you came into the peristyle that from the western porch there was a view over this whole section of the city and the towers of the bridge. The lamps were lit in the sanctuary, and through the screen she could see the ancient statue of Jupiter in his chair—she felt no urge to pray. The despair she had felt in the restaurant had gone away, and she was thinking.

  She walked out onto the porch and sat down on the steps. The streetlights were coming on at the bottom of the hill. She sank her chin into her scarf. Around her there were several other indigents, people who had made the porch their home, and now sat waiting for the temple servants to bring them their evening meal. The Baroness Ceausescu rubbed her hands together, then took out a cigarette and smoked it. She was wondering why she had seen Domnul Luckacz at the princess’s funeral, when he had made his opinion of her so plain. Was he there in some professional capacity, perhaps as a member of the Siguranta? Or was he spying on the baroness herself?

  No, these questions were not what she was interested in. Now she remembered what the prattling man had said: “… charming young lady whose family stole one of my country’s greatest treasures.…” The phrase was out of character for him, too harsh, too heartfelt. What interest did the elector have in Kepler’s Eye?

  Old men were sitting near her. She took her handkerchief out of her pocket to wipe her nose. The tourmaline was wrapped in the cloth. Now she slid it into her hand, looked down. Even in the half-darkness it seemed to shine, a source of faint, purple light. It was hard for her to imagine now that when she’d first seen it, strapped on Mlle. Corelli’s forehead, she had scarcely noticed it.