by Paul Park
“Well … good!” she said, clapping her hands. She seemed like a girl, almost, full of shy levity as she rolled up her pajamas. “You know, there’s really no reason to stay here anymore. I think it’s time to take a trip!”
“Where?”
“Oh, I don’t know. The countryside. The mountains. Or we could go abroad, to Germany!”
She told him stories of her travels for half an hour or more. When the street door opened, four flights below, they both heard it. They heard the footsteps coming up the splintered stairs. Or rather, she heard them and he watched her, watched a brittleness and artificiality overtake her gestures, though she was still gay. “Once I was visiting Germany on the train. So many beautiful little houses and villages; I think even the country people are rich. It was in wintertime, and in every little station people waited for me in the snow, and some child would pass me flowers, and I would wave from the coach door. There, you see it is a lovely country, full of lovely people…”
Crack, crack, crack. Markasev watched her listening as she talked. He heard the steps on the landing, on another flight of stairs. Then there was a pause, and he imagined someone looking for the door, choosing theirs among the three on the top landing.
“Open it,” said the baroness. But when Markasev didn’t move, “Come in,” she said. The room was warm and full of good smells. The door swung inward, revealing the outline of a man.
“Come in, come in,” she repeated, her voice bright and hysterical. “Ah, Monsieur Spitz.”
This name was unfamiliar to Markasev. She said something more in a language he recognized to be French. But because of the eloquence of her hands and gestures, he had no difficulty understanding she was welcoming the man in, offering a place to sit.
“Please,” he imagined her saying. “You are welcome here.”
The stranger now took a few faltering steps inside the door. Markasev sat at the table with his greasy plate in front of him; he was astonished. Not since they left Saltpetre Street had he seen the baroness speak to another person in this way, as if they had a prior acquaintance. He had gotten used to thinking she was friendless in the world. How had this man found them? Why was he out of bed, out of the hospital, when he was so obviously sick? His face was livid, and at every step he grimaced in pain. A bandage covered most of his head under his hat, which he labored to take off; he was beautifully dressed in old-fashioned, formal clothes. Velvet trousers, silk stockings to the knee, a woolen cape that now fell open, and Markasev could see the stranger’s bloody hand, pressed against his side. His waistcoat and jacket were stained with blood.
But if the baroness knew him, he gave no sign of recognizing her. He peered stupidly around the room. The baroness said something else, and he looked at her, his face bewildered. Markasev turned also, because her voice had changed again. It was coarse and guttural and foreign as she pronounced the foreign words. She was standing in the shadow of the lamp, her face half obscured. Looking at her, Markasev saw no trace of the lady of comfort and tears, no trace of the young man in student clothes, no trace even of the artificial girl she had seemed just moments before. He knew she’d been an actress because she had told him, but he had never seen in her a transformation like this, of the kind that had delighted audiences across Europe. She stood with her hands on her hips, a menacing shadow. It was not possible to think of her as a woman.
The stranger—Monsieur Spitz—choked out some painful words. “Who are you?” he said. No doubt speaking in French was too much effort, and the baroness, too, switched to Roumanian.
“Let me help you,” she said in a coarse, country accent. “Let me—” Still keeping to the shadow, she came forward, made a gesture with her hands.
The stranger grimaced, touched his head. “Don’t touch! Don’t touch. Where am I?—tell me that. Who are you?”
“You’re with friends. People who know what those men did to you.”
“What man? It was a woman, let me tell you—beautiful—heartless bitch! God in heaven, let me find her. I went to her house but she was gone. I will follow her—”
“No—”
“Let me tell you. She had such shoulders, like the goddess. How could she have done this? Ah, it hurts. It was a silver candlestick, which she took from the mantel, and I did nothing, nothing at all! Nothing to—”
Why was this man not in bed? He staggered forward and seized hold of the back of a chair, which he used to support his weight. He bent his body around the wound in his side, while he worked to recover his breathing.
“That woman has already been punished,” said the baroness. “Would you believe it when you saw her so proud? Chased from her house. In the streets without a penny, and the police—you’ll never find her. She has sunk too low.”
For a moment no one spoke. Then, “Oh, I’m tired,” confessed Monsieur Spitz. “This bullet in my ribs. If you know something, tell me. I woke in my carriage with a man robbing me. In my pockets as I lay helpless. I cried out, put my hand up—he shot me in the side. Robbed me.”
Markasev wondered if the man was blind, or mostly blind. One eye was half covered by his bandage, and the other was dark with blood. He thrust his nose out, sniffing at the smells of cabbage and grease. His head lolled from side to side. “The thief—I barely saw him in the dark. Sweating face. Yellow hair. Who are you? Do you know him?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me,” and the baroness told him. She gave him an address in the northern reaches of the city. “Oh, I will find him. Cruel, thieving bastard—Greuben, that’s a German name!”
He would not sit or be comforted. Now he seemed eager to be gone. He pulled himself upright and staggered back toward the door.
“And when you speak to him,” pursued the baroness, “tell him to look for Radu Luckacz at the headquarters of the metropolitan police. And tell him you were sent to him by a third party, by the Elector of Ratisbon. Will you say that for me? Will you do me that one favor?”
Monsieur Spitz glared at her out of his bloody eye. Then his face softened somewhat, and he wagged his big head. Where was he going? How was it possible for him to imagine he could get back down the stairs without collapsing? Surely a doctor was what he needed, and a place to rest. Yet they heard the crack, crack, crack of his feet kicking the stairs, and he was gone.
Afterward, Markasev sat quiet in his chair. He listened to the sound of the baroness’s breathing, which was broken and forced. In a moment he decided she was weeping. She turned toward the window, then sat down on the bed and put her arms around her knees. Her face was turned away.
“Are you hungry?” he asked after a little while. When he said nothing, he got up to clear the table. He wiped their dishes with a greasy rag, and wrapped up the food she hadn’t eaten. When he was finished, he saw her lying back against the pillows, and he imagined she had fallen asleep. He stood drinking his warm beer, then made a nest for himself on the round carpet and blew out the light.
* * *
BUT THE BARONESS was not asleep. Nor was she thinking about Spitz or Hans Greuben. But in her mind’s eye she was looking at her son’s small, handsome face, his smile when he said her name—the first word she had ever heard him speak. Now it seemed obvious to her that there was nothing wrong with him, that nothing ever had been wrong—a slow learner, as she had said when she was pleading with her husband. She herself had scarcely spoken until she was four years old.
Or had she pleaded, really? She’d been twenty-four when he was born. Her husband had brought in doctor after doctor, and maybe she’d been cowed by the unanimous insistence of those old men. But now she had to admit she’d been relieved at first and even glad to be rid of the whole sniveling, puking mess—the evidence that her husband had once lain with her. And more than once. No doubt it had been easy for her to believe the child was damaged in some way.
Now she couldn’t sleep. She put the jewel on her bedside table. She lay on her back, chewing her nails, listening to Markasev’s even breath. And at first light she imagine
d she and Markasev would have to leave, perhaps even leave the city.
But in the morning she woke after a strange dream, and found she was feeling none of the same urgency. She lay in bed, which was not her habit. She sent Markasev out to buy cigarettes and the newspapers, and then sat smoking and reading by the window. The story didn’t appear until the afternoon, in a small box on the second page. It retold the story of the murder of Claude Spitz the jeweler, how a servant of the Baroness Ceausescu (since absconded) had confessed to the crime. Then it added this new complication: Someone else had come forward to claim responsibility. A German national, he had begged to be locked up, had refused the protection of the German embassy. He had provided the police with evidence from the scene of the crime, as well as details never reported in the press.
That day the German ambassador protested, claiming that the man had been tortured by the Siguranta. Antonescu made a public apology, promised to intervene. But the ambassador took the night train to Berlin. And shortly before dawn, five regiments of German cavalry crossed the border near the town of Kaposvar.
12
The Wendigo
AND IN NORTH AMERICA, Peter and Miranda sat together at the entrance to the cave. They were hungry. Peter squatted among the boulders, rubbing his unequal hands together.
“If he took the boat,” said Miranda, “then he’s already gone. Even so we’ve got to follow him, because there’s nothing to eat. Andromeda has hurt her leg. How do you feel?”
“Better.” Peter scratched at the hair on the back of his big right hand. “I feel better.”
The previous morning, when he had first woken on his sweaty tangle of blankets in the entrance to the cave, he had lain quietly for many minutes, too exhausted to move. Miranda was there, and she had hugged him and kissed him on the forehead and the cheeks. He was surprised by this, by the way she touched him; at times she was in tears.
His fever had broken during the night. The spots on his chest and face were gone. But he was too weak to move—all day he was too weak. Miranda sat with him talking, and she held his hand and washed his face. Sometimes she got up to call for Andromeda or Raevsky.
Later the yellow dog came in, mauled and bitten on her neck and paws, because she’d met some larger animal that night. She limped over to put her head in Miranda’s lap. Miranda had dug her hands in the thick fur, hugged the dog’s head until she whimpered.
Later, toward evening, when Peter had struggled to his feet and gone outside, he found Miranda standing among the rocks. And when she saw him, new tears came to her eyes. “What’s wrong?” he asked her, and she shook her head. “What’s wrong?” he said again, and she relented, smiled.
“I dreamt I was twenty years old,” she told him.
She said she wanted to find Raevsky’s footprints, and after fifteen minutes he followed her a little way into the trees. Weak and exhausted, he stood next to a birch tree. He was surprised to see her at the bottom of an odd, small dell, taking her clothes off in the snow. She was only fifty feet away, but she didn’t see him. He stood breathless, without moving, and watched her peering into a circle of ice between two trees as if it were a mirror; the sun had not yet set. Then she took off the old Gypsy’s bulky coat, and lifted her shirt up so her skin was bare. She was touching and pressing at her breasts. Her back was partly toward him, and he couldn’t see. She was looking at her hands, and she undid the front of her pants and turned away from him completely, and he could see the arch of her back as she leaned to examine herself, as he imagined.
Because her coat was off and he could see her body, he felt a new embarrassment. He looked down, and there was the yellow dog beside him.
She had limped up through the snow to stand beside him on the edge of the small dell. The hair rose from her back, and Peter had listened to her low, soft growl. She’d turned her heavy head, pulled back her lips to reveal their pink underside. Peter had known that if he moved or spoke, the dog would have bitten him.
Afterward, Miranda had built a fire, had lain down beside him in the cold. In the morning he had woken up alone. Now, squatting by the fire, he told the truth. “I feel better,” he said, though he was hungry, of course. “I had such nightmares.”
Miranda’s face took on a stricken look. “I dreamt I was twenty years old,” she said again, as she had the day before. She stared at him for a long moment—the hugs and kisses were all gone.
She stood up and rubbed her palms on her dirty black jeans. “We’ll stay tonight,” she said. “You rest up—we couldn’t reach the river before nightfall, anyway. If there’s a storm, I don’t want to get caught out in the open. The thing is, though, we’ve nothing to eat.”
“Which way is the river?” Peter asked.
She shrugged. “The jerk left a trail.”
But in the afternoon the jerk came back, lugging a canvas bag. When Miranda hid his boat, she’d kept some supplies in it, which the wild men hadn’t found. These included some biscuits and a long gun for hunting—Raevsky had shot an animal on the way. He’d hung the body in a tree a few miles from the camp, and while Miranda put up the canvas tent, he and Peter went to look for it.
The previous morning, Miranda had had to lift a bowl of melted snow for Peter to drink. But now he felt his strength returning and, unwarrantably, his good spirits. For the whole time since he’d arrived in these woods, he’d been sick to his stomach. But maybe the fever had burned that sickness out of him. Now he felt stronger, purified by hunger as he slogged behind Raevsky in the afternoon light, through the small birches. His heart thudded in his chest, and the snow dragged at his boots. He stopped for a moment and breathed deep.
Suddenly he felt like laughing, throwing snowballs at Raevsky’s retreating back, and there was no reason for it. They were still lost. Splaa and Rodica and the others were still dead. But he wasn’t afraid of Raevsky any more. He wasn’t afraid of hunger or the future. He found himself mumbling part of a poem that his mother had taught him:
“Away to the hills, to the caves, to the rocks—
Ere I own a usurper, I’ll couch with the fox;
And tremble, false Whigs, in the midst of your glee,
You have not seen the last of my bonnet and me!”
As he chanted these words, he found his feet had picked up the rhythm, and he caught up to Raevsky in the wet snow. He was gratified to see the captain turn his head and pause—was that a frightened expression on his swollen face? It was! The old man put up his hand to make a sign against the evil eye. How did Peter recognize the gesture, which he’d never seen? Raevsky stood panting, out of breath in the long light.
“No closer,” he said, putting out his hand. “So, you are what I cannot understand. Two times, you are a dead man.”
He swallowed his breathing down. Peter and he stood face to face. “I thought she was alone,” Raevsky said. “I thought I will find your corpse. She was sick, that was my fear. What will I tell my lady?”
His left eye was surrounded by a black ring. The eye itself was covered with a red, sticky film. Again Peter found himself smiling. In his mind he caught a glimpse of Miranda with her shirt hiked up, examining her slender waist and mottled rib cage, her skin covered with goose bumps, he imagined.
The captain had shot some kind of big monkey, and had hung it from a leather strap up in a tree. It was a shame—there was another smaller monkey that had climbed into the branches and was chattering at them as they slogged up. When Raevsky pulled out his long revolver, the little monkey started to scream, and scurried down the far side of the tree. Peter saw it watching from a distance as they unstrapped the big, hairy body and let it fall.
“So,” Raevsky said. “I know what this is. This is the wendigo. Ishu told me the story. So, my men are gone. Now I am cursed and damned.”
He seemed to share in Peter’s giddiness. He clapped his hands together, and in the snow he made a capering little dance.
Peter was the one who dragged the stiff body. In some places it glided over th
e snow. At other places where the undergrowth was thick, Peter had to hoist it up and carry it. Still he felt happy to use his muscles. The old man went in front.
They made good time, and in an hour they were back. The air was warmer, and Miranda had built a fire away from the rock face, with a big pile of new wood that she had gathered in their absence. She had pitched Raevsky’s tent. The yellow dog was snarling at the body of the ape, which Peter flung down in a bare place on the stones away from the fire. The old man was rummaging in the canvas bag, and now as darkness gathered he came forward with a bottle and a knife. He took a drink of what smelled to Peter like good Turkish ouzo, but he didn’t offer it around. Instead he squatted down over the corpse and expertly, immediately, began to butcher it. He skinned away the heavy pelt and cut big chunks of gray, greasy meat out of the chest and thighs. The black blood stained the snow.
Peter went back to the fire. He didn’t want to look. But the high spirits that had sustained him were flagging now, and he felt weak from hunger. He sat with Miranda, and they ate biscuits and stared at each other until Raevsky came back. He’d cut sticks of green wood to serve as skewers, and Peter and he roasted the meat and ate it, and Peter had never tasted anything so good. He burned his fingers, burned his mouth on the tough, sinewy, disgusting lumps of flesh.
The dog wouldn’t touch it, and neither would Miranda, so there was more for them. Andromeda curled up ostentatiously in the entrance to the cave. Peter could see her eyes shining in the darkness when he turned around. Miranda and the old man were arguing about Albany, but Peter found he didn’t care much about that. It seemed a tired, stale old argument. After a while he wiped his fingers in the snow and on his pants, and drew from his pocket his harmonica, which his uncle had given him in Greeneville.
He could smell the ouzo across the fire, but he wasn’t going to ask for it. Instead he cooled his mouth with snow, then spat it out and began to play—whisper music at first, but then a tune. And the tune suggested an old song that he’d learned so long ago he couldn’t remember. His mother had been born in Quebec, and had taught him some French nursery songs by rote. He didn’t speak any French. But after a few moments he lifted his mouth from the harmonica.
