A Princess of Roumania

by Paul Park

  “I don’t want to discuss it.” Miranda said. “I want you to get us to Albany. Will you do that one thing, finally, after all the harm you’ve caused? Don’t you owe me that?”

  Raevsky said, “I have lost five men and my sister’s son. I was beaten by those savages and did not tell the dark from light.” He shrugged and muttered, “Do not talk to me.”

  Miranda had cut a strip of birch bark and made a map, drawing on the white surface with a piece of charred wood. “That’s right, isn’t it?” she said after a moment, pointing toward the west where the sun had set.

  “There is nothing you must fear,” protested the old man. “She means not to harm you, I swear on my parole. She is…” He looked up, his eyes bleary with drink.

  He looked across the fire at Peter. And then he started to clap his right hand against the bottle in his left, in rhythm to Peter’s song. He knew the words, too, and he started to sing. In a moment he grinned, and Peter could see where he was missing some of his back teeth. His face gleamed red in the firelight, and there was juice or liquor in his beard.

  “So,” he said. “Gypsy singing from Baia Mare. So, I am eating meat from the wendigo, and drinking with a dead man. Truly my life is over. At first I thought you were too young, but now I see it in your face. I am drinking with the Chevalier de Graz.”

  He raised the bottle. Peter felt a shudder in his chest. He bent again to the harmonica. The steel was cold against his teeth. But the instrument was more responsive now that he was playing it for the first time with his new hand. He could do a lot more things with it.

  Later, when the fire had burned down, he lay down in the tent with Miranda and couldn’t sleep. She had gone to bed early, but he had walked into the darkness a short way, and climbed up by the rocks onto the ridge to see if he could catch a glimpse of the new moon.

  When he came slipping down again, the old man had already passed out. He was curled in his feather bag, huddled among the rocks beside the fire. The bottle lay beside him, carefully corked, and Peter paused to open it and savor the well-remembered scent. He cleaned out his mouth with a big, burning swallow, then stoppered the bottle again and laid it down.

  The tent was an ordinary pup-tent—rectangular, with a peaked roof supported by two poles. The flaps were untied. Peter crawled into the tent, then sat down to undo his boots. In the almost complete darkness, he was aware of Miranda’s smell. In his mind he pictured her as he had seen her the previous morning. Then he groped among the blankets so he could feel where she lay. She was asleep, he decided.

  He lay down without undressing, and put his hands behind his head. He listened to the thumping of his heart. But he must have dozed off, because in the middle of the night he woke, disoriented, to find some more light in the small tent. He raised himself on one elbow, imagining the old man had built the fire up again. There was a glow outside that he could see through the canvas wall. And there were shadows of movement, too. He saw the shadow of the dog as it passed between the fire and the tent.

  Miranda was in a sleeping bag, her face uncovered in a nest of tangled hair. He examined her in the fire’s filtered glow, her straight, narrow nose, her delicate black eyebrows, her small, protruding ears. A lock of hair lay across her lips, trembling when she breathed. The shadow of the dog passed quickly over the canvas wall.

  * * *

  THE BARONESS CEAUSESCU spent that day in the rooming house behind the university. In the evening she sent Kevin Markasev into the streets to purchase groceries. He stood in the shadows when he returned, a paper bag in his hands. “You know there’s a crowd of people in the Strada Inocentei,” he said. “There were students giving speeches in the park. These things were hard to find.”

  The baroness wore a sleeveless cashmere vest over a white shirt. Around her neck there was a tiny golden chain, just visible in the lamplight. She wore black trousers and leather boots, which left a mark on the bedsheets. She wasn’t listening to Markasev. Instead she was reading the agony column in the Roumania Libera: “Stay away. The numbers are seven and seventeen. M.”

  And another: “Don’t you see how you have broken my heart? I will always remember. Meet me at the clock tower at five. All is not lost. Carlos.”

  And a third: “Madame La Baronne. The boy is already in Germany, where he is cared for. I make no bargains with thieves, and in the current crisis you will find it impossible to hide. Give me what I want. The stations and the gates are watched. Every day I expect to hear of your surrender.” Then there was a small coronet printed above the initials T.G.R.

  That morning the baroness had sent a letter to the Elector of Ratisbon, at his suite in the Athenée Palace Hotel. In it she’d proposed a simple swap, and indicated how to reach her. This was his response.

  She threw the paper aside and leaned back against the iron bars of the bed. There was a package of cigarettes on the side table, and a paper-covered book of one-act plays. In the ashtray was her husband’s signet ring, the pig of Cluj. Beside it, on the stained wood, lay the tourmaline, shining softly in the glow of the lamp.

  She laid her head back on the pillows and lit a cigarette. Holding it between her lips, she undid her gold cufflinks and rolled up her cuffs, exposing her small forearms and bony wrists. She was a beautiful woman, but her hands were not beautiful. She had big, raw knuckles, and nails that were bitten till they bled.

  “The university has closed,” said Markasev. Every day his speech was clearer and more complicated: “The miners are on strike. Trifa and the others are all free. People are drinking and playing music. They’ve let your servant go. You know, that man who used to bring me food.”

  * * *

  THE BARONESS SAID nothing to this. She took another swallow of smoke, and let it out in a slow stream. Abruptly she turned to him, and he could hear her soft, harsh voice. “Did you get what I wanted?”

  “Yes, but it was hard to find.”

  “Give it to me.”

  He came to her bedside, and she moved her legs so he could sit. From the paper bag he drew a bottle of Egyptian whiskey. She put the cigarette into the metal ashtray, and took the bottle from his hand.

  She uncorked it, and he could smell it. There was a wineglass on the table, and she poured some whiskey into it and put the bottle down. She did not drink. The whiskey in the glass was amber-colored and the smell was sweet.

  “What else?” she said.

  He took out a box of twelve brass cartridges. The baroness drew up her knee to show a revolver in a leather case under a fold of the quilt.

  “Pick it up,” she said.

  There was still a bottle of milk in the paper bag, and some soft old apples. He put the bag down onto the floor beside the bed, but did not reach his hand out for the gun. He knew nothing about guns. This one was strapped into its leather case. He could see the drum was empty.

  The baroness pushed it toward him with her boot. “It was my husband’s,” she said.

  Still he didn’t pick it up. She had lifted her body from the pillows until her face was near his. He inhaled, and under the smell of whiskey and tobacco he could smell her bitter smell.

  “We have enemies,” she said.

  He couldn’t think of any. Their landlady was kind to them. People in the building and on the street—they smiled and waved.

  “One enemy,” she said.

  In her husband’s laboratory, sometimes she had sat this close. That was good, and he remembered. She was the lady of comfort and tears, and she had brought him things to eat, and fed him with her own beautiful hands. Sometimes he had put his head onto her lap.

  Now abruptly she got up, pushed him away. She walked back and forth across the narrow floor, and then threw open the door onto the landing. Her coat hung from a hook; she seized it and her small student’s cap. “Come,” she said, and led him down the stairs into the crowded street. And it was true—there were no enemies that he could see. It was a cold night, but people laughed and talked as if it were midsummer. They sat on the s
teps of their houses. The baroness walked with her hands in her pockets, and she led him through the streets around the university, and then north through the Field of Mars into the Piata Revolutiei. They saw soldiers of the metropolitan police, and also German staff officers in uniform, particularly as they approached the Athenée Palace Hotel. All the lamps were lit, and in the portico of the restaurant stood five men smoking cigarettes, dressed in the black boots and the black raincoats of the German diplomatic corps.

  “There,” said the baroness, pointing. “Potato eaters. They laugh at us in our own city.” Then on the tramway platform, she pointed out the undercover policeman slouching in the corner, a newspaper stuffed into the pocket of his coat. “They are everywhere,” she said. “I can do nothing. You know they will arrest me if they find me.”

  That was the end of it, and they went home. As usual, he walked behind her, and he could see the people turn aside to watch her as she passed. When he was back in their snug room, he watched her drink a glass of whiskey on the bed. It seemed to make her body hot, and she stripped off her cashmere vest, unbuttoned the buttons of her man’s shirt, so that sometimes when she moved he caught a glimpse of her small breasts. She held the tourmaline in her hand, and once she pressed it against her forehead as if to cool herself. She scarcely spoke, but left him standing in the middle of the room on the dirty rug, a small coiled circle of rags. While he stood there she turned out the light, and he could hear her taking off her shirt in the dark. By the time his eyes became accustomed to the dim, reflected light, she had drawn up the sheet and turned away from him.

  The next day she took him to the Gara de Nord, and together they watched the first trainloads of German troops come in. They looked more like policemen than soldiers of the regular army. Their only weapons were the pistols underneath their long coats. They were bareheaded, or wore soft, billed caps. Only the officers wore the ridiculous spiked helmets of the propaganda posters, which had lined the wooden fences of the railway yard until the week before.

  “If he knew who I was, then he would have me locked away,” murmured the baroness, indicating an old officer on crutches. She took Markasev by the arm as they walked. “These places are for Germans now and not for us. If they weren’t watching, we could leave the city. As it is, they have us trapped.”

  These were dark words, but Kevin Markasev felt nothing but happiness. All around him he could feel an energy and gaiety, as if the political crisis had resolved all private quarrels. Lovers embraced shamelessly on street corners, and old married couples walked hand in hand. The shops were open late, and they were crowded, as if everyone had money to spend. The coffee shops, especially, were packed and brightly lit, the billiard rooms and public houses overflowed. There was a curfew that was universally ignored. The streets were full of children, though it was past their bedtime. Provocatively dressed young women wandered through the crowd, offering smiles and kisses to strangers.

  That night the baroness allowed him to walk beside her, and it was only when they turned into the Strada Iuliu that she let go his arm. Later, in their attic room, she again permitted him to sit beside her on the bed, as she showed him how to load the revolver, how to hold it in his hand.

  “There is a man who has stolen my heart,” she told him. “Kidnapped my son. Stolen him from his bed. Oh, there is such cruelty in this world!”

  Tears glittered in her eyes. Swallowing his fears, he put down the gun. Her white shirt was unbuttoned, and she smelled of sweat. Her shoulders and her neck were damp with bitter sweat. She turned her mouth away. “Hush, child, hush,” she whispered. She had seized his wrist in her left hand, but her right fist against his chest pushed him away. He could see that she was weeping, and the quiet tears ran down her face, and she could not be comforted, at least by him.

  The tourmaline lay in the rumpled bedsheets, glinting like a glass eye. The baroness released him and he stood up. Wordlessly, she indicated the small nest of pillows and bolsters where he slept at the foot of her bed. Then she took her boots off. Then as she had the night before, she extinguished the lamp and stood up suddenly to undress. He heard the shirt fall, the buttons of her trousers give way, and while he blinked in the darkness he was sure that she was standing naked, or else in her underclothes. And as before, by the time his eyes adjusted, she had slipped into the bed and turned away from him.

  He stood for several minutes, and then lay down on his pillows with his head under the blanket. In time he wondered if she was asleep. But she was not. He uncovered his face and listened to her quiet, harsh voice: “Theodore von Geiss und Ratisbon. You will know him by his face. He had the smallpox. Every morning after breakfast he stands in the entrance of the hotel, distributing five-franc pieces to the prostitutes—it is a ritual. An event, like the ringing of the bells in the temple of Mars.”

  * * *

  ON THE NIGHT of the German ambassador’s ultimatum, the Elector of Ratisbon had gone to Targu Mures, to meet with influential members of the German minority in Transylvania. But he was able to catch a train back to Bucharest, and in the German-language newspaper he had read the story of the crowds turning out to welcome the advancing troops, pelting them with pine cones and pieces of bread. At second hand he was able to witness the collapse of the Roumanian army. Entire divisions surrendered to inferior forces or else refused to fight.

  He read about the demonstrations in the Piata Revolutiei. Like everyone, he was thrilled to hear of the destruction of the Siguranta headquarters and the release of Zelea Codreanu, Valerian Trifa, and other political prisoners. The rapidity of these events astounded Europe. A truce was declared in a few days, though in the mountains there were places of resistance. Trifa and the others were negotiating with the German government. They had promised to arrange the abdication of Valeria Dragonesti, which the elector thought was a foolish idea.

  From his hotel balcony he could see into the square. All night the area around the Winter Keep was packed with people, and the atmosphere seemed oddly celebratory. There were no fights, no counterdemonstrations, for which the elector was grateful. Since Kaposvar, he had detested violence.

  Yet in his happiness, as always, there was a grain of discontent. These men negotiating with Trifa—he was not among them. Always his position in Roumania had been unofficial, dependent on a network of relationships, and now he found himself excluded. The new ambassador was not his friend, nor were any of the people newly arrived from Berlin. As for the military officers—he had grown accustomed to their polite contempt. They had not forgiven him for his failure years before.

  Along with his message to the baroness in the Libera, the elector had written a letter of protest to the German foreign secretary, offering his continued service to his country. He expected a reply in a few days, but in the meantime he found himself with nothing to do. Muffled in a sheepskin coat, he stood before dawn on his hotel balcony with a schnapps and soda in his gloved hand, and let his thoughts return into the darkness past Codfish Bay. It was an idle reflex at first, a trick of the mind, until he saw the fog had dissipated to the west. Whatever protection Schenck von Schenck had managed to provide her niece, now it was gone. The whole expanse of the dark forest lay before him, west to the Henry Hudson River.

  Eagerly he scanned it and saw nothing. His eye roamed back and forth, searching for a sign. The mist hung in clumps in the valleys until the wind blew it away, revealing the fold of the Hoosick River. South of the stream, below a rocky ridge, a single campfire burned.

  * * *

  BUT IT WAS ASHES in the morning when Peter woke up. He crawled out through the tent flap and saw her standing by the ashes of the fire. The dog was with her. “He’s not here,” she said.

  She meant the old man, Raevsky. His sleeping bag was empty, and the bottle lay broken on the stones. “I’ve been waiting for an hour and he hasn’t come back.”

  Miranda had brushed her hair and braided it. She stood with her boots on, but without her sweater or her coat, wearing instead a baggy, s
hort-sleeved shirt he hadn’t seen before. She must have pilfered it from Raevsky’s supplies. It was a cold morning, but her arms were wet, as if she had been washing in the snow.

  “Did he go hunting?” Peter asked.

  She pointed to the long gun leaning up among the boulders. Then she knelt down over the cinders of the fire, blowing them alive and feeding them with slivers of wood.

  Peter watched her for a moment. He rubbed his dirty teeth with his right forefinger, then turned aside to spit. The monkey meat, so delicious the night before, now felt queasy in his stomach. He looked up to where the corpse had lain—it too was gone.

  They made a breakfast of dry biscuits and hot water, boiled in Raevsky’s old tin pot. The dog’s foot was better, and she had gone away into the trees. In time she appeared again among the birches, and barked softly in her bizarre, quasi-human way—a sound like a man clearing his throat. They got up to follow her. Miranda took the gun.

  The dog led them through the woods until they found an open patch of snow below the rocks. The snow had a crust, because it had hardened and softened several times. Peter could see where the old man’s heavy boots had punctured it, making a series of dark holes. But there were other marks as well.

  Above the crust there was a layer of light, dry, powdered snow. Perhaps a quarter of an inch had fallen during the night. In it Peter could see the footprints of another creature, an animal not heavy enough to punch through the crust.

  The little, handlike marks were plain—it was another monkey. Peter bent down to examine the print of the small, naked pads, the long toes and nails, which decorated the snow between Raevsky’s boot marks. The trail was clear across a stretch of open ground. But in the conifers on the far side, under the tall trees where the snow was thinner, it vanished.