A Princess of Roumania

by Paul Park

  In silence Peter and Miranda spread out among the trees, while Andromeda ran around them in a circle, nose to the snow. They came together again, still without speaking, and trooped back to the fire.

  “Well,” Miranda said, staring down into the low flames. “Now it’s just us.”

  During these days, Peter had been drained of his capacity to feel astonished, and he imagined it was the same for Miranda. She stood with her hands in her pockets. The air was cold, and she had put on Blind Rodica’s coat.

  “It’s time to move,” she said. “We’ve got some freedom now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She turned up the collar around her face, and tucked her hair inside the coat. “I don’t know,” she said. “It feels weird. Maybe they’re leaving us alone.”

  Her hands, when she took them out of her coat pockets, were raw and chapped. She rubbed them together, then knelt down and warmed them at the fire. “I mean we have to find a way to save ourselves. We can make choices for ourselves. We don’t have to go to Albany. We don’t have to show up in Roumania at all. I’m not even sure they’ll be so glad to see me anymore.”

  “Doesn’t your aunt live there?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t know. Germany would make more sense—Ratisbon, maybe. Where would you like to go?”

  “Florida,” he said, and she smiled.

  “My grandparents have a condo in Palm Beach,” she said. “What the heck.”

  They spoke with a mixture of lightness and seriousness, then and later as they made their plans. They would wait one day for Raevsky, and in the morning they would leave. They wouldn’t try to find the hunters or the wild men. There was no reason to expect a good reception in either place. And with the number of biscuits they had, they couldn’t waste time looking and risk getting lost. Raevsky’s map was a simple one, and maybe he had left more food by the river. In the morning they would go and find the boat.

  “What do you know about the wendigo?” Peter asked, but Miranda shook her head. These days when she didn’t want to talk about something, she just ignored him.

  “It’s a ghost, isn’t it—is that what you saw? That night above the camp…”

  “We’ll go someplace warm,” she said. “I guess New York is a real town. Rachel used to take me to New York about once a year, when Dad was busy with his grading. We’d stay with her sister. We’d go to movies and musicals on Broadway.”

  They sat side by side among the rocks. Whole subjects seemed erased, blacked out, like the dark places on an ancient map.

  “When I was sick,” he said, “I must have been a little crazy. There’s a moment I thought I was going to die.”

  She shrugged.

  He was venturing into a dark place on the map. “I remember how you were,” he said. “When I was sick.”

  She had given him water, washed his face, lain down with him. She had slept beside him and never left him. Still there was a barrier between them, which maybe they had brought to this world from the other one. “If I had died,” he said, “do you think I would have ended up at home?”

  She didn’t answer. He let some time go by before he spoke. “I used to think if I were normal, if I just had two hands like other people, then there’d be nothing I couldn’t do,” he said. “Anything I wanted, I could have. It doesn’t matter. I don’t think you’re telling me the truth.”

  “About what?”

  He stopped, then started again: “Choices for ourselves. Is that what you think, that you’re free from all this crap all of a sudden?”

  Miranda didn’t look up. Finally she spoke. “It’s just I’m not sure they’re going to welcome me now. Even if my aunt is still alive. Before, it was like playing a game of chess. But no, you’re right. Part of me still thinks I’ve got to go to Albany and find this man Ion Dreyfoos. And if I don’t, then terrible things are going to happen.”

  Peter stretched his right hand to the fire. “And what about me?”

  She looked at him now. “I’m hoping you’ll come. I always hope you’ll come.”

  Why was she so stingy? She made him angry. Always from the beginning she had thought she was too good to be even his friend, let alone anything more. Or else he was the one who was convinced of that.

  He flexed his fingers, examined the dark hair on the back of his hand. He had a birthmark in the lap of muscle near his thumb, a shape like a rabbit with its long ears. “I think you’re fooling yourself,” he said at last. “And anyway this princess thing has gotten out of hand.”

  Miranda stared at him pugnaciously. Her jaw was set, her lips were closed. But in a moment she was smiling. She brushed a strand of hair back from her wide forehead, then rubbed her nose. “Whatever happens,” she said, “I want you to be with me. You and Andromeda. Will you promise?”

  He didn’t promise. He didn’t have to. Instead he stared into the flame. “That old man Raevsky called me something more than once. Degrats, or something. Do you know anything about that?”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” she said, too carefully.

  Then she went on: “I know who you are. That’s who I want you to be, because that’s who I am, too. This place has its hook in all of us. That doesn’t mean we can forget what’s most important.”

  Above them on the rocks, Andromeda started to whimper. She stood facing into the line of trees. Peter glanced that way and realized he was looking at Raevsky, who was standing between two birches perhaps a hundred feet away. He was swaying on his feet. Then slowly he came forward. And Peter could see there was a small animal beside him that was holding his hand, pulling him into a crouch while it slid forward on its ass. Peter looked, and looked again, and realized what he saw. It was the creature that had crossed in front of him and Miranda and Andromeda that night as they came down toward the fire on Christmas Hill.

  Yes, there it was, the same naked belly, round head, and lidless eyes. It led the old man for a few steps, then paused as he stumbled forward by himself.

  Peter got to his feet. Miranda got up. Andromeda stood above them on three legs. And none of them moved as they watched the old man shuffle through the broken crusts of snow—barefoot, they could see that now.

  Behind him, the animal had climbed back into the shelter of the birches. It stood watching for a moment and then disappeared. The sun was down behind the trees.

  Miranda put her hand out. The old man hobbled toward them step by step. He was mumbling and muttering. Peter could hear the words.

  The dog whimpered and snarled. It was the end of the afternoon, and the light was fading. Miranda took a step forward.

  “Blestematele de picioare”—my damned feet, whispered the old man.

  His feet looked burned—blackened and filthy, and covered with some kind of grease. His hands, too, were split and raw. His cheeks were bloody, and his face was chapped and wind-burned.

  “Picioarele mele arzande,” he said.

  They sat him down on his own sleeping bag. He seemed scarcely to recognize them. But when they came close, he tried to seize hold of them with his still-powerful hands, as if through touch and proximity he could remind himself. “Imi pare rau,” he said. I’m so sorry for it.

  They wrapped his feet in blankets and gave him water to drink. He sat huddled by the fire, his hands clasped around a tin cup. Peter sat with him while Miranda took the gun and went out with Andromeda into the woods. Peter didn’t want to leave her alone with Raevsky. They were gone about half an hour. But they discovered nothing except Raevsky’s boots, which Miranda laid out on the warm stones. In the meantime, the old man’s head nodded. Peter helped him to the tent and laid him down. But he could not be left alone. He seized hold of Peter’s hand and wouldn’t let go until he fell asleep.

  * * *

  IN THE MORNING he had made a strange recovery. He shook Peter awake and whispered in his ear. “We must leave,” he said—he had recovered his English. “Come, we must leave this place.”

  Peter smelled his st
inking breath. “So, I will survive like you,” said the old man. “Nothing kills me. I can live beyond my time.”

  He climbed out of the tent into the dawn light, and when Peter followed he was sitting by the ashes of the fire with his pant legs pulled up to his knees. He picked and rubbed at his feet, which were covered with scabs. With great care, he dabbed them with liquid from a small glass bottle. Then he drew on two pairs of socks, one cotton and one wool, and eased his feet into his stubborn boots. “So, you see,” he grunted, and then labored to stand up.

  Once on his feet, he moved with a combination of stiffness and spryness that was painful to watch. But he was anxious to be gone. “So, I take you to Albany. Albany first. Then we will talk about the rest. Today. Tonight. Tomorrow. In Albany we eat with human food.”

  Miranda’s hair was tangled and she was yawning, and rubbing at her face. She had spent a cold night in the cave. She was moving slowly, and it was strange to see her standing in a patch of sunlight as the sun broke through the clouds, yawning stupidly while Raevsky struck camp. He hopped and capered as if every step hurt him, as if by arching his back and raising his shoulders he could put less weight on his sore feet. He ripped apart the tent and stowed it in the boat bag, along with the bedding and the tarpaulin, and everything he had brought up from the river.

  They were ready before Miranda had properly woken up. Peter hoisted the bag onto his back. It made a clumsy burden—a canvas duffel bag, and Peter put his arms through the loop handles as if they were the straps on a backpack. Miranda and Raevsky had an argument about the gun, but finally he allowed her to carry it. He went in front, and led them with crazy swiftness through the woods. When they reached the place where he had shot the ape, he led them in a wide half circle, Peter noticed, and down a rocky ravine on the far side. They passed between two bald hillsides. Then there was a long slog to the valley.

  In the afternoon they reached the bend in the river where Miranda and Raevsky had camped. The flat-bottomed boat was waiting for them, drawn up on a black layer of pine needles under the tall trees. Miranda was tired, and so they sat down for a meal of biscuits and water while the old man unlaced his boots. He drew his feet out, and rewrapped them in cloth strips soaked from his little bottle, all the time crooning and mumbling in Roumanian. His battered fingers trembled not so much from fatigue as from suppressed excitement, and his voice was gasping and high. Altogether the change in him was astonishing, when Peter remembered the grim soldier who had surprised them at the ice house with his men. Now he was like a madman—his face and hands were never still, and he picked at his lips and beard. Nor could he rest until he’d loaded up the boat again and loaded them aboard, and stepped gingerly from the overhanging bank into the stern, and pushed them away.

  The pirogue was heavily loaded with the three of them and the dog. The current was swift, and divided often between low sandbanks lined with the trunks of broken trees.

  They went on for an hour or so. “Stop,” said Miranda as the light grew dim. “There’s a place.” She was in the bow, and she paddled them to shore beside a beach of sand and stones, ignoring the entreaties of the old man to go faster, farther. “We’ll camp here,” she said. “It’ll be too dark to see.”

  The decision was the only sensible one, as in places the water was shallow enough to rip the bottom from their boat. In other places there were hidden snags. Abruptly the old man finished arguing, and as the boat came to the bank he leapt ashore, and started to build camp with the same frantic and unhealthy energy. They had stopped on a wide, curving strand of pebbles and small stones, and immediately he started to clear a place in the bare sand, flinging the stones into the water. Then he and Peter pitched the tent while Miranda gathered wood and lit a fire.

  Andromeda had a rabbit to eat, but the rest of them had biscuits for supper— biscuits Raevsky had bought for his men in Bremerhaven. They were flat, hard, and indestructible, each baked with the image of the German lion. Peter and Miranda soaked them in hot water. But for their hunger, they would not have been able to swallow them down, and even so, Peter’s gorge and stomach seemed to resist every mouthful. But Raevsky sat cross-legged on the sand, cracking the hard strips between his teeth.

  Later he heated water in a biscuit tin to wash his face and neck and beard. He laid out a bar of soap on a flat rock. He rubbed his hair with a ragged towel. All the time he was humming a song, the same song Peter had played on his harmonica two nights before. Peter’s mother had taught it to him:

  Radu Mamii nu mai bea

  Uite potera colea

  Insa Radu n-asculta

  Potera-I-conjura …

  After the old man had scoured his face red, he sat down on the rocks with them and rubbed his hands together. “So,” he said. “I must not go to sleep.”

  When Peter asked him why, he shook his head. “The wendigo! I saw the wendigo! I shot the big one, but there was the small one, and I saw it run away. But I was hunting with a dead man, drinking with a dead man. De Graz, tell me what you see? I saw a fire shining and a wind blowing, and my lady. No, I did not see her, but I heard her voice. Is strange I came awake to follow? Is strange so I am waiting for this night? Why did she run from me in the cold snow? I did not see. My lady has bright hair that is red and brown. Eyes are blue and dark. Skin so clean, body so clean, thin like a boy. Now I see her so, as she was when I said good-bye at the Gara de Nord. I kissed her hand! She wore no gloves. I could smell something on her wrist. She wore no coat, but a small coat and trousers like a boy. I would die for her, I think, but so I am the last who did not die. All they died for her except for me. So I was like a ghost who can feel nothing, and I was walking in the snow without my shoes. I thought I heard her voice. Maybe she will come again tonight.”

  He talked like this for quite a long time. Miranda rolled her eyes. She had put up a second tent not far away, and she stood beside it brushing her hair while the old man talked. Then she was making a small pantomime of tiredness. She yawned, tilted her head, closed her eyes, and put her folded hands together next to her cheek. She mimicked a snoring noise, then waved and crawled inside her tent.

  Two nights before, with Raevsky passed out by the fire, it had seemed natural for her and Peter to sleep in the one tent. The next night, Raevsky had been injured. It was just as natural to put him under shelter, and he hadn’t let go of Peter’s hand. Trudging to the river, Peter had been hoping they could go back to the first arrangement. But when they reached the boat, among the supplies they had found there, Miranda had picked out a second tent.

  Now he found himself wondering if he should try to follow her inside, or even if her snoring noise and little wave had been an invitation. How could you know these things for sure? He sat up for a while longer, listening to the old man sing:

  “‘Stop drinking, my dear son.

  I fear the soldiers will come for you.’

  But Radu wasn’t listening…”

  13

  Dr. Theodore

  LATER THAT NIGHT THE BARONESS Ceausescu sat on her bed, looking out the window into the dark street. Beside her on the coverlet lay two of the afternoon newspapers, Roumania Libera and the Evenimentul Zilei. Both presented on their second page a description of the same event. According to one, an unknown anarchist had made a reckless and murderous attack on a German officer. According to the other, a nameless patriot had struck a blow for freedom.

  Yet the details were the same. At first light a young man had approached a group of soldiers near the Athenée Palace Hotel. Without provocation he had shot and killed Herr Sergeant-Colonel Boris Blum, liaison to the Second Army. The Zilei gave some biographical information: He was a native of Danzig, two years from retirement, and the father of eight boys, four from each of his two wives. He was well loved and admired by subordinates and superiors.

  The baroness put her thumb over the sketch of a fat-faced officer with a handlebar moustache. The paper trembled in her hands as she reread the description of the young man’s arres
t. He was being held in one of the station houses of the metropolitan police. He had not revealed the names of his accomplices. There was no letter in his pocket, no identity card, nothing to suggest who he was or why he did what he had done.

  That day, waiting for Markasev to return, the baroness had spent her time in bed, chewing her fingers and smoking cigarettes. She had not dared to go into the street. In the evening she had borrowed the newspapers from her landlady, who had knocked upon her door. Now she lay back against the pillows, holding the Roumania Libera folded into thirds in her left hand, while with her right she fumbled for the tourmaline inside the dirty bedsheets.

  She was conscious of a sudden feeling of relief. If the papers had lied, if the boy had given her up, surely the police would have found her by now. All evening she had waited for the sound of their footsteps on the stairs.

  Now she grasped the jewel and touched it to her forehead and her eyes. As if the power of the stone had opened some inner gate, she felt a current of emotion. Her eyes itched, though she did not weep. Her skin was hot. A shudder of dry sobs passed through her. Fear and rage no longer could protect her from herself. In disgust, she threw the paper to the floor.

  Everything she loved, everything she valued in the world was gone. Her clothes, her name, her son, her reputation, her position in society—all was gone. The Elector of Ratisbon had chased her from her house, chased her out into the streets, chased her into anonymous and disgusting lodgings where she lived hidden from the world, ashamed and afraid to show herself. The Elector of Ratisbon had threatened her with arrest, exposure, death, and sent his hired thugs to search for her.

  And now the one thing she had found and kept, the boy whose life she’d saved, who had loved her and followed her and kept her from loneliness, and whom she too had loved in her own way—the elector had destroyed him as well. There was no limit to his malice or his efforts to humiliate her.

  And there was no limit, finally, to her unhappiness. She, whose talents had been praised by connoisseurs all over Europe, whose palm had been kissed by the Turkish Sultan of Byzantium, was reduced now to poverty in a single, squalid room. Yes, it was true she’d made mistakes. Yes, it was true she’d been improvident and rash. Oh, she had many regrets, for which she punished herself daily. Surely that was enough, more than enough, and there was no reason to accept more punishment at the small, sexless hands of this monstrous and potato-eating man.