by Paul Park
“Come in,” said General Stoessel. He was standing at the doorway of an inner cloakroom. He was in full uniform, with epaulets and black boots.
Once again the elector suppressed a smile. Stoessel was grotesquely small. The top of his head, as he came forward, was at the level of the elector’s cravat. And the elector himself was not a tall man.
The general’s voice was high and thin. “I want to thank you for your information about the presence of the Baroness Ceausescu in her home, and to tell you that I have sent a detachment of military police. It is important to keep the rule of law in this country, and to resolve once and for all this matter of the Herr Spitz’s murder. Now. Here is your train ticket to Berlin, at seven o’clock this evening. I must ask you to surrender your passport.”
In the cottage on the riverbank, where there were no longer any doors, for many minutes now the incubus had shifted back and forth and up and down inside the little room, trying to trap Miranda Popescu against the walls or behind the furniture, while at the same time he engaged her in conversation—“Please, have one of these rolls.” The symbol of his family was the banded serpent, and it occurred now to the elector that Dr. Theodore was like a serpent in a cage, weaving back and forth, threatening a helpless creature until … Where had she gone? The corner where he’d trapped her was now empty.
“Excuse me?” he said. With the small part of consciousness at his disposal, he went over what Stoessel had said. Why did they need his passport? But then he thought he understood. If the foreign minister was going to offer him a new appointment, doubtless he would need new diplomatic papers.
“Because of our position as guests in this country,” said General Stoessel in his absurd, high voice, “I do not feel I have the authority to order your arrest. I have conferred with the ambassador on this subject. Nevertheless it is my duty to request you to return to Germany to answer charges there. Herr Greuben will travel with you under guard.”
The elector found this difficult to follow. His head was aching. The evening sun shone through the long windows, and many of the details of the room were now lost to him, swallowed up in shadow. The new ambassador, a white-haired man with a white goatee, had turned toward him. He was wearing a boiled shirt with gold studs. He walked over to the desk and sat down.
The general was speaking. “You are acquainted with Ambassador Behrens, are you not?”
Ratisbon had taken a few steps into the room. “What…?” he murmured. “What…?”
“Charges, that is all,” said Stoessel. Was that actually a monocle hanging from his buttonhole? How was it possible that there were men like him still living? When the elector was welcomed into government, all these fossils would be put in a museum.
On the riverbank, the boy had slipped out of the succubus’s grasp. Using the four-kings defense, he had turned her wrist around.
“Charges,” the general repeated. “We have been listening to Herr Grueben’s story. We are glad we have been able to save his life. Trifa has been quite cooperative. But I must say I am disheartened by your role in this, because I knew your father. He was a fine man, an officer and a statesman from a great and noble family. In his name I now ask you—is it true what this man says? Are you guilty of these crimes?”
“What…?” said the Elector of Ratisbon. In the cottage on the Hoosick riverbank, the incubus struck and missed, struck and missed. All pretense was abandoned now. The knife was in his hand. Outside, the succubus roared and threatened in the cold grass, but the boy had seized her in his hands. How could he be so strong? Was there a man alive who could accomplish what the elector was trying to accomplish? No, not one.
“Do not pretend you are a fool,” said Stoessel. “Whatever you are, I know you are not that. And don’t imagine I’m so old and stupid that I could not recognize what is obvious—that you have engaged in witchcraft here under our noses, perhaps even in this hotel. Herr Grueben has sworn to it and signed the paper. Let me say this is a sad day for Germany, when the Elector of Ratisbon is revealed as a common conjurer.”
The elector turned toward the third man, slouched in his armchair by the stove. And now for the first time he recognized Hans Greuben, his face covered with half-healed bruises, and his expression open, vacant, terrified. “He sent a corpse into my room,” he murmured now.
What was the fellow talking about? He felt he should explain, and yet all explanations were beneath him. These old troglodytes—Ratisbon turned and stumbled out the door. His head was throbbing, and he needed air. He ran his hand along the marble balustrade. He stood above the lobby at the top of the marble staircase, then stepped insecurely down. At the midway point he tripped and almost fell. His heart staggered, and he grabbed hold of the banister to catch his breath. Injustice and ingratitude had wounded him, that much was sure. It could not be, for example, that the girl had hurt him. Below him on the tile floor, soldiers and civilians walked back and forth. Gathering his strength, he closed his eyes.
* * *
“PLEASE DON’T BE ALARMED,” said Dr. Theodore. He stood blinking in the middle of the imaginary room, in the cottage on the riverbank, a smile on his face. In his hand was a small pruning knife with a hooked blade. “I had not thought you were so beautiful,” he said. “I am grateful for the opportunity. Let me say it is an honor to meet a princess of the old blood, a princess of Roumania.”
He stumbled toward Miranda with his arm outstretched. He made a few weak gestures with the blade. He was easy to avoid. But the room had no doors or windows. As Miranda backed into a corner, the objects and contours of the room seemed simultaneously to fade and darken. Moment by moment the light dimmed; it had no source. Now Dr. Theodore appeared as a dark silhouette, and now she couldn’t see him, and it was dark.
But she could hear his voice, which changed. The murmured platitudes were gone, replaced in a moment by new language in a tone that was louder and more resonant. “Now it is time for what your family has done.”
All at once, the light came surging back from the tall windows. Miranda stood again in Juliana’s cottage, and every detail was in place. There were the scuff marks on the banister to the upper room, and the place where the rail had been broken and repaired. There were the scratches on the newel post where Juliana had measured her as she grew.
And in the middle of the room, Dr. Theodore had been replaced by someone else. Dressed in a black suit, the new man was smaller and more delicate. His hair was dark and glossy over a bald spot. He was looking at the floor, his chin sunk on his cravat, his face partly obscured by his high, winged collar. But when he raised his head, Miranda was astonished by his ugliness, his ruined, cratered face, out of which peered two lustrous brown eyes. His hands were clasped behind his back.
There were some medals and ribbons pinned to his lapel. Now he removed his hands from beneath the tails of his coat and showed them to Miranda. They were small and manicured and empty.
“Help,” Miranda murmured. The man smiled. His teeth were small and white.
“It is time to pay a bill,” he said. “After twenty years I will be able to tell your mother of your death.”
All this time he had been moving closer. “You are just a girl. But our future does not add up to the sum of our abilities, as I learn every day. Perhaps one day you might bring help to your country. In this way I can compare you to a pawn that has struggled down its track. In one more move it will become a queen and dominate the board. But at the moment of transition, you are vulnerable. Yes, you did me harm long ago. But I am fighting for my country. At the moment I am most despised, then I must fight the hardest. And because I have a deeper knowledge than the imbeciles who run my government, I can see what they don’t see—you are a threat to us.”
He had been moving closer, but Miranda had not moved. She found it hard to listen, because of the man’s pitted cheeks and twisted nose. She watched his red lips open and close over his teeth, while at the same time she looked past him and around the room. Everywhere she touched and
grasped at objects in her mind. Even in this moment of danger, she could not prevent herself from noticing the one starred windowpane, or the place where the cat—Alphonse—had clawed the upholstery, or the painted photograph of the Santa Sophia that Umar had brought back from Constantinople. Every detail brought with it a small story that she now remembered. And she imagined if she searched these stories she might find something to help her as the ugly man came toward her step by step.
Yes, there was something, a brass ring set into the floor. One day when no one was home, Juliana’s niece had showed her how you could lift up the edge of the Turkish carpet, which was no longer there. And you could twist the ring just so and pull it up, and there was a compartment where Umar kept a gun in an oiled cloth, a pistoleta left over from the Spanish campaign. Yes, and she remembered crouching on the stairs to the upper room, listening to Umar as the lamps were lit, as in his harsh voice he was saying that the empress had turned against the Brancoveanus, but they would find some secrets if they came for the little girl. The next day her aunt took her to Bucharest in the carriage.
“Now you see,” said the ugly man. “There was a chance for Great Roumania, but it has passed. Your father and your aunt are among the martyred dead. Your mother is my guest in Ratisbon. You are the last, and after you there will be none. Please, I see the bracelet on your wrist. Bring it to me. Put it in my hand.”
The door was behind him, and now she found herself maneuvered into a corner of the room, as he came toward her on his little feet. Beside her was a window made of diamond-shaped panes, and she turned toward it now and hammered at it with her forearms until some of the glass broke. She was protected by Rodica’s quilted coat. And even though the glass fell down around her, she couldn’t push out through the leads, supported (as she now remembered) on the outside by a layer of black chicken wire. She could never get out that way. And so she turned just as the ugly man came up behind her. As he reached for her she ducked under his arms and scrambled over the litter of glass shards. On her hands and knees she searched for the little ring. But she couldn’t find it.
The ugly man grabbed hold of her and pulled her up. When he put his hands under her coat, she could feel their coldness. He clutched her firmly in his small hands, and she was shuddering and twisting, and she couldn’t pull away. So then she pushed against him suddenly with all her strength, and thrust the heel of her left palm against his chin, while with her right fist she was thumping on his chest. And all the time she was shouting and crying, “You shit, you shit, you shit. You piece of shit…”—the kind of language she’d picked up from Andromeda and used only self-consciously; it had never seemed completely appropriate until now. And she must have caught the man by surprise, because he swayed on his feet and then tumbled to the floor with her on top of him. One of her hands was around his wrist, holding the knife away. And the other was thumping on his chest. And in her heart she felt a surge of triumph as she felt his body subside into helplessness, and she beat on his chest as if by striking him she could be rid of all the accumulated suffering of the past week, all the angers and frustrations—she didn’t need Umar’s gun, or any directions from her aunt. She didn’t even need Raevsky, or Andromeda, or Peter. But with her own hands she could defeat this creature, who now writhed and slipped away from her. And under her hands he seemed diminished, smaller every second as the light dimmed and the room flickered around her, and the objects in it lost their solidity. Before the darkness was complete she staggered up; the door was open, and she could see the trees outside.
* * *
AND AT THAT MOMENT IN Saltpetre Street, in her husband’s laboratory, the Baroness Ceausescu looked into her crystal pyramid. In the district police headquarters, six German soldiers received their orders. But even if she’d known of their approach, she would not have been able to break away from what she saw.
The pyramid was oriented to the points of the compass. If she looked into the south and north sides, she saw the fight, as she imagined falsely, between herself and the Elector of Ratisbon, the serpent and the tyger. But in the east and west sides she saw a simpler and clearer image, the elector on the stone staircase of the Athenée Palace Hotel. He was standing by himself, one hand on the banister, one hand pressed against his heart. It was difficult to read the emotions on his damaged face, but the baroness imagined a turmoil of distress. She placed her bitten, bleeding, tobacco-stained fingers on the crystal surface, while at the same time she looked down at the pages of one of her husband’s manuscripts, held open by the tourmaline.
Frightened, she had watched the snake command the center of the pyramid and push the tyger back. She’d watched it strike and miss, strike and miss. What would happen to her if those fangs struck home? But she could not watch and do nothing while the destiny of the white tyger, her own destiny, the destiny of Great Roumania was decided. She thought if she could force the elector to relax his grip on consciousness, just for a moment, then the tyger would have a chance. She had seen the little beast pushed and harried against the walls of the pyramid. But the snake was losing strength, and she could see that, too.
So intent she was, in her moment of anxiety and triumph, that she could not feel the presence of her husband’s ghost behind her. She could not feel the proximity of his cold hands, which he held out as if to touch her on the shoulders. Nor could she hear the whisper of his voice, as he spoke with her the old spell, copied in his handwriting years before. It was a witch’s curse, a fainting spell, uncertain in its efficiency, especially now as his wife mispronounced the words. But the baron wished it speed, and saw it taking momentary shape above the point of the pyramid—just a trick of the light, really, or an evanescent shadow of the red pig of Cluj.
The baroness didn’t see it. She was peering at the tiny figure of her enemy, standing by himself on the marble staircase. One hand was pressed against his heart. And as she watched, she saw him pitch suddenly downstairs. With his arms over his face he rolled and slid. Then he lay crumpled at the bottom of the stairs, and her view was obscured by the men who rushed to help him.
* * *
ON THE HOOSICK RIVERBANK, the woman gave a screeching yell. Peter had his arms around her. Now there was no longer any hint in her of Miranda or his mother, or any frailty or helplessness. The braid had come loose, and her coarse hair was wild around her head. Her lips were pulled back to reveal her teeth, and she was trying to bite him, trying to scratch him with her long nails as the yellow dog barked, and Raevsky stumbled and staggered blind, waving his saturated gun. On the top of the bank, he lost his balance and then slid down suddenly onto the strand, where he sprawled by the water’s edge.
The yellow dog was in the high, frozen grass at the edge of the pines. Again, the bird that had tormented her came stooping from the sun, and sank its talons into her back. But the dog jumped away into the undergrowth, and the eagle couldn’t follow her among the brambles. In a moment it rose up to the sky, disappeared among the clouds—Peter saw it rise, saw the light catch its feathers. He had the woman’s head in the crook of his right arm, and he sank the fingers of his left hand into her scalp, and pulled her head around, until he was staring at her violent and distorted face. And once again he caught a glimpse of something familiar, the black eyes and flashing teeth of a proud lady he’d seen several times when he was young, but once especially, dancing with an old man in uniform in a high-ceilinged, high-windowed room—she’d thrown her head back, laughed aloud from the pleasure of dancing, or else some whispered joke. And in this fantasy or memory, he himself was in a sky-blue cadet’s uniform, standing shyly by the wall. Even a name came back to him—La Condesa de Rougemont, and then the name was gone, and the memory was gone, disappearing like a fragrance or a wisp of music.
* * *
CAPTAIN RAEVSKY STUMBLED to his knees beside the river. As the blindness cleared out of his eyes, he saw Pieter de Graz above him on the bank, with his right hand around a woman’s neck. All around there was the sweet stench of witchcraft.
De Graz was behind her with his right arm locked around her neck, his left arm against her stomach. He was trying to crush the breath out of her, though she was not a breathing creature as Raevsky knew. Then suddenly he released her and fell back, but at the same time the yellow dog came jumping and snarling out of the undergrowth, and grabbed hold of the woman’s long skirt, and shook the tattered cloth from side to side. The dog was searching for something to bite, but there was nothing inside the skirt now, no flesh or bone. Just a few rags in the dog’s teeth.
Raevsky let his gun fall to the stones. Sore and crippled, he staggered to his feet and staggered up the bank. But de Graz and the dog hadn’t waited. The dog was barking, running upstream along the top of the bank, where there had been a path. De Graz ran after her, and then Raevsky followed as best he could, limping and swearing; they hadn’t far to go. The dog was barking, and de Graz was calling out Miranda’s name; the river made a turn, and now they plunged into a belt of pine trees. Raevsky was behind them, and as always if you could just get your feet moving, then they wouldn’t betray you, and he was running now. He kicked through the frozen stubble and then through the trees, and was in time to see Miranda Popescu on the far side of an empty clearing. She turned around toward them and he saw her face; she didn’t see them, couldn’t hear the barking and the shouts. Then she stepped into the trees and she was lost.
* * *
IN ROUMANIA, THE ELECTOR HAD suffered a small heart attack. For a single second he lost consciousness when the back of his head struck one of the long marble steps. And in that one dazed moment, all of his stupendous mental work was lost. Unsupported by his power of concentration, the incubus, the succubus, the cottage itself and everything in it—all of it collapsed and disappeared, leaving only the pine trees and the empty riverbank. And of course the boy, the dog, the man, but not the girl—where had she gone? As he lay waiting for the doctors, he watched them search among the tall trees without results.
