by Lumi Laura
CHAPTER 11 The Gazebo
Alex found her grandmother in the garden. Nights were still cold, but the sun warmed the ground enough during the day to plant seedlings. Her grandmother was planning a large garden with tomatoes, cucumbers, artichokes, squash, carrots, beats, turnips, onions, radishes, and bell peppers. Alex took a deep breath. Who's going to eat all this? she wondered, as she eagerly pitched in. Sunlight seemed to be bothering her less this afternoon. While they covered the roots of the tiny plants, Alex pumped her grandmother for more information about the gazebo.
"Who built the gazebo? What happened to it?"
Her grandmother fell silent and continued working. She didn't answer for a long time and when she did, her voice was soft and far off. "The gazebo was built at the direction of Queen Marie herself. She used to take my mother there when she'd come visit. They'd spend a little time alone together. Years later, she came to visit me."
Her grandmother told Alex that the gazebo had been a nonagon, a nine-sided, airy structure open in all directions. At each of its nine corners, thin vertical columns supported the roof. Inside stood short stone benches, five sections circling a pentagonal stone table.
"But why there, next to the family graveyard?"
"I believe partially for privacy. After my mother was no longer with us and I was a little older, Queen Marie wanted just the two of us together when she came on her rare visits. But she was a spiritual woman, and used to tell me that the entire human race was one big family. She said that all religions worshiped but one god. I sensed something going on beneath the surface of our conversations, which caused me to question my entire upbringing. Something was wrong, and it had to do with my mother."
"Do you know anything about the Cantacuzene family of Sinaia? I've heard that they have a connection to the Monastery."
"Why sure, child. Prince Mihail Cantacuzino founded the Monastery after a pilgrimage to Mount Sinai in the Holy Land. The man Queen Marie had an affair with was Zizi Cantacuzene, a descendent of the prince. Zizi is mentioned in the biography I gave you. He was my biological grandfather. It's an ancient family originating in Smyrna, Greece, which is now a part of Turkey. You and I both have Cantacuzene blood flowing in our veins." She seemed to want to ask a question but fell silent.
"How old were you when your mother died?" Alex had a faint memory of the story of her grandmother's mother. No one talked much about her. She'd been raised by another family, several families, actually. She'd been passed from one to another.
"That's one of the mysteries we must discuss while you're here."
"A mystery? How did she die?"
"That's just it, you see. She didn't. She disappeared."
"They never found her? Did the police look?"
"I've not been able to learn the full story myself. I was still a child and hardly even remember my mother. The Cantacuzenes not only wouldn't discuss her, they wouldn't have anything to do with me after she disappeared. Queen Marie did visit, not too often, but as much as she could. Whenever she was at Peleș Castle, she'd come down here once a week. She didn't regret her little extra-marital indiscretions. When she died, I was eight. She came to Peleș to die, so she could see me one last time. She called the gazebo her sacred space. She was a great believer in God, but didn't much care for Romanian Orthodoxy. Later in life, she embraced the Baha'i faith, which believes in the spiritual unity of all religions and mankind. That's why she had the gazebo built as a nonagon, which is a symbol of the Baha'i."
"What happened to it?" asked Alex. "A structure like that should have lasted a long time."
"And it would have, if it hadn't been for the Communists after the Second World War. The follower of Baha'i believes in the worth of the individual, which is not a Communist ideal. They tore it down."
Alex walked out of the garden and to the hearth where she'd burned her blood-soaked clothing, scooped the black ashes into a bucket, then returned, and while sprinkling them along a row of tomatoes, she again addressed her questions to her grandmother.
"Have you considered rebuilding it?"
"Many times. The Monastery is against it."
"Father Zosimos?"
"He's a good man, but not tolerant of other religions, even one that accepts his."
"Why not do it anyway?" Alex asked, then wished she hadn't.
Her grandmother didn't answer.
