Tourmaline

by Paul Park

  It was the baroness's intention, of course, to meet the train at the station as it steamed in from Germany. Yes, she would see her son again. She burned with anticipation. And she would see Clara Brancoveanu once again. And she would offer her shelter in the palace. A penniless refugee—it was an act of simple charity. And it would give a secret pleasure. When the baroness was a child, homeless in the streets of Bucharest, once she had been taken in by the Brancoveanu orphanage.

  What had her dead husband said? For the sake of her own power and strength, it was important to find someone to replace Kevin Markasev. Her husband had always kept her from her own accomplishments, but he was not a fool—it was for this reason, she realized now, that she was attempting to revive her career upon the stage. The baron had stripped her of everything when he had forced her to give that up, as had been doubtless his intention.

  Now she would take that power back. And she would hold her son, Felix, and Princess Clara, and maybe even Miranda Popescu too, in time, under her roof. What had Hermes Trismegistus said about the need for hostages? But it was not enough. Now more than ever she needed Kepler's Eye to see her way forward in the struggle against Germany. This was the crisis of the last act of the play. To resolve it she needed the tourmaline, the real one, not the fake. Mile. Corelli had told her where to look.

  All that day she had been reading in her husband's books, trying to find out about the jewel. The language had been difficult, abstruse, and she'd lacked the patience to decipher it entirely. Even so, she had come to the conclusion that the baron hadn't really understood the power of the stone. In love himself, he had thought only about love. Kepler too, and that fool of an elector—the sentimentality of these men had blinded them. It took a woman to use power wisely, not in a frivolous manner, nor for the sake of her own vanity.

  She had only a few hours before the train arrived at midnight at the Gara de Nord. She had Captain Corelli's address. Now he was a professor at the university How had he enjoyed his treasure all these years? Was he a fool like these others? Had he used it to lure prostitutes into his room?

  Now she heard the ringing of the bell, which Jean-Baptiste employed to summon her. A guest had come—no, three rings and then silence. It was Radu Luckacz, doubtless with news about the Popescu girl.

  She had dressed modestly for her interview with the professor, a waistless gray smock with a Parisian hemline at midcalf. It was a cool night, and she wrapped a gray, fringed shawl around her shoulders as she left the room. She passed through her bedchamber and then into the more public apartments, until she found at last the little sitting room where Radu Luckacz waited for her.

  She opened her shawl so he could see the fine bones of her neck. She came close to him so he could smell the fragrance of her perfume, mixed always with her own body's smell—she was careful not to cover it completely. He stood with his hat in his hands, looking more than ever like a rusty old crow.

  "Madam," he insisted after an agonized silence. "I have good news. We have surrounded Miranda Popescu in the forest above Mogosoaia. You understand it is in the old preserve where those monkey-faced barbarians are living. You know they were protected by Aegypta Schenck and then forgotten by us, neglected for too long. I have spoken to the German ambassador, who agrees it might be time to harvest those old trees. They will bring a good price in Germany. . . ."

  "Surrounded?" murmured the Baroness Ceausescu.

  "Yes, ma'am," Luckacz persisted in his shrill, nasal, Hungarian-accented voice, too loud for the little room. "We have her in a circle. She has left all human habitation, and there is only one more place to look. We will take them at Constantin's Ford. She is with that fellow only, and one Gypsy servant. . . ."

  "She is not to be harmed," murmured the baroness.

  "Ma'am, your compassion is well known. . . ."

  She put her hand out toward him, pausing a few centimeters from his coat. The lamps were low. Shadows flickered around them. "I will bring her here. I will reunite her with her mother. Perhaps she and Felix . . ."

  "Ma'am, she is a murderess!"

  Ah! And is that really such a bar? the baroness thought. Then she spoke wistfully, sadly: "Please, I want you to bring an honor guard to the station. And a brass band. Could you manage a brass band?"

  For a moment she felt overcome with sadness, imagining herself in Clara Brancoveanu's place. "My friend, you've helped me," she whispered to Radu Luckacz. "And one more thing—have you found Markasev, the boy who escaped from us? You remember I asked you. . . ."

  "Yes. So far I have discovered nothing. We must be discreet. I have people in the hospices and shelters. You know the German government has opened up some houses for the indigent. . . ."

  The baroness shrugged her shoulders, wrinkled her nose. "Thank you, my old friend."

  She could not bear to think of Kevin Markasev in any of those places. Since her husband had told her how the boy was made, she had felt the attachment even more strongly. Now she regretted her rashness in the house on Spatarul, mourned her lack of foresight. But what use were any of these regrets—Aegypta Schenck's murder, or the lies she had told her husband? Looking backward, you assumed a burden that you couldn't carry, that you must dispose of if you wanted to move forward. Because in another sense these mistakes were part of what made her strong, her passionate, impulsive nature—she could not help herself!

  And she need not have worried, because Kevin Markasev was not at that moment in some dismal dormitory for the homeless. As she came out one of the side doors of the palace under the porte-cochere, Kevin Markasev was waiting by the gate. He was in a crowd of people waiting in the cold, misty evening to catch a glimpse of her. As her footman handed her into the carriage, he was one of only a few who did not wave or cry out. Only he stood with his hands in his pockets, a woolen cap pulled low over his forehead; as she scanned the faces of crowd under the streetlight, Nicola Ceausescu didn't recognize him.

  Nor was he in her thoughts as she sat back against the leather seats. She was thinking of her interview with Professor Corelli. Maybe she should have walked along the Strada Floreasca in disguise, knocked on his door. Maybe she should have summoned him—no, the jewel was in his secret place. And from his house she had to go directly to the station to meet Radu Luckacz and the train. So she had decided to pay an official visit—unannounced—in her coach and four.

  At a corner of the street, she pounded on the window with her gloved hand. The footman saw her and called to the postilion up ahead. The coach slowed, stopped, and at the entrance to an alley between two brick buildings, a woman stepped from the shadows.

  A hooded cloak obscured her face. In the deserted street she stepped over the coach and stepped onto the rung. The baroness opened the door for her and she slipped inside.

  "Oof," she said, and giggled, turning down her hood to reveal her long nose and big mouth, big teeth. She smelled of liquor. "Ma'am, are you sure this is a good idea?"

  AT TWILIGHT PIETER LED THE general's daughter into the old-growth section of the Mogosoaia woods, enormous oaks and beeches that had never been timbered, and they crunched through layers of acorns and beechnuts underfoot. Often he found signs of bears—scratches in the tree bark at about eye level. But of the forest people there was no longer any trace.

  "Nous ne pouvons pas rester ici," said de Graz. "Il faut que nous . . ."

  They were crossing a little stream. Miranda Popescu sat down to take her boots off. "Mademoiselle," he said. "Je vous en prie. . . ."

  "Oh, Peter, I'm so tired. Completement fatiguee. Just let's sit here for five minutes."

  "Mademoiselle—"

  "Don't call me that. Don't be so formal. Please—there's no need."

  The Gypsy, who had been walking behind them, now came up. She spoke the language of the country people. "We can't go on. We'll stop here for the night."

  De Graz muttered a curse. Bitterly, as if they were children he explained the facts to them. Their only chance was to slip over the river in the da
rkness, the Colentina River where it broke at Constantin's Ford. If soldiers and policemen had not already secured it. . .

  The light was fading from the trees. "Well, then let's wait for darkness," argued the Gypsy. "Can't you see how tired she is? We'll rest here for a few hours."

  How could these women be so headstrong? How could he help them if they would not help themselves? Frustrated, he made his right hand into a fist inside his bandage, squeezing it to feel the puffed-up wound. That was real at least. He would need a surgeon soon.

  "It's all right," said Mile. Popescu. She had stood again to cross the brook. Now she turned around to face them with the water around her bare ankles. "Ludu—he's right. The quicker we are, the more we'll have a chance. Besides, if we reach the river we will have to wait till darkness then. We'll have an hour at least."

  This surprised de Graz. He had made the same calculation, more or less. Now on the far bank she was rubbing her feet before she slipped into her socks again—that had to stop. It was nonsense for her to think she could keep her feet dry. So once the stream was past he turned north onto swampier ground just to teach her a lesson. And of course the way was more direct.

  The Gypsy cursed him. But now Mile. Popescu was following him with grim stubbornness as they splashed over the uneven hummocks and through the dead trees. There were mosquitoes. He caught at them with his left hand as he stamped a path through the undergrowth. Sometimes he held aside the brambles for her, turning to watch her flushed, angry face. At Mamaia Castle he had not known much about children, and she had not taught him much. She'd been too proud and too precocious. But he remembered this way of goading her.

  Now she was a woman.

  And it was true—she must be tired. Two days of wandering in the hidden world—he knew about that. He had been lost in an American boy's body and he still had dreams. But he had woken up, and now she was awake, and he would bring her across the river at Constantin's Ford, the only possibility on foot. Bucharest on the north side had spread beyond its walls, which had been torn down in many places. But his mother had a house near Lake Herastrau. There was a fig tree in the courtyard, he remembered. Seven steps led to the door, which was painted red.

  It was strange, he thought, how you could give your life over to other people. But that's what a soldier did, and that's what a soldier's glory meant. Dysart had forgotten that, had gone out for himself. Now he was worse than dead.

  Pieter's hand ached where Dysart had cut him. It throbbed and ached. In half an hour they left the wet ground behind—they hadn't lost any time, and might even have gained something. And he could smell the river. In a thicket of pine trees they sat down and waited for the moon to rise. Businesslike, Miranda Popescu stripped off her wet boots. Then she brushed her teeth, wrapped herself up, and in the last light she sat down to read once more the letter that she carried with her money in the beaded purse. The Gypsy had kept it for her after all.

  "What is that?" he asked.

  Mile. Popescu looked up at him. And she actually smiled; in her expression there was no trace of any anger. When she was a child, sometimes she'd been cross with him for days.

  "Do you remember?" she said. "Please correct me. But was there a time— I must have been about seven-—when my aunt and I sat on camp stools in a farmer's field. There was a tent, and lots of food, and bottles of wine in copper tubs, on ice. Some officers gave an exhibition of trick riding and dressage. And I remember you on a big gray horse. Prochenko was there with us in his uniform. I saw him under the torchlight. He promised me a sip of wine!"

  Curse his handsome face! "He had hurt himself," murmured de Graz. "Otherwise he would have won as always."

  "You see—I remember him saying that! If I read this letter before I fall asleep, then in the morning I remember something like that, some small thing. And of course it's looking at your face that brings it back. Hearing your voice. I think we were friends before. That's not too much to ask!"

  Later he went down to the riverbank to reconnoiter. He came out from the trees. Crouching down among some cattails, he surveyed the broad, shallow reach of the Colentina, slow and noiseless here. There were no lights anywhere that he could see, no sign of life on either bank, which proved nothing, obviously.

  When he came back, Miranda Popescu was alone. Doubtless the Gypsy had gone out to squat somewhere. Curled up on a bed of pine needles, wrapped in a gray shawl, the general's daughter had fallen asleep. De Graz sat watching her. There was a mist above the trees, and beads of moisture on the surface of the shawl.

  Restless, she murmured and rolled over. The letter had fallen from her hand. Inadvertently he caught a glimpse of it as he bent over her. The light was almost gone. "If you are as I think a princess of Roumania . . . " he read.

  Perhaps. He'd sworn his parole to Frederick Schenck von Schenck, and to his sister too, whose handwriting it was. But there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip, as his old nurse used to say in English, he remembered suddenly. Mrs. Abigail. She'd had a wart on her cheek. The wart had had a hair in the middle of it.

  The moon was up now, though it was hidden in the mist. But the sky was brighter in the east. Soon he'd wake her, Miranda Popescu, who now turned onto her back. He could see her cheeks and long neck. Her face was beautiful in the soft light. Drops of mist were in her hair.

  Nurse Abigail must have taught him some English doggerel, which he now remembered:

  They flee from me that sometime did me seek,

  With naked foot stalking within my chamber:

  Once I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,

  That now are wild, and do not once remember. . . .

  What if she was the general's daughter? A man could look, couldn't he?

  He stood over her as she awoke and stretched, opened her eyes. He had not been alone with her before. Too soon there was some noise from beyond the thicket. But it was only the Gypsy coming back. She was excited, laughing, and she bent down to grasp Miranda's hands—"Oh, miss, you won't believe it!"

  And as Miranda Popescu turned her head, the girl went on—"I saw one! Oh, I'm sure I saw one."

  "What?"

  "And it was huge! A white tyger, miss. I saw it underneath a tree!"

  HAVING REACHED THE UNIVERSITY DISTRICT in the eastern part of Bucharest, the baroness's horses slowed to a walk. The baroness sat forward on the seat. Mile. Corelli was beside her. A creature of impulse, Nicola Ceausescu had not planned carefully what she would say or do.

  But when the carriage stopped outside the narrow stone house, she pushed open the door and stepped onto the rung. She had posted one of Luckacz's men at the corner of the road, who now touched his cap—"He's still inside."

  "Thank you." Standing in the unpaved street, looking up at the dark, elegant façade—Professor Corelli, historian and antiquarian, was nevertheless from an important family—the baroness now understood why she had brought the girl. And it was not, as she had first supposed, because she needed her to show her the location of the jewel. But the baroness wanted something to trade. Years before, the Elector of Ratisbon (now deceased!) had proposed a trade: her son for Kepler's Eye.

  "Come, my dear," she said to Mile. Corelli, holding up a gloved hand to help her from the coach.

  Oh, but she had been a fool, the baroness thought, not to trade the false stone for the boy—her only son! But how could she have known? It didn't matter. In two hours she would embrace her darling Felix on the station platform in front of the assembled dignitaries, the real jewel in her pocket. That would be the moment of her victory, and the band would play the appropriate motif, mixed inevitably with other, darker themes—she had given Luckacz some sheet music from the third act of her drama to pass on to the musicians. Oh, but her husband had been right! Trismegistus was right! The elector had given up his prisoners. Now he was dead. She felt a thrill of triumph.

  "Come on, my dear," she repeated, her fingers clamped around the girl's elbow. "Please don't dawdle. Your father is expecting us."
r />   This was untrue. It was not the baroness's habit to come announced. But even in the dark street, she thought she could detect a wistful kind of apprehension in Mile. Corelli's painted face—"Ma'am, what did he say?"

  "Hush, child. He will be glad to see you."

  This proved to be an exaggeration. Fingers clamped under her elbow, she led the girl up the stone steps while one of the footmen rang the bell. Gaslight flickered in the portico. In time they heard the sound of the bolt pulled back. New light spilled out from the hall, and a servant stood with his hand on the doorknob. In back of him a big man with a loud, jovial voice—"Who is it, Gaston, please?"

  The servant, who couldn't have been more than twenty, peered out doubtfully. He said nothing, but in time he pulled the door back to reveal his master, a big man dressed in slippers and a smoking jacket. "You!" he said.

  Then Gaston was gone, and the man stood alone on the threshold barring their way. He was clean-shaven, with a high, pale face, good features, and gold-rimmed spectacles. "You are not welome here," he said.

  The baroness felt the girl cringe under her hand. In what spirit of bravado had she painted her lips and eyes? "Please, father," she said.

  Now her cloak had parted, and the baroness could see also that her clothes underneath were far from modest, a low-cut shirt, silk stockings above her knees. And it was just those small, defiant, self-defeating details that touched the baroness in an obscure section of her heart—Mile. Corelli had prepared herself with some carefulness. And at that moment she reminded the baroness of herself, of errors she had made.

  She dismissed her own footman with a nod, a gesture of her head. "Please, sir," she said. "Do you recognize me?"