by Bel Mooney
Unwelcome, disturbing, the thought of Ana Popescu flickered into his mind once more. What was wrong with the woman that, no matter how much he tried to be friendly, he could not get through to her? There must be a key – although God knew what it was. Maybe she was like Mariana Vlada – and the rest. Or perhaps she was totally straight … Certainly you would never be able to work out what made her tick.
As Michael Edwards drank real coffee that morning, enjoying the breakfast cereal that was sent from home with the rest of his stores, Ana was climbing the stairs to her apartment, all weariness gone. She was smiling. At each light step, up and up, her mind chanted, Ion, Ionica, Ion, Ionica, in perfect rhythm. She could not wait for the moment when she burst into the flat to show him, triumphantly, that she had at last managed to find some milk.
Four
Ana hated to see Ion in his Young Pioneer’s uniform, and despised the songs and slogans he learnt with such ease. She could not blame him for wanting rewards from his teachers, needing their approval. And if it meant singing fatuous lines of praise about the great leader, how could he help it? She heard him one evening, almost absentmindedly crooning as he built a series of bridges for his car out of books and cardboard:
We know a man whose eyes are like the sun after the tempest,
We know a man whose mind is broad as the horizon,
We know a man whose soul is fire …
You’re singing for the bootmaker, Ion – the butcher, the beast, the bastard – you’re piping in your sweet young voice for the man whose face we see for two hours a day on the television, whose speeches fill the newspapers I have to cut and file each morning, who has defiled our language and debased us … Oh, stop singing, Ion … SHUT UP, ION!
But she said nothing. It could be dangerous. And with that instinctive thought came the question that began to keep her awake at night: … dangerous for whom? In that uniform her son looked like someone else, almost a stranger at times; she wanted to scream and throw the disguise from the draughty loose windows of the flat, watching the empty arms of the white shirt flop helplessly, the blue shorts whirl on the wind, like a fragment of sky, away from their private world forever. But she could not. Asked in school, would he not have to tell? And then … dangerous for whom?
It was late March. Unexpected warmth had settled on the city, although there were reports of sleet and snow in Timişoara. Radu had written to say it was very cold still, and that he would be visiting Bucharest in a week or so. Ana grinned when she read the letter down in the murky hallway; the thought of Radu’s bearlike bulk in her sitting room, the uncompromising boldness of his conversation, his ideas, the jokes they would tell about past and present – it would be a window opened on the stuffiness of her life. Yes, better the sleet of Timişoara, scourging face and hands, cleansing the spirit, than this deceptive warmth, this promise of a spring too soon, so that flowers budding in the parks would soon be nipped again.
Ana is standing, weeping. A year ago her parents took her to see the great painted monasteries not far away, and still she remembers the Virgin’s face, the mother of God, and the mystery that could make Dracul a woman too. And then her mother’s arm on her shoulders, gently guiding, as Tată strides ahead. Oh Mamă, Mamă…
She hears no words. There is a smell of earth, and of damp grass; drops of moisture bead the cut-out tin birds on crosses gently rusting in the drift of spring rain. Nearby a sapling has grown at the foot of a tin crucifix, split in two, so that Christ is caught in its fork. People bow their heads so low, faces disappearing into their breasts, they seem headless: dark shapeless bulks of terrifying grief. Susanna Popescu was loved (how soon the past tense slips in) by the people who murmur their blessings, and pray ritually for her soul’s salvation. But no, Susanna Popescu is loved, by the child who hears no words, but carves every detail on her memory forever.
Earth rains down on the coffin, making its own small storm, drumming lightly on the wood. Resolutely Ana clutches the two red gladioli to her breast, not wanting them to be buried with Mama. Her fingers bruise and bend the stalks. Someone is weeping, one of her mother’s friends, but Stelian Popescu stands stiff and straight, staring down at the coffin (almost covered now), and ignoring his daughter. There is no arm on her shoulders now, but Ana does not cry: tears enough all around, decorating leaves, hats, spider webs, ferns, graves, with necklaces of crystal. Ana’s face is contorted with the concentration of not crying, although inside her chest a small wild thing throws back its head and howls, like a wolf in the Carpathians. Oh Mamă, Mamă, how could you leave me?
Soon the ceremony is over, and Ana begins to hear once more.
‘It was a fine funeral.’
‘No more than she deserved.’
‘May she rest in peace, poor Susanna.’
‘She will – she was so young, it was such a shock.’
‘And poor Stelian, too. How will he cope without her?’
‘How will he look after the child?’
‘She didn’t cry, did you see? What a poor, brave girl.’
‘Shh, she can hear.’
‘No, she’s not taking anything in …’
They all turn and walk slowly away. Ana looks back up the slight hill to the pile of fresh soil, flattened on the top with heavy spades. Were they beating you, Mamă, for leaving me? She sees it black against the sky. Suddenly she tears her hand from her aunt’s and runs back, throwing the gladioli on the mound, and jumping up to stamp on them with her small feet. When they come to take her away the flowers are crushed and absorbed into the earth; ragged smears of vermilion.
She returns home with her father, and the two of them circle the space once inhabited by Susanna, staring at each other wordlessly across that gulf, each unable to flow out and fill it. Stelian begins acting very strangely, staying up all night, receiving visits from gypsies who smell of smoke and horses and whisper hoarsely as he motions her to leave. Ana cannot understand it, because her father hates gypsies, he has always said so. Sometimes she rises in the morning to find him absent, but forages for stale bread or cold corn mush, and takes herself to school without a murmur. There is no arm around her shoulders now. And all the time, for two years, Stelian never once mentions Susanna, nor takes Ana to visit her grave. He does not give her any word of explanation when he loses his job at the school, though he hears her crying at night. Nor does he ever, even when her thirteenth birthday approaches, tell his child what he is doing – or what he is about to do.
‘Mama,’ said Ion, ‘somebody told me a joke in school today.’
Ana smiled. ‘Was it a good one?’
He nodded. ‘I’ll see if I can remember, to tell you. Er … there was a barber who was famous, because he was the best barber in Bucharest. He could cut hair really close. One day somebody asked his secret. He said, “Well, when I’m cutting hair I whisper one word in their ears, so their hair stands on end.” The man asked what the word was. The barber said, “Ceauşescu, Ceauşescu.”’ Ion hissed the last words, theatrically.
Ana put a finger on his lips.
‘What is it, Mama? I thought you’d like the joke?’
‘You must never, ever listen if someone tells you a political joke, Ion – I’m sure I’ve told you that before.’
‘But why, Mama? It’s funny!’
‘Yes but – ’ she hesitated ‘– you never know, the person might be telling you just to trap you. So if you laugh, he will tell, and then you will get into trouble.’
Ion beamed at her. ‘It’s all right, Mama, Maryon told me. And anyway, that won’t happen because there isn’t anybody in my class whose father is in Securitate.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Oh well, you see, the other day the teacher asked us what all our fathers did for a job. And nobody said his father was in Securitate! So it must be all right, mustn’t it?’
His eyes were wide. Ana flung an arm around him and rocked him towards her. ‘Oh Ion, Ion, it’s not quite so simple. But I wish it were! I wis
h you could always be as innocent…’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Ion …?’
‘Yes, Mama?’
‘Did you mind the teacher asking that – about the fathers and their jobs?’
His eyes dropped. ‘Well, yes, but I told them what I always say. Anyway, Paul’s and Roman’s fathers are dead. And Mihael’s father is nearly dead. And my father might be dead, mightn’t he?’
Ana shrugged, still holding him. ‘I hope not, Ion, for his sake. He was a nice man.’
‘Did you love him, Mama?’
He had asked her the question before. She never knew what to say. If she denied love altogether then perhaps, to the child, that cheapened his existence; if she confessed to love then that might make her an object of pity in his eyes: the rejected woman.
‘I loved him a bit, Ion. We had a lovely time together, but … well, he couldn’t stay here. He had to go back to his country.’
‘Why didn’t you write and tell him about me? I think maybe he would liked to have known about me.’
‘Oh, I’m sure he would, Ion. But he told me he was about to move apartments and he would write with the new address. I expect he forgot. People are very busy.’
‘Especially in England?’
‘England, America, Germany, France, everywhere there … They have so much to do: books and magazines and newspapers to read, and films to go and see, and lots of television programmes to watch, and restaurants and pubs …’ Her voice took on a dreamy, hypnotic tone.
Ion responded by leaning on her and taking up the refrain, ‘… and chocolate and bananas to eat, and lots of toys to play with …’ Then he paused. ‘But my teacher – he told us it’s all terrible in the West. People have no jobs and they’re hungry. They even sleep in the street, Mama – that’s what he said. What’s true?’
She gazed at him, regretting the sudden spasm of confusion that contorted his face, obliterating their shared fantasy. ‘Ionica, I don’t lie to you. What they tell you in school isn’t true.’
‘None of it, Mama?’
She shook her head. ‘Except things like your sums. Even Ceauşescu can’t make two and two equal five.’
Ion grinned ruefully. ‘Sometimes I can, though. I didn’t do very well in maths this week. So does that mean I’m more clever than Him?’
They both giggled: children sharing a naughty secret. In that instant Ana imagined the Young Pioneers’ uniform floating down on currents of air, away from them forever – even though it still encased Ion’s body, as he laughed by her side.
He went to the table to paint, opening the small plastic water-colour box, and reaching for a pile of scrap paper, typed on one side, that she had brought from the Embassy. He licked his lips with his tongue as he worked, drawing carefully with a stub of pencil, then filling in areas of paint: blue – she saw lots of blue, and green.
‘Don’t look until I’ve finished, Mama.’
Ana sat quite still, watching him. What was it about having a child that filled one with such a vertiginous mixture of terror and love? Small pale face with dark straight hair falling over the forehead; the curious pointed chin which gave his head an elfin delicacy; grave, almond eyes set perhaps too wide apart; hands with bitten fingernails and a few scabs and scratches, moving slowly over the paper while the tongue delicately echoed that circular progress … there he was, what she saw. That was Ion, her son. Yet the sum total of ten-year-old ordinariness could not begin to approach what she knew – imprinted on her blood right from the beginning. Such knowledge was awesome, allowing no respite, let alone escape. It was as if, at the moment of birth, a chunk of her innermost being had been torn off, to be pushed out into the world yet remain a part of her still. When he was at school, away from her, she felt his vulnerability. Sometimes she saw the world as simply a collection of dangers (monsters real and imaginary; fire, flood, earthquake; disease; runaway lorries; all manner of pain) that threatened the small head she loved.
Yet worse was the thought of his safety. This paradox confounded her. If Ion went to school, day after day, and absorbed what he was told, and grew in that knowledge to become a man, here in the country of their birth, then what hope was there? The body could walk in safety while the soul had its breath slowly crushed, until all that remained was a shred, a smear – disguised in human shape.
Then the haunting came again – unbidden, unwanted. Ana thought of something she had read in one of the American news magazines in the library, and shivered. She imagined Ion elsewhere, without her … But the idea was too terrible to contemplate, and she pushed it away.
The only sound in the room was that of Ion’s paintbrush – a poor, scratchy thing. At last he laid it down. ‘Now you can look, Mama.’
She leaned over his shoulder. He had drawn a thick green line about two inches from the top of the paper, and above it was the gaunt, brown shape of a well, its balance arm too tall for the space he had given it. The sky above and around this skeletal shape was sombre grey, and the earth beneath was sliced open in cross-section, dark-brown soil patterned with tiny, wriggling black worms. From the base of the well, straight down and then widening out like a cavern at the foot of the page, was the tunnel into what Ana recognized as their private world of story – the well world. The background down there was coloured bright blue, like sky. Strange exotic trees, bearing red flowers, waved their branches at right and left. At the foot of the page he had painted wavy lines: the water at the bottom of this well not black but bright blue, mirroring that fantastic second sky.
‘It looks lovely, Ionica.’
‘Can you see yourself?’
The rowing boat was only big enough for two people, and Ana easily recognized herself from the dark hair, and the green sweater. The little figure rowing was Ion, the painted line of mouth turning up at the corners. Piled all around the two figures, crowding the boat, were what looked like balls, in red and yellow, orange, green and brown. Ana asked what they were.
Ion made a tutting noise, half-exasperated, half-disappointed. ‘It’s our food, Mama. Can’t you see? It’s tomatoes, and apples and oranges and cakes and … all sorts of things.’
She laughed. ‘So we’re going to have a real feast, Ionica.’
He nodded. ‘Do you like my picture? Is it good?’
‘It’s very good, Ion. But one thing I don’t like … Why have you painted me looking like that? You’re smiling … look … but I look really sad. Why have you made me look like that?’
There was a pause. Ion looked worried, even embarrassed. Then he said, ‘You look sad because … oh, maybe you’ve been in a long queue and you’re cold and tired and you didn’t know I was going to take you away and … I don’t know really.’
Sudden tears made Ion’s picture dance and break up before Ana’s eyes. It was pity – but whether for herself or for him, she could not tell. Certainly not for the pair with spiky hands and straggly hair who rowed their laden boat in the world beneath the well, under that dizzying blue sky. They were fortunate. But she made herself sound light. ‘Well, I know I’d be smiling if I was going to eat all that lovely food! Look, let’s put your picture up on the shelf – then we can see it properly. There! It makes the whole room look better, doesn’t it?’
He nodded, pleased with his work.
The picture was still there, two weeks later. It curled over at the edges, so Ana attached it to the wall with a few dabs of flour and water paste. She often glanced up at it, and smiled. Ion had forgotten about it of course; like all children he was drawn towards the new. In her worst moments, when she lay in bed at night and listened to the World Service, or Radio Free Europe, she wondered if she would ever have the courage to act, as she had briefly imagined, before pushing the thought away in horror. Yet it bobbed back always, just out of reach, a visitation calling itself by an abstract name, tormenting her with words like ‘sacrifice’ and ‘freedom’. Then the inevitable adaptability of children offered some reassurance. ‘Any
one can get used to anything,’ her aunt used to say dourly, and it was true.
Ana is in her father’s car, her case thrown on the rear seat. ‘But how long will I be staying for, Tată?’ she asks.
‘I’ve some business to see to,’ Stelian replies, gripping the wheels so that his knuckles are white, staring straight ahead.
‘What sort of business?’
‘Never mind.’
‘Does Aunt Liliana know I’m coming?’
‘Of course. She’s glad. She hasn’t seen you since the funeral.’
Ana falls silent at the mention of the funeral, wondering why people say death is final, when every day. she looks over her shoulder to see if her mother is there.
‘You’ll be all right,’ Stelian says at last, awkwardly.
Ana is puzzled. She cannot understand why he says that, since it had never occured to her to doubt that she would be all right. ‘Yes, Tată.’
There is another long silence. The wheels bump on the stony road. Trees flash by, each one wearing its painted white sock, so that Ana becomes entranced, almost hypnotized.
‘Sometimes, you know …’
She shakes herself, hearing the strain in his voice.
‘… I want to tell you something, Ana, but it’s hard. Sometimes, it is impossible to go on in the same way, when there is nothing left.’
‘Do you mean – Mamă?’
‘Yes – that. But it’s a symbol of everything else. We have lost everything, Ana.’
‘Who? You and me? I don’t understand you, Tată.’
