by Paul Park
“Warn them at Mamaia Sat,” the old man said, and the younger boy ran away south on the packed sand near the water’s edge. He had no shoes, and Miranda wondered how long he could run like that—as fast as he could go. She lost sight of him among the larger rocks of the headland, then turned to follow Ludu and the man on piggyback.
They took a path through the dunes and through the bushes and flat grass upon the other side. They crossed a larger road that ran in back of the dunes, then continued through the dry reeds on the other side until they reached the shores of a small lake. Among the reeds a house on stilts was built over the water, or at least the lakebed where the water had receded. The mud underneath the house was cracked and dry.
Dry clothes first of all, Miranda thought, and she would pay these people. She had her purse in her oilcloth package. It would be important to pay them, to reestablish her authority, and then sit down and ask them questions. She would buy some food from them before she fainted from hunger. With her aunt’s letter to guide her, and some basic answers, she could make some choices—what did these people want from her? Was it safe even to be with them? Let alone to spend the night.
In front of her, Fishbelly reached down to slap his son on the rump as if he were a pony. If she paid them, Miranda thought, they could guide her to Insula Calia. Now she regretted not having pressed her aunt for information when she’d seen her in tara mortilor. That way she could have asked the questions she wanted to have answered now. Obviously there was much to learn, but no chance now except by keeping her eyes open until she could read her aunt’s letter in privacy, in its entirety: There was a deck covered with traps and fishing weirs. There was a ramp of gray planks that led to the deck, and the boy staggered along it with his burden while Miranda followed Ludu up a ladder. The door was open and led into a single room. The walls were made of weathered, unpainted boards. The windows were covered with big shutters. There was a fire in the iron stove, a kerosene lantern on the long table.
“Get her some things,” said the man as his son, panting, slid him down into a chair. Ludu led Miranda back into a corner of the room, set off by curtains around a straw pallet on the floor. “You’ll sleep here,” she murmured.
“No, she won’t,” called the man. “Codreanu will be burning the houses in Mamaia Sat—it doesn’t take much in this weather. The fire will spread. We’ll run for it when Gheorghe comes. Just a few things and we run. You—get us the horses,” he said, and the other boy went out.
Ludu pulled some clothes from a line of four wooden crates against the wall. She stripped off her wet things and rubbed her body with a piece of cloth. Chilled, Miranda turned to face the curtain, which was made of printed cotton in a pattern of red flowers. Through it she could see the old man leaning his meaty forearms on the table, poring over something that was hidden from her. She supposed the curtain, transparent to her, would be opaque to him because the lamp was on his side. She unbuttoned her shirt. He did not look up.
“I’m taking you to the woods near Casimcea,” he called out. “Please,” he said, as Miranda was pulling on a loose, coarse shirt and undershirt, and heavy trousers. A few things that she’d taken from her desk in her father’s house—a silver-handled toothbrush, a tortoiseshell comb—she now transferred to her new pockets. “We have to ride,” murmured Ludu at the same time. She gave her woolen socks. “You’ll wear my brother’s boots.”
“I tell you this because we must move quickly,” called the man on the other side of the curtain. “We are your servants. Anything you want, then we will do. We have wished and prayed.”
It didn’t seem the right time to ask for food. Anything she wanted—a sandwich and a bed. Miranda didn’t want to tell them things or talk at all. She wanted to listen. She didn’t want to demonstrate how much she didn’t know.
Also, she was worried about the horses. But if the man had seen her on a little sorrel mare in Vama Veche, then it must follow she knew how to ride. He didn’t say the little sorrel mare had thrown her into a ditch. She sat down on the pallet to dry her hair while Ludu went to fetch the boots for her. She felt more confident when she was wearing them. She got up, stamped her feet, then strode out from behind the curtain. She had the oilcloth bundle in her hands.
Gratefully she unwrapped it and unwrapped the gun, the box of bullets. Inside the rags they were almost dry. The diary was almost dry. She rubbed it and the gun with the cloth around her neck, which she had used to dry her hair. She was pleased at the man’s response: His eyes grew wide. “I saw that in your father’s hand. Blessed on St. Sebastian’s altar.”
But the bag of money had gotten soaked. She untied it, put in her fingers and pulled out the saturated wad of paper that had been her aunt’s letter. The words were illegible, and the paper ripped along its seams as she tried to unfold it. “This is great,” Miranda said.
But inside she was cursing herself. How stupid she had been! The letter was a gift to her and she had spurned it, thrown it away. How long would it have taken her to read it completely? Already her aunt had been proved right. Apparently she was indeed surrounded by murderers and spies.
Maybe if she dried the paper out, something could be salvaged. Maybe she’d already read the most important part—she’d find something at Insula Calia.
And maybe her first instinct had been true, and there’d been nothing in the letter she could use. Surely it was better to think so now. Nothing could be accomplished if she had to depend on her dead aunt for everything. There was no reason to despair, not over a stupid piece of paper.
Still she was sickened by her own carelessness. Inside her empty stomach she felt a sudden surge of dread. It turned rapidly to irritation. She found herself irritated by the way the man with the beard was staring at her as if everything about her was important. She didn’t deserve that kind of deference, not now, not yet. “So you might tell me what you want,” she said. As far as she could tell looking around, there wasn’t a crumb of food in the whole place.
The man sat in the only chair. Elsewhere there were stools and wooden crates and fishing gear. Nets hung from the rafters on one side. There was sand on the bare floorboards. It crunched under her leather soles. The place stank of the sea.
In the lantern light she could see the man’s face, his protruding brow and sunken eyes, his cracked lips and red nose, his thick, gray beard. The red scarf around his head was gone now, revealing a bald scalp. His forehead had a mottled, bluish look. “I don’t understand,” he said, and for a moment Miranda wondered whether she had gotten the words right.
“What do I want?” he asked. His face was anything but friendly.
Miranda squeezed the water from the purse. Now she felt it would be a mistake to offer him money. Instead, conscious of effect, she loaded the gun and slipped the box of bullets into her shirt. Once in Colorado Springs, Rachel’s father had shown her how to load and fire this kind of gun.
“Things have happened since that day in Vama Veche,” she said portentously.
Not that she remembered anything about it; the man made an abrupt gesture with his hand. “What do I want? Please, miss, it is no mystery! I want to be free in my own country. I want rain in the Dobruja. I want the Germans out of Bucovina and Transylvania. I want Nicola Ceausescu dead and a Brancoveanu on the throne of Great Roumania. I want the vampire sealed up in hell or breaking stones upon the Brasov road. I want revenge on the men who maimed me.”
He glared up at her. Ludu, who had been packing clothes into a canvas bag, now broke in. “My father was wounded in the fighting. The German horses were on the bridge, and my father stepped on a grenade. That was five years ago. Last month we went to the oracle at Insula Calia and he heard Mother Egypt’s voice. She told him the prayers to say. Please, miss—now you are here.”
“I’ve been away,” Miranda said, uncertain. But some things she was beginning to understand. Nicola Ceausescu was the woman who had sent Captain Raevsky to kidnap her. And of course she had almost the same name as the fo
rmer Communist Party chief who had been murdered in 1989, and whose exploits had been carefully described in her aunt’s book, burned on Christmas Hill. Insula Calia was the place her aunt had mentioned in her letter. Doubtless she would have explained about all of this, only …
And if Miranda went to Insula Calia now, maybe she could talk to her aunt again—hear her voice. “I’ve been away,” she repeated. Now her own irritation had flagged, and she sensed a growing anger in the man. “Nicola Ceausescu—tell me about her.”
She watched Dinu Fishbelly squeeze his knotted red bandana in his fist. He leaned onto the surface of the table and thrust his head into the circle of lantern light. He spoke slowly, as if explaining to a child. “What are you saying? German soldiers are in Transylvania, in the oil fields. Ceausescu’s widow calls herself the white tyger, and where she goes the people kiss her hands. Here on the coast whole villages stand empty. Now don’t tell me we have risked our lives for the sake of a girl who knows none of these things. I tell you all the fields between here and Saraiu lie fallow except where our bones have been plowed under—don’t you know this? Tell me you have heard our prayer!”
Miranda swallowed, looked down at her boots. This was a question that could not be answered. Still, she thought, an answer must be found. Clenching her teeth, she raised her head, forced herself to look at him until he turned his eyes away. Why should she be bullied by a man she didn’t know? She had her father’s gun in her hand.
Outside there was a clattering and snorting, and a pounding on the door. The boy who had gone for horses threw it open. “They are burning the trees,” he said. “We have to go.”
“We wait for Gheorghe,” said the man. But he did not resist when his son and daughter came to lift him from his chair. He clambered onto the boy’s back. Outside there was a fire behind the hill, and they stood watching for a moment from the deck. Then the boy carried his father down the ramp to where four horses stood among the trampled reeds. They were snorting and blowing. A little boy held two of them. The reins were wrapped around his forearms. Now he surrendered them to Ludu, who had the canvas bag over her shoulder.
Spooked, one of the horses pulled up. Ludu grabbed it by its cheek plate and led it forward while the old man climbed astride from his son’s back. He had a special saddle, Miranda could see. He had no stirrups but his thighs were strapped in place with leather straps. The boy pulled them tight, and then the small red horse was stamping in a circle while the others drew back among the reeds. The ground was soft underfoot. Miranda looked into the lake beyond the house. It was a small sad puddle in the middle of the dry mud. Even so she saw the reddened sky reflected in the water.
The vampire was at Mamaia Sat, she thought, and in her mind she could picture some cottages huddled against the dunes. Was it Nicola Ceausescu who had sent him, the way she’d sent Raevsky? If so, was all this Miranda’s fault already? She had been stung by the Gypsy’s words to her, which had sounded like an accusation. Where was the boy who had run away?
“We wait for Gheorghe,” said Dinu Fishbelly.
But the littlest boy burst into tears. And the other boy and Ludu were preparing to go. Barefoot, they swung themselves into their saddles. Ludu tied her skirt in front of her around the saddle horn, so that her legs were bare against the horse’s side.
This is horrible, Miranda thought. She had a lump in her throat, and to distract herself, to reestablish some control, she tried to notice little things: the smell of burning in the air. In contrast with the people, these horses looked glossy and well cared for. The leather was new, and the metal jingled and shone. There was one horse left, a big shuffling gray—the biggest of the four, Miranda noticed. The others were waiting; she put her foot in the stirrup and pulled herself up. She’d ridden a horse a couple of times. Once she and Andromeda had visited some of Andromeda’s cousins in New Jersey. Everyone agreed she’d done well, almost as if she knew what she was doing.
“Where now?” she asked.
“We must wait for Gheorghe,” repeated the man.
But now the crying boy had disappeared into the reeds. Dinu’s son bent his horse in a circle. It was black with lots of silver in its coat. Ludu followed him down the path onto the road. Then the two of them set off north between the lakeshore and the sea, in a running walk that soon turned faster. The surface of the road was hard-packed sand with a strip of beach grass down the middle.
“Stop,” said the man. He held the reins of his red horse in his left hand close to its neck. Past his hand they were braided together in a long tail, and Miranda could see that with his right hand he was flicking the reins back and forth over the saddle horn, not striking the horse so much as caressing its shoulders on both sides, while his left hand moved back and forth and up and down as if anticipating the horse’s head. Miranda studied him, searching for clues. He drew the horse around in a full circle while Miranda sat up straight. Her stirrups seemed too high. The old man had a big saddle with a high, curved back. Hers was just a scrap of leather over a square of wool.
Back and forth flicked the braided reins. Miranda was also conscious of a clicking sound. The man was clicking his tongue and mumbling in a low voice. Then he must have come to a decision, because suddenly his horse pressed forward, and he released it and went up the road in a hard, immediate gallop.
She knew enough to know you held on with your thighs and not your hands, that you pointed your feet in and kept your heels down, that you moved with the horse and not against it, which was easier said than done. Inspired, she supposed, by the others, she blundered forward into a walk. She knew you weren’t supposed to kick with your heels, but after a moment she found herself drumming on the horse’s sides as it continued its slow amble. And when it finally changed its gait, she found herself tugging downward on the reins.
The red horse was much smaller than her gray one, but it was already out of sight. Unfamiliar stars shone through a veil of clouds—only the brightest, because it was not dark. A fire burned over the hill behind her, and she smelled smoke. On her left hand, now, the lake had gone away, replaced by a flat field of grasses over a broken wooden fence. There were some pine trees, more and more as she went on.
She had a lump in her throat and she couldn’t get rid of it. So she tried to think about the horse and find a way to make it go faster. In a little bit she thought she was doing better. She relaxed her hands, relaxed her legs. The road ran straight and there was no opportunity to swerve or change direction.
Still confounded by the high stirrups, Miranda shifted her weight around, eased the pressure of her thighs and tightened up again. She raised her hands and lowered them. She had an idea she wanted to keep the horse’s head up, its nose low. She experimented with a light hand, even let go the reins entirely at one point.
At moments she felt stabs of danger and urgency. At other moments she felt brief, furtive sensations: the loaded gun inside her shirt, chafing at her skin. It was good to feel it there. On her right hand, sometimes she saw the black sea through the dunes. The moon was out of sight behind her, but still she could not help but remember a poem she had read when she was in eighth grade and which Peter knew by heart. “The road was a ribbon of moonlight, over the purple moor.…” She remembered Peter Gross reciting the whole thing, and remembered wondering if it was his way to make a pass at her—not that she’d wanted that.
Then suddenly she heard hoofbeats up ahead, and the red horse was coming toward her down the road. “What are you doing?” shouted the old man. “Come,” he said. “Stupid…”
The word was like a slap.
“Miss, come!”
The man had passed her coming back, and then pulled up his horse. He’d turned immediately behind her and was now chasing her up the road. Embarrassed, she supposed, her horse was now making a better effort. The man was close on the near side, and she could hear him mumbling and clicking.
On Miranda’s left the grass had turned to scrubby bushes and a few low pines. The man came up be
side her, and Miranda looked at him, or rather at his horse—its neck stretched out, its determined, staring eyes. The bit was loose in its mouth, she saw. She relaxed her own hands and her horse sprang forward.
Now they came to three big pine trees bunched together on the other side of a gray fence. Miranda looked over the red horse’s neck, because she saw a movement in the trees. She saw the flash of a gun, white with a center of red and black. She heard the shot, and then the red horse was stumbling across the road. Her own horse veered to the far side. Blocked by the dunes, it pulled up suddenly. Miranda yanked backward on the reins and tried to come around, but the horse wouldn’t budge. It pulled its head away from her and stamped its feet, moving sideways across the road.
She slipped from the saddle and let the horse go, while she ran back the way she’d come. She saw the lump of the fallen horse and some movement too, where Dinu Fishbelly was sprawled out on the sand. One of the straps around his legs had given way. But he was still caught by the other one and tangled in his long reins. His eyes were closed. His lips were split and bleeding.
She fumbled for the buckle on his leg, and he opened his eyes. “What are you doing? Get away! Leave me, for God’s sake!”
Under the weak moon, the sky a burnt magenta to the south, she saw everything clearly. The inert horse, dead as a rock, its neck stretched out, its tail splashed across the road. The man where he had fallen in a crust of mud. His black shirt was made of patches sewn together with a scarlet thread. Miranda saw a patch of corduroy.
She found she’d pulled out her revolver. She looked down the road but could see nothing, no movement, nobody coming. She thrust the gun into her waist again and knelt down over Dinu Fishbelly, trying to see where he was hurt, wondering if she could carry him as his son had. She would find the gray horse farther on. It would wait for them. She knelt in the cool breeze from the sea, and she could smell the salt.
