The Tourmaline (A Princess of Roumania)

by Paul Park

  All that day and the next morning, she and Miranda had argued and rested in the forest clearing. At the same time she taught Miranda how to care for the animals. Together they had combed the gelding’s tail and mane and rubbed his body down, while he drank from the pond and rolled in the sweet grass. “Why should they give us this, and money, to do what? We don’t know these people. They owe us nothing.”

  “Please be quiet. The money was my own.”

  “Then wait for the oracle to tell you. Mother Egypt will tell you.…”

  “Yes, I know. But there’s no time to waste. Ten days, he said. I must go now if I’m to be in time. Then we can go to Insula Calia. And for once I’ll tell her what I’ve done already.”

  Still she found a little time to waste. Sitting against the stone wall of the hermitage, Miranda had broken open the leather diary she’d taken from Mamaia Castle. It was written in French in a careful, childish hand. One of the last entries was this:

  Saturday, 18 Thermidor. Captain de Graz took me to Murtfatlar to show the little Turkish mare my aunt has given me. I do not like Captain de Graz or any man who talks about my father. But the mare is a sorrel roan of fifteen hands very flexible and light in the bridle—small head long neck—I shall enjoy taking her over the big stile! I shall call her Daisy or perhaps not. My aunt says I shall take her when I go away to school. Until then she will be stabled in the village and I’ll go every day.…

  Miranda’s French was good, due to the efforts of Mr. Donati when she was in seventh and eighth grade. Sitting in the grass, she puzzled over these small, serious, entries:

  Wednesday, 6 Brumaire. It is hard for me to write this, because the lieutenant was cruel to me today. I think he must have no idea how I feel. He took me riding as he promised, but all day he was pressing forward until poor Aramis was out of breath and I had to stop—it’s been so hot for so late in the year. He led me over the hedgerows as if to prove I couldn’t follow. So I put the spur to Aramis, though he really is too small. It didn’t matter. He got over, and I’ll make it up to him. But the lieutenant was gone and I couldn’t even catch him on the way home. Later I told Juliana and she laughed at me. She told me Lt. Prochenko has a woman in the village, it is a scandal she says. That must have been where he was and left me to ride home. I know I am young, too young. But I’ll be eight years old this spring and I can grow up fast without a father and a mother. Anyway it’s only sixteen years difference, which will not seem like anything when I am his age. I used the whip on Aramis all the way home. But he went lame and pulled away from me, and then I had to get help from some farmer. My aunt was furious and took my books away because of my cruelty. She did not understand. But she understands I hate her, because I told her.…

  Miranda rubbed her nose. It embarrassed her to overhear the feelings of this young girl. “Last night I wet my bed again.…” Miranda would have liked to think that if she’d ever kept a diary in Massachusetts, she would not have filled it with such stuff. She felt like a snoop to read about it. More than that, she felt a residue of shame—what a brat she’d been! What a selfish and precocious brat! Though maybe diaries didn’t always show you at your best.

  Still, it made you think there was a reason you forgot most of your childhood. You might be too ashamed to go on. But people could change, luckily, and there were things to be learned here: stories about her aunt, and things her aunt had said about her mother, held prisoner in Ratisbon. One winter, twenty-seven porpoises had beached themselves and died.

  Most of all she read about horses. Obviously she’d been obsessed with horses, feeding them, caring for them, naming them, analyzing their habits, and of course riding them. Just this one fact gave her confidence. Besides, the big gelding proved easier to manage than either the pony or the gray. In the morning she combed him and rubbed him. Ludu showed her, but she knew already.

  Because the Germans had taken his saddle, she first climbed onto him bareback. She didn’t touch the reins. He was gentle, and she found she didn’t have to turn her body to turn him. It was enough to turn her head.

  Ludu Rat-tooth was astonished as she went around the clearing. She doubled back, then made a figure-eight, and then another. On the fifteenth time around, bored already, she had come to a decision. “If you won’t go with me,” she said, “will you wait?”

  Subdued, Ludu began packing their things. Miranda sat on the horse for a few minutes, and then slipped down to help her.

  The wood where they’d slept was in the high ground between the Danube and the coast as the river flowed north into the delta. At noon they came out of the trees above the village of Dorobantu. They’d gone slowly, for Miranda was riding bareback and the girl was leading the pony. They’d seen no one on the road, and the rutted streets of the town were also deserted. The girl found some women sulking in the narrow houses, who nevertheless were eager to sell them bread and fish paste and raspberry syrup in thick glass bottles. The horses drank at the well, while Ludu negotiated for a saddle.

  They spent the night in Macin, and in the morning Miranda caught the ferry before dawn. Ludu Rat-tooth was inconsolable as they stood upon the dock. “You will not leave me here?” she cried. “Last night I saw my father. He was in the branches of the death tree and the blood was on his face.”

  “I promise I won’t leave you. I’ll see you in an hour.”

  Why had she come? Why had she chosen this detour? First, it was because every choice now seemed like a detour, and she was searching in the past for a pattern that made sense. And she was grasping at the story she had first heard from her mother’s letter—how when she was just a few days old, she had smuggled out the plans for an invasion near the town of Kaposvar. Her aunt had hidden them in her diaper. What condition were they in when General Antonescu unfolded them upon his table?

  Second, she had a mental picture of Anna Djourek, the Russian attachée. She imagined a yellow-haired, dark-eyed girl, dressed in an embroidered smock in Oberammergau, which in her mind was not a town at all, but a pasture full of wildflowers, and Anna Djourek appeared in the middle of it like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music—no, that was not it. That was an illusion, conjured out of nothing and maintained over another picture to cover it.

  Miranda had shot a man. The moment it had happened, she had scarcely paused to notice, because of all the chaos of that day. But in the night she lay awake and thought about it, how the man had flailed his arms and staggered backward and collapsed, how he had dropped his gun and fallen. His knees had given way. He had lain flat on his back with a small, dry, singed, neat hole through his shoulder. Later, the hole had filled with blood.

  And perhaps that shot had killed him. What had he said, that he would rather die than be brought back and tortured in Berlin or Bucharest? Maybe that was happening to him now. Miranda could not think of that.

  “You won’t leave me?” said Ludu Rat-tooth.

  Miranda had woken with a headache. And she felt no better when she stepped aboard the boat. The ferry had a small, uncertain, internal-combustion motor, which gave out clouds of greasy smoke and a sound like the firing of a gun. Packed in with people and animals, Miranda saw nothing of the trip across the water—the sky was still dark. In any case, alone among Roumanians, she was too nervous to pay attention to her surroundings. She was afraid of being recognized, even though she’d taken off her bracelet and put it in her pocket. Still, she kept her head down; it was not until she’d reached the other side, and coaxed the black horse up the ramp onto the dock, and swung herself into the new, high saddle, that she looked properly around. Ludu had told her the way. She took the river road into Braila, which was scarcely more than a village at that time, and one of the prettiest places in all Roumania.

  Built near the confluence of several rivers, it stood over a great system of marshland. Flights of water birds passed overhead. On Miranda’s right hand stood a line of shooting lodges—tin-roofed, gaily painted, so she now leaned back and slapped her horse upon his croup—not that he
needed urging. Raising his head, he pounded up the slope into the village.

  There Miranda had to pull him back, because of the chickens pecking in the dirt. The road was lined on either side with wooden duckboards. Well-dressed men and women promenaded. Braila was the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, and there were many naval officers. The women wore long dresses and carried parasols. Up ahead was a bronze statue of the naked Venus rising from the shell. Bronze dolphins played.

  In this quaint border town, delegates had gathered to resolve a trade dispute. For most of the past month, Crimean fishing boats and gunships had blocked the entrance to the Danube, in violation of the Treaty of Alibej. The Roumanian government had been slow to respond. The German maritime commissioner had asked for caution.

  Zelea Codreanu was there for the Roumanians. Miranda saw him take the air in front of the town offices, surrounded by his secretaries. The street was crowded now with horses and carriages. Miranda turned her head as she walked the horse past. There was no reason, she hoped, for him to recognize her in the daylight. He himself looked heavier, more solid as he peered over the tops of his half-moon spectacles at a small man in uniform. He wore a silk top hat. He carried a sheaf of papers under his arm.

  She did not see him turn around to stare at her retreating back.

  Miranda walked her horse through the jostling traffic. She didn’t know what she was looking for. But up ahead she saw a narrow wooden house set back from the road. A flag hung breathless from the roof of the porch, a double-headed eagle, which was also stamped on Miranda’s gold coins.

  What was she to do with the horse? In Western movies, in front of the saloon there was always a wooden rail. Or there had been a courtyard to the hotel at Macin, and Ludu had arranged everything with a couple of barefoot grooms. Here on one side of the house was a cobblestone alley where the horse didn’t want to go. Instead Miranda slid out of the saddle and led him through the wrought-iron gate into the garden, and left him to eat the tallest flowers. She’d only be a few minutes, she thought.

  She had with her Alexei de Witte’s insignium. He’d pressed it into her hand. It was a simple agate brooch, set in a ring of carved silver. As she came onto the porch, she slipped it from her pocket and gave it to the woman at the desk inside the front door. She asked for Anna Djourek, and then waited as the secretary disappeared into the back of the house.

  After a few minutes a woman came down the staircase. Dressed in a blue gown, she was holding the brooch in her palm. Her hair and skin were dark. Miranda was surprised to see she was quite fat.

  She blinked as she approached, as if she’d come out of a closet into the bright light of the hall. Her eyes were slightly crossed. “S’il vous plait?” she asked.

  “I have a letter from a friend of yours,” Miranda said in English, while the woman blinked at her. She seemed baffled, so Miranda repeated herself in French.

  “Ah, a friend?”

  “Yes. He wants to say he’s safe. Please, is there a place for us to speak?” Miranda turned her shoulder to the secretary, who had reappeared now at her desk by the door. She was staring out the window at the horse in the garden.

  Miranda held the letter out, but the woman in the blue gown did not take it. “Please?” she said again.

  Miranda gave the three pages of typescript a suggestive waggle. “Alexei de Witte gave me that brooch. He said you’d…”

  Anna Djourek interrupted. “Ah, I do not know this name.”

  Again Miranda made a gesture with the letter. “Please, he said it would all be clear if you would read this. He said it was a message for your government.…”

  “My government?”

  Miranda clenched her teeth. She had not anticipated that the woman would be an idiot. “Follow me,” she said, and walked into the house toward the staircase, away from the secretary by the door.

  “Please, you cannot go there,” said Mlle. Djourek.

  Miranda turned back. “He gave me that brooch and said you’d recognize it. He gave me this letter, which is a message for your government. I know you will find it interesting.”

  Now, finally, the woman took the three typescript pages and held them up. “It is in German?” she asked. “I do not have my glasses.” She peered briefly at the embossed seal of the German Republic, and read a few words before looking up. “‘Streng Geheim…’ What is this, please?”

  Miranda came close to her. “It is the order of march for the Third Army Corps,” she murmured. “They will cross the Russian border at the Cosmesti Bridge.”

  Anna Djourek smiled at her and wrinkled her nose, as if these words meant nothing. In fact they meant little enough to Miranda, who was losing patience. She was here for the sake of the man she had shot. “Alexei de Witte,” she said. “He told me to tell you you were in a blue embroidered dress in Oberammergau, when you came from the university.…” And there was Julie Andrews in her mind.

  But in Braila, in the house of the Russian delegation, Anna Djourek screwed up her face. She raised her hand and pushed Miranda in the chest, pushed her away so that she staggered back against the wall, which was covered in green-and-white flowered paper. “Quel salaud—what a disgusting pig!”

  The brooch was in her hand, and now she threw it down. “And you also. Who are you to know these things? Who are you—his lover, eh? What is your name?”

  She raised the typescript pages to a few inches from her nose, glared at them for a few seconds, and then crushed them into a ball. “What are you telling me? He is disgusting, I tell you—what do you know of these ridiculous accusations? The Cosmesti bridge? It is absurd. In any case I have no military function. Oh, who are you, who are you? Oberammergau, how can you say this word? What does it mean to you? Irina”—this to the secretary at the desk—“you summon the police.”

  But the police were already on their way. Codreanu had dispatched them.

  * * *

  THAT SAME MORNING, in Germany, the Elector of Ratisbon received a message. He sat in his apartment at the top of his house. His delicate, small hand followed an ancient crack in the surface of his table. Over the centuries the grain had receded into the wood, leaving a marbled and uneven texture that gave him pleasure.

  On the table was a square of mirrored glass. Now as he watched, slow, printed letters appeared on its smooth face, one after another. Impatient, he looked away, forcing himself to examine an arrangement of columbine and wheat stalks in a heavy, stoneware vase. He counted to five hundred. Then he looked back.

  MY FRIEND I LOOKED WHERE YOU TOLD ME AND I FOUND HER NOT FAR AWAY. SHE EVEN SAID HER NAME. I GAVE HER A HORSE AND SENT HER ON HER WAY BUT YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED. IN THIS WORLD THERE IS IRONIC COINCIDENCE AND LUCK. YOU WILL BE VINDICATED I THINK. SHE WAS THERE WHEN POOR OLD ALEXEI DE WITTE REACHED THE END OF HIS RACE. BUT I THINK HE DID NOT FUMBLE THE BATON.

  After a few moments the letters faded and the surface of the looking glass was clear. The elector sat staring at the image of his face, where the words had been.

  There was a time when he had avoided the sight of it, had lived in a world without reflection. Managers of the great European hotels, when he had booked a suite of rooms, had had the looking glass removed even in the bath. But he had not been abroad in many years. Nor had he attended many of the social and political gatherings where once he’d been ubiquitous.

  When he had last come out of Roumania, he had been brought before a court of inquiry, accused of conjuring and prestidigitation. But because his father had been a high-ranking diplomat, and because he was related through his mother to an influential French family, the legal process had not gone further. His passport had been revoked and he’d returned home.

  Since then he’d scarcely left the confines of his house. As a matter of patriotism and convenience, with all his strength he’d tried to break himself of dangerous mental habits. He had pursued a new physical regimen and a course of study in literature, philosophy, and art. But because he spent so much time alone—his parents were d
ead, and he had no wife or children—all mental paths inexorably led back to the source of his disgrace: the hidden world, which after all exists, although his government had tried to subjugate all knowledge of it as a matter of national will.

  They were fools. They left themselves vulnerable and unguarded. The democratic traditions of the country, though they had led to prosperity and strength, also had this disadvantage: the suppression of superior men such as himself, who had been maimed and rendered worthless in the public eye. Yet surely there was still a way for an intelligent and modern man, a citizen of the future, so to say, unencumbered by vain social and religious constraints, to offer service to his country.

  He sat staring at himself in the mirrored glass. The childhood disease that had broken his face into chaotic lumps and splotches—it was not the enemy. Often now through hours of staring he had come almost to love himself, love the way he looked. Sometimes the entire house of his ancestors, vast as it was, was still not big enough to contain his love.

  * * *

  BY THE CLOCK on his wall it was almost noon. But in her private suite of rooms, Clara Brancoveanu was enjoying a late supper. All day the princess, as she sometimes did, had fasted, taking nourishment from lemon water and the appetite of her young friend. Now she was eating crackers, while he finished a salad of asparagus spears.

  He stopped and wiped his mouth. Distressed by something in her face, he cocked his head to the side. He smiled, then frowned, then tried to amuse her with a series of absurd expressions until she burst into tears. Then, “Oh my mother,” he said. He came around the table to her side and went down on his knees before her chair. He pressed his cheek against her hands.

  Light came from tall, yellow candles. It flickered on the crystal and the intricate silk tablecloth. The princess tried to smile. “I am a foolish woman, Felix. Don’t mind me—the fancies of a foolish woman. I’m afraid I will not leave this place.”

  Her hair, coiled in soft braids, was gray. Her face was soft and wrinkled. “I think I’ve been a prisoner for half my life. At first it didn’t matter after the prince was dead. And when Aegypta took the baby, where would I go? Only she was brave enough to stay at home. Always I’d expect this man to let me live someplace in Paris or in Alexandria—it didn’t matter. Now I think he must have lost his mind. What purpose does this serve after these years? Or maybe he has died and they’ve forgotten us.”