Trouble in Transylvania

by Barbara Wilson

  I sang to Eva, who was lagging:

  Kathleen Mavourneen, the gray dawn is breaking

  The horn of the hunter is heard on the hill

  The lark from the light wing

  The bright dew is shaking

  Kathleen Mavourneen! What, slumbering still?

  “I’m not slumbering,” said Eva ill-temperedly.

  “Don’t get Cassandra started on her Irish songs,” warned Jack. “Her enthusiasm and her ability to keep a tune are unrelated. Believe me, I heard every song Cassandra knows while we were traveling in South America. Motown is one thing, but watch out for ‘Danny Boy’ and ‘The Green Hills of Antrim.’ Your eardrums will never be the same.”

  “Anyone can keep a tune,” I said. “But I remember all the words. Are you ready for the chorus?”

  “No!”

  I would have sung it anyway, but the sight of something ahead stopped me. In a bright blue training suit, a familiar figure came speed-walking, elbows out, knees high, down the hill right towards us.

  It was Gladys. And she was not alone.

  Three scruffy black dogs ran after her.

  Chapter Six

  “GLADYS, ARE YOU escaping?” I half-expected to see armed militiamen racing after her.

  “Well, hello there, Cassie.” She stopped in front of us, hardly winded. Her white hair was slicked back from her forehead in a smooth wave, and her cheeks were a fresh pink. The dogs, after a cursory greeting, slipped off to some nearby bushes for a sniff and a squirt. They were ugly, wild-looking beasts, large enough to be wolves, and their fur was black and matted. “I guess you got Bree’s message, huh? The poor kid was real worried about me. No, I guess I’m not going anywhere … not for a while yet. I’m just taking my morning constitutional before I start my treatments.”

  “But what about this murder then? Has it been solved? Who were you supposed to have killed? Did they find the real murderer?”

  “Nope, they didn’t. I reckon that still makes me the main suspect. They might get around to locking me up one of these days.” The thought made her laugh. “Me—in a Romanian jail! What the heck would I do there? But Cassie, why don’t you introduce me to your friends and then let’s go back on up the hill and sit down somewhere so I can tell you about it. See these dogs? I collect them everywhere I go. I’d love to get them into a bath, but I don’t think that would go over too good around here. I bet you could use some coffee, you all look pretty near worn out.” She plucked a piece of straw from my hair. “You got here awful fast, but how? Where’s your car?”

  Jack said, “It died.”

  “We believe it can come to life again though,” I added.

  Eva put her hand to her forehead and groaned.

  The town of Arcata was divided into two sections. The lower part, where we’d been dropped off, consisted of a few streets of official buildings and shops: an alimentari or grocery store with little in the windows, a beauty salon, a clothing store, two pubs. There did not appear to be a garage or petrol station anywhere. The houses in the lower section were set among small orchards and newly planted gardens; some had the carved wooden gates we’d noticed before and many had pretty scalloping and other scrollwork on the lintels and eaves. They were tidy but slightly worn-looking, and that gave them a soft magical charm. On the hillside where we met Gladys, the houses turned into villas that could hold a dozen guests; they were gingerbread marvels of dormers and cupolas and porches, all with the same shabby, lively, slightly fantastic air as the smaller houses. As we climbed higher, followed by the original three black dogs and then two more, we passed several ice cream kiosks, a cinema showing a Bruce Lee film, a restaurant or two and a miniature, dark-timbered Orthodox church set among the firs.

  Eventually we arrived at a square at the top of the hill, next to a small, perfect lake. On the square were benches and a fountain and to the side, with a view of the lake, an open-air restaurant. If it hadn’t been for the three tallish utilitarian hotels on the other side of the square, the setting would have been quite idyllic.

  “This isn’t what I imagined,” said Jack. “It’s so… poetic.”

  We seated ourselves in the outdoor restaurant above the lake, which was sparkling lightly in the morning sun. Eva ordered us coffee and bread and butter, and then we all turned to Gladys.

  “I don’t even know where to start,” she said. “I never had anything like this happen to me before, and I’m around bathwater and electrical gadgets like clippers and hair dryers all the time.”

  “You electrocuted someone?” said Jack. “I mean, someone was electrocuted?”

  “Let me tell it from the beginning.” Gladys gestured to the largest hotel of the three, the one shaped like a cigarette box. “You see that low white building at the back of the Arcata Spa Hotel? That’s the treatment center—the clinic, the spa. It’s a great place, and everyone who works there is tops too. I’d been going there about a week, feeling better and better. I hadn’t even seen this Pustulescu fellow—you know, the one who invented Ionvital and is so famous—because he was usually on the road, traveling around the other clinics and spas in Romania and to conferences to present his research and so on. I’d been seeing the doctor who seemed to be in charge, Dr. Gabor, Dr. Zoltán Gabor. He’d set up a schedule for me, all kinds of massages and baths, including a shot of Ionvital every day.”

  A large plate of bread arrived, a light, tasty sour rye, with margarine and thick plum butter. Jack and I dug into it hungrily. Eva pulled a candy bar out of her bag and ate that instead.

  “So I go to my usual appointment with Dr. Gabor to get my shot of Ionvital, and who do I see, sitting in Gabor’s office as if it belongs to him? Dr. Pustulescu. And girls, I don’t like him. Not one bit. He’s wearing a moldy green and brown suit, like a reptile, and white shoes. White shoes, I ask you. You don’t even see men in Arizona wearing white shoes anymore. You can’t tell how old he is, he’s kind of like Ronald Reagan, the same dark hair, except Pustulescu’s is a toupee, and the same evil old eyes. He’s wicked Old Man Coyote, personified. I ask him where Dr. Gabor is, and he says, Oh, I’ve temporarily relieved him of his duties.”

  Gladys held her nose to imitate the doctor’s sinister, nasal accent.

  “So what am I supposed to say? I ask if Dr. Gabor has done anything wrong. Pustulescu says, Wrong, dear lady? Oh no, nothing wrong. Let us just say, he and I did not see eye to eye over the running of the clinic. Then he changes the subject—he’s looking at my chart. He says [again the pinched nose], I notice you’ve been following the prescribed regime except for one thing: you haven’t been taking the galvanic baths to help your circulation. That is not good, dear lady.

  “I tell him that I just can’t get beyond my conditioning to feel comfortable putting my arms and legs in water together with an electrical rod. I’m not even gonna try it, because I don’t like the whole idea of it. I’m here to relax and it’s not good for the nervous system to be all het up, and anyway Dr. Gabor said I shouldn’t do anything I didn’t want to.”

  Jack looked appalled. “Let me get this straight, Gladys. This is some kind of electrical shock treatment?”

  “It’s mild,” said Eva. “I have heard of it, it’s not serious.”

  “Well, Old Man Coyote just laughs [Gladys gave a hideous nasal whinnying laugh]. I can tell he’s the kind of bozo who never acts like he’s upset and who always gets his way. One of my brothers-in-law is like that and he’s gone far. Mrs. Bentwhistle, Pustulescu says, I tell you what we’ll do. The schedule is full today, but tomorrow you meet me downstairs at the bath at eight o’clock, before the first patient, and I will give you a demonstration. I will put my hands in the water first—to show you that there is no danger at all.”

  Jack and I looked at each other in consternation.

  “Well, I think about skipping it,” continued Gladys, “but after all he’s the big cheese at the spa, he invented this stuff that’s making me feel real good. So I think, Heck, what’s the harm? So I m
eet him downstairs in the baths the next morning—yesterday. Nobody else was around, no nurses or bath attendants. I wasn’t surprised because it was pretty early.

  “I remember the whole thing like it was a dream—real clear, but with that strange slowed-down feeling. Pustulescu’s wearing a white coat, not real clean, over his green slacks and a yellowish shirt. He rolls up his coat sleeves and then his shirt sleeves. His skin is old and wrinkled like a dried-up snake with liver spots all over. He’s smiling at me, saying, You’ll see, Mrs. Bentwhistle, it’s really quite galvanizing, and then he sticks both his arms, up to the elbows, in the two basins of water. You see? he says. I’m fine. Now turn up the voltage dial as high as it will go. You will see that nothing happens.

  “But the minute I turn the knob up, he gives this big old gasp and conks over on the floor. His heart stopped, just like that.”

  Jack and I were speechless and even Eva was taken aback.

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing in Hungary,” she said. “The equipment must be faulty here.”

  “What a way to go,” said Jack.

  “What happened then?” I asked.

  “I screamed and then I must have fainted,” said Gladys. “Because the next thing I know I’m on an examining table and my granddaughter’s there, looking real worried, along with Dr. Gabor and a whole lot of other people. When I saw Dr. Gabor I thought maybe I’d imagined the whole thing, but I knew I hadn’t. I don’t think anybody really thought I could have killed Pustulescu, but I was still the only person around when it happened. I turned the knob up myself, for goodness sake. They got Nadia Pop, who’s the tourist agent here, and then the cops showed up.”

  “What happened with the police?” I asked.

  “They didn’t know what the heck to do except try to look tough. They wanted to arrest me, but Gabor and Nadia wouldn’t let them. There was a whole bunch of shouting. I don’t think the cops had ever had a case like this on their hands before.”

  “Couldn’t it have been an accident?” said Jack. “A short or something in the wiring?”

  “That’s what some people seemed to be telling the police,” said Gladys. “But the cops weren’t buying it. They took the voltage meter off to check it and they took Old Man Coyote away for an autopsy. They’re leaving me alone for the time being, but who knows what’s going to happen?”

  She looked less frightened than bemused by the whole situation.

  I asked, “Do you remember, Gladys, when you were originally talking to Dr. Pustulescu in Dr. Gabor’s office, about the galvanic bath, was the door open?”

  “No,” she said. “Because he was giving me my shot. It’s always closed then.”

  “Was anybody waiting outside?”

  “Just the usual crowd. The Austrian gal Sophie and the Dutch couple, the Vanderbergs. We all get our shots around the same time. They were as ticked off as me about Dr. Gabor getting the boot.”

  “And what about Dr. Gabor?”

  “He’s back in place like nothing ever happened. Last night I saw him and he said, Don’t forget your shot in the morning, Mrs. Bentwhistle.”

  Gladys looked at her watch. “That reminds me, I’ve only got half an hour before my appointment. Come on and I’ll introduce you to Nadia Pop.”

  On the street level of the Arcata Spa Hotel, next to the lobby and facing the square, was a glass-fronted office. The western sun had faded the few posters in the windows, posters not of Arcata or of the villages of Transylvania and Bukovina, but of the hideous coastal resorts on the overdeveloped Black Sea. Inside the office was a long teak-veneer desk, with very little on it besides an old-fashioned heavy telephone and several pads of paper. A woman was sitting at the desk and staring at the phone; she started with surprise when the four of us came in.

  Olivia Manning is always droning on in her Balkan Trilogy about “moon-faced Romanian beauties,” but Nadia Pop was the first woman I’d ever met in Romania to fit that description. Hers was the plump, ivory-skinned, moustached beauty of the Bosporus, full-cheeked and heavy-lidded… and unfortunately compromised with bright red lipstick, crumbling black mascara, and over-sized horn glasses sitting on a snub nose. She wore an orange polyester suit jacket over a pink and green flowered dress, and her hair was pulled back in an unbecoming bun. She was probably about thirty-five.

  “Oh, Gladys,” she said, in halting English. “Your friends coming, good they coming from Budapest to help.” She addressed us, holding up her hands as if she were being robbed at gunpoint. “Most unhappy situation. Very.”

  Eva spoke to her in Hungarian, but Nadia shook her head apologetically. “I don’t learn Magyar, so sorry. Romanian?”

  They pushed me forward, but after a halting beginning, I started over in French. The time had come to confess that my Romanian was limited. Better to find a language we could both speak well. I was right; like most educated Romanians Nadia Pop had studied French.

  “C’est une tragédie, une vraie tragédie. C’est incroyable.” Turning to Gladys, she repeated, “A tragedy, a big tragedy. We got big problem but do not to worry, it is okay. Well, not okay now, but soon.” And then in rapid French she asked me if I’d heard the story, and repeated the highlights again. With gestures, so that everyone could follow the innocence of the dip into water and the unfortunate result. She omitted the death gasp, for which I was thankful.

  “Gladys said the police haven’t charged her with anything.”

  “No, not yet, but perhaps more police come from Bucharest.” She shifted her mascaraed eyes in Gladys’s direction, “I told her if that happens we will call the American Embassy right away. I am here for the tourists.” She patted her well-developed chest. “My job is to protect them from problems.”

  This self-appointed mission cheered her up. She suddenly regarded the three of us with glee, and spoke in English. “Now, to business down, like you Americans say. You need hotel, we have hotel, many nice rooms. How many nights for you? A sightseeing trip to the Bicaz Gorge? To Bukovina? To Dracula spots? Anywhere you want to go, I got car, I take you. You want treatment? You got medical problems? This is the best—Gladys tells you. You tell them, Gladys.”

  Eva addressed her severely. She spoke in English and at length. About her business, about this regrettable trip to Romania, about Romanian roads and the lack of garages. “If Transylvania was still part of Hungary,” she ended, “none of this would have happened.”

  Nadia’s round face had assumed a bland, inoffensive, helpful look. “You got problem with your car. I fix it. That is what I am here for. To help. Only to help. Politics, I don’t care. I am Romanian, Arcata is Magyar, we live together brother and sister, no problem. And the people come here from all over the world, brother and sister, no problem. No Yugoslavia here, okay? No Bosnia, no, no! I drive you to your car, I got tools, we fix. We fix everything!”

  Nadia stood up and beamed a smile that showed one or two missing teeth. “Come on now, you get some rooms, some rest, you feel better.”

  We followed her into the hotel.

  The rooms were cheap so we each took our own, all in a row on the sixth floor at the top. There was a big glass window in each of them with a spectacular view of the lake and the rising Carpathians, along with a balcony, a full bath and a comfortable double bed. I lay down on the bed without bothering to undress and immediately fell asleep.

  I woke up a few hours later when someone knocked on my door. “Come in,” I said, without moving. I assumed it was Jack. Eva had gone off with Nadia to look at the Polski Fiat. Somehow Nadia didn’t look like a car mechanic, but these days, in these countries, knowing how to fix anything is an important skill to have.

  Bree slipped diffidently in, stopping when she saw me in bed. “Oh, I’m really sorry,” she said, and that same, slightly hungry look I’d seen in the MÁV office crept into her eyes. “You’re asleep.”

  “I’m awake now. Is it lunchtime? I could eat something.”

  “I just heard from Gram that you got here. She’s
been in the treatment center all morning. She just isn’t concerned. She thinks being an American makes you safe.”

  “It often does,” I said, yawning and stretching. “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried getting help with some other passport. Like a Haitian or Vietnamese one maybe.”

  “Thanks for coming. I thought of you because you said you knew Romanian and you seem so experienced. Gram said she told you all about it. Isn’t it incredible? I called my mother, Teresa, she thinks we should come home right away. I told her that Gram didn’t want to. I’m so glad I was able to get hold of you and have you come. I told Teresa about you, she said you sounded great.”

  Now I was fully awake. Bree had been coming closer and closer and now she was sitting on the bed with me. Her small soft breasts poked out braless under three layers of sleeveless tops that ended above her navel. Necklaces and thin chains dripped from her milky-pale young neck, and sharp little white teeth showed behind her parted, moist lips.

  I jumped up and straightened my shirt and jeans. “I’m glad to do what I can for your grandmother. But I don’t understand how you were able to get hold of Eva’s business number. Did I mention Eva to you?”

  “I got the number from Cathy Snapp. She and Archie and Emma are staying in Arcata too.”

  “I thought they were going to Sighişoara or someplace?”

  “No, first they went to Tîrgu Mureş, then they came here to the hotel. Emma is supposed to be from a little village nearby. Cathy has been getting on my nerves. She’s a nice kid, but she seems so young.”

  Bree was sitting cross-legged on my bed now as if she owned the mattress. I decided I had to get her out of here.

  “I’m starving,” I repeated, moving towards the door. “Where’s lunch, downstairs?”

  “In the dining room.” Reluctantly Bree got up and followed me out. “But I guarantee you, it’s not exactly the best food you’ve ever tasted. Gram and I have been eating a lot of cheese sandwiches.”