by Mario Bolduc
“The keystone of this whole deal, right? The child Raymond agreed to raise in exchange for a long-term deal with Aspekt-Ziegler.”
Silence fell.
“Little Kevin, right? Only three years old.”
Suddenly, a voice behind Max said, “Landermann died without ever knowing a goddamn thing.”
Max swung around. Another old man behind him. Bald, dark eyes, tanned, leathery skin.
A Rom.
The man scanned the room before sitting next to Max and offering his hand. “Frank Woensdag.”
“I thought you were in Indonesia.”
“You thought wrong. I can’t tolerate the heat.” He smiled. “And I’m probably the only Rom you’ll ever meet who hates to travel.”
The Mercedes was headed north. Lars Windemuth drove while Woensdag sat with Max in the back. Landermann’s former underling was answering Max’s questions honestly without trying to hide anything, which surprised Max.
Yes, Christina had gotten him the job with Aspekt-Ziegler in the middle of the 1960s to make sure she could divert a portion of the company’s profits toward Romani causes. She was particularly sensitive to their condition in Eastern Europe.
With a few colleagues, Woensdag had created a fake research-and-development department. It was used as a way to send money to Eastern Europe without raising Landermann’s suspicions, or those of the political authorities of the recipient countries.
A little before her death in 1997, seeing her end in sight, Christina had placed a large sum of money in a Swiss bank account created to continue her philanthropic work with Roma across the globe.
“And how was Raymond Dandurand involved in all of this?”
“Aspekt-Ziegler could have chosen any number of companies far more suited to help it make a move into the American market. Christina was the one who wanted the contract to go to Raymond’s business.”
Max waited for the rest.
“Christina and Raymond got to know each other during his various business trips to Europe. At the time Dandurand was desperately seeking new contracts. He’d harass Landermann with his never-ending calls. They would eat together, Christina, Dandurand, and Landermann, and Dandurand talked non-stop about his company. That’s how she became interested in him.”
The Mercedes left the highway, and Woensdag continued. “I didn’t understand, didn’t know why she was so insistent. So I asked her. She told me Dandurand was willing to agree to quite the favour.”
“Adopting Kevin?”
“Yes.”
“Where was the child from? Romania?”
“Christina was discreet about that. She called me three months after the signing to tell me the children had arrived.”
“There were several children?”
“Kevin and two others. I went over to Christina’s apartment. Landermann was in Spain, I think. I mean, that’s where he spent his summers. She told me that Dandurand would be adopting a young woman and a boy.”
A young woman? Roxanne?
She wasn’t Kevin’s mother, but actually his big sister.
Max imagined the scene: Raymond coming out of Dorval Airport with a baby carriage, Gérard Lefebvre looking on dumbfounded. Raymond telling him he’d just saved Nordopak, thanks to a wedding and an adoption …
“And the other child?”
“A family in Great Britain. But it was harder for that one. The boy didn’t have any ears …”
Ioan Costinar.
Kevin’s brother.
A businessman in trouble agreeing to an impossible offer. Raymond becoming rich from his deal until the Dutch company severed all ties with his company in 1998, once Christina had passed away. By the time Raymond had been conned by his son and Max, Woensdag had already been pushed aside, replaced by a new generation of executives. Gone was Dandurand’s secret ally in the company.
His solution? Find new collaborators sensitive to his problems.
And so Raymond went to Woodlands, Manitoba, to meet with Ioan Costinar because he was familiar with the Landermann widow’s affection for the Romani cause. As a representative of the World Romani Congress, Costinar managed the funds Christina had left in an account just before her death. But Costinar hadn’t made a deal with Raymond, and Raymond had returned to Montreal with nothing at all.
Or perhaps not quite nothing.
Raymond had been noticed by Peter Kalanyos, who had no relationship to Ioan Costinar. Kalanyos decided to take advantage of the situation. He travelled to Grande-Vallée a few days later, after killing Costinar, to murder Dandurand and take the child.
But again and always — why Sacha?
The Mercedes came to a halt in front of an opulent stone home hidden from the road by a row of spruce. Max got out of the car and looked around, taking a deep breath of brisk country air. As Windemuth drove around the house to park the car behind it, Max noticed a tricycle and toys. A child stood a few metres away, watching him, fear painted on his face. From where he stood, Max couldn’t see the red mark on his neck, but there was no doubt, anyway: it was Sacha, little Sacha, Sacha from the pictures, Sacha-the-Red, Kevin’s son.
“Sacha …”
Just as Max began walking toward him, a silhouette appeared from behind the trees. A woman walking straight to the boy to take him by the hand.
Josée Dandurand.
38
Bucharest, February 27, 1973
Emil Rosca’s cellmate at Rahova Prison still remembered the hell of Piteşti, where he’d been locked up in the early 1950s. It had been Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej’s model prison, his masterpiece, his creation. Enough to make Stalin jealous. In the evenings, after darkness fell, Emil’s cellmate told him his stories, a way perhaps of making him appreciate their current conditions of imprisonment. Piteşti had been a “re-education centre,” sadism its foundational philosophy.
“At first, Emil, we had to confess our sins and denounce our former accomplices on the outside.”
“Then we had self-criticism sessions where we denounced our allies and accomplices within the prison. After that we were forced to confess publicly, turning our backs on our families, religion, wives, and friends. And, finally, the last step was re-education. We were sentenced to re-educate our best friend and torture him with our own hands.”
The victim become the perpetrator.
During de-Stalinization, Piteşti’s leaders, including a number of “re-educated” citizens, were accused of purposely wreaking havoc and terror to discredit the Communist regime. Most were sentenced to death.
And the perpetrator become victim again, the circle complete.
Under Nicolae Ceauşescu, cruelty hadn’t suddenly disappeared, quite the contrary. It had changed, though, into a more insidious, psychological terror. In the first few weeks of his imprisonment, Emil attempted in vain to get in touch with the Conducător. Ceauşescu was always away somewhere, he was told, travelling across the world, invited by foreign dignitaries, even in the West, where he’d become a golden child of sorts.
And then, little by little, Emil became used to his new life. After Auschwitz and Vorkuta, he came to believe that prison was his lot in life, his fate, his punishment.
His very own Gypsy curse.
One morning during roll call, a few months before being released, Emil learned that his children had died. He was standing with his fellow cellmates at attention in a row, like every morning, a guard walking behind them, counting out loud enough for another guard with a notebook in hand at the other end of the room to hear.
The roll call guard shouted Emil’s name and number, moved to the next man, then suddenly turned and walked back to Emil, tapping his shoulder. “By the way, Rosca, your three pathetic children are dead. Rotting now. It’s been more than a week. Fever took them, and we can thank fate for that.”
Emil attempted to hide his hurt; he knew weakness would only be exploit
ed. But the pain in him was like an ulcer bursting, like a cancer making itself known. He saw double but didn’t falter, didn’t give the bastards the satisfaction.
That night some of the other prisoners shared their rations with Emil, which he hadn’t been able to swallow. He could only think of his children. Ceauşescu had succeeded where Hitler’s concentration camps and Stalin’s gulags had failed: the great line of Luca le Stevosko finally extinguished. Thanks to Emil, Ceauşescu had taken and kept power over his countrymen; he had used his naïveté and trust. All that Emil had left was regret at not spitting in Ceauşescu’s face that day in Vorkuta, as his father might have. Unlike his father, Emil wouldn’t have the opportunity to die with honour. He would rot away in prison for believing the lies of a gadjo.
Another Romani prisoner informed him that his children’s possessions had been burned according to Romani tradition, just as Eugenia’s belongings after she was killed. The ceremony had followed a pomána, a funeral feast, in which three living children played the role of the three who’d passed. The soul of the children having not yet reached the kingdom of the dead, the pomána helped give them courage for the long road ahead.
In the following days, Emil thought of ending his life. But he couldn’t. Suicide would be conceding victory. A show of weakness.
By the time he was let go in the middle of the winter two years after his arrest, an emaciated and weakened Emil realized with terrible sadness that the living conditions of his people had greatly deteriorated. His house had been razed and a multi-storey building had been slapped together over his old mansion: it already looked as if it were crumbling. Electrical wires dangled from the windows, no one having even bothered to connect them to the electrical posts down the street. A balcony had collapsed into the parking lot, raising neither alarm nor complaint. Complain to whom, anyway?
The houses that had used to be owned by other members of the kumpaníya had disappeared, as well, replaced by fallow ground, now home only to a few mangy dogs.
In the streets, Roma rummaged through piles of trash for something to eat. Others wandered to and fro, hoping activity would warm them, dressed in threadbare clothes stuffed with newspapers or cardboard.
So this was how Ceauşescu and his bastard henchmen thanked the Roma for putting them in power!
In a café in the suburbs north of Bucharest, Emil couldn’t recognize a single face, despite the fact it had been a rather well-known hangout for Roma. The barman told him that he still saw Roma in the neighbourhood from time to time. Thanks to his help, Emil found a few Lovari and a group of Kalderash, and the latter led him to Sergiu, Eugenia’s brother. They told him that Sergiu regularly visited Buftea Market. He would come into town in his truck, his pride and joy. According to another barman, Sergiu ferried Roma between farms during harvest season.
Emil walked more than twenty kilometres to see this brother-in-law. Sure, the man talked too loud and was rather rough around the edges, but he was the last of Emil’s clan. He decided he’d ignore the poor opinion he’d always had of Sergiu. They’d never really had any affinity, but Emil couldn’t care about that anymore. Seeing Sergiu would be like seeing Eugenia and his three children. It would be an attempt to regain a window into his life destroyed by Ceauşescu and the bastards who followed him. Sergiu was all the family he had left.
For a whole day Emil stood around Buftea Market before finally spotting his brother-in-law. The man’s laugh hadn’t changed, nor had his manners. You could hear him from a kilometre away.
When he finally noticed Emil, Sergiu looked like a man who’d seen a ghost. Without hesitation he took him in his arms. “I thought you were dead! They set you free! I can’t believe it!”
“Not completely free.”
Emil was assigned to a residence and couldn’t leave Bucharest, much less Romania. Even his presence in Buftea was prohibited. Once a week, Emil had to meet with a Securitate agent. If he was caught breaking a single rule, he’d be sent back to prison. Though, in truth, the whole country would be his prison now until the day he died.
Sergiu kept staring at him, still disbelieving. “Come, I’ve got something to show you.”
Emil climbed into the back of the truck, where he sat on jute bags among wooden crates. The truck left the city through busy streets. Emil glimpsed a roadside billboard: Nicolae and Elena surrounded by beatific schoolchildren. Disgusted, he looked away.
Sergiu lived in a home built with stolen materials, he proudly informed Emil. Other Roma had joined him in this improvised neighbourhood on the road to Găeşti. They all knew they’d be chased out of their new homes sooner or later.
For now it was their fiefdom.
A woman welcomed Emil as he jumped out of the truck. He didn’t recognize her; surely, Sergiu had married again after his wife died during the destruction of the kumpaníya’s homes.
Suddenly, Emil jumped back, startled. Behind the woman, his two sons appeared, and their older sister, Alina, now a beautiful young woman.
He ran toward them and took them in his arms. He’d never been so happy. His three children were alive! He’d been lied to in prison — more torture to break his spirit. His eldest son wore a hat year-round to hide the scars left when his ears had been sliced off, Sergiu explained. Each side of his face bore large scars, long healed now. The pain must have been excruciating, but the wounds were superficial, and the boy hadn’t become deaf.
Alina had been tortured, as well, and by the same Dr. Hans Leibrecht. She would never be able to bear children. The doctor had practised on her the sterilization methods he’d developed in Auschwitz.
Emil held his daughter to him. They stood together for a long time without moving.
He felt a presence at his feet. His youngest had been a baby when Emil was arrested. Thankfully, the Securitate hadn’t put its hands on him. Neighbours had hidden him under a pile of old clothes.
His three children with him.
His broken children.
His family he’d thought lost forever, now with him again.
The happiest day of his life.
“Wait, that’s not all.” In the kitchen, Sergiu climbed onto a chair and pulled out an enormous box from the top shelf of a cupboard. Inside, Emil’s old Paolo Soprani. The gormónya had a few more battle scars from the Securitate raid, but it had survived. “A keepsake to remind me of you.”
Suddenly, incapable of holding back anymore, Emil burst out in sobs. He cried for a long time, surrounded by his children and Sergiu, of whom he’d been so contemptuous once upon a time but who today was giving him a reason to live.
“I’ll prepare a hedgehog,” Sergiu’s wife announced with a celebratory smile.
Other Roma, told of Emil’s return, joined them. Kalderash, and Lovari especially, a few Tshurari: Emil’s reconstituted family.
“What will you do now?” Sergiu asked.
Emil had been thinking about this very question since the beginning of the meal. When he had believed his children dead, the future had been meaningless. But now only his children mattered. Sooner or later Ceauşescu would hear about his children’s existence, or be overtaken by paranoia once again. Emil couldn’t take the risk of being with his children when that happened.
The next day he sent a message out of the country.
Three weeks later it was time to act.
As planned, Emil rented a room at the Atlas Hotel beside the Timişoara terminal so that his children could rest for a few hours before continuing their journey. They lay in a pile on a too-soft mattress and were soon fast asleep. Emil dozed in a chair that dated from the 1950s. The night before they’d all climbed into Sergiu’s truck and driven on back roads to avoid police roadblocks. Today, in Timişoara, was the last day of their travels in Romania.
As the children slept, Emil tried to understand why Ceauşescu had been so cruel to him and his family. His old friend had decided to isolate
himself, as had Stalin, indeed as most dictators did, sooner or later. Up until recently the Roma had been an unstructured group without a political agenda. After the London congress, they’d begun to organize. Ceauşescu had chosen to act decisively while they were still weak, instead of waiting to face a stronger force later, one with credible leaders like Emil.
One thing was certain: Emil would never forgive Ceauşescu for what he’d done to his wife, Eugenia, and his family. And he’d certainly not keep the children where the Conducător might get his hands on them.
He heard the whistle of the train from Belgrade. The station was probably full of Yugoslavian tourists. They dressed well, walked with their noses high, just like Westerners, treating Romanians with condescension.
The next morning, as the train left for Belgrade, it would stop near Moraviţa on the edge of the Yugoslavian border, where Romanian passengers would get off, leaving only Yugoslavian passengers and the very few Romanians with exit visas — party cadres mostly. Their papers would be examined by Romanian border guards. Then they would go on to Vršac on the other side of the border, where Yugoslavian border guards would repeat the process.
And on that train, counterfeit papers in hand, Emil’s three children would be on the road to freedom.
Emil’s youngest pulled on his sleeve. It was still early, but Emil hadn’t been able to fall asleep beyond a light, fitful doze. Had they been followed? Sergiu had been careful as always. And the hotel often housed Roma. The boss himself was a Lovari. A guy you could trust, Sergiu had insisted.
In the morning, the owner led them to a park near the train station, through little-used side streets, before heading back to his hotel. At that early hour in winter the place was deserted. While the two boys played a little farther away, Emil sat with Alina on a bench. He thought of his life that had brought him here, to this city, at this moment. The end of the road, he told himself. He thought of all the broken promises made to his father and himself. Commitments forgotten as easily as they’d been made. Once again, he cursed his naïveté, which had led Eugenia to her death, mutilated his eldest son, and made his daughter sterile.
