by Lee McGeorge
“Da. Bine.”
She beckoned him inside and from the instant he crossed the threshold she was talking in rapid fire Romanian. He set down his laptop bag and barely had his backpack off his shoulders before she was leading him by the elbow to an open door to point out a bedroom that felt like it hadn’t been heated in a long time. The next door was a bathroom replete with a constant explanation of something or other in Romanian. No chance to examine, it was on to another room, small and without furniture. The tour was lightening fast. She pulled him towards a main room that at least had furniture. A sofa, an armchair, some nested tables, but what she wanted to show him was the picture of Jesus on the wall. A sacred heart picture. The landlady pointed it out and spent more time on the picture than anything else, talking, chattering, pointing out details as though she was giving a tour in an art gallery, her hands moving in sweeps across the image as though discussing the brush technique of the artist. At what seemed to be the point where she finished talking about the painting she crossed herself. Paul smiled. The landlady crossed herself again and tipped her head towards Jesus.
“Oh, I see.” Paul genuflected as best he could. He’d always found religion pretty pointless but he didn’t want to be rude. The moment he crossed himself the landlady beamed a huge smile to show him just how much lipstick she’d managed to get on her teeth then led him to the kitchen.
On the table, Romanian language documents were already laid out in preparation. She handed him a pen. There was wood cladding on the kitchen wall from the floor to waist height, the slats stained the darkest brown, the top of the walls was white plaster. The kitchen had a...
The landlady coughed to get his attention. She pointed at the dotted line on a document and said, “Aici.” It was that word again, ‘aici’, the taxi driver used it pointing at the building, it must mean ‘here’, Paul thought.
He scanned the contract. Many tiny lines of small print in a language he couldn’t understand. The top of the form had dates marked for today and six months hence, a tenancy agreement with rent paid in full. He didn’t like contracts at the best of times and was anxious not to make a mistake. What choice did he have? He could sign or he could have nowhere to live.
He signed the form and for what it was worth wrote in the margin, ‘I do not fully understand this document.’
Another contract appeared.
“What’s this for… for what?” he asked shrugging his shoulders, trying to demonstrate confusion.
“Electricitate.” She said flicking the light switch. Again he signed and again he made a protective excuse in the margin, hoping it would afford a modicum of protection should things go legally tits-up.
After what seemed an endless stream of contracts he couldn’t read, and paying six months rent and utilities in cash to a landlady he couldn’t understand, she said her goodbyes and left without giving a receipt.
It was too fast. He had questions, or rather he would have had questions if he’d been given time to think about it; but the magenta lipped landlady was out of the door, literally drooling over the wad of cash in her hands.
As the door closed behind her it left a small oasis of silence in the apartment. It was done. The journey was over. Paul slipped off his coat and immediately smelled the stale sweat from his clothes. End to end he’d been travelling for sixteen hours in winter clothes in unheated cars and overheated aircraft. Trains, planes and smelly taxi cabs. He popped open his backpack and grabbed his towel and wash bag.
The bathroom was functional. Toilet, sink, mirror, a worn tub with rough looking enamel, white tiles and a bare concrete floor. There was a hole in the floor close to the wall he assumed was a drain. He imagined the floor would get very cold.
“As cosy as camping,” he mumbled as he turned the taps to the bathtub. The cold water spurted, brown at first, then clear with coughs and hiccups; the hot tap only hissed.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me?”
Paul squeezed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. The landlady. She’d been gone only a minute or two.
He grabbed the keys from the kitchen and ran straight down the stairs. Six floors, jumping the last three or four steps from each flight and holding the banister with one hand to swing around the corners until he reached the big steel door into the street.
He pushed his way out into the cold. There was a gentle wind and a few snowflakes in the air. It was icy cold, especially without his coat and with his skin sweating beneath his shirt. He looked up and down the street. He could see a row of tower blocks and a few parked cars dusted in snow, but the landlady was gone.
“Oh, fuck... Oh fucking hell.”
Keep looking, where could she have gone?
He ran down the few steps from the front door and realised that the building backed onto a huge courtyard. She was there, walking away.
Paul jogged to catch up then dropped to a brisk walk when ten yards behind her.
“Hi, hello, hello,” he wasn’t calling loudly enough but was reticent to shout. “Hello!”
She heard, she turned.
“Hi...” Paul stopped for a second and grabbed his knees to catch his breath. The landlady stood patiently. “Hi. Yes... erm? In the apartment… there’s no hot water.”
The stare of blankness answered. A cartoon thought balloon seemed to hover over her head and it was completely empty.
“There’s no hot water… no… no… shhhhhhhhh,” Paul mimicked the sound of water and mimed washing his hands. “water… there’s no, none, none, nothing hot water!”
Then from nowhere, “Nu este apă caldă!”
There was a young girl, teenaged, emptying rubbish from a pink plastic bucket into a communal trash bin. The landlady and the girl spoke a fast exchange in Romanian which the girl translated.
“She says there is no hot water in building at this time.”
“Oh…” Paul said. “Thank you.” Then almost as an afterthought, “Could you ask her when the water will be working?”
The two women spoke again, the landlady was giving a long explanation that the girl translated almost simultaneously. “She says it comes back when they pay the water. This building is, how you say community, one bill for all building, but some people are no money and don’t pay so they don’t get hot water this building. When they pay they get hot water.”
The landlady added something else. “She say there is no hot water here in five years.”
This time, it was Paul’s turn to have the empty thought bubble over his head. All he could think of to say was, “Mulţumesc,” one of the few words he’d learned before travelling. Thank you.
“Cu plăcere,” the landlady grinned. You’re welcome.
‘Fuck you,’ he thought as she walked away.
He couldn’t help but feel he had been ripped off but didn’t yet know how badly. What other problems would he discover with the apartment? Did the gas work? The heating?
Paul sighed audibly and rubbed his brow. The girl was looking at him, smiling brightly and with an air of expectancy. She was a little younger than him, seventeen or eighteen years old perhaps. Long dark straight hair pulled back in a ponytail. Thin. Very thin, with skin that was so milky and translucent it made her dark eyes and eyebrows seem to stand out from her face. Despite being undernourished and anaemic looking she was certainly pretty. Cheekbones and cuteness. All she needed was a few good meals and she’d be gorgeous.
Snowflakes began falling faster and suddenly Paul began to shiver. “Thank you,” he said, “Thank you very much.”
He spent just a few seconds too long to look at her.
And she at him.
If he’d been paying attention, he would have noticed three men on the far side of the courtyard making a straight line for them. He would have noticed that they were walking in powerful strides. He would have noticed that they epitomised determination and purpose. Most of all, he would have noticed that they meant trouble.
But Paul was completely oblivious to those three m
en coming to start a fight. He was too occupied trying to find something to say to this pretty girl who had helped him.
“My name is Paul. Paul McGovern.” He extended his hand, blissfully unaware of the three men closing in.
“Ildico,” she replied, shaking his hand. Her skin felt warm, very warm against his. “You are English, or American?” she asked as he still held her hand.
“I’m both, I was born in Seattle but I grew up in London.”
If there was a time to notice the men and walk away so as to negate any contact. The time was now…
Then that time passed.
“You are living here?” she asked pointing at the building and beginning to walk that way. Paul nodded. “So why do you come here?”
“I have a project. I’m a journalist, a feature writer for magazines, but I have something special to work on for a few months. I’m going to write a book.”
Ildico’s eyes lit up with dollar signs. “You are a writer!”
“Yes… Not yet... Well, kind of.”
“So why do you come in Noua, nobody comes to Noua.”
“I was told Brasov is a very nice place.” Paul replied.
“Brasov is nice, but this is Noua.”
Paul stopped walking. “This is Brasov?”
“It is Brasov, yes, but not city of Brasov. This is Noua, outside, how you say... Noua is a district of Brasov. City of Brasov is about fifteen minutes on bus, but you are very close.”
Paul let out a long groan. This whole adventure, if he could still call it that, was beginning to feel as though it would begin with pointless obstacles and hurdles to clear. He placed his hands on his hips and stared down for a moment. If he’d remained looking up he would have seen the expression change on Ildico’s face; he would have seen that flash of horror as Ildico realised that the three men were right on them. “I’m supposed to be in Brasov,” Paul mumbled to nobody in particular. “This isn’t fair. I’m supposed to be in Brasov.”
Then it hit.
He was stumbling as though the ground had shifted, his arms cart-wheeling forward as his shoulders snapped together across his back from the blow. The fall stopped short as his shirt pulled tight and yanked him back. There was a moaning squeal, a woman’s voice from his side, high and shrill.
As he righted and found his feet, Paul was turned by strong hands towards the face of a giant. A man. A fat wide head with a purple scar from the centre of his forehead that stretched into his hairline above his right eye; eyes that held a bitterness of character still to be unleashed. This insidious face breathed onto Paul with a disgusting smell of stale tobacco mixed with an acrid hint of vomit. Paul felt his legs give way beneath him, but the Big Man held him firm, gripping his shirt about the buttons in a huge fist. In the panic, Paul registered the single detail that this Big Man had black hair on the back of his hands and fingers.
Paul’s heart was pounding in fight or flight but he could do neither, his instincts had taken over to drop him to the floor, to curl up in a ball and protect himself, but the man seizing him was keeping him upright. To his side there was shouting from the girl. In confusion Paul looked left and right, wanting to yell but found the air trapped in his throat, too paralysed by shock to do anything. He tried to take in the situation but was just too surprised and felt like he was watching the situation in a movie that had just started halfway through the picture.
He looked away from Big Man. He could see… could see… the Big Man holding his shirt, almost lifting him off the ground… he could see a young kid, teenaged, looking gormless… he could see another man with a shaved head holding the girl by the hair. He was yelling at her, hurting her, screaming abuse only an inch from her face.
Ildico was pushing back against this man, repeatedly screaming what sounded like, “Nyalla Nu, Nyalla Nu!”
Whoever this guy was he was pissed off and aggressive. Then the shaved headed man pointed at Paul and shouted something in Romanian, but the words weren’t for him, they were about him.
Ildico repeatedly cried out, “Nealla varog,” and from somewhere Paul recognised the word ‘varog’ as meaning ‘please’ and figured Nealla or ‘Nyalla’ was the name of her attacker.
Nealla grabbed Ildico’s pony tail and wrenched her head back as though he wanted to snap her neck. He wasn’t play acting, he really did want to snap the vertebrae of her spine and he was shouting at her with such venom it looked as though the words coming from his lips had the power to break bones.
At this Paul freaked out, lost his cool and screamed in English, “Leave me alone, this has nothing to do with me.” He twisted in the Big Man’s grip, struggling with the futility of a toddler against an adult.
The situation freeze framed.
It took a few seconds for him to notice. It was his English language that had done it. He’d cried out like a coward and now, all eyes were on him.
“Oh shit.”
Big Man still gripped his shirt but was exchanging glances with Nealla, neither of them seemed to know what to do. Paul looked to Ildico hoping for help, wishing her to talk to these guys so they would let him go, but she stared back blankly looking more of a victim than he did. The gormless teenager remained in place but tilted his head down to stare at his shoes.
“Hey,” Nealla called out to get Paul’s attention. He twisted Ildico to position her body in front of his, then pulled her arm behind her back, wrenching it against the grain. She made a long painful cry as the muscles and tendons of her shoulder were stretched in the wrong direction. Her face contorted with agony until tears rolled across her cheeks. It was a slow deliberate move that seemed purposely to send a message of some sorts. He started speaking to Paul, saying things that couldn’t be understood but ending each sentence with something that sounded like, ‘Ildico, femee o mya.’ He said it three or four times like a mantra. Whilst still twisting her arm he slid his free hand around her torso and underneath her pullover to fondle her breasts as a public spectacle. He was strong, he could break her arm if he wanted to. With relish, he put additional stress on her leveraged shoulder to make her gasp for breath between cries as his hands fondled beneath the wool of her pullover. It was a show. The abuse and pain were only part of the act. The real theatre came from the loathsome despicable smirk he wore as a victory mask. He was forcing her to comply with pain, playing with her tits in the street as though it was no more wrong than kicking a tin can. And he was smiling...
“Ildico, este femeia mea!”
Paul got it; Ildico is my woman!
He understood what Nealla was saying, but what he couldn’t get was how a violent man could do this in the middle of the street in broad daylight and nobody was coming to help?
Paul needed to find his backbone, he had to do something but couldn’t figure out what the best action was. He couldn’t fight or run, but should he scream for help and hope someone looks through a window?
There had already been screaming. Nobody was coming to help.
“Let her go,” Paul said with as much composure as he could muster.
Ildico cried out sharply. A response to Paul speaking, Nealla twisted her arm harder and grinned wider.
“Let Her Go!” he blasted as fear got the better of him. He’d wanted to sound firm but overcompensated and shouted an angry instruction. He instantly regretted it.
Nealla tossed Ildico aside. She fell to the ground and stayed there, sobbing, tears streaming down her face as she lay on her hip in the snow. Paul looked at her for a moment making eye contact; it was a moment that was so overwhelmed with hurt that no message was conveyed. There was nothing from her but pain.
Nealla walked, strolled, strutted with cool and authority as the occasional snowflake fell about him. The Big Man still held his shirt and fighting for escape was futile but his feet involuntarily were trying to walk him backwards. When close enough, Nealla reached back his hand, made a fist and threw it straight into Paul’s face. In reflex, Paul yanked his hands up to protect himself and cried out as
though he’d been hit badly, but the punch was a decoy. It ended not as a blow to the face, but by grabbing Paul’s hand and bending it backwards in a stress position. This time Paul really yelped as the pain sheared along the bone like an electric shock, his body doubled over, following the pressure on his wrist as he was skilfully, almost effortlessly pushed to the ground. The Big Man let go of his shirt and allowed him to fall into the snow as Nealla pressed him to the floor by kneeling on his chest, holding him down with all of his body weight. And when things looked like they couldn’t get any worse, they got a whole lot worse.
Without seeing from where, there was a cut-throat razor in his face. “Eh? Englezoule? American?” Nealla was asking something that seemed to be the end of a question that Paul hadn’t heard the beginning of.
A razor. A fucking razor. It was simple and cheap, a black handle with a steel blade, but the blade was being pressed into Paul’s face. He felt it touch his skin. Nealla was grinning.
Paul lost it and screamed and screeched like a burnt child. The blade was touching his nose, his eyebrows, the corner of it was resting on the tear duct of his right eye. Oh God! Not my eye, not my eye.
Nealla moved the razor to Paul’s lips in the way one would hold a finger to symbolize silence. Nealla made a “shhhhh” sound to quieten Paul.
It worked. Paul became utterly subservient and quiet, physically paralysed in any conscious sense but trembling uncontrollably, shuddering in spasms. Nealla grinned, he was missing a few teeth and those that he did have were tobacco stained and jagged. His skin seemed leathery, worn and slightly yellow, and from close up Paul could see a light stubble on his head that showed he was prematurely bald at the front. There was a wide blue vein running from his temple over the top of his head. He was perhaps in his mid twenties but somehow looked physically older and mentally younger at the same time; but it was the grin that defined him, the smirk of someone loathsome. In that grin seemed to be his reason to exist. The grin signified that he was now happy and content that he owned and controlled the situation; the way his manner changed from aggression to contentment once he had checkmate of physical force suggested that this was what he lived for.
