She turned away from Sauers and stared at the man's cool ash-colored eyes which reminded her so much of the winter sky above the unforgiving mountains of her village. Mountains strong and permanent formed of orange and red molten rock that had burst forth from below the surface and forced its way upward towards the snowy clouds, piercing the steel-blue sky like stalagmites, until the heavens were dominated by soil and rock and trees that could withstand the fierce climate—survivor of every cataclysm. What had existed before she was born, before her grandmother, and her great great great grandmother—
A buzzer down the hall sounded and Nita jolted. Furtively she glanced around her at the sterile environment, its only richness in the dead gleam of stainless steel, its only life the color corpse-white. No, this was not the mountains. She had little power here; she looked down at her wrists chained together and her pale small hands clasped tightly in her lap as if all they could clutch, all they could hold onto to keep body and soul together was each other.
"We're not here about the legalities," the grey man whose name she had not learned said in a comforting tone accented by a slight smile. But Nita knew that both people in the room with her thought she was not just guilty but also insane. Hopelessly insane. Not much to do about that. Bunic believed you can't change people's minds with words, just with actions. "Trust only what you taste and touch and smell," she'd said. "What others believe, this cannot matter."
"I see your name is Luminita."
"Everyone calls me Nita."
"Yes, a diminutive. Very nice. What does Luminita mean? Something about light?"
"In Romanian it means 'little light'."
"Meaning a bright personality?"
"Yes. But also someone who lights the way for others."
"A beacon."
Nita remembered her Bunic with so much longing. The woman after whom she had been named, who had meant the world to her, was gone now, and that thought stabbed Nita's heart like a rusty knife. Bunic, in Nita's youthful view, had always been old, snowy hair like goose down covered by a headscarf the color of the purple loostrife that grew in the wetlands, a face earth-brown and crinkly as Baltic fruit shriveled by a sudden frost. But her smile, that wasn't old at all. Her smile lit wise honey eyes and changed the wrinkles around her mouth until she appeared young to young Nita. As if they were sisters. And sometimes Nita believed that they were sisters, more than sisters, identical. As a child, she had wanted to grow up to be just like Bunic.
"And how do you feel about that?"
Nita's vision of the past cleared returning her to the present. The man had spoken and she had no idea what he was asking her.
"I'm sorry. Could you repeat that, please?" she said.
"Wake sus!" Sauers snapped.
The man said gently, "I asked if we could begin at the beginning. If you would be willing to tell me about how you came to be in Bucharest."
Nita knew this man had read her file and was aware of every bit of information about her that the courts and the doctors had been able to ascertain. Why he wanted it now, she did not know.
She was about to ask him this when Sauers ordered, "Completat!" and Nita decided that complying was in fact the easiest way to go. Once this was over she could return to the vomit-green cell they called her room in this small asylum and fall into the world inside her, where they could not penetrate.
"Let me ask you specific questions," the man said. "It might be easier that way. Why did you come to Bucharest?"
"To go to school."
She could see him struggle to recall the information from her files. "I seem to have read that you did very well in school. Exceptionally well."
"Yes. My grades were excellent."
He smiled. "It's unusual for a girl from a small mountain village to be accepted at university."
"I studied with my grandmother. She taught me to read three languages, and to learn numbers. She wanted me to be modern and well-educated."
"Your grandmother must have been very proud of you, earning a scholarship."
"Yes. The whole village took pride in me."
"I see. So you came here for university."
"No, I studied first at the secondary school level. I then matriculated to the university."
"I see."
She wondered if he saw much of anything. His dove eyes revealed nothing. Did he understand how life could be? How her life had been? Could he sense a clash of worlds? She doubted it.
"Did you enjoy school."
"Yes."
"Did you make friends?"
"Yes. A few." When she said no more he waited and she filled in the blank space hovering between them. "I had two girlfriends, Magda and Anya, and a guy, Toma. We all went to coffee houses together and clubs. We listened to music and danced and talked a lot. More than I was used to." She felt exhausted from talking now, as if all this depleted her. And to what end? She knew she was destined to be a name in some research study that a girl her age would read about in a text book one day.
"Did you have a boyfriend."
"No."
"What about the young man you just mentioned?"
"Toma and I were friends. Only friends."
"And the girls? Were you just friends as well?"
She did not know what he was implying and at first could not form an answer. Finally she took the easiest route. "We were friends only."
"Close?"
She hesitated. "I suppose."
"And did you confide in them?"
"Confide what?"
"Anything. Your thoughts. Feelings. Anything about your life. Your past."
He said "past" as if she might have accidentally conveyed to Anya or Magda a dark secret, or even Toma, but they had not talked of the past, only the present. And the future. A future that no longer existed. "We talked of school and movie stars and music." She hoped that would satisfy him, and it appeared to.
"Tell me, Nita, while you were in Bucharest, did you miss your village."
"Of course. Sometimes, not all the time. I had my studies."
The man had been making notes on a pad of paper and now turned the page. She wondered why he made notes when he would have the videotape.
In the pause, Nita snuck a glance at Dr. Sauers. The woman's manure eyes pierced her and threatened retribution but Nita did not know for what. Nita looked down again, but a small smile spread her lips apart as she thought to herself, "We all must dance with him one day."
"Nita, I'd like to hear what your village was like. Can you tell me something about it? I'm from North America, so this is all new to me."
She stared at him as he tried to look sincere. Yes, her village would not be known to him, and yet she wondered if he truly appreciated the differences. While she had not been to North America, or even to Western Europe, she had seen his land on television and in movies and knew how it looked, how people acted. He would have no such markers for her world. She could tell him anything and he would believe it. Of course, Sauers knew her village, or claimed to. The doctor was probably German or Austrian but clearly she spoke the language well and must have lived in Romania for some time. But even if she didn't know Nita's village, she would know the region; she would have passed through villages like Nita's. Although there was no village like Nita's, of that she was quite certain.
"A fi honest," Sauers said slowly.
Nita stared at the camera, the most humane element in the room to her thinking. At least the camera eye of God was not judgmental today. Or analytical. It recorded what was, without interpretation or hidden agendas. The way she had learned to think at the university.
"The village I grew up in was like many. Small, the people simple, kind and generous. They looked after one another. The people were old because the young ones moved away, like I did." She felt a short, sharp pain in her heart. An image floated to mind of the village, colorless, empty of living beings, the houses abandoned, the cold mountain breezes blowing through broken windows, forcing wooden shutters to bang against wa
lls, the yards littered with the bones of dead chickens, paper and fabric rushing across the ground and into the nearby woods. A village of ghosts. She felt tears forming in her right eye and looked down. She did not want either of these two to see her vulnerable.
"How many people lived there?" he asked.
"One hundred, no more."
"Your parents?"
"My mother. . .died when I was a child."
"And your father?"
She shook her head.
"Who looked after you?"
She felt annoyed. He must have read all this in the reports. Still, she tried to keep her voice from sounding impatient, which would only bring trouble. "My grandmother raised me. My mother's mother." Then she added before he could ask, "My father's family was from somewhere far away."
He nodded as if she had said or done something right. Nita did not dare look at Sauers.
The man continued but he could not disguise the energy in his voice, now that he thought he was onto something. "Was there anyone unusual in your village? Anyone different than the others?"
"Everyone was unique." She kept her smile hidden; she wanted to toy with him a little.
"Yes, of course. But what I meant was would you say there was anyone living in the village who maybe did not feel they belonged there? Who might have felt like a prisoner?"
She knew what he was getting at, and she knew what he wanted her to say. He wanted her to say it was her. Instead she told him, "Yes, one man. We called him Vechi brbat. It means 'ancient man'."
This was not what the grey-haired man was expecting. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him move back in his chair slightly, as if regrouping his thoughts. To her right, she heard Sauers make a small sound like a snake hissing.
They insisted she be here. They controlled her life. She had no options but this one: to play with them, as much as she could. And she would. They did not care about her, about her village, about vechi brbat. And Nita did not care about them. Not at all. What could a prisoner feel but to desire the end of her captors?
The man at the table leaned forward and scribbled in his notebook. When he looked up at her she met his gaze, forcing her eyes to reflect innocence, guilelessness. In an instant his demeanor altered and he again looked hopeful, as if he had made a good decision and even before he spoke, she knew where he wanted to go.
"Tell me about this vechi brbat," he said, badly mispronouncing the words. And she knew he had decided to humor her. She smiled, which from his reaction he interpreted as her being more at ease with him. But of course she did not trust him. Not at all.
"Vechi brbat was old when my grandmother was young. She told me stories, what her grandmother had told her, and her grandmother before her."
"I see," the man said, jotting a note. He looked up at Nita with an encouraging smile. "Could you describe this vechi brbat for me?"
"Grey hair like yours, but brittle," she said. "He was thin, very thin, because he did not eat much, and hunched, but I think he must have been shorter than me. His eyes could not focus well, and he had trouble with light, especially the sun."
"Where did he live? In the village, I mean. Did he have a house?"
"He lived with us. In a cage in the back room. My grandmother fed him from time to time, and let him out when she felt he was not a threat."
"What kind of threat?" The man's voice held anticipation, as if Nita were on the edge of divulging something important.
"He might hurt someone. If he were kept weak, he could not harm us. That's why my grandmother fed him little."
"And the rest of the villagers? Were they afraid of him?"
"No one was afraid of him."
"But if he was a danger—"
"When he was well fed. But he never was. And at night, but he was kept on chains and ropes. He was not dangerous in the day, and not when he was weak."
The man paused. "Did your grandmother ever keep you in the cage?"
"Of course not!" Nita snapped. She saw Sauers tense, ready for action. "I was not a threat. Only vechi brbat."
"Alright. That makes sense," the man said, trying to mollify her, fearful that she would stop talking to him. "Tell me more about him. Did you ever speak with him?"
"No. Why should I? There was no reason to. And besides, he could not talk. He only knew the language of long ago. He had nothing to say."
"Did he ever try to speak to you?"
She thought for a moment. "Once. When I was very young. I had gone into the woods to hunt for mushrooms too late in the day and he appeared."
"You were not afraid?"
Nita looked at him with disdain. "Of course not. I told you I did not fear him."
"And what did he do?"
"He walked up to me and reached out his hand to touch my face, but I stepped back. And anyway, the chains and ropes were caught around a tree trunk, so he could not reach me. It was dark in those woods where the trees grew close together and little sunlight got through. He might have had more power."
"What did you do, when he tried to touch you?"
"I picked up my bucket and went home."
"Did he follow you?"
"Yes, for a while, when he unraveled himself."
"Did you tell anyone about this?"
"Yes, I told my grandmother."
"And what did she do?"
"She beat him."
They were all silent for a moment. Nita recalled watching the crimson welts form on vechi brbat's bare back as Bunic laid on the thick black leather strap. The blood was not red like Nita's and Bunic's but pale, almost colorless, barely pink-tinged. Vechi brbat took the beating with barely a sound coming from his lips, but his body hunched over even more until he was curled into a ball like a baby. Nita had felt sorry for him.
"How did you feel about that?"
"He had to be taught a lesson, my grandmother said. Otherwise he would cause harm to others."
The man took more notes. Dr. Sauers got up and checked the camera. Nita looked down at the shackles locking her wrists and ankles and thought that she was as much of a prisoner here as vechi brbat had been in the village. She, too, was kept in a cage. Controlled not by near starvation but through drugs they injected into her daily. She knew how much vechi brbat had longed to break free. She grew to understand him very well.
When Sauers returned to her seat and the man whose name she still did not know had finished his note taking, he turned to Nita and asked if she would like some water, or a juice.
"No. Thank you."
"All right then. Can we continue?"
She knew he did not expect an answer and she gave none. He would continue whether she wanted to or not. That was the nature of being held prisoner.
"I'd like to talk about the last time you visited your village. Back in the summer."
Her mind went to a picture. Like a postcard. An overview of the village, in shades of verdant green, with rich ochre mixed in, and the azure of the sky above. There were people: pretty, tan-skinned Oana and her four rosy-cheeked children and her belly swollen with the fifth. And Radu, her blond-haired, hard-working husband. Little Gheroghe, who played the flute so well, and Ilie who made such beautiful, well-constructed boots with his long, graceful fingers colored nearly black from the Russian cigarettes he liked to smoke. She saw them all as dabs of paint on a canvas, a human still-life, paralyzed in the thickness of time, depicted in her mind as they went about their day, as they had always done, as their children would, unless they left the village as Nita had.
"Tell me about that visit. Why did you go home?"
"My studies were complete for the year. I had gotten a position, serving food and drink in a taverna in Bucharest, but the owner did not need me for three weeks, until the tourists would come, so I went home to see my grandmother."
"Were you happy to be visiting her and your village?"
"Yes, of course."
"And how did everyone react to you?"
"They were all excited to see me. They wanted to kn
ow what it was like in Bucharest, and at the school."
"And what did you tell them?"
"That the city is full of people who dress in all the colors of the world and walk the narrow streets at every hour, and that lamp posts shine warm light at night like stars. I told them that the school gave me knowledge, and I learned about things I had not known existed."
"For example?"
By Blood We Live Page 23
