The Story That Cannot Be Told

by J. Kasper Kramer

  Then, one evening, as they prepared to make camp, a call rang out that Tataie couldn’t understand. One of his countrymen translated.

  “Something’s there. Up ahead.”

  Switching on his flat, rectangle-shaped light, which was clipped to his uniform, Tataie went deeper into the trees, relieved that his battery was still working. When he approached the ruins of what once was a house, yellow flashlight beams came in rhythmic waves over fallen walls and a gray, broken door. The air was quiet but for the patter of snowflakes and the whir of tiny, mechanical wheels. The Germans’ lights were brass with hand pumps. Soldiers walked the perimeter, peeking inside. Most of the men became bored and moved on. Only three people lingered—Tataie, another Romanian man, and the German soldier who’d held the gasoline.

  Something shifted inside the house. Someone made a noise.

  The soldiers exchanged looks and approached. They pulled aside fallen boards and found a way to squeeze into the rubble. At the corner of what had once been a living room, crouched beneath what had once been a table, Tataie’s light fell on a naked woman. Her hair hung from her face in long, greasy ropes. Her body was mottled with dark patches of bruises and dirt. A torn blanket was draped over her shoulders, but it slid down her back when she put her hands up to cover her eyes. She shivered as the snow settled, melting on her skin.

  “Is she a Jew?” asked my grandfather’s countryman, crossing himself.

  The German shifted his weight but stayed silent.

  “Are you a Jew?” the Romanian asked. “Are you helping the resisters in Odessa?” The woman didn’t respond. Another few moments passed in stillness. “Should we kill her?”

  Tataie flinched.

  The German spat, then looked up through the half-collapsed roof at the snow coming down from the black sky. “She’s already dead.”

  But no one moved to leave.

  “She could give up our location,” said Tataie’s countryman, scrunching his nose.

  “She could,” the German agreed. And, after a moment longer, he took a deep breath and unholstered his gun.

  Tataie reached down into his pocket.

  “Wait,” he said, and in the palm of his hand were two of his three silver coins. They glinted even there in the dark. They clinked together, singing like chimes. “Leave us. I’ll take care of it.”

  The Romanian and the German looked at each other. They looked at the coins in Tataie’s hand. The German reached forward and pinched one between his fingers.

  “Be quick,” he said.

  Tataie’s countryman paused before taking the other.

  The two soldiers climbed back through the rubble, my grandfather still as stone till he could no longer hear their footsteps crunching through the woods. The snow came harder. The wind picked up. He moved forward, the image of the naked woman dimming as the battery in his light died.

  “There’s a small fishing village to the south,” he finally said. “They seemed like good people, but we ate through much of their meat and wine. They’ll be in need of a means to restock for the winter. They’ll not turn down good silver.”

  He took out his last coin and set it on the edge of the table.

  Tataie’s light flickered and went out. The woman lowered her hands from her face. He got his bearings and pointed.

  “That way,” he said, tipping his hat.

  Alone in the dark, he walked back to camp.

  It would not be till three years later that my grandfather found his way home. He had survived the Siege of Odessa and the Battle of Stalingrad. He had marched what felt like the length of the world. But then the Red Army forced its way past our borders, and when the tides turned against us, our young king led a coup against our prime minister. Our soldiers were informed we’d switched sides. They were told that the men they’d been valiantly dying beside, they now had to valiantly kill.

  After Romania changed from Axis to Allies, the Americans flew over in planes and dropped bombs on our cities to free them from German control. My grandfather led a troop of young men and liberated small villages by foot. Winter came earlier in the mountains of the Old Kingdom than down by the sea. The ground frosted before mid-September. The first flurries arrived after dawn, just briefly, two weeks later. By the end of October, Tataie and his men were stamping their feet in the cold, a thin sheet of white on the ground. Once the snow began truly falling, it did not seem to know how to stop. Stretches of mountain range became impassable. Bridges collapsed under the weight of ice. Other soldiers would not have known how to travel such treacherous roads, but Tataie had learned the lay of this land as a boy.

  One evening, while making camp in the forest, he realized he was only a day’s walk from his village—a day’s walk from the cottage at the top of the hill that he would inherit. So late, late that night, when the snowfall finally stilled, when the moon glowed high above the dark pines, Tataie walked out beneath the trees all alone. He stared up the mountain, searching for lights. He feared what he would find. He feared what would already be gone.

  Behind him, a slide was pulled back, the echo of metal scraping metal muffled in the snowy clearing. Something frozen and hard pressed against the nape of Tataie’s neck, and he went rigid with fear.

  “Turn around. Slow,” said a voice thick with accent.

  Tataie did as he was told, his eyes widening as he realized who it was who might kill him.

  The bin holder. The gasoline pumper.

  The German’s eyes widened too, but he didn’t lower his pistol.

  “They say it’s almost over. The war,” Tataie whispered. When the German didn’t speak, he gestured up the mountain with a nod. “My home is just there, in a valley between the tallest peaks. I’d never left before, never seen anything else. Now I’ve seen so much, I fear it won’t look the same.”

  When he was still met with silence, Tataie wondered if he’d been mistaken, if this wasn’t the same man he knew. But then the German’s expression changed.

  His lip curled as he asked, “The woman. The naked one in the forest. What did you do when we left? What did you pay to keep secret?”

  My grandfather stared down the barrel of the gun, then turned his head to look back up the mountain a last time. A flame flickered to life in the distance. First one. Then another. So close he felt he could reach up and take them.

  “I gave her my last silver coin,” Tataie said. “I pointed the way to the sea.”

  The wind shifted through the snow-covered trees. An owl called out in the night. Finally, my grandfather looked back at the soldier.

  But in the white, moonlit clearing, he was alone.

  The First Snow

  Mamaie was superstitious of everything, though this hadn’t always been true. When I was sick, she made a fuss if I looked at my nails or turned my face to the wall. She chased stray dogs out of our yard with her broom, screaming like they were devils.

  “It’s a full-time job in this house,” she complained, “keeping the bad omens away.”

  If ever someone said I was cute—and they didn’t pinch my cheeks and make a puh-puh-puh noise—she would have a conniption, sure I’d been charmed.

  “Hasn’t your mother taught you anything?” she’d ask, furiously braiding red string for a bracelet in hopes of protecting me from the evil eye.

  I couldn’t blow out candles, and I’d sooner be caught dead than whistling inside. If I brought her a bundle of flowers, she’d only accept them after making sure there was an odd number. If I sat at the corner of the table, she’d panic and scoot me to the center, swearing I’d never be wed. Mamaie always kept a piece of thread in her mouth while she sewed. She got excited when her palm started to itch. On Tuesdays she made sure not to wash her hair.

  “And never, never, never, Ileana, look back at the house after you’ve left,” she insisted.

  I thought Mamaie’s superstitions were fun, but I had a hard time keeping up with them all. Constantly, in the middle of the simplest things—like wiping water off t
he floor with a rag under my foot—she’d race in fast as a brush fire, sputtering wild prayers and setting things right. I figured her mind had gone curly, but on the night of the harvest festival I realized the truth.

  In the mountains, fall came earlier than it did in the city. School had only been in session for a short time before the first frost of the season dusted the farmlands in crystal. To celebrate the harvest, all the villagers came together on the first of October to share their favorite foods. The morning arrived bright and crisp. The wind whipped and whirled through the valley, drying colorful, wet leaves as they scattered. Men built fires in the center of town, and women were baking by dawn, filling the village with the scent of hot, crusty bread, hand-stuffed sausages, and baked pumpkin.

  Sanda was cooking tripe soup with calf stomach, beef hocks, garlic, and vinegar. Mamaie usually made plum dumplings, but since I didn’t like plums, she agreed to fry up some dough to fill with sweet cheese and top with powdered sugar. It was amazing how much the villagers could do with so little. Because it was Sunday and I didn’t have school, I helped in the kitchen and tended to chores, but the sense of community made me want to contribute in some more meaningful way. After digging around near my schoolbag, I found where I’d hidden my chunk of chocolate when I arrived. I brought it to Mamaie and unwrapped it. Some of the edges had whitened, but otherwise it was still perfect.

  “I want to share,” I said. “But it’s too small for everyone, no matter how we divide it.”

  “That’s nonsense,” my grandmother said. And then she heated up some water in a pot and melted the chocolate in a bowl placed on top. After that she drizzled and dripped it over her fried pastries. “See there? Now we can all have a taste. You’re becoming a real villager, Ileana.”

  I couldn’t help smiling as I picked up the tray of sweets to bring down the hill. Before I could go, though, my mamaie caught my sleeve, gesturing to a crack in the table.

  “Have you seen that before?” she asked, worry lines creasing her brow.

  I shook my head.

  “Oh my. Oh no, no, no.” She started wringing her hands. “Go on, then. Off with you. I need to find your tataie.”

  Down in the valley, men were dragging long wooden benches into the street, and women were setting up goods to barter—homemade clothing, walnut jam, painted dishes, and leather. Mr. Sala and Mr. Ursu had a pig turning over a spit. Corn roasted on metal racks. Stray dogs ran everywhere, begging for scraps. There was a whole table of cheese: stinky cheese, smoked cheese, cheese aged in fir bark. Tonight there would be music and dancing and games, and maybe even a chance that someone would start telling stories.

  Earlier that morning I’d asked Mamaie if someone might tell the story that could not be told, and she’d smacked me on the back of my hand.

  “You promised your grandfather you wouldn’t bring that up again!”

  Outside Gabi’s house, my friend and her mother were lugging their great covered pot of tripe soup, so I ran over to help.

  “Did you see who’s here?” Gabi whispered, head motioning toward a table near the well.

  There, smoking cigarettes and watching the villagers, was the strange man from the inn. Beside him were two companions. Since they’d arrived, questions had gone from casual to confrontational. More than once Mr. Bălan had lost his temper, demanding that the men pay their bills and be gone, which of course only worsened the problem. The strangers had stopped playing pleasant. They’d stopped pretending to be on a countryside vacation entirely.

  It was obvious to everyone that the men were Securitate. But only me and Gabi and my grandparents and Sanda knew they were searching for my uncle. Rumors said soldiers from the Land Forces had been spotted in other villages too—that they might be headed our way. Surely, this had something to do with my uncle as well, though we couldn’t guess what.

  After setting down the pot, I took a long look around the village, fear filling the pit of my stomach. When Sanda went to talk to another adult, I said to my friend, “The owl in our yard has been flying around during the day.”

  Gabi made a face. “Are you getting weird like your mamaie?”

  “No,” I said defensively. “But this morning there was a new crack in our table.…”

  Gabi slapped her palm to her forehead. “You are getting weird like your mamaie.”

  “You’re the one who thinks Old Constanta’s a witch.”

  “Because witches are real,” Gabi said.

  By the time the sun was past the midpoint in the sky, everyone was down in the village. I avoided Mrs. Sala, who was tsk-tsking each time she saw me—after my terrible summer-homework grades, things had only gotten worse. Squeezing through the crowds, I found Tataie playing his fiddle with a group of other musicians. Nearby, women danced in a circle, holding hands. The circle cinched together and stretched apart, the women’s feet matching in time as they went forward, left, forward, then back and right. I tried to find the pattern, impressed that they could all remember so many steps. Gabi joined in and did a wonderful job.

  On the tables lining the street, there was more food than I’d ever seen in my life—except, of course, in American movies, like the secret ones I’d watched with my father. I wondered where the villagers had found it all. The backs of cabinets? The corners of attics? Beneath loose wooden planks in the floor? I wondered what had been traded and sacrificed to acquire the ingredients for the small frosted cake on a metal folding table to my left, the beef salad decorated with eggs and olives and roasted red peppers on my right. Even though I was a picky eater, I ate enough to stay full for a week. The chocolate-drizzled pastries were, of course, a success.

  Everywhere people were having such a good time, clinking cups and tasting a bit of this or that, joking with loved ones and admiring neighbors’ wares, that I started to forget about Mamaie’s superstitions. It wasn’t till I was sitting beside her, helping barter her pillows and blankets, that I remembered how worried she was.

  “All around us there’s trouble,” she said, eyes on the Securitate. “We have to stay vigilant. I’m always telling you, aren’t I? Heed the signs.”

  I stared, searching, but the only sign I saw was that the three strange men had had too much to drink. Early batches of ţuică were the culprit. The plum brandy was being passed cup by cup, hand to hand. A drunk villager had even offered a glass to me, which my mamaie smacked away. It looked like the Securitate were competing to see who could reach a big pear trapped at the bottom of a bottle they were sharing, but when Mr. Ursu began carving the last bits of meat off the pig on the spit, their attention shifted. One of the men wobbled over.

  “I want some of that,” he said.

  The old butcher kept carving, as if he hadn’t heard. Next to him Ioan was holding a plate. His eyes widened when Mr. Ursu gave him the last of the meat and patted him on the back.

  “Go enjoy,” he said.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” the stranger spat, swaying.

  “I heard you just fine,” said Mr. Ursu, wiping his long carving knife on his apron. “But you’ve had enough of our food these past weeks. Doesn’t seem right, you stealing meat from the innkeeper’s boy when you haven’t paid his father for your stay or your drinks or your constant questions.”

  “ ‘Stealing meat’?” repeated the stranger, and his companions started to rise, joining him by the spit. The man gestured to the tables full of food. “All of this belongs to the state. That pig you slaughtered belongs to the state. Way I see it, you’re the one stealing.”

  Mamaie’s hand flitted to mine. Tataie, across the street, put down his fiddle. Ioan, who’d grown incredibly pale, took a shaking step forward and offered his plate to the stranger, but the old butcher put a hand on Ioan’s chest.

  “Come to think of it,” one of the other Securitate said, “isn’t this the same fellow with the radio in his shop? The one with the illegal antenna?”

  The third stranger nodded, smudging out a cigarette butt with the toe of his boot. “He
ard rumors he’s been tuning in to the wrong kind of stations.”

  There was murmuring now, people crowding around the Securitate and Mr. Ursu, who was gripping his carving knife tighter and tighter. The skin on his neck went taut. He started sweating, started breathing all funny. His wife came up behind, looking worried.

  “Mamaie,” I said anxiously, “something’s wrong.”

  She shushed me, rising, and pulled me away from the table just as a villager was pushed into it. I cried out. There was shouting. Ioan’s father, Mr. Bălan, nose red as a beet, forced his way through the crowd, yelling at the Securitate and shaking his fist.

  The old butcher clutched at his chest and fell to the ground.

  My grandmother gasped, turning my face to her, covering my eyes with her hand. I could still see through her fingers, though—Tataie and Sanda rushing to help, Mrs. Ursu sobbing and squeezing her husband’s arm, the Securitate and the crowd moving away. My insides clenched in fear.

  Mr. Ursu did not get up.

  When they carried his body into his house, still and breathless and pale, Mamaie stood with me outside in the garden, fussing with the collar on my blouse. People were carrying baskets of half-eaten food back to their homes, eyes darting to the Ursus’ open door as they passed. There would be no games tonight. No more music. No stories.

  Mamaie blotted her eyes. “I should have trusted the signs! A week ago, a painting fell off the wall in the bedroom. And that crack in the table this morning!”

  When Tataie came out to meet us, shaking his head solemnly, a heavy sadness washed over me. My grandmother took a deep, trembling breath, stuck out her chin, and went into the house. Watching the villagers clean up the street, I was struck by how quickly things had changed. One moment we’d all been happy, laughing and dancing and carrying on. Now the whole town was silent and mourning. I saw how, in a breath, everything could be taken away—just like when I found the bug in my dresser, when I stepped on the train and left my family behind.