A Princess of Roumania

by Paul Park

  “You catch me just before I’m going out—one of these tiresome dinners of the German Friendship League. But come in just for a moment; I am glad to see you! You have something for me?”

  He was not about, Greuben reflected, to offer him a drink, though an array of bottles and soda water siphons lined the sideboard. He gave the impression both of being in a hurry and having nothing but time, doubtless an aristocratic trait. He was, after all, the hereditary Elector of Ratisbon, with an hereditary seat in the Reichstag. And though he held no official post here, he had the highest possible connections at the embassy, which did not keep him from making separate arrangements with a junior attaché.

  Now he closed the door behind them. Though it was hard to interpret the expressions of his small, ruined face, again Greuben detected some impatience. So he said at once, “I have come from my monthly interview with the Baroness Ceausescu.”

  The elector smiled, revealing his perfect teeth. “That disgusting whore,” he said. “What did she want?”

  Then after a moment, after reconsidering, he went on—“Not that she wasn’t a brilliant artist once! Fifteen years ago—I can’t remember—I saw her in Milan, in a production of Ariadne auf Naxos—my God! She was a magician!” Here he raised his bunched fingers to his crimson lips. “What did she want, besides our money?”

  “She told me Miranda Popescu had been found.”

  The elector’s smile disappeared. He stepped across the carpet, and Greuben found himself looking down at those limpid eloquent eyes. “Where?”

  Greuben could smell the elector’s sweet breath, with a hint nevertheless of some astringent fragrance—was it caraway? “She didn’t tell me. She said it was a rumor.”

  “Yes, of course. But she is able to find out?”

  “She will make enquiries.”

  “Ah!”

  As if he had only just noticed he was standing too close, the elector stepped backward to the middle of the floor. “The white tyger of Roumania!” he continued. “You understand why this is important?”

  Greuben wondered if he did. Walking up from Cleopatra’s Temple, he had rehearsed this conversation, because he wanted to avoid a certain subject. He wanted to dispense his information without reference to the elector’s great defeat, his failure, without which he doubtless would have been prime minister of the German Republic, or at least foreign secretary, despite his ugliness.

  At the time of the change of government, when Valeria Dragonesti had been pushed onto the Roumanian throne, the Elector of Ratisbon had planned an invasion, a liberation of the German-speaking sections of the country. The excuse had been the murder of Prince Frederick Schenck von Schenck, a distant cousin on his father’s side. The widow had taken refuge in Germany—he still held her in his schloss in Ratisbon. Naturally, Greuben had thought, he’d be interested in the daughter. A regiment of German cavalry had been cut to pieces at the border, at Kaposvar.

  Now Greuben didn’t mention to any of that. “A symbol of Roumanian nationalism,” he murmured.

  The elector seemed relieved. “Yes,” he said. “Hans—yes, that’s very good.”

  He took another step backward, and brought his small hands together. “A symbol of national aspiration,” he went on. “Roumania is divided now. The empress is unpopular, and General Antonescu. We must not allow them to be supplanted by a more … charismatic or … inspiring figure in the people’s mind. Not at this … delicate moment, when our interests…”

  His words trailed away. Halfway through this speech, he’d turned his back on Greuben. He had wandered over to the window overlooking the city and stood mumbling there, his hands clasped behind his back. Now his voice came sharply, clearly, though he didn’t turn around. “You will arrange for me to meet that creature, that gaudy prostitute, on the behalf of the German government. Doubtless she will have been invited to the empress’s reception. I myself cannot attend.…”

  There was no dear fellow now, no dear chap. After a few moments, Greuben felt himself dismissed like a servant. He stood for a moment in silence before letting himself out.

  * * *

  WHEN THE DOOR WAS CLOSED, the Elector of Ratisbon put his hand to his forehead, feeling the first indication of a migraine headache—a small sound he could almost hear, like the cracking of an egg. He stood looking south across the piata toward the north façade of the empress’s palace, the colonnade and the massed bulk of the Winter Keep. Perhaps he himself should attend her reception the next evening—no. He could already tell his headache would be incapacitating. And he was not convinced he could control his feelings—the white tyger! He had had her once!

  Twenty years before, he had let the mother into his house, let her take refuge there along with her thrice-cursed sister-in-law, Aegypta Schenck von Schenck, who had disgraced and befouled a proud German name. Two women and a baby had thwarted him, and while he kept the mother on behalf of his government, he had let the aunt and the daughter slide through his fingers with the plans to his great project, two years in preparation, till it was betrayed by a superstitious and benighted woman who even now did not cease to thwart him and constrain him, and who even now could not see, half-German as she was, that the future of Roumania lay with his country, with modern science and republican government, with land reform and technological innovation, and not with magic and barbaric superstition, and empty genuflection on the altars of empty and nonexistent gods. He had failed once. This time he would not fail.

  But where was the girl now? Where had Aegypta Schenck hidden her all these years? In what corner of Roumania was she hiding, or where was she abroad?

  5

  The Attack at the Ford

  THE DOG LIFTED her yellow muzzle, sniffed at the cold morning air. She barked once, howled once, then pricked up her ears. Peter Gross held out his new dark hand. “You see?” he cried, pointing to the hook-shaped scar on her right foreleg. “You see?” he cried, catching at the silver rings along her ear until she growled and showed her teeth. Then he pulled back, raised his left hand, afraid of getting bitten, Miranda thought. “It’s her,” he said. “You know it is. Look at her eyes.”

  First things first. Stanley had once told her that the way you get through things is one at a time, or you’ll be overwhelmed. Only morons see the big picture, he’d once said—something like that. So now Miranda rubbed her nose, then rummaged through her backpack, which she’d found on the frozen grass next to the extinguished fire. Pushing her fingers through the leather laces, she felt the shawl, the beaded purse, the empty, crumpled manila envelope where the book had been. But the bracelet was there and the rest of her Romanian things—Markasev had not robbed her, at least. But how stupid she was feeling, how dizzy and light-headed—still, first things first. There was a flashlight that might come in handy.

  She slung the backpack over her shoulder, then went down on one knee. She reached out her fingers, and the dog reached up to smell them and lick them as Miranda scratched her ears.

  “Hey,” Miranda said.

  The dog lay curled in a nest of clothes, a gray Donna Karan T-shirt and black sports bra, red Victoria’s Secret panties and black bicycle pants—that combination was so Andromeda, Miranda thought. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  Almost she expected the dog to speak. Instead it whimpered, licked her wrist, then yawned. And she didn’t seem injured, didn’t start or yip when Miranda ran her hands down her legs, stripping the red underwear from around one of her back paws—Miranda would tease Andromeda about that, when she saw her again. And she’d pack the clothes. Andromeda would thank her later. The T-shirt was frozen stiff.

  Miranda sucked in the cold air. Almost it made her weak, light-headed, sick. She dug her hands into the rich fur of the dog’s chest and neck, seeing each hair that curled along her muzzle, seeing her cold, silver eyes, the surface of them dusted with some other colors, red and black and blue.

  Then she stood up. She was shivering, and her teeth were chattering. “We should go back,” sh
e said.

  “Yes,” cried Peter, “I have to go home. My father…” His eyes were bleary, his nose red. “Can we call my father from your house? I have to go to the hospital.”

  What was he talking about? He was acting like a kid. But Miranda looked out over the familiar mountains. The meadow, the open crest of the hill was smaller here, just a bare place among the trees.

  “Where do you think they are?” she asked, meaning Markasev and that girl Brenda, but Peter didn’t answer. “Can you walk?” she said, and the dog got up, turned in a circle, limped a few steps and then bounded away, which was encouraging.

  More than once Stanley had described the scientific process in his laboratory—small victories. Narrow focus. Step by step. “We’ll go down,” Miranda said. It was too cold in her sweatshirt and no gloves.

  And maybe Stanley was right, because right then, as if liberated by the decision to move, the words of the old woman or her aunt or whoever it was came back to her. The ice house. Gregor Splaa. “Come on,” Miranda said, turning downhill.

  The dog went on down the slope, the frozen hillocks dusted with snow. Now she looked back with one paw raised.

  “Where are we?” Peter cried.

  He didn’t understand, Miranda thought. He couldn’t smell the difference in the air as they came down under trees that were ancient and immense, oak and white pine and shag hickory. And as they came off the hill he stared around, as if expecting the walls of the art museum to come together suddenly among the trunks of the trees, or else their broken ruins. “We’ll go to your house,” he said. “Don’t worry, my father can come pick me up. I’ll call him at work. It doesn’t matter. He’ll find his way. He’ll know.”

  “We’re not going home,” she said.

  The flatness, the sureness in her own voice surprised her. And it wasn’t true—she’d read a lot of books like this, where the girl wakes up and she’s a beautiful princess in another world. But she always goes back again. She always goes home. “We’re not going home,” she heard herself repeat.

  Then in a little while she went on. “This is a different place, but it’s connected. So we’re not strangers here. A lot of what we know can help us.”

  They stood beneath a hawthorn tree near where the barbed wire had been. A hawthorn—Stanley had been a nut for the names of trees. The dog came prancing back, and Miranda squatted down again. She dug her hands into the fur of the dog’s throat and let her lick her wrists. Already the flesh around Andromeda’s earrings was swollen and inflamed, so Miranda picked at the tiny clasps until the rings fell open. She slipped the tiny silver loops into the pocket of her black jeans, rubbed the sore place with her stiffened fingers, then bent down to bury her face in the dog’s fur. Something will be stripped away.

  Now almost she felt the urge that Peter felt, to search among these trees for the exact place where her house had stood. But what was the use of that? That’s not what her aunt had said. “Come on. We’ve got to find some shelter and some winter clothes. We’ve got to find the ice house. You know this place. See where the land slopes down. That will be Christmas Brook.”

  She rose to her feet, and the dog jumped away. It was true—Peter knew this country like the back of his own hand. Looking at him now, she could see the surge of recognition as he looked around. “We’re not wandering around until we freeze,” she said. “We’ve got to have a plan. My aunt told me to find Gregor Splaa.”

  Peter was examining his forearm, scratching at it. “That’s good,” he said, his voice brittle and shrill. “Only he’s been dead for fifty years.”

  “I don’t think so,” Miranda said. But she was reassured by his attempt at sarcasm, reassured by the dog’s evident joy as she dug her muzzle into the new snow—small victories. “She said the house on the dam, but that must be the ice house. She said we’d find instructions there, and people who would help us. Prochenko and de Graz, and someone blind.”

  It was good to listen to instructions, good for both of them, and Miranda could hear the calming sound of purpose in her own voice. But at the same time, a bunch of doubts came back—Peter was right. Gregor Splaa was the name on the stone bench. These other names, this sense of recognition—Stanley had told her how the mind plays tricks. Often before she’d had dreams that seemed real.

  She said, as if to reassure herself, “And if Gregor Splaa is alive here, and the ice house is here, then maybe there are other people, too. People that we know.”

  Now she saw in her mind’s eye Rachel and Stanley in their old house on the green. She saw them going down to the kitchen, making coffee, sitting at the oak table with the lion’s head feet, which she had decorated with blue nail polish when she was six. She had seen them making English muffins and reading The Berkshire Eagle, then calling up to her.

  She sucked at the cold air to clear her head. “I know it’s not much,” she said. “But it’s a start. If we can’t find them, we’ll figure out something else.”

  Now Peter was staring at her with a puzzled expression, as if he were noticing her for the first time that morning. “What happened to you?” he said. “What’s wrong with your face?”

  She put her hand up to her nose as if to brush away some smut. A beautiful princess, she’d thought. No—maybe an ugly princess. What was wrong with her face? What was he talking about? Why did he say that?

  “Look at yourself,” he said. “You’re different.”

  Which maybe didn’t sound so bad. She didn’t feel any different. “Of course I am,” she said.

  Something would be stripped away. Maybe Gregor Splaa would have a mirror. First things first.

  In the meantime she was right about Christmas Brook. After a few more steps downhill, she could hear the sound of water. Before, the stream had been a tiny, seasonal affair, a dry rut most of the year or else a muddy bog. Only at the ice house had it been visible year-round. But now she clambered down a small ravine and there it was, rimmed at the edges by shelves of shattered ice, coiling through the trees at the bottom of the hill.

  The dog walked downstream a few paces and then looked back, her forepaw raised above the snow. Which was typical—Andromeda had always had a crummy sense of direction. “Where are you going?” Miranda asked. “It’s this way.” She wondered if the dog could understand her, wondering also what name she should give her now—not Andromeda, surely. “Andromeda,” she called out, and the dog cocked her head, then dropped her muzzle to the snow. “Come on,” Miranda said. “Let’s find the ice house. Then we’ll figure things out.” And then to Peter: “Can you take us there?” although she knew the way. They’d just have to follow the brook upstream.

  But she’d gotten Peter moving. Now there was a change in him, too, a childlike curiosity. He stood above her on the bank, an expression in his face she recognized. Always he had had a sense of purpose in these woods. He stood cradling his big right arm in his left arm. But maybe now he’d be interested in finding his way, interested in this larger landscape, which nevertheless was so familiar to them both. He took a few steps along the stream bed, and reached up tentatively with his right hand to push away a drooping branch. Where had she seen that mark before, that red birthmark below his thumb?

  Snow had sifted over the pine needles and dead leaves. The dog ran on ahead. Last in line, Miranda stole a glance behind them as they turned upstream. Then she hurried after Peter’s retreating back; she wanted to get in front of him. But it was easy to be distracted and go slow. She felt she couldn’t look at anything, because if she did, then she would stare at it forever. It was as if the ground had come to life. Even that simple landscape of black tree trunks, snow, and black dead leaves filled her with an excitement that was hard to bear. The stream sang in its bed. Above their heads the cold light seemed to glow. “Sometimes you read a story,” Miranda found herself saying. “You wake up from a nightmare and you’re glad. Sometimes you wake up—it doesn’t matter. You can’t…,” she said.

  The dog came prancing back. She jumped up, lick
ed at Miranda’s hands. “I’m sorry,” Miranda said, lamely and absurdly. But the dog pulled her head away. Andromeda had never remembered or cared about her dreams. She was awake, scratching at the soft snow.

  Peter stood above them on a rock, and he’d gone back to cradling his new hand and arm as if the bones were broken and the flesh were dead. “I’m sorry,” Miranda repeated, too softly for him to hear. Because there was no way she was not responsible for what had happened, one way or another.

  Peter wanted to tell her something. “Look,” he said. “Look there.”

  Miranda saw a trail of footprints following the stream. “What do you think?” she asked.

  Again Miranda wondered about Kevin Markasev and the girl—where were they now? Where were they in these woods? She’d seen no footprints in the meadow up above, where the snow was blown away in patches.

  But these weren’t their prints. These were the large nailed boots of a man walking alone, not long before, she thought. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s hurry.”

  The dog went on ahead. Sometimes Miranda recognized a rock or a certain tree. Sometimes Peter pointed something out. “Look,” he said. “That’s the seventeenth green. Where the stream crosses by the water hazard. That’s all gone. But look there.”

  He was pointing to a bare place in the trees, and a ring of strange, symmetrical hillocks where the traps had been. “My dad’s a member,” he said. “Every Tuesday. You didn’t know that.”

  If trees had grown up over—what was it called—the fairway…? Maybe they had gone into the future. In which case … She’d read books about that, too.

  But how could there be no trace of anything, just these strange similarities? She pressed on, hurrying now, eager to see some kind of building or structure. “What makes you think the ice house will still be there?” Peter asked. “That’s where the clubhouse was, by those big pines.”