A Princess of Roumania

by Paul Park

Two men stood away from the fire but facing it. They smelled like many kinds of garbage and meat, and they seemed to be talking to each other. Andromeda stepped close and paused behind them, sniffing the air, curious as to what their language might sound like. “Ooga booga,” she imagined. So she was surprised to hear one talking in an English accent. “It will be snow,” he said, shuffling his feet.

  If dogs could laugh, Andromeda would have laughed. She stood on three feet, one foreleg poised above the snow. But the red-bearded man was aware of her. He turned, and she scampered back into the dark. For a few minutes she crouched behind a bush, chewing the ice out of her feet, watching the shadows until she got bored. Then she was aware again of the wolf’s trail, gleaming behind her like a ribbon of yellow light.

  She followed it to a big tree, two hundred yards or so from the bonfire. It was an oak, with heavy branches that grew straight out from the trunk. It was the only big tree in what was almost a meadow of bushes and scrub. And there were other wolves there, circling the trunk or else standing on two legs against it, scratching at the bark, peering into the branches. Something was up there. Andromeda saw a rope around the bottom of the trunk and stretched up taut into the darkness to a big, huddled shadow on a low branch.

  One of the wolves jumped up halfheartedly, then dropped down. They paid no attention to the yellow dog who lay down in the snow at a safe distance, chewing and licking at her paws. When the shadow moved, she looked up. In any case she had already caught a scent she recognized. It was Captain Raevsky up there, and now he moved and she saw the glimmer of his eyes as he looked toward the fire. Many smells came off of him, borne to her on the cold, dry air above the marking of the wolves. Dirt and sweat and fear. She saw him stretch his leg out on the branch. In the small reflected firelight she saw his face, and it was bleached and broken like the moon.

  * * *

  IN BUCHAREST IT WAS ALMOST morning. In the Athenée Palace Hotel, the Elector of Ratisbon still sat in his chair. He had not stirred in more than a day. His first conjuring was finished, and he lay back as if asleep, his feet up on the ottoman, his face painted with sweat.

  He had thought Miranda Popescu would be easy to find, that she would glimmer like a candle in the black wastes of America. But for hours he had let his mind range far and wide and had seen nothing. Had the baroness lied to him? No, because he could feel something there past Codfish Bay, a presence that was thwarting him, turning away his eyes. It was as if he were peering into a gray fog. When he came to himself, he was angry and frustrated and a little frightened, too. He recognized the power that was keeping him away. But Aegypta Schenck was dead, he knew. Surely she was dead. If he hadn’t known she was dead, he could have sworn …

  Even so, his conjuring had roiled the air, had brought with it a storm that was taking shape over the North Atlantic. There was no power anywhere that could hinder the sinking pressure, the gathering circle of the winds. But in Bucharest the elector was resting, drained and tired, and as often happened when his strength was low, he was pursued by waking nightmares.

  In his own mind he was a man of destiny, of modern science, born to greatness. Many of his political and social programs, introduced first to his own peasants and factory workers, were now spreading across Germany and across Europe. For years he had wasted the resources of Ratisbon on the delegates of the German Republic. He had spared no effort to ingratiate himself. He had no doubt that when the new elections were held, there would be a high place for him in the new government.

  Or rather, yes, he did have doubts, and sometimes his doubts threatened to overwhelm him. Because of his compelling ugliness, he told himself, it was impossible to seize and hold the trust and loyalty of other men. For this reason, for years he had attempted to possess Johannes Kepler’s tourmaline. Kepler, also, had been an ugly man.

  Now he had promised himself that he would find a way to free the German citizens of Roumania, without bloodshed if possible. In this way he hoped to earn the thanks of his grateful nation. Yet he must be careful. Even at the apex of their superstitious decadence, these Roumanians had beaten him before. Aegypta Schenck and Clara Brancoveanu had betrayed him, and General Antonescu had ambushed him in the woods of Kaposvar. His small force had been destroyed before it reached the frontier. He had been six kilometers from the crossing when he was stopped, six kilometers from the station where the munitions train was to have met him. On the far side of the border German partisans had waited, an army of malcontents ready to march on Bucharest with him at their head. But Antonescu had blown the tracks up and the guns couldn’t get through. Six kilometers, for the love of God!

  Of those people who had humiliated him, Schenck was dead, Brancoveanu was in prison. Antonescu commanded the Roumanian armies; did he understand, when he saw the elector across the room at some official reception, how terribly and completely he would be crushed when the time came? Twenty years was a long time in politics, but even so it was amazing to Ratisbon that he could travel freely in Roumania, stay indefinitely at this hotel after what he had done, what he planned to do. Because the empress was so desperate for German money and investment.…

  These were the thoughts that, never far from his conscious mind, the conjurer’s trance had rendered into a kind of dreaming code. He found himself back in the woods of Kaposvar, riding in the dark night toward the station and the border crossing. From time to time he would attempt to consult his watch. He was late for the train to Berlin, and was afraid that it would leave without him. As the horse galloped along a dark forest path, he would let go of the reins to search for his watch in the bizarre, pocketless clothes in which he found himself, and which he now recognized to be the prime minister’s robe of state, a kind of straitjacket of ermine and gold braid. And yes, his worst fears were justified, for as he came out of the woods beside the railroad track, he saw the train coming to meet him, passing him by, leaving him helpless in the dark. And as the train passed he was able to peer into a luxurious, candlelit, private car, with horsehair furniture on which reclined the grotesque, gigantic frame of General Antonescu. Near him Clara Brancoveanu and her sister-in-law held up between them a smiling baby, whose diapers were stuffed with documents and money.

  The train rattled by, and he watched the blue lights of the baggage car until they disappeared. He was left alone. And his horse was gone. Also his absurd attire, and he was standing in ordinary gentleman’s clothes. Now the train tracks were gone as well, and he found himself in the woods again with the white tyger above him, crouching on the branches, or else stalking him behind the bushes. He started to run, slipping often in his patent-leather boots until his suit was torn and wet with mud.

  * * *

  IN HIS ARMCHAIR in the Athenée Palace Hotel, beneath the portrait of Inez de Rougemont, the Elector of Ratisbon grumbled and cried out. In that comfortable, safe room, his thoughts were full of panic and despair. In the north Atlantic, the storm of his anxiety was gathering force, but it had not reached the dark woods of New England. In her shelter in the hunter’s camp, Miranda Popescu spoke to Gregor Splaa.

  Past midnight he had seen her light still burning. He had come in to apologize again, and then to ask permission to go with the hunters in the morning. A family of hairy mammoths had been discovered on the other side of the lake, the great elephants of these woods. One pair of tusks could make you rich.

  He had Rodica’s purse of silver nuggets, but it wasn’t a lot. Prices had quadrupled just in the last couple of years. He was having to pour out money just to these hunters so they could stay, especially since Miss Popescu had seen the spirit by the river.

  So he thought if he could make the kill, then it would be something he could do to help, to redeem himself, and they wouldn’t have to beg their way from Bremerhaven to the Roumanian frontier. He had always been better with animals than men. Never in his life had he killed a man. That whole time in Rodica’s house with the soldiers camped outside, he had been trembling with fear. And in the morning he was not in hi
s right mind, or else he would not have … He could not have … Rodica had been a mother to him, though she was a Gypsy.

  When he’d entered her tent, Miss Popescu was still reading the letters he had given her. She sat cross-legged on her cot, holding her mother’s letter to the candle flame. At the same time she was inspecting the bracelet on her wrist, the tyger bracelet of her mother’s family. She turned her wrist back and forth, examining one by one the golden beads. Her leather pack was open on the floor.

  “Miss, you should not wear that,” he said.

  She looked up, a dark-haired young woman with pale skin and small, slightly protruding ears. His heart went out to her, alone in the wide world.

  Watching her play with the most precious relic in all Roumania, he had spoken without thinking. But now he reminded himself: It was not his place to question her. She put the letter down, slid the beads between her fingers. “I thought it was mine.”

  He bit his lips, which were already chapped and bleeding. “It belongs to the Roumanian people.”

  “I thought it belonged to the whatchamacallit. The white tyger.”

  “So they say.”

  “No one else has worn it?”

  “That’s the trouble, miss. Too many have worn it. You are not the first since Miranda Brancoveanu. In the bad times…”

  “What?”

  He shrugged. “People pretend. The white tyger.”

  “And?”

  He shrugged again. “It ends badly.”

  She was staring up at him. When he had first seen her in the house he’d shared with old Rodica, he had been shocked by how insignificant she looked, how thin and frail—her wrists and shoulders, her long fingers and neck. Now in just four days she seemed stronger and heavier, more womanly as far as he could see under her woolen shirt. And there was something in her face that recalled her father. And perhaps, he thought, the melancholy that now came over him was unconnected to her frailness, no longer so apparent. Perhaps it had a different source, which was in the memory of Blind Rodica, who was dead, who had sacrificed herself for this woman, and whose name he’d just touched over in his mind. And he’d been aware of her all along, he supposed, because the girl was wearing some of her clothes, the red woolen shirt he recognized. It was still too big for her.

  He had been with Rodica when she bought it new, at a trading post on the Hudson River. But after all that and a minute of stupidity, she was dead.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I told your aunt I would protect you, and I did not. I am ashamed. Please,” he continued, but she interrupted him with a gesture of her hand.

  “Tell me about the white tyger,” she said. She had not taken off the bracelet, which she was fingering one bead at a time. She had not asked him to sit down. He was more comfortable standing, though the roof of the round tent was low.

  “Miranda Brancoveanu came out of the mountains,” said Gregor Splaa. “People told stories. First she was alone, and everywhere she went the people … No, there was a king, a Turk named Kara Suliman, and he sent soldiers. He burned the villages where she’d been hiding. Living in caves. She had the strength of the goddess Minerva…”

  As he was speaking, he could hear the change in his voice, the softness and the sadness enter in as he remembered Blind Rodica who’d believed all this. Even the part about the goddess, though she was a Christian. It didn’t matter to her. He found himself staring not at Miranda, but into the candle flame that burned from a small stub of wax on a camp stool next to the cot. Rodica’s hairbrush, too. The tent seemed hot inside.

  He put his hands to his cheeks, touched his beard, which itched. “You don’t believe these stories,” said Miranda.

  “No.”

  “What do you believe?”

  He shrugged. Then after a pause, “A debt to your family who took me in. Your mother is alive after these years. The empress is greedy and cruel, and Antonescu is a tyrant, and a war is coming. If the white tyger can protect us, then that too.”

  But was it possible to think this young woman could change any of that? He’d scarcely heard a shred of news from his own country—just a few rumors in the past twelve years. Just a few old copies of the Roumanian newspapers, which he’d seen on his infrequent trips to Albany. Just a few terse letters from Aegypta Schenck, which Rodica had read to him—this was his country now, he thought, where Blind Rodica’s house had burned. He didn’t know anyone in Bucharest. Could anyone blame him if he wanted to arrive there with some money in his pocket? Rodica had talked of wages, but he wondered if Aegypta Schenck had any money to pay? She was living by herself in Mogosoaia.

  The girl sat cross-legged on her cot, squinting up at him. “What did she look like?”

  “No one knows. Blind Rodica had a vision. Black hair, she said. Dark eyes.”

  The girl fingered the beads one by one, as if she herself were blind. “I could refuse this.”

  But she couldn’t, of course, Splaa thought.

  Suddenly he felt close to tears. “I must tell you again how much I am ashamed. I didn’t pretend I was a soldier. Once Rodica told me I would know what kind of man I was, and if that’s true, then I’m ashamed. I could do nothing. You’ll see I will not be that man again. I will bring you to Ion Dreyfoos and your aunt Aegypta. I will protect you from those men who would sell you to Ceausescu’s widow or the empress. In Roumania you will find friends…”

  All this had burst out of him, and he felt he could go on for a long time in this way. But Miranda Popescu put her hand up, and he paused. How sad she looked!

  “You have other friends to help you,” he continued. “You don’t have to rely on me. These hunters—”

  But she interrupted him. “They won’t say a word to me. The white tyger! They saw me screaming in the snow because of a bad dream.”

  Splaa said nothing. Then: “They don’t judge you. You were right to be afraid. They think you saw the wendigo.”

  He had explained this before. The wendigo was an evil spirit in these north woods, a superstition. “It brings death, these people say. You see it in a shape you recognize—a person known to you. It was the wendigo that led you from the river.”

  But if that was so, he thought, would Blind Rodica come for him? What would he tell her, if he saw her by the water, or in the snowy woods?

  “No,” Miranda said. Then in a moment she went on. “Tell me, who is the Chevalier de Graz? Who is Sasha Prochenko?”

  This was easier. “I never knew them. They were friends of your father’s. Pieter de Graz was a great champion. He beat all the Turkish wrestlers at Adrianople during the war. Afterward, the sultan signed the armistice.”

  “And?”

  “Why do you ask? When the generals put the empress on the throne, your father spoke against them. He gave a speech in the old Senate, and they all listened—it was in the newspapers. Your father was a hero in Roumania, a hero in the army. So they paid his friend Ceausescu to denounce him. But there were riots in the Field of Mars and Brasov and Timisoara. And so they murdered him while he lay in prison. So—a great man and a patriot—this was long ago, twenty years. Those men were your father’s aides-de-camp. Prochencko was a cavalry officer, very blond, I remember. Very popular with ladies. De Graz was a great champion, as I said.”

  “And…?”

  “Miss?”

  “Was he—I don’t know—a nice guy?”

  “He was a famous soldier, decorated in the wars. Your aunt sent them with you to protect you. Don’t you remember? What became of them? They lived in Constanta when you were just a child.”

  * * *

  IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC and over Greenland, a storm was gathering. But it was still far away at dawn. That night Miranda dreamt that she’d awaked to a gray light in her little tent. And when she raised herself onto her elbow, she saw her aunt Aegypta sitting on the floor, dressed not as Miranda first remembered her, in a fur coat and leather boots at the railway station in Roumania, nor as subsequently she had seen her in her dreams. This
time she appeared to be naked under a gray sheet, which she had arranged around her body to conceal everything but her head and hands. The material seemed to glow in a subtle way, the color of gray clouds with the sun behind them. Rather than the light of morning, that was the radiance which had filled the room.

  She had been sitting with her legs crossed, her back bent, her chin sunk on her breast. But as Miranda came awake she raised her head. And without any kind of greeting or acknowledgment, she started to speak. “The coins I have given you are for a purpose, and you must bring them when you come to meet me in the land of the dead. I did not think that it would come to this, but now I’m glad I was prepared, for I could do little where I was. Now I have taken a risk, but I have confidence in you. The gold is for the boatman and the sphinxes. The silver coin is for the king of the dead. Death can be defeated. Take Sasha Prochenko and follow the cave to the end under the yawning wall. Free me and I will bring you safe at last. Without me your hope is small.”

  There was more, but this was the part Miranda remembered when she woke up. She lay on her back and wondered whether it made sense to think of her aunt as a living, breathing person, who was living right now in Mogosoaia or Constanta. What would she say to her, when she saw her face to face?

  Her aunt had given her a few specific directions—find Ion Dreyfoos. Give the gold coins to the sphinx. And some general ones—save Roumania from slavery. Between them was a big gray area—what was she supposed to do? Wear a crown and yell at people? It was impossible to visualize, and so to distract herself she thought about Peter when he’d visited her in the tent. All the previous day she had felt awkward about it when she saw him.

  Boys had always been interested in Andromeda. That summer when school started, she had come back and told Miranda about meeting some random Italian on a beach. And if they hadn’t had intercourse exactly, they had gotten close—Andromeda had given her the blow-by-blow, as she described it. To Miranda it had seemed like fascinating messages from outer space. She had always been shy about that kind of thing, because of her period. But now she had to wash out her underpants twice a day and walk around with what felt like a roll of toilet paper between her legs—how long was that supposed to last? No wonder she was thinking about sex. With Peter in the tent, there’d been a moment, as Andromeda called them.