A Princess of Roumania

by Paul Park

  Miranda lifted her coffee cup and brought it to her lips. But though the cup appeared full, she smelled and tasted nothing.

  Aegypta Schenck put her hand out, and put it over Miranda’s hand, where it lay on the surface of the table. “Girl, you must not think I would have given you up. You lived with me until the empress destroyed me. Do you remember those days by the sea, or in the woods at Mogosoaia? No—I took them away from you. I thought I’d spare you pain and confusion—now it occurs to me that I’ve miscalculated. God forgive me, I have made mistakes. I’ve been working toward these things since before you were born. And I keep telling myself that this white tyger is more than what you want and what I want.”

  She smiled again—a false, constrained expression, it occurred to Miranda now. “I know it is hard, and you are still a child. But I could not have given you more time inside the book. Our enemies are strong and getting stronger.”

  “I am not a child.”

  “Indeed not. When was it—the last time we saw each other?”

  “I don’t know. Stanley told me I was three.”

  “Stanley? Yes. Of course. So do you think that you were three years old when I stood on the platform of the Mogosoaia station and put the book into your hands? I tell you, you were not yet nine.”

  Miranda shook her head. “Twelve years ago,” her aunt went on, relentless. “Did I not say that something would be pulled away? Can you forgive me—can you believe that this was for the best?”

  Miranda took her hand from her aunt’s big hand. She couldn’t think about this now. She had to think about Peter. “I’m not going to let him die,” she said. “Don’t make me choose between the two of you. You brought us out, and you can send us home. I’ll take him to the hospital in Pittsfield. Or maybe he won’t even be sick. Give me some days at home, and I can say good-bye, and then I promise we’ll come back, or I’ll come back at least…”

  Her aunt stared at her, and Miranda felt a chill.

  The old woman clucked her tongue sympathetically—“My poor child. It is true you do not understand. That book is gone. That is all finished, done.”

  At that moment, Miranda thought she might raise up her hand, put her hand over her aunt’s mouth to keep the words from coming out. Except she’d known it all along—“We can’t go home?”

  “To what, child? This is your home. There is nothing there.”

  Miranda felt her eyes well up, and then some tears were on her face. “Well, then you can cure him here—can’t you? Can’t you do that, if I do everything you say?”

  Aegypta Schenck looked at her. “Ah well,” she said at last. “Perhaps it’s for the best as it is. You must be brave and think of that. I seem to have made terrible mistakes with him and with Prochenko too from what you say. First a female, and now his own spirit creature—these were proud men. And the calculations were so difficult.”

  After a moment she went on. “They swore an oath to your father. I had not thought they’d be so loyal, especially Prochenko, but they grew to love you when you were a child. They were not my first choices, I should tell you. But when the empress turned against me, there was no one else. De Graz had a reputation, and they didn’t like each other.”

  “What are you saying?” Miranda thought. And then aloud: “You’re saying it is best to let him die?”

  The old woman shrugged. “The damage is already done.”

  She said nothing else about it, and when Miranda spoke again, she asked a question that was not quite to the point. “Tell me, if you love me. If all this was for the best, then why was it so cruel?”

  Her aunt’s dark eyes had a yellowish cast. “Child, I know it’s difficult. All that is gone. You must not dwell on it.”

  “Please,” Miranda said. “I want to know. This year in school we read about the First World War.”

  Aegypta Schenck wiped her red nose on the back of her hand, a coarse, unladylike gesture. “If you want to know, then you have already guessed.”

  Then in a moment, “It was because of you.”

  Miranda shook her head. Her aunt went on. “Let me see. The First World War—we made historical projections. A European war was necessary, then and later, if there was to be no war in Massachusetts. That was all. These events made you secure. In the end that was all I cared about.”

  Then she continued after a moment. “Please put it from your mind. When I first started work, I would have made that place into a paradise. It was in my mind to write the book of paradise, and we would all be characters and not just you. When the empress turned against me, it was still half-finished. After that, all I cared about was your protection. And don’t you think,” she continued, hurrying now, stumbling over her words, “if that place had been like heaven, then you’d have been happy to come here?”

  It was cold in the restaurant. All this time her aunt had not taken off her coat. Now she slid it from her shoulders to reveal an evening dress, a diamond choker around her wrinkled neck. She took the lamb’s wool hat from her head and laid it on the table. Her hair was carefully pinned back with tortoiseshell combs.

  Happy to come here, Miranda thought. Then she spoke. “His father was Dan Gross. He lived on White Oak Road.”

  Again there was that flicker of impatience. “Don’t dwell on it. It is finished now.”

  But it wasn’t finished. “That place,” Miranda said, “is what I am. Rachel and Stanley. Christmas Hill. Andromeda and Peter. That is what I am.”

  “Of course. And you will be something else—the white tyger. All of us, we leave our childhood behind. I also, I am becoming something else. Do you think that I’m not terrified?”

  Then in a little while: “Come, child,” she said.

  They had been sitting near the window. The sun had risen over a shoulder of the mountain, and the morning light had reached into the street. In the plate glass of the window was a fiery glow.

  “You’re not listening to me,” Miranda said. “You told me I had two friends, and I must have faith. One of them, you said, would show me a sign. He would show me something from my own country. Or was that just trying to trick me? Mislead me, like you said?”

  The old woman rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. “I do what I must do. These friends—you have no duty to them now,” she murmured. “You are the white tyger.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments, and then her aunt went on. “You lived with me for seven years in Mamaia castle on the sea. Your mother was not there. But I made a promise to her in Ratisbon that I would keep you safe. Oh, and it made me happy to keep that promise, when I saw you playing with Juliana on the tiles and playing in the water. I would have kept you near my heart, except the empress and Antonescu defeated me when you were just a child. Do not blame me for that. I cannot bear it. All the choices that I made, they were for you.”

  Miranda sat watching the sun come in the window. “You’re not listening to me,” she said again.

  The old woman looked down into her empty cup. She pushed her chair suddenly backwards, and clapped her hands. “Then you will explain it to me when we are safe. You are the white tyger. You must do what you think best. Now we must meet the timekeeper.”

  She stood up, and Miranda stood up, and she led Miranda deeper into the restaurant until she found the side door. Opened, it revealed a dark alley between the wooden buildings, and the old woman led Miranda down it, away from the front street and into a neighborhood of dilapidated sheds and greenhouses, long galleries hung with small cracked panes that were just now catching the sun’s light.

  Above them Miranda could see the white mountain, and for a moment she could glimpse a picture in her mind. It was both clear and evanescent, as if it had been momentarily inserted, then removed. She saw a building high up on the mountainside, a pavilion at the top of the glacier where the light was touching now. She imagined several old men and women, thin and stiff and pale, peering down from the parapet. Names for them came to her—Venus, Apollo, Artemis.

  D
own below, she and her aunt walked through a courtyard of neglected grass and trampled earth. They walked beside a clapboard wall, its white paint peeling. Now Miranda could see in front of them an old man beckoning them on. He was dressed in spattered overalls, and when he reached the door of one of the glass galleries, he pushed it open.

  His face was thin and narrow, mottled black and pink. His hair was white and thick. He held the door for them, and they stepped into an enormous and untidy space, a greenhouse that went on forever, and whose glass roof was shining now in the sun’s rays. And the greenhouse was packed with cages in long, double rows: wood-and-wire cages in stacks four and five feet high.

  “Here you go,” said the old man. “You have your money? Come with me.” He led them over the duckboards, then down a cramped and narrow passage between two rows of piled cages, in each of which, as Miranda could make out, there was a small and silent animal.

  “Here you go. Here you go,” muttered the old man. He led them past gerbils and rats, foxes, turtles, snakes, rabbits, birds, insects—all kinds, and some Miranda didn’t recognize. In most of the cages there was a bed of cedar chips or straw. The animals watched her calmly through the netting or the bars. There was no movement or display.

  “Here you go, here you go,” and they were peering into a cage at eye level, where a small bird sat on a wire swing. It was a little bird, whose iridescent feathers were tinged with dirty sunshine through the windows. A battered brass plaque was affixed to the bars of the cage. On it was engraved A. S. V. SCHENCK.

  Miranda turned, and in the cramped space behind her she could see her aunt stare hungrily at the bird. The old man paid no attention to her. “You have your money?” he said. “Take what you like. She’s a beauty.”

  Miranda hesitated. “And … is everybody here?”

  “Most of them. Most of them. Here we have … ah, many, many. You are rich?”

  “No.” She pulled the silver coin from her pants’ pocket and held it up.

  “I thought so,” muttered the old man. “I thought so. Yes, just the one. Any one you like, maybe.”

  “What about Pieter de Graz?”

  “Yes, yes, well, he should be just coming in.” And the old man took off down the duckboards. He pulled some spectacles from the breast pocket of his overalls and slipped them on. Then he was fingering the brass plaques on the cages, until he found one at the bottom of a pile. “Here.”

  Miranda got down on her knees, then on her hands and knees. She could see the plaque, but it was dark inside the cage. “Here you go,” said the old man, slipping a brass flashlight from another pocket and then twisting the top. A small light came out of it.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  But then she did—a red beetle no larger than a dime, standing in a corner of the cage. “Aren’t there any larger animals?”

  The old man squatted down. “A few. A few. They’re in a different place. This size here, it’s more convenient. There’re an awful lot of bugs.”

  She peered in at the beetle. “How would I carry it?”

  “Well, I suppose we can give you a little box. I don’t see why not.”

  Aegypta Schenck had followed them down the passage. She stood behind them, shivering in her fur coat. “Please,” she said.

  The old man didn’t hear her. He didn’t turn around. “Maybe I can’t do this,” Miranda said. “You’ve been planning my whole life.”

  “Child, this is not the time for infantile rebelliousness.” The princess spoke sharply, but her face was empty and fearful. “It was not my choice to give you up. Do not punish me, Miranda Popescu! Don’t you see this is a terrible place?”

  Miranda felt her eyes fill with tears. “Do you have a little container?” she asked.

  “Well, yes. Yes, I think so. Let me see.” And the old man was going through his pockets until he found a small wooden box, painted with a Chinese street scene. It was of a kind Miranda remembered from her childhood. Her fingers easily found the secret panel, the lever that held the spring.

  “If not me, then what about your father?” said Aegypta Schenck. “He is here. Prince Frederick is here—”

  “Well, no,” muttered the old man, as if it had been Miranda who had spoken. “Butterfly, isn’t he? Gone a long time. You’d need more money…”

  “I am sorry,” said Miranda. “Don’t you see—I can’t. You’ve made it too difficult, and he’s my friend.” She touched the lever and the drawer to the box jumped out.

  She thought, “This is not real.” None of this was real. In the real world she was lying with Peter in a cave in the woods, and this was all a dream.

  But in the dream the old man reached to pat her hand. “It’s a good choice, young lady. A good choice. Tell you the truth, that old bird’s about done. This one’s got some tread on it. Years of wear.”

  He slid open the wire door and reached in his hand. The beetle hopped onto his thumbnail.

  “That’s the way of it. You see he’s happy to get out. Even a few minutes, that’s too long.”

  He held out his hand, and for the first time she noticed how pretty the bug was, its shining red carapace.

  She studied it for a moment, the subtle geometric pattern on its wings. Then she forced herself to look up at Aegypta Schenck. She braced herself for an expression of anger, but didn’t see it. Her aunt’s face, which had been sullen, now was calm.

  “So it is nothing, the future of Roumania,” she said, rubbing her nose on the back of her hand. “Is it nothing against Pieter de Graz’s life? But if you ask me, he will not thank you for saving him from his duty as a soldier. Nor will he love you for forgetting your own future. Perhaps you are a child after all.”

  Miranda couldn’t look at her. She held out the silver coin and the man took it. Then with great care he laid the beetle into the box, along with some strands of grass. “Should be all right for an hour or so,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  But she made no motion to get up. Now the decision was made, she felt she could not bear to see the old woman’s face again, or listen to her voice: “Believe me,” said Aegypta Schenck. “I have suffered for this. Suffered and prayed. Please, Miranda, do not steal it from me.”

  “You’d better get back,” said the timekeeper.

  “Okay.”

  Miranda bit her lips, forced herself to look up. “How can you say good-bye to someone you’ve never met?” she thought. “Please don’t hate me,” she murmured, prepared for an expression of anger and contempt on her aunt’s face. Instead, and maybe it was just a trick of the dirty light, but she was surprised to see a softer look, less pinched, less worried.

  “God bless Roumania,” muttered Aegypta Schenck.

  What did she mean? “Please,” Miranda whispered. “We all do what we can.”

  “I know! By Jesus Christ I know. You will forgive me?”

  What did she mean? “There is nothing to forgive.”

  “Oh, but there is. God bless Roumania and you.”

  Then she went on. “I told you the white tyger had a choice. Now the hard way is best, and perhaps I was too proud when I thought that I could tell you this, and this. So now I am made humble by the white tyger. Oh, but don’t forget. I have left a message for you at the shrine of Venus.”

  Miranda shook her head, and her aunt continued. “So—not even that. Forgive me. A hard lesson—an old habit, and you cannot now imagine how I planned. That was my book, too. Now it’s gone. Now I must trust you, which is hard. And I must only hope that you could not have helped us if you’d followed every plan of mine. So—what will come now?”

  Miranda shook her head. Thank God this was all a dream.

  “Oh, my dear,” said the old woman. “Then is this good-bye? I hoped we’d have years in front of us, and then your mother, too. Oh, but it was worth the risk! But for God’s sake,” she continued, “do not leave me in that cage. For God’s sake you can get me out.”

  Miranda looked down. She slid the box into her l
eather backpack, empty now of all her Roumanian things. Only the last gold coin in her pocket. Only the locket on her neck. Only the tiger’s-head bracelet that still glittered on her wrist. The sun was shining, and the air in the greenhouse was full of shining motes of dust. When she glanced up again, her aunt had disappeared among the narrow rows.

  On the way out of the greenhouse, Miranda and the old man passed the cage where the little bird swung back and forth. A brandywine bird. Miranda found she knew the name.

  She paused. “Can you open her up?” she said. “Can I see her?”

  The old man frowned and mumbled. “She was my aunt,” Miranda said.

  The old man’s eyebrows were heavy and dark, although his hair was white. He peered at her for a moment, and then undid the latch on the bird’s cage. He reached in his big, battered hand. “Come,” he said, “come on. Just for a minute, now.” But as soon as the cage was open, the bird flew at him and pecked him on the knuckle. Then she was out the wire door. Cursing, he grabbed at her with his bleeding hand, and managed to pull out one of the iridescent tail feathers. But then the bird was gone, beating at the glass roof until she found a broken pane.

  The old man danced a little angry dance. He raised his stiff hands to the ceiling, mumbling a string of curses and vulgarity. No longer interested in Miranda, he hurried to the door. When she followed him, she found he had grabbed up a battered, paint-stained ladder from a patch of weeds, and was raising it against the greenhouse wall. Above him on the ridge pole, the little bird sat in the sun, and above her rose the white mountain.

  When Miranda came to the harbor again, the boat was waiting. And when she came to the far shore, it was easy to retrace her steps. And when she woke up in the morning, bundled against the cold in the entrance to the cave, she found she was holding Peter’s hand.

  And later, in the chapel of St. Simon the Fisherman, in the wooden church off of Elysian Fields, the priest and the sacristan gave up hope. They had been sitting with the body of Aegypta Schenck von Schenck until the body, quite suddenly, began to decompose. Toward noon they rubbed her gray old flesh with perfume, and put her on a bed of flowers, and nailed her coffin shut.