Spell of Blindness

by Lori Tiron-Pandit

  .

  I don’t know what I would do without Ra. He comes over almost every day, takes me out, and listens to me. He lets me cry in his arms. He leaves with shirts soaking wet with my tears, and I am left a little lighter.

  “I would have done anything to prevent this, to protect you from this. But what can I do?”

  He’s my protector. I love the smell of his shirt and the gentle lift of his chest as he breathes slowly and pats my head close to him. I love the feel of his soft sky-gray tee shirt, and his rough and rumpled steel-gray jacket against my face.

  Sometimes I feel selfish and cruel in the way I treat him, but I know he cannot be interested in me romantically. I am probably just a silly girl in his eyes. I mean, I’ve met his friends. He hangs out with all the famous, glamorous, and sophisticated actresses, and his group of intimate friends includes the cruel and brilliant journalist who slices up politicians in his weekly column read by the whole country, a novelist who is considered the greatest Romanian literary talent post-revolution, and one of the most adored actors of his generation, who is also an exceptional musician. He is the only one in his group with a low profile, although he has a doctorate in art history and has received several national awards for his work in Christian art restoration. Why he chooses to waste his time with me, I will never understand.

  He has hinted once at a terrible tragedy that left him marred and unable to function socially. “I am in many ways a dead man who will never smile, sing, dance or love again. You give me hope, though,” he said. “You should see yourself with my eyes.”

  He looks so old when he talks like that. The skin on his face so thin, soft, and worn.

  We went out for ice cream in Cismigiu Park today. I warned him that I would not be good company, so he brought a book. We found a place to sit. He lifted his legs and crossed them on the bench. I sat to the side, my legs stretched along the bench, my back leaning against his left shoulder. I ate my chocolate-caramel bar and watched people while he read. I felt grateful.

  .

  Laura doesn’t understand. She thinks that I am doing this to myself, that I am the one inflicting this pain, creating this dream, and refusing to let it go.

  “Don’t you see he doesn’t deserve your love? A weasel. Just forget him.”

  I thought he was the one who had come to me through heaven and hell, from the darkness, through all the times of my soul, to bring me love. I thought the choice had been made at a different place, by someone else.

  “Love doesn’t have to be so intense, Ana.” Laura tried to convince me that my world was upside down. “A man and a woman can have a very fulfilling relationship, without all the torment, the jealousy, the tears. There are other, more important things to occupy your time and your mind. You have other things, too. You have your poetry. Your poetry will always respond back with love.”

  My poetry. As if I can put any word down on paper anymore. All I do is whine and feel sorry for myself. How poetically can one complain?

  Laura. She lives on a different planet. She’s never been one of us. She’s even more aloof since she returned from the retreat. Maybe it’s just in my mind. She’s only more committed to her way of life. What’s wrong with that? Ever since returning from that retreat, she has been hiding in that tiny hostel room and meditating with a group of three other people whom I’ve never met before. She never bothered to introduce them. She seems happy, though. I envy her.

  .

  I want him back. That is one of the few thoughts that I catch flying from time to time through my tired mind. I spend all my nights trying to find reasons to forgive him, trying to understand, trying to convince myself over again that I haven’t been wrong about him all this time.

  He is saying so many things. It flatters me that he is at least taking the time and effort to lie to me, just to make me feel good. That shows that he cares a little, doesn’t it? But, of course, I need more than this. Don’t I?

  I don’t feel like waking up today. I wish I hadn’t woken up at all. Isn’t it beautiful to just die in your sleep? I am sure it must be a better place than this. This world, there is something wrong with it. Something is missing. Even this room appears strange to me now. The sun comes inside in shades of insane yellow that make me want to hit my head on the walls until I don’t feel any pain anymore. Or maybe I should go out in the cold and get these feelings frozen. Don’t they say that while freezing, you go into a state of deep sleep and dreaming?

  3.

  THE MOTHER SUPERIOR of the Codresti monastery was a legend. At the time of Ana’s visit, she must have been more close to a hundred years old. Ana remembered her story as her grandmother had told it to her.

  The story began on a hot summer day, when Veronica’s family left the corn field on which they had been working to have lunch at home and the girl (Veronica was not more than thirteen years old at the time) was left behind, looking for the shoes that she had taken off during the day. It was then, in the distorting noon heat, that a tall figure, wearing a long, indefinite dress, appeared in front of her, smiling in the light, feet not touching the ground.

  The apparition spoke to Veronica, telling her she needed to pray for the people of that place, that the ground she was standing on was sacred, and it should become a place for prayer and devotion.

  The girl went home and told her parents what had happened, but they thought she was suffering from heat stroke. Little Veronica knew she was not delirious. She went then to the village priest to tell him about her vision. The priest laughed—Veronica was a poor peasant girl who hardly went to school because she had to help her parents with farming. Why would God choose her to be the witness of such a miracle in the cornfield? But the vision in the field changed Veronica. She became determined to accomplish what she now saw as her mission: building a monastery on that plot.

  Veronica left her parents’ home with one change of clothes and a small bag containing a wedge of bread, some cheese, and a few green onions from the vegetable garden. She walked toward the monastery of Father Nicodim, a place that she knew about from other people in the village. She walked for three days and three nights, throughout the forest, on small paths in the cornfields, over the water, and through ten other villages, until she reached the place.

  Father Nicodim’s was a monastery for monks. They didn’t allow the little girl inside and didn’t believe her story about the cornfield apparition. Veronica did not leave, however. She waited at the monastery gate day after day, hoping they would change their minds. In front of that gate, hungry and cold after a week-long rain, she had another vision. The floating figure caressed her forehead and said that she was on the right path. She was not to be afraid of anything, as she was doing God’s work.

  Inside the monastery walls, Father Nicodim was also startled that early evening by a thundering voice. He was to go out and meet the girl at the gate, the voice ordered. He was to help her, he was told. So Father Nicodim gave Veronica his blessings and helped her start building a monastery for nuns there, in her family’s cornfield.

  The monastery was built over two years and a very long last summer, while Sister Veronica lived in a hut made of mud and sticks. She was very soon joined by three other nuns who came to help her and dedicate themselves to the new establishment of faith. With the help of the villagers, as well as people from other distant parts of the country who had heard about the visions of little Sister Veronica, the monastery of Codresti became a haven for many nuns and lost souls.

  This was the story that Ana’s grandmother used to tell her on long winter days, as Ana sat by her side, watching her buna’s fingers dance on muslin, piercing it with colorful threads to leave behind intricate vines with unrealistic leaves, flowers, or acorns. Ana had heard the story so many times that in her mind, it sounded like music.

  Her grandmother had promised to take Ana to see Sister Veronica someday, but that day never came. Ana’s grandmother’s heart had stopped beating one day in her bed. She had come back to life for tw
o more days after that, only until her daughters were ready to say goodbye. Ana’s grandfather went after her the following year.

  Sometimes, Ana felt angry with her grandmother, for making her believe in signs from God that she kept waiting for, but she never saw. So she started to think that Sister Veronica was just a childhood story. Veronica never existed, Ana had decreed, and she had stopped hoping to ever hear a call of her own. Life would have been so easy if God had time to come and speak with each of us about our ways, Ana thought many times, losing her faith.

  . .

  The Year Before

  IT IS LATE SATURDAY AFTERNOON when we decide to go to Campina to visit the castle because Ella read a book about the young poetess and, feeling a strange connection to her, she is overwhelmed by an unstoppable need to visit the temple that Iulia’s father had built for her.

  “Come, Ana, we have to visit the castle. Don’t tell me that you haven’t always secretly wanted to go to that place and see what the legend is all about.” I can’t tell her that.

  We probably buy the last train tickets—the train station is under assault by students going back home for the winter vacation. We reach Campina at dusk and manage to find out way to the castle. To our great relief, it is still open. “In a half hour, we’re closing” the cashier, guide, and custodian announces loudly, as if she needs to be heard by a group of visitors much larger than the two of us. “Do you need a guide, or can you find your way around?” the woman asks us before opening the doors.

  “We’re fine, thank you,” Ella says with a big, confident smile. The woman opens the door for us without another word.

  We pass quickly through the two rooms that form the left wing of the castle and stop in the main, center hall, the one with the big Jesus statue hanging from the ceiling. The noises of the town’s evening are entirely muted in here, so we bathe in the silence until an eerie piano music makes us shiver and come close to each other to hold hands for a second. For our benefit, the museum curator lady started playing over the sound system the piece of music that Iulia composed and played after her death on the piano sitting right there in front of us, in one of the three narrow rooms opening at the back of the central hall.

  The central hall is brightly lit, making the advancing evening outside, as seen through the back windows, seem even darker. We walk slowly through the rooms that form the right wing of the castle: Iulia’s room, in which she never slept, and which houses the writing desk brought out from her crypt and a drawing of her on the day of the funeral, and the room of the famous writer and eternally mourning father. At the end of the corridor, we find ourselves in a tiny room furnished with a table painted with alphabet letters and other strange signs, and chairs with three legs, built without iron nails. The wall opposite the entrance has a large painting representing the ghost of Iulia coming to meet her father. This room tells it all. The story of the bereaved old man who cannot let go of his nineteen-year-old adored child, the prodigy who had already made a mark as a poet and who succumbed to tuberculosis but never left her father’s side. From beyond the grave, she told him to build this castle as a meeting place with her spirit. So he built it, a strange iron and stone construction on a quiet, normal town street, a building so far removed from this world that the locals never pass on the walkways in front of its gates but cross the street and walk on the other side, farther away from the reach of its ghostly powers. In this strange place of shadows, the ailing father spent the remainder of his years, in spiritism sessions, trying to be with his child again, beyond death, time, and natural order.

  As I let myself be transported into the space of the former owners’ lives and deaths, I feel Ella grabbing my hand suddenly and pulling me out of the spiritism room with a strength I never suspected she had. The hole in the wall, through which the ghost of Iulia was supposed to enter the castle, had spooked Ella. “I thought I saw a pair of eyes through that.”

  We lie down on the floor, in the middle of the big hall, still holding hands, and gaze up, at the labyrinth painted on the ceiling, above the head of the statue, trying to follow its winding roads toward the immense flaming eye in the middle. We can feel the unnatural presence. This place is, without doubt, a gate opened into another world.

  “The museum is closing in five minutes. Please find your way to the exit.” As we get up to leave, I can see that Ella has been crying. We thank the museum guide and use the same side door to go out. The mirrors, on both sides of the door, reflect our images to infinity and immortality. Behind us, the metal door closes with a loud noise.

  Once outside, we can finally take the time to look at the exterior of the castle: the three beautiful towers, the symbols and inscriptions on the walls. I take a photo of the main entrance and touch the writing on the wall: There is no seeing without believing. Ella turns toward the gate, and, as we go out, she says softly, “Maybe we shouldn’t have come here. Too much death. And I am not sure that we can see anything else beyond that, as much as we might believe. I am afraid that belief only breeds its own frightening creatures that will only terrify the real world and will never belong here.”

  .

  Dan called. He wanted to see me. He missed me, he said, and I like being missed. So we met.

  He looked great, and the moment I opened the door, I did feel it all again: the claws in my stomach, the lightheadedness, the rush in my veins, the lifting off my feet. It was beautiful and very short-lived, as always. One second. That was it. On the second breath, the world was back in place, musty and old.

  He came with an armful of lilies of the valley, and the room will smell for days of him, or of something I think I long for. He is not that anymore. It was goodbye for good. Where does love go? Or, if this wasn’t love, then what was it? And what is love, anyway?

  I was ready to give in, forget myself in his arms, and see if I can find again the feeling of owning the world. It was not there. His kisses were sour and all too mundane. I was in my head all the time. Never really took off flying. The bloody wings of past emotions were lying on the floor at our feet the whole time.

  .

  Ella was not feeling well today. Half of her body felt “like it belonged to someone else.” She asked me to buy some groceries and drop them at her house in the afternoon: Farmers’ market apples and German bakery bread.

  I found her praying in her “positive energy corner,” which is more of an altar of sorts: a long and narrow coffee table covered in a white silk scarf, on which she has a candle, a small vase with green flowers (some sort of mini chrysanthemums), several Romanian icons, and brass and marble statuettes that look Buddhist or maybe Hindu. The table is under a glass-tiled window, at the end of the narrow corridor.

  Ella was wearing a long caftan-style dress, with tiny white and pink lotuses on a black background. “It’s my high-priestess robe,” she told me when I admired it. “You can have it.” I must have said no more than ten times, but she wouldn’t listen. “I want you to have it. I think it would look beautiful on you. You can hem it if it’s too long. Use it when you pray. It will remind you to keep me in your prayers.” She took it off and handed it to me right then, and she put on a simple black dress instead.

  We sat on the floor on cushions and had tea and buttered toast. I asked her about Calin.

  “We broke up,” she admitted with what looked like a mischievous smile. “I didn’t tell you. Sorry. There is nothing much to tell. He didn’t need this burden and, to be honest, I didn’t need him. I need to be by myself right now. Figure out how to save this body from ruin. My therapist says that I need to count on myself more and on others less. Do away with all the crutches. Isn’t that a funny expression? What if I can’t walk? I can’t walk. She should know that by now, don’t you think?”

  “But she’s wrong. You don’t have to let go of everyone. You can’t do everything alone. You need to let someone help. I am here for you, you know that. But there are also many other people who love you. What about your parents?”

  “
Oh. No, no, no. My mother drives me crazy. We get into monumental fights every time we meet. She’s very controlling, and she tries to brainwash me to go to more doctors and try more drugs. She makes me crazier than I am already. And my dad cries. He cries every time he sees me. He cannot handle this. I don’t want him to suffer so much at the sight of me. I want him to forget and forgive himself, you know?”

  We stopped talking about the difficult subject. There was not much I could say to help her feel better. But there were things I could do. I made buttered toast and herbal tea with honey, and we ate everything in front of the TV while watching a horror movie. We could at least pretend that life was simpler, as it once, long before, used to be.

  .

  There was a bride at the café where I met Ilinca and Laura. She had been kidnapped from the wedding party by her friends, in that very endearing tradition of Romanian weddings. We overheard them planning to ask the groom for four bottles of whiskey in exchange for his bride.

  The bride asked us for cigarettes. She looked beautiful and excited. I wondered if all brides are like that. I wondered how it felt.

  “How long do you think that this shallow happiness will last,” asked Laura in a low voice. “It’s misplaced. You cannot owe your happiness to another person.”

  Ilinca couldn’t stand for that. “Come on. Stop it. Not everybody is like you, miss Oh-I’m-so-spiritual-and-so-otherworldly-that-I-eat-only-sun-rays-and-sleep-standing-up. Most of us, simpletons, want a significant other to share our lives, and find great fulfillment and happiness in it. I am happy. I personally am very much in love with my husband. I could never dream of anything better for my life than him.”

  I didn’t want to participate in the discussion. I just let myself be hypnotized by swirling cigarette smoke that was floating inside the room.

  Ilinca didn’t allow it, though. “Ana, help me here.”

  “How can I help? I don’t know anything. Leave me out of this. To me, God, love, happiness are all just smoke. They seem to be floating around, but they remain out of touch.”