Spell of Blindness

by Lori Tiron-Pandit

  While I was sitting there, trying to figure out an escape, a young man entered the room. He was tall and thin, to the point of seeming to break from the waist. He moved his legs slowly and with difficulty, as if they had been borrowed from someone else. His entire bodily posture was one of burden, his head and shoulders bent in front, in a humble way. But the most striking aspect of his appearance was the skin. I had never seen before such yellowish, transparent, sickly skin, wrapped on the contours of his facial muscles like a plastic bag tightened with twist ties around a loaf of bread.

  I assumed he was the nephew, Bogdan’s sister’s son, who I knew was living there. He gave me a long, curious look, but he didn’t even say hello. He went out into the corridor and I heard a door closing with a loud bang.

  I sat there alone for another ten minutes, then the voices became loud enough for me to hear. Bogdan’s mother was yelling at him, about her home not being a hotel for him.

  “I haven’t seen your face for weeks. Why don’t you just go back to her and leave me alone, leave this house!”

  “I’ll go, don’t worry. I don’t need you. I don’t need your house!”

  Bogdan had told me that the apartment was his, and his mother was living there because she had lost her own house in the divorce settlement.

  While I was thinking about walking out of there, the shouting grew louder.

  “I raised you, sent you to school, kept you protected from that good-for-nothing father of yours. I cooked for you and wiped your ass when you were a baby. Is this the thanks that I get? You just run away from home and leave me alone here to take care of it all? You forget about your mother in just a split second when a little anorexic tramp comes along? Then don’t come back to this house again. Go and live with her and forget about me!”

  “Just shut up, old woman. Shut up!” The anger in Bogdan’s voice was different than his mother’s. His anger felt quieter and insane. Then I heard a loud noise—a large object hitting the floor. I got up to leave, but then he came out with a plastic bag in his hand, and we both went away. He didn’t talk at all. I also kept quiet for a while, trying to figure out what to say.

  “Bogdan, I don’t want to go home yet. Let’s stop at a coffee shop. What do you say?”

  “I am really tired, baby,” he replied. I knew he was trying to avoid any explanation of what had happened, but I was too scared to go home with him. He did look very serene now, as if nothing had happened. He was smiling lovingly at me and put his arms around my shoulders in a protective gesture.

  We got off the bus downtown, and we went to a small bar.

  It is hard for me now to remember the entire conversation. I asked him about what had happened at his home, and what was wrong with his mother. He tried to mumble something about his mother having been to a party the previous night and having a bad hangover. In the bar, while chain smoking from my pack of cigarettes, he started to tell me the same childhood history about how he was raised by his grandmother because his parents were having fights all the time, and later they separated, shutting him out of their lives. His sister left home at a very young age and got married when she was eighteen. His grandmother was an alcoholic and she had mobility challenges because of advanced rheumatic disease, so she was not in a good position to take care of a child. For the first time, I couldn’t believe any of it, as hard as I tried.

  .

  I was at home in Vulturi with Mama, planning for a pajama-and-chocolate-cake birthday celebration for her, when Bogdan called. I swear I had no intention of asking him to come over. I had already explained to him that we Mama’s birthday has always been a small celebration just between the two of us. I really wanted a break from him. But when he called I was in the kitchen with Mama, feeling warm and weak. It was maybe the sweet smell of Mama’s baking and the violent wind bending trees to the ground, outside our window. It might have been the big mug of sugar-and-cinnamon-flavored red wine that I had gobbled down, or it could have been that Bogdan sounded so depressed and lonely, like a small animal in need of a charitable soul. I had to do the Christian thing and take him in, for one last time.

  I knew that would make Mama happy, sustaining her dream that I might have luck this time, that maybe it was not over for me.

  I didn’t even make a full-fledged invitation. “I would invite you to come here, if it wasn’t already so late. I don’t believe that you would be in any mood to travel on a Saturday night, right?”

  “You are too good to me,” he answered. I didn’t understand what that meant until Saturday morning, at five o’clock, when he called me from the train station, asking me to go and pick him up. He had taken the first train at night and arrived “to surprise me.”

  “Surprise! I didn’t want to tell you anything on the phone. Are you surprised? I thought we could spend Sunday together, and return tomorrow morning to Bucharest. Are you surprised? Oh, I can see from your long face that you were not expecting me at all. See, this is the kind of man I am. That’s what you like about me, right? I’m full of surprises.”

  I was not surprised. I had gone to sleep with an ice-cold knot of fear in my stomach all night. I felt actually relieved when his call woke me up.

  Mama evidently was very pleased. On the way home from the station, he insisted on stopping at a flower shop to buy a bouquet for her. I could already see her eyes brightening with hope and dreams for me.

  He soon started talking about how he wanted to buy an engagement ring for “this stubborn girl,” and how he couldn’t do it until I told him what kind of ring I wanted. A nightmare.

  On our train trip back to Bucharest, we didn’t exchange words. We didn’t even look at each other. The curtains had been lowered over our little play.

  .

  We met Ilinca and George at the supermarket yesterday, and Bogdan entered the race for the Academy Awards. His performance was masterful.

  I went to the store to buy oranges, chocolates, and tree ornaments, and he came along because he was getting bored of watching TV all day. We were admiring the fantastic cheese selection and the heavy, green branches made into garlands that surrounded the display when I noticed Ilinca and George approaching from the meat section. I wouldn’t have looked at them, but the giggly, happy voices caught my attention and their cart overfilled with food made me think of large family reunions that I would never know.

  Bogdan was standing next me, looking elsewhere, still lost inside his mind. He had been irritable and aloof all day because of our earlier discussion about him needing to move out of my place. He had agreed in principle, but the situation had clearly upset him very much. He seemed disoriented and unresponsive after that. When I waved to get Ilinca’s attention, Bogdan spotted them, too. In an instant, his hands were around my waist and his cheek was next to mine. “This cheese looks good, doesn’t it, baby?” he said loudly, while our friends were approaching.

  I shivered with disgust, but I couldn’t make a scene right there. Trapped again.

  “You are doing your Christmas shopping here too? This is an unbelievable coincidence,” he said to Ilinca and George very effusively when they came close to us. “We are going to Vulturi to spend the holidays with Mama, but we still want some of the Christmas spirit in our apartment.” Tight embrace. Applause. Good scene.

  I stretched my mouth side to side, and in my mind, I tried to remember exactly when we had made those plans. Ilinca and George didn’t seem to notice anything wrong. They were holding hands and found it easy to believe that the rest of the world was just as happy as they were.

  But Bogdan was not done yet. “I am trying to get Ana into the holiday spirit, but she is acting like a spoiled princess who’s decided she just doesn’t want to have fun. What am I going to do with this girl of mine?”

  A peck on the cheek. Tighter embrace. Looks good, but tell the cameraman not to go for a close-up, because it would ruin the magic.

  I made what I thought was a discreet effort to free myself. He let go of my waist, but grabbed my ha
nd and kissed it. Ilinca and George started to look uneasy.

  “I bet you are busy.” I tried to offer them an escape.

  Ilinca opened her mouth to say something, but she didn’t get a chance.

  “Oh, come on, how can they be busy?” Bogdan interjected. “It’s the holidays. It’s a time to spend with friends and celebrate. Am I right? We need our friends in good times and in bad ones. We could use your advice, right now, as a matter of fact. We are in a bit of a pickle, Ana and I, and I think we can learn something from you, guys. You have been married for three years already, is that right?”

  I was not sure what he was talking about, but I knew with certainty that I wanted him to shut up. I gave Ilinca a desperate look.

  “These are not good times for us, guys,” Bodgan continued. “Ana has been very cold lately. I love her to death, but she refuses to see it. We are not intimate anymore at all. You need to tell us the secret of your happiness.”

  Everybody freeze! Cut! Lunch break! Something! I need to think how to react. Where is the damn script? Where did that coward director hide? All right. Bring in the children. Have the customers hold their baskets up and walk with wide dance steps. Blast the Christmas carols on the sound system … now.

  “Sorry, I have to go,” I tried to say, and I left the store almost running.

  .

  He is gone. Yesterday, after the market incident, as soon as we were out of the store, I told him that it was over. I was clear and unequivocal. I didn’t want him to come home with me. I told him that he could go and pick up his stuff before I got home (I was planning to spend a few hours in the book store) and be out of there by evening.

  He didn’t take it well. “You need to grow up and accept the fact that a relationship brings the good with the bad, that there are not only flowers and walks in the park but also dirty, smelly, human issues.” He was quite poetic for the circumstances.

  Soon, poetry turned into melodrama. “How can you do this to me? How can I trust a woman ever again, after this? I loved you. You meant everything to me. You don’t even realize what you are doing. You will never find another man to love you the way I loved you. Where do you think you’ll find somebody ready to sacrifice everything for you like I did? To put you on a pedestal like I did? To worship you the way I worshipped you? You are throwing me away as if I am not worth anything, after all that I did for you. How could I have been so blind? Do you think that it’s been easy for me? In the last month, you have been treating me like garbage. I kept hoping that you’d realize how much I loved you and you would come to your senses, but you didn’t seem to want to do that. Well, there is nothing else I can do to help you. You have broken my heart. I don’t know what I am going to do now. I don’t know where my feet will take me when I go out this door, but I know that I will never trust or love anybody again.”

  Then he moved into dark crime territory. Before leaving, he said something about killing himself and killing me too to get it over with, because of the unbearable pain he was feeling. He just let that into the conversation, without a menacing voice or change in facial expression. I was so glad we were in a public place.

  I was shaking with fear when I came back home that night, imagining that he might still be here waiting for me. I was safe. He has taken most of his things and left, but I don’t know if it is over yet. Seems too easy. I am still scared that I might hear his key in the door. I am afraid to sleep.

  How did I get myself in such a mess? I tried to convince myself for a while that he was just a slightly eccentric good man who really loved me, and this relationship was possible, even if everything was telling me that it wasn’t because it was too fast and too far removed from reality. I wanted so much to believe. I wanted to have a taste of happiness even if it meant lying to myself. It worked for a few weeks, then it became harder to believe, but I still tried. I am indeed desperate and pathetic, ready to hang on to any man as long as he feeds my illusions. How am I different from Bogdan?

  The Christmas ornaments are still in their bag, on the coffee table, in front of the tree that is lying on the living room carpet and will probably never get to see lights this year.

  .

  I am looking at that one orange left in the basket on the table. I ate five of them already, one after the other. Oranges bring me Christmas. As I sit here in the kitchen and peel my oranges, cutting their skin with precision, my childhood comes flooding in. Warmth and calm. My grandparents’ house on the morning of a frosty winter day. The smell of burned wood and chicken soup simmering on the stove the entire day. It’s infallible. Among water-lily-shaped orange skins, I am always seven, on Christmas vacation in Codresti, where Bunu cuts up the large fruits and gives me slices on a plate. I lie down on the floor, right under the tree, eat the fruits, and stare into the lights above. Everything is right. That feeling is what I’ve been running after all these years. It usually lasts until the last piece of sunny fruit.

  There is only one more orange left in the basket. The one I have been avoiding all this time: small, dry, and pathetic. It reminds me of a Spanish children’s tale of three brothers looking for wives in an orange tree. I am this last, pathetic orange, and none of the young men reached to pluck me from my branch.

  Am I somewhere too high, or am I too completely unappetizing? Or maybe my man lost his way? Did powerful witchcraft stop him on his quest to find me?

  11.

  THE MONASTERY WAS CALLING her name with the voice of a mother whispering a lullaby. Ana went there in the afternoons to sit on the stone bench and think of her life. At least, she thought she was thinking. When considering the matter more seriously, she realized that often she couldn’t remember any thoughts. All was emptiness. All frozen. She sat on the bench and, while the rest of the world twirled around her, she stopped. And that was the most wonderful feeling. It was similar to the short sensation you feel before falling asleep, when all the outside noises seem to intensify while you are completely muted. This is how Ana would have described it if she were still writing.

  .

  Veronica walked toward Ana’s bench like a creature from a world that only they shared. She was standing under the twisted apple tree trunk, her robes waving like a dark lake around her. She looked beautiful, young, maybe Ana’s age. She sat next to Ana and took Ana’s hands in hers. What came after that is hard to describe in mere words. You can call it a revelation or vision, but I don’t know if that would be close. Ana was entirely aware of her body: the tips of her feet were touching the pavement, her back was rejoicing in the coolness of the stone. It’s just that she couldn’t move. She couldn’t even shift her eyes from their trajectory: toward the heavy branch of the willow tree leaning over the white monastery wall. It was the same view, and yet it was all changed now. An unusual light was infusing the whole scene; all the parts of the picture were lit from inside as if trunks, leaves, and walls were only thin paper lanterns.

  They talked without being confined by the mechanics of talking.

  “In faith, like in love, people make many mistakes,” Veronica began. “Sometimes the past, the old rules, become too powerful and strangle the life out of faith, which should be free, should flow through our days unencumbered by dusty scriptures and heavy bell towers. We sometimes don’t leave any space for true faith in our devotion to God, in our prayers and Sunday masses. When I received my message, I went to the priests and they chased me away. There are no new revelations for them. Only what’s already written down is true for me, and belief is a question of knowledge, not existence itself. They haven’t left the door open for a miracle. Have you done the same, Ana?”

  But Ana found that she couldn’t open her mouth to answer.

  “I found love when I was thirteen,” the nun continued. “You might say I was lucky, because love hadn’t even occurred to me before that. The angel of God appeared in the field, and since then, I have been in the presence of my beloved every day. I believed, and my belief has been enough. My first feeling was that I wante
d to die. I wanted to leave this world of illusion and go behind the curtain, to be with him there, where the original love resides. But I didn’t have that choice. All I could do is surround myself with high walls and create a space for my devotion inside. Only my God and I existed there, and everything else had no power. I felt his love raining on me each day, until one morning when there was nothing, when my question did not receive an answer, and suffering returned like a storm and took everything down. I changed places that day. I moved away from my own monastery and built another, more durable one, on a higher hill, closer to the sky.”

  Ana felt the nun look into her eyes with a clear blue gaze. She took Ana’s hands to her heart.

  “You can build monasteries from marble, cement, brick, or wood. They will always be beautiful at first, when faith is strong and its aura blesses the place. But all monasteries are meant to crumble. They are meant to be outlived and outgrown. We cannot let them turn into prisons. The walls of your monastery are lifeless, dry, faithless, and crumbling. They are opening up for you to step away.”

  Veronica sat there, looking at the church on the left, eyes half closed. The sunlight, clearly shaped into thousands of golden arrows, seemed to be irrevocably attracted to her skin. Soon, the light had absorbed the nun and left in her place only a patch of real world: a twisted dark tree trunk all covered in twigs that were once climbing roses and not far in the future would become roses once more.

  .

  It was a long and warm fall that year. Ana sat on the stone bench at the monastery, covered in her warm gray shawl, not feeling the cold, while the world around her rustled, unsettled. The willow tree swept the ground with delicate motions. The nuns rushed past her, in work and prayer, while Ana no longer envied their purposeful life.