by Paul Park
But that evening and the next, around a fire outside a barn or in a copse of trees, she sat and listened to the stories about hunger, and hardship, and the usurper, and German tyranny. And sometimes stories about her father, because each of the old soldiers had his personal encounter to describe. In the gaps between them, she could catch glimpses of the man himself.
The general had not cared for distinctions between officers and ordinary soldiers. A gap-toothed man named Sorin told her, "Once we were on the Strymon River north of Thessalonike. The Turks were on the other side of a high stream. We didn't have anything but beans and hard green peaches in the trees. The word came that there was a run of some small fish, I never knew the name. We crept out of our holes when it was still dark. The general came too, and I've never seen anything like it. The fish—they jumped out of their holes in the earth. The stream had come out of its banks and flooded a small hill like a waterfall over the rocks and the tall grass. And you could find the fish jumping and sliding down. There was eels, too. We took our boots off and caught them in our hats, and the general was laughing like a boy. It was like a holiday or being out from school. We built a fire in the clearing and roasted those fish on sticks. I sat next to the general and he was telling jokes. But then we had bad luck because the Turks crossed downstream and cut us off—it was that devil, Kemal Bey."
"What did he look like?" asked Miranda. "I mean my father."
"Oh, he was no hero in his face, that much I can tell you. Not so tall and strong. A high nose like yours. Ears even bigger. Not much of a chin. You never saw him?"
"No."
"Not a picture?"
"No." Miranda wondered for the first time why this was so, why there hadn't been, for example, a portrait in the castle on the beach.
"So, I can tell you about that," said an older man, as though she'd asked. "The general had superstitions. The photographs were blurred because he'd always move. He said it was bad luck to stop in time. You know there were always things like that, never a fight on a Thursday. Never when Mars and Jupiter were in conjunction. I forget all of it. He used to get letters from his sister."
It had been drizzling and raining since they left the river. Nevertheless this was a beautiful country, the flat plain of the Danube, the tara Romaneasa with the city of Bucharest in the middle. There were orchards, wheat fields, and pastureland with many cows and sheep. The small, thatched, wood-and-stucco villages were built around a graveyard and a temple of Demeter with a bell tower and a tiled dome. The straight muddy roads were lined with poplars.
Miranda rode the big black gelding, and Ludu followed close behind. Miranda could tell she found the landscape ugly and depressing. Every mile they came inland she seemed more distracted and sad. Before, she had been full of her opinions and judgments. Now she was mournful, silent, perhaps because she realized finally and forever that her home was gone, her family dispersed or dead.
But if that was true, why did she want to talk about them and nothing else? Only the mention of her house—burned now, probably—her father, her brothers, could bring even the smallest, sourest smile to her. And she still didn't have anything good to say. As Miranda learned more about her own father, she learned about Ludu's too, stories that made a kind of counterpoint. "Sometimes he'd drink all night and there would be no stopping. He'd send Gheorghe out with all the money in the house. When that was gone he'd pull himself around looking for things to sell—all the silver work he'd made during the winter. He never took any of our clothes, I'll say that for him. This was for days, and we'd run off to sleep outside or with the neighbors—we'd leave him alone. Then he was tired out, and we'd go back and find him sleeping in his chair or sprawled out in the dirt if he had fallen and could not get up. He was helpless without us and he knew it. Then months would go by and he'd never touch a dram. I'm worried about him now, I'll tell you that."
This came out of her at Mogosoaia, where they had arrived during the day. Miranda didn't know what would be kinder, to force the girl into the facts or let her continue in delusion. What was the use? And maybe she knew better after all. Miranda's own memory of that night, when the vampire had squatted over Dinu Fishbelly now seemed like a dream. So maybe somehow the old Gypsy had survived.
Now past midnight, they sat in the stable while the men were talking. And when Ludu fell asleep in the straw, Miranda got up to go outside and watch the mist come over the sky, hiding the stars. The stable was on the edge of a wood, tall beeches and oaks. She looked north over the knee-high grass toward the unlit bulky building across the lake. Nothing here looked like home.
She stood a few minutes in the doorway listening to the men, watching the carbide lantern shining on their faces. Where was Dysart? He must have slipped away when she wasn't paying attention.
She saw Ludu start awake and look around. She'd woken up as soon as Miranda was gone. As they'd come farther from the coast, she was less and less able to stay alone, to leave Miranda by herself even for a moment. Sometimes that was comforting among these older men, and sometimes it was frustrating, as now. Miranda stepped away under the trees, and in a moment she saw the girl come out the door and look around. Then she came to stand beside Miranda in the darkness, and together they listened to the buzz of voices inside.
From near Ploiesti, Dysart had ridden ahead to find support in Bucharest among important people he had known from years ago. This revolution, or whatever it was, could not be achieved with these old soldiers from the marshes and the villages. Dysart had brought richer, better-connected people from the city to meet her, and they were harder to impress. One, Count Sfetcu, who worked in the treasury office, spoke for many when he said: "That she is the daughter of my old comrade Schenck von Schenck, I can see for myself. That she is a bold young woman and a patriot, no one can doubt. That she is responsible for the rain in the Dobruja, that she is the savior of Roumania—these are children's stories. We already have one white tyger, and she is an agent of Germany. Why should we want another?"
Sfetcu was a goat-faced man who talked about her as if she wasn't there. But he had a point. The problem, Miranda understood, was not with Nicola Ceausescu, or Radu Luckacz the police chief, or the Roumanian home guard, but with the German army. That was what mattered. And if no German soldiers had come to stop them yet, it was because so many had moved north to Lithuania, or east across the border into the Ukraine. Miranda had a little bit of time, but not a lot. The German governor of Transylvania had troops at his disposal in the oil fields.
But de Witte's letter had given her some breathing space. That was the advantage she'd taken from the mistake she'd made. Now she listened to the forest sounds, the peepers and cicadas, even though it was a damp night. Ludu said nothing, an anxious look on her chapped, spotted face. Though the moon was hidden, there was still light enough to see. Above her rags of mist glowed faintly against the black sky. Worried and frustrated, Miranda turned away, took a few steps under the trees. Where had Dysart gone?
No doubt he had walked out in disgust, because when people started to talk about political or military strategy, it always seemed a little unreal. Not long ago Miranda had been a high school student. She was not the one to be manipulating armies. The fiasco in Lithuania had taught her that.
So if she stayed with the guns and horses, always she'd depend on other people, on Dysart or Sfetcu or the rest of them. Doubtless her aunt had understood, and it was why she was always leading Miranda to places like this one, where another way might be found. But if that was true and she had grasped the truth, why was she so resistant? Here she was in Mogosoaia after all, as she had gone to Insula Calia. It's not as if she'd had a better idea. But why was it sohard for her to take what was offered? This was the Brancoveanu land, the foest where her aunt was buried.
As she came out into the open air, her mind was still occluded by the stable talk, the close, inside atmosphere. All this talking could not change the obvious. The Germans had no energy to spend on her because of the war in Lithuania�
��that was her strength. Her weakness was she didn't know this place or these people, didn't know whom to trust.
In the first days after Insula Calia, she'd wondered if her sole presence was enough to bring a change in a rotten and unpopular government, like the velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia. And unlike what had happened in Romania starting with the riots in Timisoara and the murder of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife—it was all so complicated. That was the version of history she'd learned when she was growing up, that Stanley had made sure she leaarned, forced her to learn over her objections. It was her history, he'd said. No doubt it had been included in her aunt's book as a cautionary tale and not a model to be followed, although who could tell for sure? This much was clear-forDysart and the others she was just a flag to hold, an emblem of her dead father and their own dead selves.
She was tired of them and frightened of herself. All the way across Walachia she had been pursued by nightmares and regrets. At moments when she closed her eyes she could see the neat, singed hole in de Witte's shoulder. And if at times she couldn't see the dead policeman, she could feel the gun's recoil as she had shot him. She could feel the bruise in her palm. It was not enough to say she'd had no choice, at Queen Mary's hermitage or in Braila, or Insula Calia either—no, she had traveled along a road, and the start of it had been when she'd fired on the vampire over the body of Dinu Fishbelly.
Maybe she had been seduced by the unreality of that moment. Then came the singed hole, and then the chaos in the garden of the Russian consulate in Braila—a man was killed, she'd later read. She'd killed a man—was it possible? She couldn't imagine it, and if there were moments, like now, when she felt sick with remorse, there were also moments as if none of it had happened, not the vampire, not de Witte, not the policeman. And none of that craziness in the salt cave, which seemed now like a fantasy.
She didn't want to feel again the place inside of her where violence seemed natural. She was her father's daughter, as her aunt had said. Surely there was another way to control these events if she could learn it. Maybe it was like learning to ride Ajax, her black horse.
Miranda stepped away into the wet grass.
"What are you doing?" Ludu whispered. "Come back."
How Miranda missed Andromeda, and Peter, and Captain Raevsky too! She'd asked Dysart about him, who'd shrugged. "He was Ceausescu's man and then the widow's. Who can blame him?" He'd kissed his bunched fingers. "She's a beauty."
Now there was a mist over the moon and the whole sky seemed to glow. Miranda walked through the wet grass at the edge of the wood. She was wearing riding boots, trousers, and a white shirt. Around her neck was the locket with her mother's portrait. Around her left wrist was the bracelet of Miranda Brancoveanu. Thrust into a pocket under her shirt was her father's gun. She had lied when she had told her aunt that she'd thrown it away. It's what she'd meant to do, as part of her had meant to throw away her aunt's new letter and her aunt's money.
That would have been a mistake. And the letter had told her she must go to Mogosoaia; here she was. And though the letter had begun with orders and directions, it had not gone on like that.
Now the night was beautiful and soft and there was moisture in her hair. From time to time the mist would blow away, revealing blue-cast stars. "What's that one?" asked Miranda.
Ludu gave a furtive glance back toward the stable. When she spoke, she whispered, "Oh, miss, that is the part of Mircea's arrow when he killed the black bull. Over there. It's hidden in the trees."
"And this one?"
"That is Jupiter. The god himself. See how he glares at us! King Jesus . . ."
Miranda liked to listen to her talk. And she liked the idea of comfortable old Jupiter among the unfamiliar constellations. On a night like this sometimes Stanley would point the planets out. "Tell me," she asked, or tried to ask. "Is the planet Jupiter . . . ?"
But she found her Roumanian, fluent in most subjects, contained no word for planet. The French word had been taught her by Mr. Donati, but it meant nothing to Ludu. So she tried to describe what she meant, but got only confusion. "No, miss, it is the god himself."
But the girl laughed. As they left the proximity of the stable, she seemed happier and more cheerful, and by this time they had reached the corner of the field. A cart track led under the canopy of the wood. "This is the way toMother Egypt's tomb," she said. "That old man told me. That Sfetcu."
"Let's go see."
"But the captain," protested the girl, meaning Dysart.
"So? We'll probably meet him on the way."
Miranda stepped into the center of the track and turned into the wood. She didn't pause or look back, and presently she was aware of Ludu Rat-tooth following her. The darkness was intense under the trees. But the ruts were easy and the path was clear.
In time they came to a burned-out cottage. There was a clearing and more light. Miranda stood looking at the collapsed and blackened beams, covered now with vines. "Tell me," she said. "Have you ever seen a white tyger?"
"Miss, no one has seen one. They are very rare."
"But they exist?"
"Yes. They live in the mountains in the snow. People hunt them for their skin, but they don't find them. They are very ferocious, very shy. Once my father's father met a man in Pietrosul who had a skin he was selling in the market. No one could buy it, he was asking so much."
"How big was it?"
"Oh, they are small!"
"Like this?" Miranda asked, moving her hands three feet apart.
"Half that. Like this."
"And striped?"
"Very faint. Silver stripes."
Miranda laughed, and they started walking again along the track into a wood that turned gradually to pines. The land was rising and there were ridges of white rock.
A cool wind came out of the trees. Above them now the mist had blown away. "Tell me," Miranda said. "I heard this story—how can I say? That people have an animal. Sometimes you can see the animal come out—"
"When they are dead." Ludu completed the sentence, then put her hand on Miranda's sleeve. "You shouldn't talk about this."
"Why not?"
"It is against the law! Not everyone can see these animals. Witches and conjurers . . ."
Miranda considered this. "I don't understand. You remember Insula Calia. What about all that? What would the law say about that?"
Ludu held onto her arm until she shook her off. Then the girl came close, and Miranda could smell the onion on her breath, see the corner of her rat tooth. "But there's a difference!" she cried. "King Jesus and Queen Mary Magdalene—they can light the firein the dark. The rest is the devil's work."
Miranda smiled. "Where I grew up there was no magic. People were pretending everywhere you looked. Here it's the opposite."
She couldn't tell if Ludu was offended. She didn't care. So the white tyger was a little guy, wombat-sized, bunny-sized! She felt inexpressibly relieved. No, but ferocious. More like a ferret or a stoat.
Ahead she saw the glimmer of a light. A new ridge of moonlit rock appeared on her left hand, a pitted, undercut surface that soon rose above their leads. Small, spindly conifers grew from the crest of it, visible now the high trees had given out. There were knee-high gorse bushes, and the path through the middle of it led parallel to the cliff. Then the undergrowth subsided as they came around a buttress in the rock, and they saw the lantern and the house and the cave mouth and the tomb.
The lantern was set into a niche in the rock. It shone upon the pale grass. Mother Egypt's house was built into the cliff nearby, a bark-faced building with a long, low pediment and an overhanging roof. The door was open and a light burned there, too.
This was the house Miranda's aunt had lived in when she was the warden of the shrine. "Mary's fountain," whispered Ludu Rat-tooth. "When Julius Caesarfought against the Dacians, he tracked her to this place. She took off her armor and was washing in the water. He wanted to have her like a dog. But whenhe saw her, he was too ashamed."
&n
bsp; "Yuck. That's quite a story."
Ludu was full of tidbits. "Some Gypsies say he dragged her to the cave, and that was the beginning of the Brancoveanus." She shrugged. "I like it best the other way."
"Me, too." Miranda was more interested in the tomb in the middle of the clearing, in front of the cave mouth. She would have gone to it, only Ludu grabbed her by the wrist. Someone had appeared in the entrance of the house, a tiny huddled figure. The candle she carried illuminated a small round face. Miranda only glimpsed it for a moment before the light flickered and the woman cupped her hand around it. But that moment was enough for her to see aface almost too strange and simian to be ugly. Painted yellow in the candle light, for a moment it seemed almost featureless.
Ludu Rat-tooth still had hold of Miranda's wrist. "Ah," she said. "Oh God, miss." She pulled hard on Miranda's hand, until Miranda twisted toward her thumb and freed herself. She held her arm up, took a step forward.
"Come back," whispered the girl.
But the woman with the candle had walked out into the clearing. And now Miranda could see more lights among the trees and four more figures shuffled out of the woods near the cliff face.
"Baron Ceausescu made them wear masks," breathed Ludu in her ear.
As the lights came together around the tomb, Miranda could see better what it was, a raised mound covered with talismans and knickknacks. The woman from the house was stooping to light candles among them and little oil lamps. By the accumulating glow, Miranda could see photographs, books, and scraps of paper, strands of beads, bouquets, and bundles of dried herbs.
Though she and the girl were hidden in the darkness, the woman now turned to them. Holding her flickering candle, she called out. "Come! Come forward."
Ludu tried to catch hold of her again, but Miranda stepped away. The girl's terror fed her sense of calm, but that wasn't the only thing. She could smell a perfume of hot oil out of the lamps, and she could see candles glimmering in th woods and in the grotto's mouth. They almost looked like lightning bugs, and in a moment she was reminded of summer evenings in Berkshire County, standing in the backyard with her father or on Christmas Hill behind the art museum.