by Paul Park
"Go on, get," she said, but it didn't move. With lidless eyes it stared past her, and she turned to see the land had changed again, opened out, and above her she could see the treeless slope of Christmas Hill. There was a half-moon in the starless sky, and on the crest of the hill a half a mile away she could see something coiling and unwinding down the pasture, while the wind brought to her a small burning stink. It was some kind of a colossal beast, a worm or a snake or a centipede that wound down through the pasture side to side, a shallow zigzag, and the moon shone on its back. And its eyes were big and shone not with reflected light, like the cat's or the little monkey's. But they were globes like an insect's eyes, and lit with the same fire that was burning the grass behind it as it moved.
AT THAT SAME MOMENT IN the third-class compartment of the Bavarian Hydra Express, a celebration was in progress. Unorganized, spontaneous, it had ignited out of the high spirits of the car, which was full of people: soldiers, tradesmen, and old women. Here as everywhere in Germany there were rumors of a cease-fire after the sudden, astonishing victories of the Lithuanian campaign. The war was scarcely two weeks old, but already (it was reported) the Duma had delivered an ultimatum to the tsar. With the vote of no confidence and the deaths of von Stoessel and the ministers, everything had changed. Already (it was reported) the young tsarevich had been released as a gesture of good faith. In return, Kaliningrad was to be reannexed.
Two men in the corner of the car were playing the accordion and fiddle. People stood around them and grabbed hold of each other as the train went round a curve. Men embraced, laughed, slapped each other on the back. They pulled out bottles of schnapps and hard cider. They ate sausage sandwiches. The air was full of tobacco smoke and patriotic songs.
The musicians were at the front next to the washroom, where there was an open space for luggage and freight. Down the center of the car was a wide aisle, crammed now with people. Princess Clara, keeping to herself, conversing softly with the boy, didn't see Dr. Theodore until he was hanging by the strap above them.
This is how they'd come to occupy their seats: They had escaped from the elector's house with their clothes and nothing else. Frightened, terrified by freedom, they'd staggered down into the town. There they'd accosted a professor of religion at the university, walking with his wife, a doctor, and their dogs. These people had taken them in, given them a place to stay, and notified the police who (as it turned out) were already pursuing an investigation.
Herr Professor Wobbe-Heck had urged them to stay, but they'd been too frightened. He had sent telegrams on their behalf to Helena Lupescu, Madame Sebastian, and others—the princess's old friends. He'd bought them a ticket. They had no papers, but Clara Brancoveanu hardly expected to be stopped at the border. Her companion was the son of the white tyger, after all.
Now, sitting on the train two days from their escape, the princess was able to breathe freely. Still, she was terrified by the commotion and loud noises. But in the crowded car, as they climbed up the grade into the mountains, she'd experienced a new kind of sensation—timid hope. As the train had gathered speed, she'd lost some of her worst fears. Though the pressure of the crowd was painful, anonymity was a delight.
Herr Professor Wobbe-Heck had told her of the stories in the press, now several weeks old. Miranda Popescu was alive. "I wonder if it can be so?" she asked herself now.
Felix heard her as he shuffled the cards, though she'd been talking to herself. He looked up with a worried face, which made her smile. "My boy, I'll always care for you," she said.
"And did you tell my mother I was coming?"
"No."
He shuddered. "I scarcely remember her."
"Oh my boy, don't worry. She'll be glad to see you. And for your sake I'll forgive her, though her husband . . ."
The terror on his face had touched her heart. But now she followed his staring eyes, and looked up to see Dr. Theodore hanging by the strap, looming over them as the train went around a curve.
For a moment she didn't recognize him. It had been years, after all, since he had brought her meals with his own hands, ushered in her guests. But now here he was again, unaged, a handsome man with a yellow moustache and blue eyes, a strong, brutal face that was softened now with several days' growth upon his cheeks. But what was wrong with him? He wasn't wearing a necktie, and his shirt collar was open. When he started to speak, she knew he had been drinking.
"Don't be alarmed," he said.
Petrified, she grabbed hold of the arms of her seat. She couldn't speak, though what was there to say? Now she remembered all too well the metallic rasp of the doctor's voice, though it was softened now by alcohol, she had to admit. Oh, but he'd been cruel to her, unfeeling!
"Ma'am, it will be all right," he stammered now. "Today is a great day. You know there are changes. Every one of us. Don't. . . tax yourself—unnecessarily. This train is headed to Roumania. You understand?"
Perhaps she had misjudged him. Certainly in the past he'd brought her medicine for her neuralgia and epsom salts—she had to be fair. But always there had been a hard, inhuman, ageless way with him, which had not disappeared. Through his fumbling reassurances, it was still there. He dropped his right hand from the strap to try to touch Felix's hair, except he shied away.
"I'm sorry," murmured Dr. Theodore. "Don't be afraid."
But every time he said that, she felt more of a threat. "Where is your master?" she asked now. "Is he on this train?"
"I have no master," the fellow answered drunkenly. She could scarcely hear him above the music and the shouting in the car. Then he turned and staggered into the crowded aisle again, and she lost sight of him. She didn't see him cross into the second-class compartment on his way up to the private first-class carriages, at the door of one of which he stopped to knock.
AS THE TRAIN APPROACHED THE Austrian frontier, it blew its whistle and slowed down. The elector was in his fauteuil, looking over the notebooks he had taken from his house. Each one was stamped on its leather cover with the token of his family, the silver snake of Ratisbon with its exaggerated eyes. Each page displayed the token of the snake, whose ribs at times resembled the legs of a centipede. In these notebooks his simulacra had compiled their observations of the princess and the boy, or so he'd thought.
But he'd been mistaken. So it was with a kind of bemused trepidation that he watched the man come in, watched him lock the door behind him, watched him stagger drunkenly into the compartment. The train whistled, and the brake came on.
The elector was suffering from one of his migraines. He had been reading:
May the seventeenth—not left his room all day. He has scarcely eaten, only lemon punch and oatmeal bread. I have experimented with different substances without result. He eats nuts, though. These are rare nuts from the spice islands that must be especially ordered. A shipment is due in the Kirchenstrasse, and I think something might be done. . . .
The entry was in his own minute handwriting, beautiful, but difficult to make out. Some lines were illegible. Here was an entry for the first week in June:
He makes the lemon punch himself. But he has asked me to bring from the cellar a bottle of Roumanian brandy. I have heard the cork may be penetrated with a hypodermic syringe. There is at the same time some success with the macadamia nuts. I must be careful, though. I have no wish to harm Lt.-Major Lubomyr when he arrives. . . .
As he read, the elector had been playing with his paper knife, a piece of iron ornamented with the snake of Ratisbon. He pricked the point against his wrist. It was still sharp. Always he had loved the look and feel of polished iron. Now he rubbed along his sleeve, momentarily wiping away fingerprints. "So," he said. "My suspicions were . . . misplaced."
"Yes."
"Often one imagines powerful enemies from far away. One imagines the governments and sorcerers of the world. Sometimes the truth is more . . . pedestrian."
"Yes."
"Sometimes there's a traitor close at hand."
"Yes."
"Tell me, are we coming to the border now? I'm afraid someone has telegraphed ahead."
"It is possible."
"Please, just one more question. What is the mood of the people on the train? I believe I can hear music playing."
Dr. Theodore grabbed hold of the brass rail that closed in the ornate upper bunk. He rubbed his mouth. "They are happy that a larger war has been averted. Our victory came so rapidly because of the attack on June the seventh. We have you to thank."
THEY WERE COMING INTO THE station. The half-moon was behind the mountain peaks. But in the secret world it shone in the cloudless sky above Christmas Hill. The snake was coming, winding down the pasture. Then it slowed as it reached the bottom and moved toward her. Miranda could see the burning fire, smell the stink of it, and she could hear the scream.
She stood in the open with her sword. Moonlight glinted on the snake's silver back. Close at hand, though, she could see it wasn't as big as she had feared. But it was breathing fire from its terrible mouth, and she found herself surrounded by a cloud of burning steam. Its eyes shone out of the fire, but she stood her ground.
In front of her it slowed now, stopped, raised itself up. She felt the burning on her skin. But as the head came swinging toward her, as the beast reached out to touch her with its claws, she saw the unprotected place on its pale belly. As it came down she struck the blade into its flesh, then jumped aside.
It wasn't finished. With a shrill whistle of rage, it raised itself up. So she hacked at it again and again while it poured out its smoke and steam. Blinded, she stabbed at it until the sword fell from her hand.
Then she was alone in the dark wood. The cold silver body lay inert. But she was burned and bleeding. She scarcely had the strength to limp away. Now more than ever it was important to find the ice house where Peter used to wait for her after school. Sometimes she stumbled on the rocks, scratched herself as she pressed through the brambles. But she recognized the contour of the ground, heard the murmur of the stream. She could see the little cottage up ahead, its windows glowing among the pine trees. How comfortable it looked as she crept toward it, holding her side! She felt drained and weak after the long dreaming, but as she came close she could see the glowing of the fire, and Ludu Rat-tooth was there, and Peter Gross, her friend. How strange he looked! How he had changed! He was a man now.
Peeking over the sill, she could just see the bed of quilts and blankets near the fire. She could scarcely hear the Gypsy's voice. "Shh, she's waking up." But she had one more task before she rested.
Inside the cottage, in the glow of the fire, they were trying to rouse her. They didn't know the danger, and so in the gray light of dawn she put out her claws. She moved down the slope toward the little stream. She jumped onto a log. She could still smell the blood of the hurt monkey, and she knew the fox could smell it, too. And so she slipped into a cleft between the branches and waited for him to come. With his bottle-brush tail and his curious, stiff-legged gait he ran up from the stream; his legs were black. He was a fast, vicious little creature, but even hurt she was still faster. She took him behind the head.
The fox was Ernest Dysart. Later the police would find him in the woods, mauled as if by an enormous animal. By that time, hours later, the cottage would be empty. Miranda Popescu and the others would have escaped into the safety of the deeper woods.
But with the sunlight streaking through the straight trunks of the pines, the white tyger crept up toward the house again.
For a while she stood guard under the windowsill, hearing the Gypsy girl inside. Ludu Rat-tooth—the little rat wouldn't dare to show her nose over the threshold. But the ape was there, lying on its back in a pile of black needles, its big eyes closed. It was de Graz's animal, the symbol of his house. Miranda didn't recognize it. But now she found herself overjoyed to see an insect on the monkey's long, pale lip, the prettiest bug in all the universe, she thought. Once she'd had him in a little box in tara mortilor. Now here he was again, with his flame-colored carapace and long head.
She put out her hand. The bug crept into her palm. Never had she felt so pleased to see a bug of any kind. It opened up its wings, revealing the blue shell underneath.
She brought it closer to her face. She yawned, then lay down in the underbrush below the sill. Hurt and exhausted, she closed her eyes, and then she was waking with a pain in her side.
And Peter was there with her, grown into a man—had it been five years for him? She was astonished by how happy she felt to find him sitting next to her among the quilts. Happy, shy, and awkward, because he looked so grown up, and because there was something in his face she didn't recognize. Doubtless he had lived through an ordeal, as she had. He would tell her about all of it. He would have stories to braid together with her story, and braiding them would make them stronger. He and she had come a long way from the woods along the Hoosick River where she'd last seen him in the snow.
Oh, but she was glad to see him, and she scrambled up to put her arms around his neck and hug him. He was about to say something, and she put her fingers to his lips, and at the same time she was squeezing him to see if he was real, squeezing his shoulder and arm until he winced. "Çela fait mal," he said.
His right hand was covered in a mass of bandages, which nevertheless were crusted and leaking. Ludu Rat-tooth was standing in the broken corner where the logs and shakes had fallen in, looking out at the sun in the long trees, the mist rising through the branches.
"Where have you been?" Peter asked in French, and again she put her fingers to his lips—she wanted him to talk to her in English.
She wanted to touch him and squeeze him, though she was exhausted, weak, with scratches and burns on her arms and hands. She pulled herself up so she could whisper in his ear, "I'm glad to see you."
He frowned.
"You know," she said, "it's not what it's cracked up to be, this princess thing."
She said this to let him know nothing had changed, at least as far as she was concerned. "It's amazing what you can tolerate," she said. "It's amazing what you can put up with.
"Especially with friends," she said when he said nothing, to let him know they could continue as before because nothing had changed. But he frowned and pulled his head away. He wasn't happy she had hugged him. He wasn't happy she was touching him now. And so she took her hand away. "How are you feeling?"
He shrugged.
"Where's Andromeda?" she asked.
He shrugged.
And she knew suddenly and with foreboding that it was stupid to imagine even for a moment nothing had changed.
Later, when she'd had time to think, she realized it was stupid to console yourself. Because nothing ever stays the same, and everything is always different, and Peter was different, and she herself was different, and everyone is simultaneously rushing toward someone and rushing away, especially people who care about each other after all. And the past drops away and has no meaning for the future, except for moments we look back and say, "Yes, I remember that." Or, "Yes, I felt that." Or, "I believed that." And those images of ourselves are bound to us as if through secret threads of glass.
But if we could forget our disappointment, and if there were something to shatter those tough, sharp threads, sever them, how happy we would be! And the past would recede from us, and we would turn from the people we have known and stumble forward, and meet them coming the other way.
The Tourmaline
IN BUCHAREST, AT TWILIGHT on the day Miranda woke, the Baroness Ceausescu read this opinion column in the Evenimentul Zilei:
TRAGEDY ABOARD THE HYDRA—The mystery has deepened surrounding the death of Theodore von Geiss und Ratisbon, the hereditary elector of that town. The facts are not at issue. He was found in his first-class sitting room, and the door was locked on the inside. Rather it is the mystery of what pushed this man, a rising star in German politics at one time, to suicide and despair. Doubtless he was aware that a warrant had been issued for his arrest, and the police w
ere prepared to take him into custody at the frontier. When discovered, he had opened his veins with a brass paper knife and could not be revived. But the deeper mystery remains: What is the identity of the corpse that was discovered in his garden in a shallow grave? And how was he able to slip away from the police, leaving two of them mortally wounded? And most of all: What of the presence of Princess Clara Brancoveanu on the same train, traveling with young Felix Ceausescu? They are expected to be met by cheering crowds, when the train crosses the Hungarian border as early as today. . . .
Since the night when she had seen her husband's ghost, the baroness imagined she had felt the unmediated pressure of the world. She imagined she had made decisions, put in motion chains of consequence whose effects now she was powerless to resist. She had scarcely left the People's Palace except to travel under guard to the National Theatre, where before small audiences she had sung a few songs, practiced a few moments, muttered a few spells. And if she had left her people delirious with rapture, she had not been satisfied—she was too old, too brittle to achieve what she most craved. It is difficult for any artist to survive an absence of twenty years—my dear!
But in her private struggle with the third act of The Tourmaline (or The White Tyger, as she sometimes called it), the baroness imagined she'd achieved a breakthrough. Of course it is when times are blackest that true worth shines through. Everyone knows that. And if after years of trying she had finally broken her husband's heart, what could it mean? Except that she was able to stand on her own feet for the first time since she'd been a child.
She stood in her husband's laboratory. No, he wouldn't be with her any more, strengthening her hand, showing her what to do. She had lit the lamp on Cleopatra's altar, and by its light she examined the newspaper article, where it continued:
. . . as early as today. What official reception they can expect from the German Authority, or from the white tyger of Pietrosul, fresh from her triumph on the boards of the National, is unclear. In the meantime there are rumored sightings near the capital of the woman who calls herself Miranda Popescu, and whose claims or pretended claims this paper continues to regard with grave suspicion. . . .