But now that light in her eyes had returned. She was floating once more through the rooms of their home, twirling around in her silk gowns, her arms outstretched to the sky, laughing, remarking on the beauty or uniqueness of things she had not noticed before. Her energy was contagious, unbounded, it rippled like wildfire. Thus, it was not long before the whole household came to expect Anton’s visits with equal enthusiasm, buzzing around him as if he was a central character in all their lives.
Not a week passed without an invitation to dinner or tea. The young man began looking forward to the freshly baked phyllo pastries stuffed with cheese or spinach or plums, something different each time, and the thirty-year-old brandy that had been placed on the bar cart in the library just before his arrival. He was flattered by the sound of young female voices, delicate like chimes, greeting him at the door, pleased at the way they all crammed into the car next to him on the way to a party as if he was already a part of the family.
From Despina’s father, Anton learned about world events, politics, and business. Art followed, along with a growing appreciation for the small luxuries that accompanied their way of life—crystal wine goblets and monogrammed silverware, the aromatic flavor of imported cigars, the exquisite feel of silk and linen suits that Despina showered him with despite his protests. He wore them when taking her to the opera or to the horse races on Sundays. He discovered how to augment his natural charm with studied finesse, how to kiss a woman’s gloved hand, looking her in the eye for just a brief moment, how to shake a man’s hand with confidence, how to speak in a way that commanded respect, admiration.
They quickly became the talk of the large Greek community in Bucharest, a vision of charm and elegance and undeniable beauty. In Anton’s presence, Despina flourished, becoming ever more radiant. As the weeks passed and they began spending more and more time together, she became certain of only one thing. The life she was destined for truly began that morning her father had sent her to the stationery store that Anton now owned, along with three others in some of the city’s most affluent sectors.
Many great pleasures had passed since. Many moments in time came and went, and the blissful ones far outweighed the disappointments that no lengthy marriage was immune to. And so they were the lucky ones, it seemed. But of all the memories they had built together, the one that Despina recalled with most vivid emotion was a day in the fall of 1935, when she and Anton emerged from the Patriarchal Cathedral on Mitropoly Hill, arm in arm. A photographer had waved for their attention—Look this way, the light is perfect, he’d said—struggling to break through the cheering crowd that lined the length of the stairs. Even now, when she studied the silver-framed photograph, her breath caught a little, not because of how striking they looked—she clad in an exquisite cream charmeuse gown, he in a crisp black tuxedo—but for what the lens had captured in their eyes on that day.
In their dining room, the pendulum struck slowly nine times as Despina took a sip of her coffee, barely noticing that it burned the roof of her mouth. Over his morning paper, Anton quirked an eyebrow at her, then set down the paper next to his plate.
“If only I was a mind reader,” he said, taking a bite of his toast.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” she replied softly.
“Tell me.”
“I don’t know, Anton. What if this is another . . .” She winced, hating to use this word. “Another failure?”
“Then we will try again,” Anton answered without hesitation, as if this was the only answer he could ever give.
She smiled faintly, feeling a little less anxious, grateful for his optimism. But she knew how hard this had been on him, too. She knew what was in his heart—that slight dullness in his eyes perceptible only to her—on those interminable afternoons when they found themselves in the company of her sisters and their parade of children. She almost suggested that they should forget the whole thing, stay home, make a fire. It looked as though it would snow again soon.
“Despina, look at me,” he said insistently. “Darling.”
“Anton,” she began, “Anton, I think—”
“We will not give up,” he interrupted her, and there was a sternness in his voice that she rarely heard. “We will not give up until you have decided that it’s enough. Which, knowing you, my beautiful and stubborn wife,” he added, chuckling softly, “means never.”
Tears flooded her eyes, and she shook her head, partly to curtail them, partly because she did not know what to say. What she wanted to do was fall into his arms right there at the breakfast table, kiss him fully on the mouth, but then she glanced at the clock. If they were going to do this at all, there was no time.
When he pulled out her chair and raised her hand to his lips, she interlaced her fingers through his, squeezed them tightly. There under her touch was all that was real and true, all that would still be hers no matter what fate had in store on this day.
3
THE CITY OF THEIR YOUTH flew by in a blur. There were the white peaks of the art deco buildings, the Telephone Palace that was Victoria Avenue’s crowning glory, Hotel Capitol with its delicate, belle epoque facade, where so many times they’d sipped frothy drinks on hot summer nights. No people in elegant garb graced its curved wrought-iron terrace, no lights in the vast windows came into sight, even the crisscrossing bridges bowing over the Dambovita looked as if they served no purpose at all. Soon the deserted avenue spilled into the city’s largest piazza, and the Royal Palace with its endless rows of windows came into view. At the gates, a handful of guards stood like wax figurines looking indifferently over the majestic square, where cobblestones once pounded by a thousand pedestrian feet shone pristinely under a fresh layer of snow.
Few words were exchanged with their driver. It was hardly possible to make small talk about the unspeakable things that had shaken the city to its core in recent days, though Anton attempted to break the silence once or twice, commenting on how his business had slowed to a crawl. “Who needs the trifles I sell at a time like this?” he said, and the driver turned to him slightly and nodded. In the backseat, Despina leaned her head against the cold glass, watching the huge, heavy flakes land on the windshield and shrivel into tiny stars. She wished all she’d seen with her own eyes could disappear like this, turn to water, evaporate from her consciousness.
Three days of massacre, with neighborhoods on fire, bodies lining the streets, broken windows and broken souls, women screaming, and the smell of burnt flesh. And men going missing in the night, flying off buildings with loaded guns at their backs, the sound of gunfire in Cismigiu Gardens. People had been marching in the streets with placards that read, Jews Are the Enemy and Solve the Jewish Problem. Many had painted Christian crosses on their front doors so their homes wouldn’t be vandalized, the facades desecrated. These were people she might have known, decent people, students and union workers, high school kids and gendarmes who had taken an oath to protect the citizens of Bucharest. And behind them, the mobs rallied with angry fists and angry voices, knowing that they were anonymous in their shared hatred. It had become nearly commonplace to see cars in flames in the middle of boulevards, to see men and women dragged into the streets, beaten, kicked with ferocity.
At night, the fury would subside, but the fear in people’s hearts would become most acute. They would shut their windows early, draw the curtains, lower the shutters. They would turn on their radios to drown out the world outside. They would talk casually about acquaintances and children or what they should have for supper, even though outside the Legionnaires, the Iron Guard, marched up and down streets with sharp bayonets pointing up to the sky.
Rumor had it that the Nazi-backed Romanian military arm known as the Death Squads were the most feared in all of Europe. Night after night, they patrolled the city’s quarters in their crisp green uniforms, bearing the triple cross emblem on their sleeves. From blocks away, one could hear the sound of their boots marching in perfect unison, their voices rising and falling together, humming their sinister
hymn:
Death, only a Legionnaire’s death,
Is our dearest wedding of weddings,
For the Holy Cross, for the country,
We defeat forests and conquer mountains.
Romanian people, Despina thought, had always been so spirited. But this was fueled by something else, something that her beloved country had embraced, something despicable that pulled at its heartstrings and slowly stole its soul. Hitler’s arm was reaching into the depths of Central and Eastern Europe, without a presence on the ground. Without a presence yet. The arm was extending its way, slowly grabbing the throat of the Romanian people.
It wasn’t long after the holidays that she’d witnessed it for the first time, returning home one afternoon with bags of groceries in hand. Most of the shops in her neighborhood had rolled down their shutters, afraid of the constant looting, and she had walked nearly two hours to find an open grocer that still stocked some essentials—flour, eggs, oil. On her way back, she felt tired dragging along the heavy bags and thought of a quicker way to get home, even though she had promised Anton that she would stick with the main boulevards and stay close to other pedestrians. But sooner than she imagined possible, she found herself in a maze of back streets covered in shattered glass and heaps of burnt rubble. Anton would have been out of his mind knowing that she had wandered through the plundered neighborhood unaccompanied, but she strode on, unafraid.
Soon she reached Negru Voda Boulevard, a quiet street lined with large, shady oaks a hundred years old. A benevolent district, where people once took their time greeting one another, smiling, and shaking hands as children chased one another around their parents’ legs. But on this day, Despina stopped at the corner and gasped, turning her face away.
The Cahal Grande, the synagogue that was one of the city’s oldest landmarks, was on fire. Legionnaires were dancing around the flames, roaring with joy, slapping one another’s backs. They had used a fuel tanker to spray the walls, and the temple had been scorched to the ground. Nothing remained of its ornate architecture. Not the menorahs or the old scriptures. Not even the lavatories.
There was pure pleasure on their faces, their gleeful smiles, illuminated, lengthened, grotesque in the flames of the burning building, as Despina stood there frozen, unable to take a step. One of them looked in her direction, measuring her with unconcealed appreciation, and gave her a lewd grin. Then he bowed to her, his arm sweeping low, almost touching the pavement. Despina turned away and broke into a near sprint, the frantic clicking of her heels echoing down the sidewalk. She was desperate to be home, desperate to shake the horror that had built in the pit of her stomach, the taste of bile that had risen in her throat. Even now, thinking of what she had seen made her shudder with disgust. And she wasn’t the only one. Of that she was certain.
Hitler himself, some said, was concerned about the violence that had erupted in Bucharest overnight with such vigor, threatening to boil out of control. He preferred a more tactical approach to the advancement of his visions, and civil war was certainly not what he had in mind for Romania. But the Legionnaires had sworn allegiance to Germany, to Hitler’s Fascist principles, and were willing to extinguish the lives of their very own people, their families and friends from childhood. And the good people of Bucharest, the mobs, followed in their wake, knowing they would be held to no account, cloaked in anonymity.
Despina was still deep in thought as the Buick stopped in front of a gloomy two-story building with patches of peeling stucco and cheap metal roofing. On the discolored stucco wall over the entrance, a dark blue placard indicated that they had reached their destination.
The driver came around to her side and opened the door, extending his gloved hand for her. Her heart fluttered as she stepped out and wrapped her coat tightly around her. They had waited so long for this visit, despite many attempts to get an audience with the institution’s director. It wasn’t until her cousin Maria intervened, practically begging for a single visit, that the gates finally opened to them. We are not in the business of peddling children was what she had been told. Their money will be of no use here. But then the little girl had arrived, and with the orphanage already at capacity and Maria’s incessant pleas, Mrs. Tudor finally agreed.
Maria, with her voice of silk and her saintly soul, was able to get them passage. Maria, who spent three days a week here bathing the children, serving their meals, shaving their heads, and healing their wounds, despite her husband’s protests, despite her friends’ puzzled glances, their incomprehension of her unwavering commitment. Why on earth does she do it? they would ask one another as they lunched on terraces and went to horse races and visited tailor shops and bought sweets for their children in pastry shops on the bustling Lipscani Boulevard. And what about her poor husband, his reputation? they commented, as Maria churned gruel and warmed water for baths and soothed the souls and bodies of children who belonged to no one.
Despina knew what lay in the hidden corridors of her cousin’s heart, her dearest friend, with whom she shared not only a striking physical resemblance but a bond that surpassed anything she felt for her sisters. She knew how Maria missed her own child, her only son, whom she had last seen when he was nine, lying in a hospital bed with typhus. The boy had gone so quickly she had barely had a moment to caress his trembling body, to soothe him with words of love in his final moments. It was because of him that she worked here, that she offered the remnants of her heart to these poor, lost children.
They would always have this in common, she and Maria, and with this last thought, she grabbed Anton’s hand bravely and led him through the wooden gate into this last realm of possibility, where their dream was not yet lost.
4
SHE PAUSED, ASSAULTED SUDDENLY BY a scent she couldn’t identify, something putrid that hit her straight on, like a fist. Garbage, she realized, leaning against the wall, suddenly weak in the knees, her heart beating too fast, as she took in the bleak surroundings of what was the playground of Saint Paul’s Orphanage. A metal bin rested in the center of the courtyard, next to an oak tree with barren branches raised imploringly toward the slate-colored sky. Running around it in a game of tag, dozens of children wearing the same shabby khaki uniforms squealed happily, as if the awful stench was no bother at all.
Covering her nose with the back of her hand, she inched forward, stepping unsteadily over the uneven grayish cobblestones, trying to fight off the apprehension that had suddenly overtaken her. Just looking at these poor children—all pale and runny-nosed, with their shaved heads and bruised knees, their vacant eyes—filled her with such sadness that all she wanted to do was flee. Why had they come here? What were they hoping to find in a place like this? Surely this was a mistake. A mistake, she wanted to whisper to Anton as she tugged on his arm. But when he turned to her, there was a smile playing on his face, as though he was observing children at play in a park on a sunny Sunday.
“Come, darling,” he said, looping his arm through hers. “It’s all right.”
Gently, he led her across the courtyard toward what appeared to be the main building. They were nearly there when a lanky boy of around ten sauntered up to them, spooling and unspooling a yo-yo with impressive ease.
“So you’re here for a tour of our lovely institution? To take a look at us kids?” he said, snapping his fingers shut around the wooden object. “I’m the best soccer player there is. And I can count change.”
Anton searched inside his coat pocket and extracted a bill. Without looking at it, he handed it to the boy, who yanked it greedily out of his hand. His eyes widened in surprise as he flipped it back and forth, trying to identify how much it was worth.
“Thank you, thank you, sir!” he said, bending down to stuff it inside his sock.
“Sure,” Anton replied cheerfully. “But can you do something for us, young man? Can you show us to the director’s office?”
“That won’t be necessary.” A thin, curt voice greeted them from behind.
They turned, a litt
le flustered to find themselves face-to-face with a wiry middle-aged woman with salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a severe bun and a gray woolen shawl covering her frail shoulders.
“I’ve been expecting you,” Mrs. Tudor said, examining the time on her wristwatch and abruptly shifting her gaze to Despina, who could not help but blush at the overt reprimand. “You must be Maria’s cousin.”
“Yes,” Anton replied cheerfully in place of his seemingly speechless wife. He shook the woman’s hand much too enthusiastically and felt a little embarrassed himself when she pulled it out of his grasp and placed it stiffly behind her back.
“Well, right this way, then,” the woman said, with a smile of forced courtesy that did not reach her eyes.
Through a dim corridor that smelled of ammonia and fresh paint, Mrs. Tudor led them at a clipped pace, not glancing back. A moment later, she ushered them into a tiny office, no bigger than a closet.
“Please, have a seat,” she said, indicating the chairs in front of her desk.
They sat, Anton taking off his gloves and leaning deeply into his chair, Despina perching on the edge of hers.
“First, I’d like to go over some facts,” said Mrs. Tudor firmly, half vanishing into her own seat behind a large wooden desk. She paused to push her oversize glasses higher onto her nose and flipped open a file. “The girl you are inquiring about . . . she is extremely withdrawn. As I’m sure you’ve heard from Maria, she was brought here in late January under unusual circumstances. Apparently, she was found in front of a residence on Dacia Boulevard by the building’s concierge. The woman took her in for the night and the next day brought her to the local police precinct, in the hope that someone might have inquired about her. It appeared that no one had, so the police brought her here.”
The Girl They Left Behind Page 2