The Girl They Left Behind

by Roxanne Veletzos

  She cleared her throat and took a small sip of water from a glass on her desk. “At the time she arrived, the girl looked quite normal, well developed and functioning, but . . . she has not uttered a single word. We were assured she can indeed speak—somehow the concierge was able to extract not only her name but the month and day of her birthday—yet here she seems”—Ms. Tudor paused as if searching for the right phrase—“utterly absent. The only thing she shows any interest in is an old piano we have long retired into the storage room. She just sits up there and hammers away at the keys for hours on end, refusing sometimes to even come down for supper. Well . . .” She closed the file and pushed it somewhat impatiently off to the side. “Do you still wish to see her?”

  Mrs. Tudor wanted to get to the crux of the matter quickly. She was certain that once this couple took one look at the girl, their visit would come to an abrupt end. Certainly they wouldn’t want a scrawny little orphan, especially one who seemed trapped in a world of her own. People like them, with their expensive clothes and private car parked outside at the curb, had no idea what it took to take care of all these children, to manage a place like this. She could not help hiding her displeasure, her lips curling downward in silent contempt.

  “Yes, of course,” Despina replied, taking her by surprise. “We certainly do. Right, darling?”

  Anton nodded, displaying no other sign of emotion than his patient smile as he reached for her hand. It was all the reassurance she needed, and her gaze traveled back to Mrs. Tudor, boldly.

  “All right, then. If you are sure.” The director emphasized the word. “I think she should meet you, madam, first. Alone.”

  “Alone? But it isn’t my decision entirely. My husband—”

  “Yes, ma’am, alone would be best. After all the poor thing has been through, I think we will spare her the experience of being scrutinized en masse.”

  Already she was on her feet, holding the door open as if in challenge.

  “I will be right here,” Anton said, as Despina followed Mrs. Tudor hesitantly out of the room, looking back at him one last time. “After all, my love, it is your heart that will tell you all that you need to know.”

  In another unventilated room, Despina paced back and forth. Through a small barred window, she glanced at the courtyard below, noticing there were no children now. They must be back in the classrooms, she thought, then realized that most likely there were no classrooms in a place like this. There were no books, no toys, no games here. There was nothing but a great void of time that stretched on endlessly. Taking a breath, she sat on a child-size chair and waited.

  Some time passed—she had no idea how long—before the click of the door made her jump out of her reverie. “Come, come, dear,” she heard Mrs. Tudor say with surprising tenderness, as a tiny silhouette appeared in the doorway. The figure inched forward, crossing the threshold, guided from behind by Mrs. Tudor’s hands.

  The girl could not have been older than four, Despina realized; she barely reached to her waist. It wasn’t hard to see that despite the shaved head and dirt-streaked pallor, she was a pretty child. Her heart-shaped lips and high cheekbones—one of which was punctuated by a small, round beauty mark, like a period at the end of a sentence—gave her a delicate, doll-like appearance. And her eyes—Despina had never seen eyes like that. Deep mossy green, like a pond in the middle of summer.

  “Hello,” Despina said, smiling, rising in a fluster, nearly dropping her purse.

  In the long moment that followed, she felt herself trembling, and the very air around her grew still. It seemed like the most monumental few seconds of her life, yet nothing was happening at all. The girl would not even look up from the plank floor but rather stood there swaying, with a discomfort that was almost tangible, sniveling and wiping her nose with the back of her uniform sleeve.

  “Here, you might need this,” Despina managed. She reached inside her purse, rummaging to find her handkerchief. She held it out, and it hung uselessly, like a limp white flag, and eventually she lowered her hand. It might have been enough to discourage her, to provoke a look or a gesture that would have ended it all. Yet all she could do was stare at the tiny creature, as if everything else in the room had receded into a fog.

  But where was her Shirley Temple? Where was the child of her dreams, with bouncy blond curls and a smile that would light up a room? When they had decided to give adoption a try, that was what she had envisioned for herself. A little blond thing with round, ruby cheeks and dazzling blue eyes. A girl strangers would stop and smile at on the street, a vision of cherubic blondness and happy disposition. This girl resembled nothing of the sort. But something about her—this sickly, timid child who would not look her in the eyes—moved Despina in an inexplicable way.

  Reaching out once more, tentatively, so as not to startle her, Despina let her fingers trace over the girl’s shorn head. The girl flinched as if her touch had stung her, but a moment later, her striking green eyes drifted upward, shyly at first, then more boldly, meeting Despina’s tearful ones, full of recognition. Anton had been right after all. Her heart had spoken; it had spoken as loudly as the church bells that had begun to strike somewhere in the distance.

  For the next six weeks, Despina arrived at the orphanage well in advance of her appointed times. Mostly, she arrived alone, but when Anton could get away from the demands of the stores for a few hours, he came as well, and with the girl clamped firmly between them, they strolled to the neighboring park, just blocks away. In the wake of the violence, a somber peacefulness had settled over the city, and they could rest on a bench for a little while, share the fresh phyllo pastries that Despina had baked for the occasion the night before. Other times, they bought warm pretzels with poppy seeds from the street vendor at the park’s entrance. Every time, Despina brought along a new book to read. As they delved into fairy tales and legends, the girl sat with her head leaning on Despina’s shoulder, her hair now grown into a boyish pixie, the color of burnt copper. She did not speak, but Despina felt the need for words less and less. She was happy just to sit with her in Cismigiu Gardens, under the statues of famous poets and composers, and watch the swans glide across the lake. The days were becoming warmer, still crisp but with the sun comforting and soothing on their pale faces, and for a few brief moments, the devastation of the past winter seemed to belong to another world.

  Years later, long after the changes that would come, the losses and new beginnings that would redefine her life in ways she never imagined possible, Despina would always return to that park bench, where for a glimpse in time, she had felt utterly and undeniably content despite the war that was raging in Europe. She would never be far from that glorious afternoon when, holding the girl’s hand tightly in hers, she led her through the courtyard full of children and through the heavy wooden gates of Saint Paul’s Orphanage for the last time.

  5

  STEFAN WAS TRYING TO FIND the most reliable wavelength on the radio dial, but the voice of the male announcer faded in and out, and he could not make out the precise words. He put on his wire-rimmed glasses and smoothed a few blond strands across his forehead out of habit to conceal his prematurely receding hairline. At barely forty, he looked and felt older than his years, much older than his wife, Maria, who had managed to maintain her youthfulness and boundless energy at only five years his junior. Just now, she was buzzing around him with fervent energy, dusting the mantel, moving around the potted plants on the windowsill, and rearranging plates inside the china cabinet as if her very life depended on it.

  His wife had always been fastidious about her cleaning, but this had little to do with the house not being immaculate or objects not being in their proper place. She was doing it to keep busy and maintain some sense of normalcy, to focus on something other than the wretched sobs coming from the floor above. That woman’s cries penetrated right through their ceiling, through every crevice of their house, at all hours of the day.

  “How much longer will they be here?” Ma
ria asked, knowing already that it was futile to ask, that once more she would not receive an answer. “I cannot take it a moment longer, I tell you.”

  Stefan looked up from his radio and shook his head as if to say, Not now, we’ll talk about it later.

  Maria sighed and went back to wiping down the champagne flutes. In all the years they had been married, she had always bent to his will, letting him control all the important decisions concerning their lives. She trusted him implicitly, for if there was one thing she knew about her husband, it was that he was a man with exceptional intellect and impeccable morals. In their ten years of marriage, he had been entrusted with life-altering decisions by some of Bucharest’s most prominent families, who hired him to draft their wills and manage their investments and advise them in difficult personal matters. Each of their secrets he guarded faithfully, not simply because it was part of his job or because he was paid to do so but because he was a man of integrity.

  However, Maria was fearful that this particular decision had been made with uncharacteristic haste. These were unpredictable and dangerous times. Stefan, better than anyone, knew that. Still, despite her endless protests, despite the enormous risk they were taking with the woman carrying on like that just above their living room, he would not send them away. Even when the woman howled as if someone was tearing out her limbs one by one, Maria could not get him to agree that it was all too much, that she needed him to defer to her on this one occasion when she had made her wishes so vehemently known.

  “Please forgive me, Maria,” Stefan said, coming up behind her and rubbing her shoulders. “I’m doing all I can, every day. But you know I can’t put them out on the street. It would be like pulling the trigger myself.”

  She shook her head once more and closed the cabinet door softly. “I know,” she whispered against the glass. “But we can’t go on like this day after day. How much longer can they survive like this? No human being can live like that for long.”

  It had been difficult indeed to keep track of exactly how long the couple had been up there in the dark attic without fresh air, without bathing. There wasn’t much food to part with these days, and still, Maria did whatever she could. Most days, she managed to scrounge up some fresh bread and canned vegetables, some leftover casserole that she placed near the door, along with a carafe of cold water and an occasional bottle of wine which always went untouched. At least three weeks, she thought, this had gone on. Three weeks of living in fear, of arguments that had divided her and Stefan like never before, even as she understood herself that the whole thing was really out of his hands, that he could not have acted any differently. Even as deep down inside, she loved him for his courage.

  Days before, when the knock at the door had startled her out of a dead sleep, her first thought was that her husband was being called on to attend to some urgent legal matter. It would not have been the first time he’d been summoned in the middle of the night for a last-minute will revision, asked to come quickly for there wasn’t a moment to spare. And so she had been utterly surprised when she opened the front door and found herself face-to-face not with the son or wife of some elderly client but with a couple who could not have been older than their midtwenties.

  The woman was wearing no coat, only a thin cotton dress that was torn at the hem. It clung to her bare legs as the biting wind coiled around her slender figure, yet she made no effort to shield herself. At her side, a young blondish man was shivering in his shirtsleeves. His hands were caked in dirt, almost black, as if he had been stirring coals in a hearth.

  “We are so very sorry to barge in on you at this hour,” the man muttered softly. “I was hoping I might have a word with your husband, if he is still awake.”

  A car drove by, and Maria caught a better glimpse of the woman’s face in the passing headlights. She noticed the anguish etched in her delicate features, the dullness in her round eyes fixed in the middle distance on nothing at all.

  “Yes, of course.” Maria smiled unsurely, a tremor passing through her as well.

  Just then, Stefan appeared behind her in his flannel robe and slippers, adjusting his glasses. He squinted in the dim light, and a sudden pallor spread over his face.

  “Come in, please, come with me,” he said gravely, motioning for them to enter.

  As they moved timidly past her, Maria thought for a moment that she recognized the young man. He looked vaguely familiar, although she couldn’t quite place him. The woman, she was certain, she had never seen before tonight.

  “Maria, would you mind bringing some hot tea to the study, please?” Stefan said, interrupting her quizzical stare as he led them up the steps.

  She wanted to protest, to remind him that it was the middle of the night, but there was something in Stefan’s voice that told her this was not debatable. When she returned shortly with porcelain cups and a steaming pot of tea, Stefan did not open the door, despite her insistent knocks. It was only when she pried it open herself and peeked inside the dimly lit room that she understood that whatever was unfolding before her was not business as usual. The young woman was sunk in the brown leather chair next to the bookshelves, with her head in her hands, resting on her knees, and her long auburn hair hung almost grazing the floor. She did not look up when Maria entered and placed the tray on the desk.

  Later that night in her room, Maria could still hear their voices as she tried desperately to fall asleep. But sleep wouldn’t come. Hour after hour, endless thoughts raced through her head. She knew her husband had had to deal with many sensitive matters, to hide many truths under the veil of attorney-client privilege. But this she couldn’t fathom. Whatever was going on under her roof at this hour had nothing at all to do with his job.

  By the time Stefan had slipped into bed, the room was already bathed in the pink glow of early dawn. He made no particular effort to be quiet, for he guessed that Maria was still awake. Certainly, neither of them would get much sleep now.

  Turning toward her, realizing that she expected him to say something, Stefan whispered next to her pillow: “I cannot explain the reasons why I must do this, but please do not try to talk me out of it.”

  “At the very least, I deserve an explanation,” Maria muttered, her eyes fixed on a fissure in the crown molding over their bed. “Who are they? Why are they here, in our home, at this hour?”

  “I will tell you everything,” Stefan said. “I will tell you all there is very soon. But for now, I am asking you, I am begging you, Maria, please let me try to help them. I owe his father my life, do you understand? My life.”

  After an extended silence, during which Maria had not stirred or made a single gesture, he went on. “It will not be for long.” It took every bit of effort not to blurt out the truth to her, to relate all that he knew about that poor man’s family. But Stefan was certain that Maria had already figured out why the couple had shown up, looking the way they did, at half past midnight. “It’s just for a short while, and then I will find a place for them to go. We just have to keep them here for a few days, a couple of weeks at most, until things simmer down out there. Until all this craziness has passed.”

  Maria could no longer restrain the anxiety that had been bubbling in the pit of her stomach all night. “Are you mad?” she shouted. “Have you completely lost your senses? How can you promise them such a thing? Don’t you know that we will be arrested along with them, that we will be lined up against the wall and shot in the street, like stray dogs? Don’t you know what will happen to our family, to anyone who is close to us? What will happen to you? None of your clients will ever come near you again.”

  In all their years together, she had never spoken to him in such a tone, but it mattered little now, for she no longer wished to be the sensible one, the one who never raised her voice, who never lost her temper. She did not care if the couple hiding out in her home could hear her, if the neighbors could make out her every word.

  Stefan threw off the bedcovers and sprang out of bed. He began pacing the r
oom, his feet shuffling softly over the thick Turkish rug. For a while, he said nothing.

  “Listen, Maria,” he blurted suddenly. “Do you hear her crying? Do you know why she hasn’t stopped since the minute they got here?”

  Still, Maria was silent. She wasn’t going to give in to him this time.

  “Because they have had to leave their only child behind,” Stefan said slowly and evenly, delivering the one bit of information that he knew would change everything.

  She stared at him, her hand going up to her mouth, then dropping away. Tears filled her eyes, and Stefan knew what she was thinking, that she was remembering her own child, their lovely boy, whom neither of them would lay eyes on again. Flooded with a sadness of his own, he sat next to her and took her hand in his.

  “I will tell you, my darling,” he whispered in a strangled voice. “I will tell you everything, if you will let me.”

  She listened silently while the hazy mauve light of dawn sharpened the silhouettes of barren trees and frost-covered rooftops across the street. As Stefan revealed the events that had led the young couple to their home, she saw at last what was at stake and knew that nothing would deter him from the path he had chosen.

  6

  IT HAD BEGUN THE NIGHT before, just after supper, as the young couple was getting ready to turn in for the night. There were knocks at the door of their small flat. At first, the woman thought it might be the old lady next door looking to borrow something again. Some flour or a cup of sugar was the usual request, and she could never say no, even though money was scarce and they could barely make do with what they had themselves. It was late, and she figured if she did not answer, the old lady would eventually give up and go back to her apartment. But the knocks grew more insistent, until they could no longer be ignored. When at last she wrenched open the door, she was surprised to set eyes not on the woman next door but on a police officer in a dark trench coat and a cap pulled low over his brow.