The Girl They Left Behind

by Roxanne Veletzos

  For three days, the sleepless hours threaded together like beads on a string, and there was no longer a beginning or an end, there was only now. He was only dimly aware of the presence of people in the hospital corridor coming and going, the clink of the metal clipboard as it dropped in a slot at the foot of Natalia’s bed, the quiet drip of a fluid-filled bag attached to a metal pole, a sheer, frayed curtain billowing in the late-afternoon breeze. And silence. Long, interminable silence punctuated only by Despina’s sobs.

  Alongside his wife, in late evening, when the lights had been turned down and the hospital quieted, he found himself doing something he hadn’t done since he was a child. On his knees, he prayed for Natalia, and for himself and Despina, too, and soon an unknown calmness descended upon him and with it some kind of understanding that had until now eluded him. This was what it must have been like for them, too, the people who had given Natalia life, when she had been snatched from their hands. They were sharing a common fate. Even though he had never known them and never would, the magnitude of what they had done to save her, not once but twice, hit him straight on, and he grasped with a start that they would always be bound by a common love for her. It was not fear they should be regarded with but thankfulness for the gift of Natalia, for the gift of her life, and ultimately, for their sacrifice.

  Sometime later, as he sat in a corner of the room struggling to keep his eyes open, afraid that if he closed them for a moment, she would slip away, all of his life’s defining moments unfolded before him, and he welcomed them with a new reverence. Like a horde of boisterous children, they paraded one at a time, bearing reminders of all that he had once felt—happiness and love and passion and pride and possibility and, ultimately, the hope in him that would not be stifled.

  And then one searing memory:

  “So I am to live with you, then?”

  “Yes, sweet girl.”

  She clutched the doll to her chest and measured him from beneath her thick, dark lashes. Her green eyes gleamed like embers with relief and perhaps a little uncertainty. “For how long?”

  “Why, forever. We are to be a family.”

  “A family?”

  “Yes, a family. That means we will never part.”

  Her gaze traveled back to the doll. She ran her fingers over the long pale hair, the gold-threaded muslin dress, the smooth surface of the porcelain skin. When she looked up at last, a smile like one he had never seen lighted her face.

  “And so I shall never leave you,” she had said.

  The next morning, when Dr. Vladimir returned, holding his chart rigidly against his chest, the image before him made such an impression that without a word, he turned around and walked out of the room. For how could he have disturbed what unfolded before him? It was a miracle, indeed, one for which he himself had not dared hope. Yet there they were, at the foot of the hospital bed, the three of them in an unflinching embrace. It reminded him of something he had seen once that had stirred him deeply: a three-budded rose had sprung back to life among a tumble of weeds over a forgotten grave.

  Two

  NATALIA

  24

  September 1944

  THE CROWD MOVED AND SWELLED like a tidal wave, restricting the air between them. Inch by inch, the mob pushed forward, toward the roped wire that the police had put up to constrain the thousands of bystanders and keep them from spilling out onto the boulevard. To get home from here, they would have to reach the other side of the plaza, then take one of the side streets that radiated from its center like spokes on a bicycle wheel. An impossibility.

  The smell of whiskey and cheap women’s perfume wafted toward Natalia in a sickening swirl as she held on steadfastly to her father’s hand. She buried her nose in the edge of his jacket and nearly tumbled forward as a heavyset woman shoved her absentmindedly from behind. Struggling to get past them, elbowing her way further into the crowd, the woman shaded her eyes with one hand while with the other she loosened the scarf tied under her chin and began waving it in the air.

  A second surge of cheering erupted like an avalanche, and the bodies began to push forward with renewed force.

  “Papa, I’m scared,” Natalia whimpered, tugging on her father’s sleeve. “Papa!”

  “Don’t be, darling.”

  His arms were sturdy enough that they could easily lift her onto his shoulders, where she felt safe. Safe and not nearly as frightened, for all she could glimpse now was a sea of handkerchiefs and hats and tiny flags flapping and twirling—until only a moment later, she followed the direction of the faces in the crowd, and she gasped.

  They were smaller than she had imagined them to be. No bigger, really, than the armament trucks she’d seen bumping along the country roads. Motorcars flanked them on either side as they rolled down the center of the thoroughfare like a colony of centipedes, metal grinding the asphalt, flattening the littered debris in their way. On the platforms, hundreds of soldiers in green uniforms—packed so closely together that some could only hold on to the bars with one hand—waved their starred caps to the roaring crowd.

  “It’s over, the war is over!” someone shouted, and the excitement spread and rippled, carrying the crowd forward another pace.

  A few women had brought baskets of flowers, roses and gardenias and lilies freshly plucked from their gardens, which they began tossing one at a time in the path of the tanks. A girl of barely twenty broke free from the barricade and knelt in the street, lowering her forehead to the ground. When she looked up again, her eyes glistened with tears.

  Natalia looked down at her father for a sign that maybe they, too, should be weeping, or at the very least shouting out a cheer, but his face was a mask, betraying nothing. He brought her back down to the ground and clasped her hand tightly; then he began leading her through the mass, carving a path in the opposite direction. They were like a great big warship bucking the tide of cheering men and women and wailing, terrified children.

  On the other side of the strangulated plaza, they cut briskly into a backstreet. A few vehicles with windows down lay abandoned at odd angles in the street, as if their passengers had run from a fire. Though it was relatively peaceful there, they still hurried along toward the end of the block, for that could change at any moment.

  “Natalia, do not believe everything you see,” her father said when they were out of earshot of any pedestrians. He paused momentarily as they walked past a dingy café with dirt-streaked windows in front of which three men were swaying arm in arm, singing a drunken tune. Bending down to her, he whispered, “Sometimes the truth is not altogether what it seems.”

  What do you mean? she was about to ask, but his eyes were pinned to the street, glancing up just long enough to check the street signs before they crossed. Perhaps he was trying to figure out a way to get home from here, now that they had gone in the other direction from the plaza. To get to the next main artery, they would have to cross over a maze of side streets and alleyways. They could hope there would be a bus or trolley of some kind.

  Usually, she did not mind taking long walks with her father. It was the one time when his attention was undividedly hers and she could share with him whatever was on her mind. But today her father was not at all interested in her stories.

  He had been like that a lot lately, practically since her return from the hospital. Gone was his usual buoyant energy, the mischievous glimmer in his eyes as if every moment had been created for his enjoyment. Gone was the man who liked surrounding himself with people at all hours of the day. Even on the occasional evening when an old friend dropped by, he seemed eager for the visit to end so he could go upstairs and listen to the news. Mostly, he hung about just long enough to exchange pleasantries before excusing himself, complaining of a headache or some other ailment.

  Maybe it was all the same, for even though the war had ended in Romania, their home was still as quiet as it had been during the bombings. Schools were to reopen soon, and all over town, lights had begun twinkling again—however timid
ly—in storefronts, in windows, but Despina’s sisters and children had not yet returned to the city. Only Maria and Stefan still came by from time to time, but they never stayed long.

  Natalia was puzzled by the chillier relations between her mother and Maria. Before the war, they had never spent more than a couple of days apart. But now Maria’s visits were short. She seemed rushed, almost uncomfortable to settle in for long or delve into a conversation of any length. Usually, she left as quickly as she came, giving Natalia a quick peck on the cheek and a glance at her mother that spoke of something she did not understand. The air felt thick between them.

  And Victor? The last time Natalia recalled seeing him was at Lake Baneasa, before the bombing that destroyed their summer house. The four of them were going to have a picnic by the shore, and she remembered how wonderful the sun felt after the long winter, how the scent of honeysuckle and lilac had enveloped her so sweetly. She had insisted on carrying the basket of sandwiches, and Victor followed her with a blanket and a bottle of wine, some plates rattling inside a matching basket. At the back gate, she’d paused, waiting for him to open it. “Bet you can’t catch me!” she had shrieked, and bolted down the hillside through the tall, untamed grass.

  He had run after her, so closely that she was sure he would beat her this time. But as usual, he did not. It was hard to imagine that all that remained of those days would now be contained in a handful of photographs on her mother’s mantel. Just recently, she had heard her father say he wanted to level the ground and put the lot up for sale.

  “Papa, are you sad because Victor hasn’t come around in a while?” she found the courage to ask.

  Her father slowed his step a little, surprised, it seemed, by the question or perhaps contemplating this very thing himself. “Well, you know he’s busy, Talia. He has a job now and probably not much time for social visits.”

  “Victor has a job? What job?”

  He shrugged. “He works for the Ministry of the Interior, that’s all I know.”

  “Is that why he moved out of the loft?”

  “Probably,” he said, and something passed over his face, something that might have been melancholy or pride. “That place up there is hardly deserving of him now, you know.”

  It was clear he did not want to discuss it further, for he picked up the pace, and they continued in silence, weaving through the maze of honking automobiles and people hooting out of their car windows and from the balconies above. They had not been able to find a bus, and it was nearly nightfall when they reached home.

  Alone in the parlor later that night, Natalia sat at her piano and dove distractedly into a Beethoven sonata, her eyes fixed dreamily on the window, beyond which there was now only a patch of black. The room was imbued with the smell of gardenias her mother had plucked from their garden just that afternoon, and she inhaled deeply, feeling the knot in her belly loosen a little but not all the way. Even here within the walls of her home, she was haunted by a feeling she couldn’t explain, a tilt of reality that deeply unsettled her.

  What was it about her parents these days? She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Sometimes she felt as if she was living with a lesser version of the people she once knew so well. Unlike her father, who had succumbed to a fog of glumness, her mother fluttered about as if nothing had happened at all, as if their lives had not been in the least interrupted by war and illness and fallen bombs and now by the Red Army that was marching down the city’s main boulevards.

  Every morning, she appeared at the breakfast table in one of her silk dresses or peplum suits, her hair in her signature French twist. As she had done every morning before the war, she sipped her coffee on the terrace, straight-backed and unflinching, gazing down at the traffic below, the trolleys and tramcars that had just begun running again. Few people would have guessed that she brewed her own coffee now and prepared their breakfast. That she washed towels and sheets, leaning over the tub in the evenings, wiping the sweat from her forehead with soapy, reddened hands. That she mended the drapes and restored the gleam of the fireplace, scrubbing soot from every nook and crevice of their home.

  Ever since Sofia had left them, she had done it all single-handedly.

  It was ironic, really, that after being with them through the worst of the war, through the darkest days of the bombing, they would lose her now, of all times. But this year, Sofia had turned seventy and decided that it was time to return to her native village near the Hungarian border, to her roots and her grandchildren who were now fully grown.

  “I want to spend my last days on the soil from which I’ve sprung, Miss Despina,” she had said, and Despina had pleaded and offered her a raise, offered her anything to stay, but in the end let her go.

  From her bedroom window, Natalia had watched them say their farewells as the rays of dawn shone over the rooftops on that Sunday morning. Even after the cab that was to take Sofia to the train station was gone, her parents stood outside in their slippers and house robes, holding on to each other under the lamppost, and Natalia was reminded of another time, another cab ride that took her and her mother from the burning city.

  After Sofia’s departure, her mother took all matters of the household into her own hands with the zest of a conquering army.

  “Get someone else to help,” her father kept telling her, but she would not. Her mother was loyal to Sofia even in her absence.

  “I can manage, Anton, don’t worry.”

  She had begun making peach and cherry marmalades and pickling red peppers, tomatoes, and onions. She prepared their meals, taking great pleasure, it seemed, in her old culinary skills, and their cellar was stocked again with hundreds of jars of homemade zacusca and eggplant spread and tarama—all labeled and dated in her sharp, determined handwriting. To Natalia, it looked as though she was preparing for another war.

  And Natalia had had enough of war.

  All she wanted to do was to open her arms to the sky, to breathe, to feel alive. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she woke up not feeling afraid of sirens and bombs, of the growl of fighter planes strafing the rooftops. She could step out onto the terrace and breathe in the morning air. She could wear her pretty dresses again, without fearing they would get soiled in a cloud of ash. She could stroll past the storefronts which had just opened again, to the pharmacy around the corner which still stocked a dozen or so shades of lipstick. The lady clerk pretended not to notice as she tried the samples, pursing her lips secretively in the counter mirror, and only smiled a little whenever she caught her eye. “Give your father my best,” she would tell her on her way out the door. But nowadays her father had little interest in his old acquaintances, little interest in anything other than the presence of Russian tanks on the streets of Bucharest.

  “The Soviets have just negotiated an armistice granting them military command of the country,” he informed them one night at dinner, barely taking the time to fold the napkin onto his lap. “We are under their control, Despina, by force, by orders of Moscow. Are you aware what this means?”

  Natalia put her fork down, suddenly not hungry. She wanted to run out of the room so she wouldn’t have to hear this all over again.

  “Oh, Papa!” she blurted out before she could hold herself back. “Why can’t you stop talking about this? The Soviets, the Soviets, why does it matter so much?”

  The look he gave her made her wish that she could push the words back into her mouth, though she wasn’t quite sure what she’d done wrong. Wasn’t he the one who always encouraged her to speak her mind, to not hold back her opinions? Yet there was no praise in his eyes now, only shock. Her mother, too, was regarding her wide-eyed, the forkful of food in her hand hovering over her plate.

  “And how much exactly do you think that you know about all this, Talia?”

  “I know enough,” she replied. “I know that people are dancing in the streets and draping garlands around their necks and greeting them with fresh bread and flowers. So whatever it is that they are
doing here, it can’t be all that bad.”

  The silence was heavy and seemingly endless.

  When he spoke again, his voice had dropped to a whisper. “You are excused, Natalia,” he said somberly, rising from the table to pour himself a drink.

  A knot formed in Natalia’s throat. She swallowed hard against it. Don’t be angry with me, she wanted to say. Be happy. The war is over. Why can’t you be happy? But this time, no words came. Instead, she stood from the table, pushed her own chair out, and left the room without saying another word.

  25

  November 1948

  WINTER ARRIVED MUCH TOO EARLY that year. Christmas was still seven weeks away, but it had already begun snowing, the days short and desperate, icicles glistening under roof eaves like broken daggers in the bleak light of the midday sun. In Palace Square, the bronze statue of King Carol I was toppled in front of a crowd of bewildered bystanders. As half a dozen tanks smashed mercilessly into the pedestal, a shout of outrage cut through the mass of people; it was joined by another, then another still, until all voices intermingled and rose like a great billow of smoke over the square. It wasn’t until a militiaman fired a warning shot into the air that the chorus subsided and people began dispersing in clusters, bracing silently against the bone-shattering chill.

  A new border stretched over the continent. A wall of barbed wire, behind which all the grand cities of Eastern and Central Europe found themselves hostage, ruled by checkpoints, guarded by watchdogs and Soviet armored tanks. In Bucharest, all the country’s former leaders and members of the Royal Parliament had been arrested or imprisoned, some sent to work in forced-labor camps in remote Siberia. Many had vanished overnight without explanation. The winter before, King Michael himself had been forced to abdicate at gunpoint after the Royal Palace was surrounded by army units sent by Stalin. It hadn’t been only him facing the end of the barrel; if he refused, he was warned, one thousand arrested students would die, and the bloodbath would not end there. Thus, he’d signed the decree, and in a matter of minutes, the last surviving monarchy in the Balkans was no longer.