Anton waved his hand in a don’t ask sort of gesture. “Business is practically nonexistent. Most days, I will have five, maybe six customers, just enough to keep the doors open. But what else can I do? That shop is my life, Victor. All in all, it still gives us enough income to live better than most. Once in a while, when there is a little extra cash in the register, I go to the speculators and get a little meat, some eggs. A luxury these days. And I thank God for it—”
“Anton,” Victor interrupted, “do you remember what we talked about the last time? The day you were released? You must be careful. Keep a low profile. Make do with what you have, and stay away from the speculators. Better to live on bread alone but to live free.”
“But there are other things as well, Victor. There are piano lessons for Natalia; they cost a small fortune, but she plays so beautifully now. And I still like to surprise Despina with something nice once it a while, so—”
“Anton, I’m afraid you are not listening.” Victor’s tone was suddenly impatient, clipped. “This is precisely why I stopped by. To tell you, to warn you . . .” He paused to clear his throat or maybe to find the best words. “There is a file on you with the police and at Party headquarters. An open file, Anton. No more piano lessons, no more trips to the speculators, no more presents. You have to be careful. Can you promise me that?”
“Sure, Victor,” he answered, looking into the flameless fireplace. “I understand. I thank you for all that you’ve done for us, but I don’t think you should worry.”
“Please, promise me, Anton. Give me your word that you will do as I ask.”
For a moment, only the sound of children outside was audible, a voice from a window calling their names. Victor looked suddenly drained, the sharp angles of his face sagging a little, making him look years older. Her father, too, looked crestfallen.
“You have my word,” he replied softly.
Victor nodded then, satisfied or relieved or maybe both. He placed the cigarette pack back in his pocket and reached for his hat at the edge of the sofa. There was something painstakingly slow in his movements, as if they required more energy than he possessed.
He can’t be leaving yet, he just got here, Natalia thought with a flurry of panic. But her father was already on his feet and coming up to Victor, holding his arms out. When they embraced, something passed between them, something so tangible that Natalia felt it from across the room. They stood like that for a while, motionless, with their dark heads bent together in silence.
“Take care of yourself, Anton,” Victor said, pulling back but keeping one hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Please give my love to Despina. Tell her I will never forget her lamb stew. Talia,” he called out, shifting his gaze abruptly in her direction, “look after your father here. Take care of him. He is the best man I’ve ever known.”
He looked straight at her when he said it. This time, she did not look to the ground, she did not look away, but she held his eyes, green and steadfast, a mirror of her own. A moment? A minute? How long was too long? She did not know. Something was dissolving in the pit of her stomach, a hot liquid spreading through her limbs like a poison.
Don’t go, she nearly blurted. Don’t leave. Can’t you see that he needs you? But the words wouldn’t leave her lips, and it came to her with a sobering jolt that Victor was leaving for the last time, that they would not see him again. She glimpsed this simple truth in the knowing smile that passed between him and her father as they walked toward the foyer, in the way Victor touched the rim of his hat with his index finger in the open doorway. She watched still the chiseled line of his shoulders as he turned and walked down the stone steps into a defiantly sunny October afternoon.
Please turn around, she prayed, please, but he did not—there was no wave good-bye, no last gesture, there was nothing at all. Leaning against the black-lacquered door, her hand grasping the edge with all its might, she listened to the sound of his steps on the pavement below until they faded away, until he rounded the corner and disappeared in the pedestrian crowd.
33
February 1954
“YOU LEFT THE FIRE ON all night?”
Squinting in the near darkness, Natalia sat up and tried to adjust her eyes. The fire had indeed all but gone out, the last of the flames lost in a bed of embers. It was cold already but not nearly as much as it would have been upstairs. Anyway, she loved sleeping down here on the sofa, surrounded by the maroon walls and the gleaming marble and the last of the fine valuables that for mere seconds, while the serenity of sleep seeped from her body, made her feel that everything wasn’t so different.
“You’ve just wasted three days’ worth of wood, do you realize that? Have I not asked you to put out the fire and go to bed?”
She sat up straight, and the woolen shawl Despina had knitted for her slid off her shoulders to reveal a wool cardigan, and underneath it a long flannel nightgown. She sighed, pushing her feet into her slippers.
“I’m sorry, Mama. I was reading and fell asleep. I’ll put on some tea.”
As she got up to go to the kitchen, rubbing her icy hands, she shot an involuntary look in the direction of the log basket. Fewer than a dozen, to be sure. And only February. At least they weren’t the only ones who would have to bridge the rest of the winter on a few pieces of wood.
In the first two weeks of the year, every store in Bucharest had run out of logs entirely. People took to chopping down trees in parks, on poorly lit streets in the middle of the night, before the police patrols arrived. All over town, men in overcoats were hauling their stolen tree branches through slush and snow, slithering along in the dark on icy sidewalks with ladders and axes, and all the trees in Bucharest were just barren stumps.
Her father simply did not have it in him to do it. “Trees have souls just like people,” he declared. “They do not deserve to share in our fate.”
Instead, he began chopping up furniture, one item at a time. First there were the chairs in the dining room, all ten of them, followed by Despina’s beloved Biedermeier table, which, in all its gleaming, majestic glory, had been the centerpiece of the household.
“We don’t need it anymore,” Despina professed, trying to keep her voice steady, her face indifferent. “This is not a time for dinner parties, and anyway, we only eat in the kitchen these days.”
That got them through the first two months of cold weather.
Next came the furniture in the bedrooms. Natalia’s delicate pale green armoire with brass knobs, the one she’d had since she was a little girl, was the first to go.
“It is too small for you now, Talia.” Her mother had tried to comfort her as her father lugged it down the service stairs and into the courtyard. “You can hang your dresses alongside mine.”
Natalia didn’t want to make much of a fuss, to remind her mother that it was the very first thing they’d bought for her when she came home from the orphanage. She did not want to complain that it still housed a few of her little-girl outfits, dresses of velvet and lace that she had not worn in years but still secretly rubbed against her cheek once in a while just to remember what they felt like.
The rest of the furniture came in quick succession: bookshelves, the art deco table in the entryway, the coat stand, Natalia’s desk with the old-fashioned Florentine frothiness that never looked more out of place in a barren room. She now did her homework in the kitchen by the stove. It was just as well, for it was the only warm place in the house, and besides, she lacked motivation to keep up with schoolwork. It seemed pointless to spend hours poring over geometry and physics and history when there was no food in their home and when most nights they slept with their coats on. When there was no hot water, no soap to wash with. Even the lights were automatically turned off at eight o’clock sharp, long before she had a chance to finish her daily assignments.
“You have to keep up with your studies so you can go to the university next year,” her father reminded her whenever he caught her daydreaming over her books. “It’s the onl
y chance you’ll have for a decent life. Knowledge is power, the only power that can set you free.”
“But Papa, you know that all I really want to do is play the piano, and the music conservatory won’t pay that much attention to my academic grades. Besides, they’ve changed the books, don’t you see? All the history books—math and science, even—have been altered. What is there for me to study? It’s all a lie!”
Every time, she regretted saying such things to him. After all he’d done to get her into a public school, he didn’t deserve it.
The year before, the Catholic school that Natalia had attended since she was seven was forced to close its doors. The nuns who taught there for decades had simply disappeared overnight. No one had any idea what had happened to them, but one thing was clear: they were disposed of without much fanfare or fuss. It was the same week the Ministry of Education announced that all students coming from private institutions—bourgeois children like herself—were permanently banned from attending public schools.
“What will we do?” mothers and fathers whispered as they waited for their children to be dismissed for the last time. “Are they to be left uneducated? Are they to beg in the streets for a living?”
In her own home, the same questions had bubbled endlessly from her parents’ lips. For six months, they went unanswered, as her father begged and pleaded and paid fines and offered bribes to get her into a school, any school at all, even one outside of Bucharest. The reply—on the rare occasions when he wasn’t actually hung up on—was always the same: Not a remote possibility, you might as well wish for the moon. Then, unexpectedly, the answer had changed.
It was precisely one week after she’d gone to the store to help out with inventory and found two empty glasses in the back room. Traces of brandy, thick as honey, still coated the bottoms as she brought them to the sink to rinse out. At the time, she’d thought nothing of it; people stopped by to see her father all the time, and he still greeted them in his usual fashion, no expense spared or effort forgone to make them feel welcome. Only a week later, when they received a letter from the Department of Education announcing that the ban on her public school attendance had been lifted, did she know undoubtedly whom her father had met with that afternoon.
It took her a couple of weeks after that to shake off the restlessness that had returned with a vengeance. She spent hours staring out the window or at a page in a book, unable to read any of it. Even her piano seemed to provide little solace, and shockingly enough, she found herself feeling a little bit jealous of her father, even though it was obvious that had it not been for her, the meeting might not have taken place at all. It faded in the end. There was nothing to hold on to, he was gone from their lives, and perhaps she was better off for it. She saw the whole thing now clearly, exactly for what it was, an unhealthy attachment to a man who would never see more in her than a little girl. Soon it was time to start her new school, and she never welcomed anything more fervently.
The first day was an overcast, muggy one, though for Natalia, everything was bathed in a pleasant light, brimming with new possibility. As she walked through the front gates, head held high, she vowed that this year would mark a new beginning, that she would work harder than ever and make the effort that was expected to her. She would rise to the occasion, for her father.
So absorbed she was that she barely took notice of the whispering voices growing in her wake, the bellow of laughter that erupted behind her as she passed the water cooler in the corridor, looking for her room number. It did not seem possible that she could be the subject of such amusement, for no one here knew her. No one knew her at all.
It was only when she paused in front of her classroom that an intense uneasiness settled on her like frost, a suspicion that this day might not go as she had imagined. Nervously, she straightened the red pioneer scarf that all students were required to wear and smoothed out her uniform skirt. Inhaling deeply, she opened the door.
The room was smaller than she expected and crammed to capacity with rows of desks that extended all the way to the back wall. A swirl of noise enveloped her—voices and laughter and the thump of books. But then someone whistled at the back of the room, and instantly the din ceased.
Breathless with emotion, she inched forward, trying not to look at the gaping faces and curious eyes fixed upon her. She stopped in the middle of the room, unsure of where to go, praying that the heavyset woman with a hard-edged face scribbling furiously on the blackboard would turn around and say something. When she did, Natalia attempted a weak smile.
“Your desk is over there,” the woman said curtly, without as much as an introduction, motioning with her chalk to a desk in the corner. “Yes, over there.”
Holding her book bag against her chest as if it offered some measure of protection, Natalia walked to her seat. A moment later, the second bell rang, and the entire class rose in unison.
“Good morning, class,” the woman uttered with a flat disinterest, huffing a little as she moved away from the blackboard and slumped down behind the podium desk. The back of her hand rose to her bleached hairline to sweep away a few beads of sweat, and Natalia couldn’t help noticing the stain in the shape of a half-moon that had formed under her arm.
“Good morning, Miss Tima,” the students answered lethargically.
“You may be seated.”
A rustling of pages followed. Someone belched and did not say excuse me. At the back of the room, a pencil was being tapped on the back of a book, as if in tune with a melody.
“We have a new student today,” Miss Tima said matter-of-factly, not looking up from the attendance ledger. “This is Natalia Goza. Natalia, please stand up.”
She stood timidly.
“Natalia has been granted permission to attend our school. Please come up to the front.”
She did as she was told.
“Natalia, before we begin our lesson today, I would like you to go around the room and pick up any trash that you see on the floor.”
Strange how she nearly burst into laughter despite the nausea that rose in her gut. Was this some kind of a joke? Was this supposed to be a comical introduction? Certainly, she had not heard this right, she had misunderstood.
“Go on, then, we don’t have all day,” Miss Tima said, gesturing to the room with visible boredom. “Go on and pick up the trash so we can get started.”
Still, Natalia did not move, staring with wide, uncomprehending eyes at Miss Tima, who clicked her tongue and shook her head disapprovingly.
“Yes, well, I see. We all see. A bourgeois princess like you doesn’t pick up trash, yes? You have someone else do it for you at home? Well, not here. Here you will be picking up the trash for the class.”
Lifting a ruler in her large hand, she began tapping it on the edge of the desk. “This is a perfect lesson for today,” she went on, addressing the class now, sweeping the wooden stick out as if she was waving it over an orchestra. “An exercise in equality. Miss Goza is about to understand that she is no better than anyone else in this room.”
It took all Natalia had not to run or to tell this rude woman to go to hell. To pick up her own trash or worse. But then she remembered her father’s face, how happy he’d looked earlier that morning, how proud he’d been that he could get her back into school. How could she run? How could she go home and tell him that all of his efforts had been in vain, that she had kicked away of her own will her only chance at an education?
Tears came fast, blurring her sight, making the room blend into a dance of shadows. She clenched her fists, her fingernails digging painfully into her palms. Then she did what she could hardly believe herself. Straightening her back, taking her time, she walked to the farthest end of the room and bent down. Crouching between the rows, she began picking up whatever she saw on the floor—bits of paper, a couple of broken pencils, a discarded bread crust that looked like it had been there for weeks. When she reached the front, she went down the next row and did the same.
Someo
ne laughed in the back of the classroom.
“Silence!” Miss Tima shrieked, slamming the ruler down on her desk with a force that made every shape in the room grow still. Then she went back to correcting her papers. She only looked up again when from the corner of her eye she spotted Natalia standing nearby, holding the trash bin in her quivering hands.
“Finished, then?” she said. “Good. Let’s begin our lesson. Natalia, you may return to your seat.”
Natalia thought she would never live past the shame that burned inside her when the next day, and the day after, she was asked to perform the same task. But to her own surprise, she did. The humiliation she had felt on that first day lost its bitter edge as she taught herself how to do whatever was asked of her with a blank mind and a blank heart, as she forced herself to feel nothing, to think nothing, to execute the task, get it done, today, tomorrow, survive. After a while, the students no longer snickered as she bent down by their desks to pick up their garbage. They no longer threw wads of paper at her as she slithered along, biting her lip, her eyes pinned on the classroom floor.
In time, Natalia was no longer an interesting diversion, a curiosity. She was just Natalia, the girl whose parents had been labeled class enemies, whose father had been labeled an exploiter of the people, bourgeois, a capitalist, and for whose sins his daughter would pay, at least every morning in this classroom before instruction began.
34
SHE DID NOT KNOW WHAT drew her with such force to Saint Paul’s Orphanage that afternoon. There was nothing in particular that she hoped to find. In fact, she was a little afraid of what she might discover there, what she might dig up. Nearly four years had passed since she had come across that letter in her father’s safe, and still she thought about it more often than she liked. She couldn’t remember how many nights she’d fallen asleep replaying those lines in her mind—those lines that wouldn’t give her peace.
I do not wish to disturb the life to which she has become accustomed.
The Girl They Left Behind Page 18