by Bel Mooney
Ion shook his head.
‘Well, they probably pushed her around a bit to frighten her, and make her tell them the names of people who come to their flat for these meetings. Then I imagine they had Maryon’s father picked up at work and brought back. They probably told him they’d beat up his wife and son unless he told them names. Then I expect they took him away.’
Ion was staring at her in horror. ‘But Daniel said his father …’
‘Oh, don’t talk to me about those people. You’re so stupid, Ion! It’s obvious Mr Corianu is a good party member. I wouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t paid by Securitate. I’m just surprised Maryon told Daniel anything.’
‘He admires Daniel,’ Ion explained in a small voice, ‘and he wanted to get him back as a friend.’
‘Well, he’s paid the price for that,’ she said harshly. ‘Now his father will probably be tortured, and sent to prison for years. As for Maryon and his mother, God knows what will happen to them, or where they’ll go …’
‘Please don’t, Mama. Don’t say it.’
‘I will! You’ve got to know the truth, Ion. These things happen all the time in this wonderful country of yours, all in the name of the man your teacher calls your father.’ She spat the last word out contemptuously. Yet even as I say that to you. Ion, I’m afraid. One day soon, because of some childish need to be friends with this boy or that girl, or to please the Principal, will you tell them that your own mother said bad things about the President? Will you inform on ME, Ion, and then weep because you didn’t realize what would happen?
Crying quietly, Ion ran from the room, and Ana let him go. For a long time she sat amid the dirty plates, staring straight ahead. Then she rose and went to his bedroom.
Ion had put himself to bed, and lay huddled, red-rimmed eyes peeping over the bedclothes. She sat down, and rested a hand on his shoulder. A great shudder went through him, and he withdrew his head like a tortoise.
‘Come out, Ionica. I want to talk to you. Come on … I’m not angry any more.’
Slowly the dark head and huge dark eyes appeared once more. But he said nothing.
‘Ion, it’s over now. There’s nothing you can do. But I want you to make me a promise – will you?’
He nodded.
‘You must promise me never to do anything like that again. I can’t make you stop playing with Daniel Carianu …’
‘I hate him now!’ said the muffled voice.
‘… well, it might be different in school – wait and see. I think he’s not a nice boy, and you must be sure not to tell him anything. Do you hear me, Ion?’
‘Yes, Mama.’
She sat in silence for a while, looking down at her son’s shape, curled so he looked even smaller and more vulnerable than ever.
And the little white naked sinners were pulled down into the maw of hell, because they had done wrong too. What is there to do but pity them? Was it wilful evil that they did? Or were they just infected with an evil which blew up at them from the gutters, entering their lungs, their blood stream, so there was no escape? You were right, Tată. This is hell. We do not have to wait for the Day of Judgement…
She stroked Ion’s head. His eyes closed, and he put his thumb in his mouth as he used to when he was a small boy. Ana felt her heart contract as she bent to kiss him. ‘Good night, Ion. And … let’s forget about today, shall we?’ He nodded, without opening his eyes.
When Ana returned to the sitting room she cleared the plates, washed up in cold water, then took her place once more at a table empty but for the precious bar of chocolate, still untouched on its plate. She stared at it. Oh please God, give me strength. Help me to do what I know I must do. I don’t know how or when, but the time will come. It must come …
Ana had never practised her faith. Susanna Popescu had taught her to kiss the icons, but Stelian’s interest in churches was solely historic and aesthetic; once his wife was dead he did not encourage Ana to attend services. And yet she could not suppress the prayer that rose in her mind now, with an intensity, a fixity of purpose which frightened her. Please help me. Please give me the strength.
In any case, the sacrifices had already begun. They would go on, she knew that, even if she had to starve herself. Ana rose and went for her handbag. She took out the dollars she had made that day, and unlocked the little drawer where she kept the rest. She counted her money with concentration, willing it to double in amount. Then she took the bar of chocolate and put it in her bag, ready to sell tomorrow.
Seven
Radu Kessler filled the tiny hall, enveloping Ana, then sweeping up Ion, despite his hesitancy. ‘He’s shy, Ana! And of me! Listen, my little friend, when you were a baby I fed you and washed you. You can’t be shy of your Uncle Radu!’
‘It’s so long since he saw you,’ Ana said.
‘You should come to visit us in Timişoara, Ana. Doina said to me as I left I must be sure and reproach you for neglecting us.’
She shrugged. ‘The money …’ He nodded and hugged her again. Then they stood for a few minutes, simply looking at each other, with the grave, questioning familiarity of very old friends who wonder, when meeting after a long time, if the other has changed in that interval, and why.
‘You seem … different, Radu,’ said Ana, when she had served him tea. He was restless, hands and feet moving even when he was seated, as if even his huge frame was too small to contain his boundless energy. And from time to time he glanced at Ion, who sat near his feet, almost impatiently, as if he wished he were not there.
‘There’s a lot to tell you, Ana,’ he said.
‘Have you been painting?’
‘Ha!’ The cry of derision made Ion jump. ‘Christ, what with? I haven’t been able to buy paint for six months. But I have been experimenting.’
‘How?’
‘With sand, and earth too. Mixing it with glue, and making pictures on board. There’s wood too – all texture, you know? But you wouldn’t like these pictures, Ana. They’re all of walls, walls of mud, stretching to infinity – all monochrome.’
‘No green?’ she asked, glancing up at her painting, Ion’s painting.
‘I will paint like that again, and sooner than perhaps … Oh, I have so much to tell you, Ana.’ The last words shot out with urgency. He fingered his beard nervously, glanced down at Ion once more, then met her eyes. She understood.
When Ion had been sent outside to play, Radu turned to her and gripped her arm. His eyes shone. He spoke in a hoarse whisper. ‘Ana, I had to come and tell you. I am leaving. At last I’m getting out!’
‘You got your passport?’
‘No, no, of course not. We gave up hoping years ago, as you did. No, I…’ He glanced around, suddenly fearful.
‘The walls are very thin. Let’s talk in English, Radu, like we used to,’ said Ana.
‘OK, if it doesn’t slow me up too much,’ he grinned.
‘So tell me the story – come on, Radu!’ To her surprise, Ana found she was trembling.
‘Doina has agreed. And then later she’ll follow me, if they let her. I’ve got this contact in Germany – it’s a long story, too long – but he’s a very distant cousin of mine. Anyway, we’ve worked it all out, and he’s getting me a false passport – a German one, of course. He’ll drive to the border and meet me …’
‘So you’ll cross – where?’
‘Moldova Nouă.’
‘But Radu – what if you’re caught?’
He flicked his huge hand at her, and grinned derisively. ‘Ana, my oldest friend, do you think, after all these years, I’m even going to think about that? This is my chance and I’m taking it – God knows I’d rather be shot than go on living in this pigshit hellhole.’
‘It’s not being shot that would worry me, it’s getting caught, Radu.’
‘OK, so they beat me up and put me in prison. I’ve been beaten up before, Ana! And do we go on, staying here in prison all our lives, without even trying? Not any more. A beetle has more coura
ge, crossing this floor, than all the Romanian people put together – who go on putting up with it all. With Him. Anyway, it’s all worked out – the route, and everything. The less you know about it the better, Ana, but believe me, I’ll succeed. I feel it inside me, and so does Doina …’
‘You can leave her … someone you love so much?’ Ana was chewing her nail, looking at the floor, as she asked.
Radu did not hesitate. ‘Yes, Ana, I can. I can! We both know the risk, and she understands. If I don’t take this chance I’ll be half a person, and she doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want to live with a cripple – someone who’s been given the chance to save his soul, and said no to it!’
‘So you’re saying that saving your soul, as you put it, setting yourself free, is more important than love, even?’
He paused, and met her eyes. Something in her voice disturbed him. ‘Why do you ask me that, Ana? After all our talks in the old days, I’d have thought you’d have been glad for me.’
‘I am, Radu. It just seems important to work these things out. To decide what really matters. What sacrifices are worth making …’
He interrupted. ‘Yes, that’s it. I suppose I’d say that you have to be prepared to sacrifice everything – like, like Christ himself. Or rather like God, I suppose – if you believe all that.’
‘Who so loved the world that he gave his son,’ Ana murmured.
‘Exactly. Oh, look, Ana, it all sounds confused, but it’s so clear to me, like the colours I used to see in my imagination, and try to put on canvas. As clear as your little Ion’s cries when he used to wake with cold, do you remember?’
She nodded. ‘I’ll never forget, Radu. You and Doina were so good to us. Without you …’
Impatient, Radu broke into his own language. ‘Enough of that. I’m not interested in gratitude, Ana. It seems to me a petty, miserable sort of emotion. I’ve always acted because I believed in what I did, and so in a way I do everything for myself. Isn’t that true? Isn’t it honest? You came to live with us because we’d been at school together, and then university, and I loved you like a sister. So I wanted you and Ion to be with us, after that miserable cow of an aunt of yours threw you out. And then, you know, when you and Doina started to quarrel I knew it wasn’t working, so I helped you move to Bucharest. I wanted that too, for the sake of my marriage, and so I was acting for myself again. And now, God knows, I want to get out, and that seems more important to me than anything. Anything at all! You might look at me with those great sad eyes of yours and tell me I’m being selfish, but I tell you, it’s gone beyond such simple-minded judgements. In here’ – he thumped his chest – ‘is the free spirit of a free man, Ana, and at last I am going to open the door for him. I’ll go to Germany and I’ll paint again, and those bastards in the Artists’ Union can go and fuck themselves.’
‘Where will you go?’
He spoke English again. ‘From Belgrade to Frankfurt – this guy will do it all, get me the passport and get me on the plane. Then at Frankfurt I give myself up – chuck the passport away, it’ll get me through Belgrade but not Frankfurt – and ask for asylum.’
Suddenly Ana laughed, a terrifying sense of purpose rising and swelling within her. In that instant she had the dizzy sense of teetering alone on the edge of a vast cliff, with sea birds crying in the air all around her, a swirling emptiness at her feet. Alone. Dare I do it? Leap forward into that space? Please, God, remove this decision from me, and push! Push hard. And help me, help me.
‘Something the matter, Anina? You look very strange. Hey, I’ve been talking too much, and haven’t asked you about what’s been happening to you.’
‘Frankfurt. You say Frankfurt?’ She stared at him, eyes hard and bright, hands clasped in a ball in her lap, so that the knuckles were white. He nodded, puzzled.
‘Radu … I wonder if…’
‘What, Ana?’
‘Would you do something for me, something more important than anything anyone has ever asked you to do before? Would you do something that would prove that you’re not in fact as selfish as you say you are? Will you help me once again, as you helped me when Ion was inside me, and you knew you couldn’t abandon us both? Oh Radu, will you?’ A sob rose in her throat, distorting the last word.
He stared at her in amazement. ‘Sweet Christ, Ana, what is it? What do you want me to do?’
There was a silence, broken only by the rasping sound of dry skin as Ana’s hands twisted in her lap. ‘Take Ionica out with you,’ she whispered at last. ‘Open that door for him, too.’
‘Ana, you can’t be serious! You can’t mean that!’
She began talking rapidly, like someone who has rehearsed a long speech over and over inside her head, and is now afraid of forgetting it. ‘I know it seems terrible to you, a dreadful thing for a mother to say. But I can’t bear to think of him growing up here any more, Radu. Something happened … Oh, I’ll tell you later. It just made me feel that my child would stop being my child very soon. That I might look into his bedroom one morning and see a monster in that little bed, a creature I wouldn’t want to acknowledge as my own, even if I still loved him. And you said it, Radu! You said that you have to be prepared to make the biggest sacrifice, like God himself!’
‘I didn’t mean …’
‘Never mind what you meant. I understand better than you think. And don’t worry, you didn’t put the idea in my mind. It’s been nagging away at me – ever since I read an article in one of the British newspapers at work. It was about child refugees travelling alone’ – she searched for the word – ‘unaccompanied – to the West. A lot of them come from Africa, of course … Anyway, the article said that in Germany the law says an unaccompanied refugee child must be taken in by the state. No visa, nothing. They don’t get sent back, you understand? If a parent arrives with a child they have to wait, and go through all the business – to see if they will be allowed to stay. And they may be sent back. But if a child is on his own they look after him, Radu – they give him a chance! That’s what I read.’
‘But Ion? You want to do that to Ion?’
‘I want to do it FOR Ion! Don’t you understand? When he was a baby we used to walk together by the canal when Doina was at the school, and make each other miserable talking about the life he would have. And then, ten years ago, it was better than it is now!’
‘I remember. But…’
‘And each day I watch him and I think I see changes. It drives me mad, imagining, wondering what people are saying to him. He sits there humming those awful songs they teach them, and then … oh, there’s a boy at school he’s friendly with …’
She told him about Daniel Corianu and Maryon. Radu nodded quietly, never shifting his eyes from her face. She had stopped twisting her hands now and seemed quite calm, almost relieved.
‘Ana, I can understand what you are saying. But I can’t believe you’re prepared to say goodbye to your son. You’re crazy about him!’
‘Yet you can leave Doina?’
‘It’s different. We’ve talked and agreed – we’re two adults, Ana! How can you explain to Ion why you’re sending him away?’
‘How many people have you heard of in Timişoara who’ve escaped, leaving everyone they love behind?’
‘Oh God, so many – of course! But this is the other way around – you’re making the decision for him.’
‘I have to! How can he know he’s living in hell? How can he know he wants to escape from it? My biggest fear is he’ll be so used to the flames he’ll start to like them. You know, when I first read that article I lay awake at night wondering if I would ever dare to give up the thing I love most in the world, because it was best for him. That’s what parents do in Sri Lanka, to get their sons away from the fighting, Radu – I read it. And I used to imagine how I would put it to him. As a huge adventure, probably. With you it’ll be so much easier. And I’d tell him I will follow him.’
‘How? If you want him out so much why not take him across the border yourse
lf?’
She clicked her tongue, impatiently. ‘I can’t, Radu – you know that! How would I organize it? And in any case, the whole point is that he’s got to go to Germany on his own. That way they have no choice. They’ve got to take these kids, it’s the law. The children stay in a home for a while and they teach them German. Then they find a foster home … such a different life, such a good life. I read it all! Things won’t ever change here – how can they? Building a vast palace for Them while there’s no food in the shops … it’s utter madness. And when the cobbler is dead, the sons will take over. It’s inevitable.’
Radu nodded. ‘I know. There’s no light at the end of this tunnel…’ he said grimly.
‘Only by breaking a hole in the wall.’
‘But are you strong enough, Ana?’
‘I’ve got the strongest weapon of all. It’s a sledgehammer, Radu – and it’s in here.’ She laid a hand on her breast, looking at him with that stubborn fierceness he remembered from school, when the strange, silent girl from Suceava joined the class, facing up to the teasing about her mysterious missing father, and because the clothes her aunt found for her were so ugly and ill-fitting, even by the standards of those with so little. And one day he found a group bullying her, and weighed in, the biggest, strongest boy in the class, so that afterwards she was safe. And they were friends.
‘I’m starting to believe you,’ he said slowly.
She darted across the room, and knelt at his feet, looking at him with eager intensity. ‘We have to agree now, Radu. You have to help me, because I mustn’t change my mind. Ion never had a father, and you were the nearest thing. Now you’ll have to pretend to be his father for a while, and then, at the last minute, you must abandon him. It’s going to be hard for you too. But let’s take it slowly. First, can you get him put on the papers?’
He shrugged, looking dubious. ‘It won’t be easy, Ana, but it’s possible. I’ll try to get in touch with my contact. We have a code … But it’ll cost more money. And I’m afraid I can’t … I mean, I have to leave money for Doina. It’s been very hard for us since she lost her job.’