by Bel Mooney
Death or departure: Ana can feel no difference. She is emptied by loss, as vacant as the apartment which had once been home.
Next morning they leave for Timişoara, handing in the keys at the office, and explaining that the Popescus will not be living there any more.
‘But perhaps Tată will come back?’ Ana says.
‘Then he will come to Timişoara,’ her aunt explains, twisting round in the seat and feeling a pang of fear at the child’s white face, unearthly in its gravity.
‘He won’t come to Timişoara now,’ says Florin harshly.
‘Perhaps he is with Mama,’ Ana says, ignoring him.
Tears fill Aunt Liliana’s eyes. She is sorry for the child, of course, and she is concerned about her brother. Who knows but that they might have taken him away in the night? Impossible ever to discover the truth. Yet Liliana weeps mostly for herself. Their house is small, yet comfortable: the tiled stove radiates plenty of heat, and there is food enough for two. But her husband is an ill-tempered man, who likes the household to be ordered precisely as he requires: he spends any extra money on black-market Kent cigarettes, Johnny Walker whisky, and Lindt chocolate, and regards them as his due, like the dice and card games in smokey rooms, and the sexual compliance of his wife. Ten years ago, when she discovered she was barren, she begged him to let her adopt a child. But Florin refused, saying he had never wanted children, that life is better without them. And now, suddenly, they have this child: the little, thin creature with strands of unwashed hair hanging around a pale face, and eyes that always seem to be remembering what is forgotten. Or should be.
Liliana knows her duty. Florin says that the girl will just have to put up with things; she has no choice, and neither do they.
Driving west from Suceava, the car sluggish under its burden, they pass through Gura Humorului, and to right and left Ana sees signs for the monasteries of Voroneţ and Humor. Then blues and reds and greens blind her inner eye, and the glittering Virgin who cradles her child takes on the form and face of Susanna Popescu, bending from the painted wall to embrace all sinners, as the deep, low chanting swells and the toaca rattles its call to prayer.
When the train pulled up in Timişoara only Doina Kessler was there to greet them. Ana smiled as Doina rushed to embrace her; despite those quarrels years ago the affection between the two women was still strong.
‘Ana! It’s been too long!’
They held each other at arm’s length, and looked at each other in silence, spontaneous smiles fading.
‘And what a time to meet again, Doina,’ said Ana gravely.
The tall, blonde woman bit her lip and nodded. Then she looked down to where Ion stood, clutching a small vinyl holdall containing the clothes for what he thought was a short holiday.
‘But why are we going now, Mama?’ he had asked again and again, half-glad, half-sorry that he was to miss the big parade, when Young Pioneers from schools all over Bucharest would line the boulevard from six in the morning until six at night, waiting for the President and his cavalcade to pass.
‘Radu has been ill,’ Ana lied, ‘and anyway, Ionica, I really feel like a change.’
The Kesslers lived in an old apartment in a green-washed building near the town centre, with high ceilings and ornate cornices which testified to a gracious past. Radu used the sitting-room as a studio; in one corner he had built a sleeping platform reached by a wooden staircase; beneath it were stacked canvases and boards and even sheets of thick card, cut from packing cases – anything to paint on. More painted boards, all the same size and separated by blocks of wood, made a table three feet high, on which was a mess of brushes, glue, sand, mixed dyes, jars of wild flowers, old pencils, knives, unfinished wooden maquettes in jagged shapes, and empty bottles of beer. In a corner of the room was a conventional table, covered with a cloth, with three rickety wooden chairs tucked beneath; on the wall by this hung bookshelves made from cheap blockboard bowed beneath the weight of books, papers and scrapbooks that threatened to avalanche on anyone who sat beneath. Two ancient, battered armchairs in red plush completed the furnishings.
In the middle, dominating everything, was Radu’s easel, encrusted with years of paint, so that its outline seemed to shift and change as you looked, like a piece of driftwood encrusted with sea-bed life. On the easel was a tall piece of board, about one metre by two. It had been stained brown with mud, thicker in parts than others, and scraped away in wavy patterns with a knife. Here and there were stuck fragments of wood, and scraps of yellow paper. Broken eggshells embedded in a circular smear of plaster made a ‘halo’ for the central figure – savagely outlined in thick black industrial paint, with two metal cogs for eyes. One hand was held up in blessing; the other held out, as an orb, what was unmistakably a real dog turd.
Ion stood staring up at this creation. Radu came up behind him, clapping hands on his shoulders so that the child jumped. ‘Well, Ionica, what do you think?’
Ion blinked and asked, ‘Are you better now, Radu?’
‘Better?’
‘I … er … explained to Ion that you’ve been ill, Radu. That’s why we’ve come. I thought you painted walls, by the way.’ As she said this, Ana saw rebuke in her friends’ eyes. They expected her to have told the child the truth.
‘Yes, I paint prison walls, and yes, I’m much better,’ Radu said with exaggerated bonhomie. ‘In fact, this is a picture of me feeling sick … Come, Ana, I’ve been preparing your room.’
In the tiny spare room she knew so well he rounded on her, as she expected, but in anxiety rather than anger. ‘You said when I telephoned you’d prepare him, Ana! I can’t believe you’d let it get this far without telling him. How are you going to do it? We’re leaving tomorrow night!’
Ana’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘So soon?’
‘Of course! It’s all arranged the other end. This is serious, Ana!’
He saw tears in her eyes, and enveloped her in his arms, squeezing so hard she cried out. ‘God, Anina, I feel as if I’m walking down a dark corridor, and there’s a door at the end, I can just see the chink of light, and I get nearer and nearer – and behind that door is everything I’ve ever wanted! It’s unbelievable.’
‘Aren’t you afraid?’
He stepped back and smiled – such excitement, ecstasy almost, on his face that, unreasonably, she felt critical. It was as if this was a game, and Radu still the boy she had known, wanting to win. ‘No time to be afraid. No point. All I can think of is the other end, and the day I’ll no longer have shit on my easel, but light and colour.’
‘And Ion?’
He heard the reproach in her voice, and frowned. ‘Of course I think about Ion! He’s coming with me – and I can’t do more for anyone than I’m doing for you two. But I won’t be afraid for him – that’s your job, Ana. Anyway, forget all that; it’s a waste of time. We both gave up fear a long time ago, when we decided this. Aren’t you overwhelmed to think that despite everything, despite all this lousy country can do to your soul, you and I can still act? Doesn’t it amaze you, my little friend?’
‘Yes … yes, it does,’ she said, feeling strengthened by his words, ‘but that doesn’t stop it terrifying me too.’
At the moment Ana was arriving in Timişoara, Michael Edwards was telephoning her flat for the third time. When her desk was empty first thing in the morning it had not worried him: she was late because she had to take the child to school, had to queue for bread, missed the trolley bus … There were always reasons. Or should he say ‘excuses’? It occurred to him that the words took on a new meaning in this country. ‘Reasons’ for this or that, delivered straight-faced, stonewalling, inevitably sought to give shape to the irrational, while ‘excuses’ were offered apologetically for the inexcusable. So Ana was late. She had been late before.
And yet her desk was so neat: nothing left out to finish, no notes in her flowing hand, to remind her of tasks for the next day – nothing.
After one hour Michael had telephoned her apa
rtment, but there was no reply. So neither she nor the child could be ill. He stared at her desk, imagining for a second that he heard her footstep in the corridor. But no one came into the room, and Michael was irritated by his sudden stab of disappointment.
He thought how tense and jumpy she had been in the last two weeks, not speaking unless spoken to, turning her back with offensive haste when he encountered her in the entrance hall, where one or two people stood waiting. When he asked after Ion she replied monosyllabically, as if the subject of her child was to her the most tedious in the world.
‘He is very well, thank you.’
‘And his cough – has it gone now?’
‘Yes, he is very well, thank you.’
Michael pulled open the top desk-drawer in which she kept a hairbrush. That tiny concession to vanity had always intrigued him, ever since the day he had entered the room unexpectedly to find her, head down, brushing her hair vigorously. Hearing him she had thrust the brush in the drawer, and looked up, embarrassed – hair whirling around her head in points of electric light, so that for a second she was transformed into something wild and beautiful. The hairbrush was not there.
For the rest of the day Michael found it almost impossible to work. He telephoned Ana’s apartment at regular intervals, wondered whether it would be worth trying to discover the name of Ion’s school, even considered telephoning the hospital in that sector of the city. She could be ill; Ion could be staying with friends … did they do that kind of thing? Michael realized how little he knew.
In any case, how could she be ill when yesterday she had looked so well: tense and preoccupied maybe, but with bright eyes and unusual colour in her pale cheeks, like someone who has just thrust her head out of the window, into a cold wind?
‘The thing is, Michael, you can never tell with these people – they’re so unpredictable. I thought the Poles were bad enough, but the Romanians!’ His colleague, Sarah Mowbray, shrugged her shoulders and could offer no advice.
‘Oh, I know, it’s just that Ana Popescu seemed so … reliable.’ Michael was aware that the adjective sounded lame.
Sarah Mowbray was an ambitious young woman, already tipped for great things. Like Michael she was doing her stint in Eastern Europe – with the inevitable hardening of certain arteries. Again she shifted her shoulders, as if by that gesture to shake off any responsibility. ‘Michael, she’s a pretty woman … but that’s about all you can say. Reliable! For all we know she could have been reporting back on us all for months. That’s part of the game – I know it, and you know it.’
‘Mmm … but even so – and by the way, I don’t think you’re right – why isn’t she here today?’
‘Who knows? She’ll probably show up tomorrow, and then, Michael, you’ll be able to ask her!’ The dry tone was not lost on Michael; he thought that he must be careful not to make a fool of himself.
In a couple of hours rumours about her absence slid around the building. Even the guard on the gate came to have a view. It was something to talk about.
That night, over a simple meal of bread and stew, they had talked of the past, especially that first winter when Ion was a small baby, and there was no hot water to wash his nappies. ‘The water was so cold my hands hurt,’ said Ana.
‘Yes, and when I gave you plastic gloves they cracked with the cold,’ said Doina.
‘Do you remember I used to make a tent of bedclothes for you, Ana, because it was the warmest place to change and dress him?’ said Radu.
‘My God, it was the coldest winter,’ shivered Ana, ‘and yet it probably wasn’t any worse than other ones we’ve known. I was just so afraid Ion would get ill.’
Ion looked from one to the other, smiling shyly, enjoying reminiscences that centred on him and therefore proved his existence, before his own recall.
‘And the egg, Ana, the egg!’ Doina covered her face with her hands, laughing, as Radu swigged his beer and groaned.
‘What egg, Mama?’
‘You were about two, Ion, and I had an egg for you in the fridge. You see, it was hard to get eggs …’
‘Has it changed?’ interrupted Radu.
‘… and I had made friends with a peasant woman – once, when I was a student I’d given her some money to buy medicine for her daughter, and …’
‘Where did you get the money, Mama?’
‘Oh, I sold some cigarettes. Robert … your father, Ion, had given them to me as a present, and I tucked them away in case of emergency … Anyway, never mind all that, I want to tell my story! Well, each week old Mrs Mihalache used to bring me two eggs for you, and it was so wonderful, Ionica. This particular week you’d had your first egg on the Monday, and I was saving the second one for Thursday …’
‘Every time we opened the fridge it would be there, grinning at us roundly!’ said Radu.
‘On the Wednesday I took you out for a long walk, and when I got back … oh, you tell it, Doina.’
‘While you were both out I … I … ate your egg, Ion. Isn’t that terrible?’ Doina looked at him with mock-serious intensity. ‘Yes, I felt rather ill, and very fed up, and no one was in the apartment, and the devil said to me, Eat that egg, Doina, you deserve it, because you work so hard … And so I took a pan, and I boiled the egg, and no egg has ever tasted more delicious!’
‘God, I was angry!’ Ana said.
‘Yes, they had a big quarrel, and I was in the middle’ – Radu made movements with his hands as if pushing apart imaginary assailants – ‘and you cried, Ion. What a noise! It was very funny.’
‘Not at the time,’ said Doina.
‘I don’t remember,’ said Ion.
‘Not long after that we moved to Bucharest,’ said Ana. Why are we talking like this, so full of ease, so full of merriment despite the pain of memory, when soon it will all be over? The past is a closely-woven mat, and no matter how shabby, we rest on it. But the future is full of holes.
When Ion was in bed the three sat for a while, smoking, but not talking very much. ‘Nothing will go wrong,’ Radu said, and Doina nodded, studying the glowing tip of her cigarette.
‘We’ve been through a lot…’ Ana began.
‘… and we’ll go through much more, as well,’ said Radu.
‘There’s nothing else to say, is there?’ said Doina, looking for a second, as if she was about to weep.
Ana reached out and took her hand; Radu took hers, and Doina clasped him with her free hand, so that they were linked, their tiny circle unbroken, and Ana took such strength from it she felt no power on earth could smash their pact.
In a low voice Radu told them both precisely what would happen tomorrow night. Ana heard it all from a distance, concentrating more on the warmth of their hands in hers – the only reality. She told them she was about to go and tell Ion, and dropped her eyes from their gaze – full of sympathy, or inquiry, or questions? She could not tell.
‘We must go to bed early, Doina,’ said Radu softly, and Ana watched as, holding hands, they moved across the studio to the wooden ladder. Her hands felt cold again. For a moment she longed, with disturbing ferocity, for the touch of male skin, cried out to enfold someone as an equal, ached to be embraced – anything not to be alone.
But she had stifled all such thoughts years ago. In any case, she was not alone – not yet. Now she must go and see her child, her son – the one with whom she would spend this night.
Ana sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed Ion’s hair. He smiled up at her happily. ‘I really like Radu and Doina,’ he said.
Ana sent up a silent prayer of thanks for the cue, then breathed deeply, feeling her heartbeat increase. ‘I’m glad, Ionica – so glad.
Because … there’s something I want to tell you, something very important. How would you like to go on an adventure with Radu, a really huge adventure?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Would you, Ion? Just tell me first if you’d like an adventure with Radu, who you like so much?’
‘Yes, M
ama, but …’
‘Listen, dearest, Radu is going to take you on a journey. To another country. No, don’t say anything yet, just listen to everything I tell you. Ion, you know what I feel about this country; how I hate everything you’re taught in school, and … and … oh everything! Well, Radu is escaping tomorrow night, crossing the Danube at a place where it’s narrow, in a little rubber boat. And he’s going to take you with him.’
Ion’s eyes were huge. ‘But why, Mama?’
‘Because I asked him to, Ion,’ said Ana, making her voice as firm as possible, and looking up at the wall so that she would not see the confusion in his eyes. ‘I asked him to,’ she repeated.
He stared at her but said nothing.
Meeting his gaze, holding it, almost challenging him, she told him about the article in the magazine, and Radu’s visit, and how it was all meant to be. ‘You must understand why I want this for you, my love – why I – ’ she felt her voice quiver, and stuck her nails into her palm to stop it ‘–well, the point is that if you were in a prison I would want you to be let out of that prison, wouldn’t I? Don’t you see?’
‘But why don’t you come too, Mama?’ he said in a tiny voice.
‘I can’t swim, Ion. So how can I cross the river? What would happen if the boat blew over?’
The logic of that defeated the child; he nodded, then asked, ‘But couldn’t you come on a train?’
‘I will – but later. When you get to Germany you have to tell them that you are on your own, that your mother sent you away from Romania because of political reasons. Can you remember that? But you mustn’t tell them my name, or our address, just in case they tell Securitate. You never know.’