by Bel Mooney
‘But when you come, Mama, how will you find me?’
‘Easy! I’ve worked it all out. In Frankfurt they take you to a lovely home for children – it’s a very famous one. I read about it at work. You live there for a while with lots of other children, and then they put you with people called foster parents, who look after you. And you’ll write to me then, and tell me where you are, so when I come I can find you!’ Ana bit her lip.
‘I don’t want to go without you, Mama,’ said Ion. He looked as if he was about to cry.
‘Ion, you must understand this,’ said Ana in a voice that was very different from the bright, determined tone she had employed up to now. ‘Wherever you go, I’ll be with you – you know that. I’ll be thinking of you, and watching over you all the time, and it’ll make me so happy to think of you in the West, reading proper books, and learning true things, and eating all that delicious food …’
‘Bananas?’ he whispered.
‘Yes, lots of bananas! You’ll grow strong and healthy, and have a lovely life. And then, one day I’ll come for you, and we’ll have a house, and do all sorts of exciting things together. We’ll be free, trust me!’
As she said it Ana knew that the word ‘free’ meant nothing to the child. How could he know what freedom meant, when she barely knew herself? To dream of bananas was enough. And what if she was telling him fantastic stories, like the ones of the world beneath the well? Or Eliade’s tales, which once she tried to read aloud, only to discover that he shifted in his seat, bored – the level of absurdity too sophisticated for him. Am I lying to you Ion? No, I am not lying to you. How can I be lying when I no longer know what truth is?
‘Will you do as I say, Ionica? Will you remember everything? And make sure you obey Radu?’
He nodded. There was a short silence, as Ion stared at her, and she smoothed his forehead, feeling language take flight, like a bird before the approaching storm.
Then Ion asked, ‘Where is the little boat? Can I see it?’
Ana heard the tremor of excitement in his voice, and she said, ‘No, not now. You must wait until the adventure begins’ – deliberately picking up his tone, and wondering at the same time how it was possible for relief to be so mingled with pain.
‘Move over now.’ She lay beside him on the narrow bed, cradling his head awkwardly on her arm. They did not speak, and after a while, when her arm lost all sensation, she heard his breathing shift into the deep, regular rhythms of sleep. Again, she felt dizzy with her own contradictory feelings – glad that he was able to rest, and yet disappointed too that he could not watch with her, lying there immobile, numb, until the tiny square window showed pinkish-grey light.
Ten
Like automata, Radu, Doina and Ana inched their way through the next day. He announced that he would finish his last work of art on Romanian soil, and began tearing a newspaper into shreds, which he stuck at the base of his figure, so that it began to resemble a bizarre bird, sitting on a nest.
Doina shook her head, standing beside him for a moment, leaning her blonde head against his dark, shaggy one. Watching, Ana thought what a bold, handsome shape they made: both broad and very tall, in a nation of people she saw as more like herself, small and beaten. And their heads were outlined against the brown colours of Radu’s despair.
‘What do you think of Radu’s work, Ana?’ Doina asked, in the tone of voice which implied she did not like it.
‘It’s a painting of my spirit,’ said Ana.
Radu rounded on her. ‘Don’t say that! Your spirit is made up of colours I haven’t seen for years, Ana, and you must never forget that.’ He walked across to the old record player, and the sound of Moldavian folk music filled the room, mournful in its gaiety – lilting rhythms that were in their blood.
‘We’ll go out. I’ll show Ion Timişoara.’
Later, walking hand in hand with Ion past the Opera House, Ana looked around at the buildings: honey, cream, peach and green, handsome with elaborate plasterwork, cornices, gables and balconies. A man in shirt-sleeves was selling carnations in the street. Gypsy women in brilliant cerise, orange and yellow skirts sat under a tree, eating bread. From behind them, where the elegant shape of the opera house dominated one end of the square, the sound of a soprano practising rose and fell, rose and fell, dying away as they moved further into the centre, where old men rested on curved concrete benches. The late April sun shone on the gilded pinnacles of the cathedral, and warmed its cinnamon stripes, so that it looked a strange hybrid from a fairytale: part magical castle, part gingerbread house. On the central pediment of the fine building to the right was an elaborate relief: an impassive angel, holding a sheaf of wheat and surrounded by grapes, looked down on people queueing for bread.
But there were the hoardings. Clearly Ceauşescu was expected on a visit within the next week, for gangs of men were busily hammering at giant hoardings bearing his falsely young portrait. Pneumatic cranes would hoist these so high the Conducator would not be afflicted with the sight of the cathedral when he spoke from the opera balcony. The crowd would be dragooned, everyone holding flags, slogans and pictures; nobody allowed to leave the square for hours, waiting for him to arrive and speak to his devoted people. Ana remembered such occasions from her schooldays: the giggles, the pins and needles, the cold feet, the punishment if aching arms allowed a flag to droop too low. And Ion was missing such a display in Bucharest … but you could not escape them. They happened all over the country.
Then she saw the word ‘Temesvar’ scrawled on a wall, with a slogan in Hungarian she did not understand, and instantly the buildings, with their swags and mouldings, seemed merely a backdrop, absurd in their frivolity, to a bleak and bitter drama, all the darker for the lightness which surrounded it. Even the hoardings seemed trivial. She recalled her uncle’s hatred of Hungarians and gypsies alike, knew that the oppression of the Hungarian minority in the city was much worse even than that of the ethnic Romanians, and remembered being slapped by her aunt because she had once gone out with a Hungarian boy called Laszlo. And somehow that graffiti, the Hungarian name for the town which had once been part of another land, symbolized all the hatred, ignorance and fear of generations, fostered with care by those who knew that on such divisions rested their own power.
And Gheorghe Doja dared to challenge the power of the state in 1914, and was defeated beneath these walls, as we would also be defeated, should we dare. Why does this come into my mind again and again? They crowned him with fire in mockery of his aspirations, and tore him apart with pincers, feeding his charred flesh to his followers. Is that the taste that is in my mouth, carried in the genes from generation to generation, with that ignorance, that hatred, that fear? If there is little I can do, this much I can do: I will remove the taste of ash and horror from my child’s mouth, and replace it with the sweet richness of bananas.
They joined a queue for broken chocolate, Ion surprised at his mother’s decision. In the last two weeks their life had been harder than ever, as Ana guarded her lei like a miser. So he skipped about as they stood in the queue, looking so happy that their conversation of the night before could have been a dream.
Then, as he nibbled the small chunk of cheap chocolate, pale and crumbling at the edges as if its journey had taken a very long time, Ion asked, ‘Mama, I don’t understand why Radu is leaving Doina behind?’
The question took Ana by surprise. She expected him to ask about himself, and her own decision; not to care about the others. She glanced round quickly, and whispered, ‘Well, in the first place, Radu has had to spend quite a lot of money, and they couldn’t really afford for both of them to go. But it’s normal, Ion, for men to escape from here on their own. When I lived here there were hundreds of stories … sometimes the men went without even telling their wives. It’s happening all the time. They leave their whole families …’
‘But why?’
Ana shrugged. ‘People get desperate, Ionica.’
‘Are you desperate, Mama?’ H
e used the phrase as if he didn’t fully understand its meaning.
She gripped his free hand more tightly, so that he said ‘Ow,’ and drew it away; then, collecting herself, she threw an arm lightly around his shoulders.
‘One day … well … oh Ion, what can I say? You’re too young to understand. But – yes, if you want me to say that, I will say it. Desperate – it means that you want something so much you’d even die for it.’ Sudden passion made her raise her voice, ‘And that’s how I feel; I feel that I’d get you out of here even if I had to …’
Realizing where she was, and that she would frighten Ion by such talk, Ana stopped. She imagined that people were looking at them curiously, and felt afraid. Watching – they were always watching you; even in the Cişmigiu Gardens. What if they were watching here, and knew about Radu’s plans? They knew him: he was blacklisted, he could not sell his paintings. So maybe they were watching his apartment? Everybody was watching, always. Nobody could be trusted.
Ana began to sweat. She thought of Michael Edwards, and wondered what excuse she would give him when she returned. That her aunt was taken ill suddenly, and she had gone to visit; that she had left Ion behind for a long stay in Timişoara. Why? He would not seek to know why. They all expect Romanians to act bizarrely, for all Michael’s cosy philosophy of emotional equality. But maybe she should take him into her confidence, maybe he would help her … to do what?
In truth Ana had made no plans beyond Ion’s departure. Her application for a passport had been refused seven years ago; veiled hints were made at the time about undesirable elements in her family. Her father? Her uncle’s black-market purchases? Or someone, some distant cousin, she knew nothing about? Such things happened. She had no hope of being allowed to leave, in any case. And yet – diplomats could pull strings, maybe? Despite herself she began to fantasize, unable to tolerate the limitations of reality even though a total acceptance of it gave her the necessary desperation to act. Like a sleepwalker, Ion silent beside her, preoccupied with making his chocolate last, Ana began to allow a deep, hidden, vulnerable part of her mind (the part buried in so many years of having to cope alone) to fix on Michael Edwards as … what? Someone who would be kind, someone who might help, someone who would certainly care – when she was totally alone. That much she might have admitted, if the thought had been allowed, even for a second, to surface.
In the capital, a bare two hours away by plane, Michael fumed at his desk. All his inquiries, this second day, had led nowhere. At lunch-time he strode down Magheru, looking irritably from right to left, as if he might see her, standing in a silent line for this or that, or buying a plastic duty-free carrier bag, emblazoned with the magic word KENT, from the gypsies who held them aloft as if they were made from the finest leather. Men, standing in groups on street corners, angered him. Women, patient with their shopping bags, aroused his scorn. A gypsy, rocking to and fro, her hand stretched out for money, and her heavily swaddled child lying on the pavement in full sunlight, filled him with rage.
As he drew near, a workman, striding quickly by, sent a gobbet of spit in the gypsy’s direction, aiming so that it splattered on the pavement a couple of inches from the baby’s head. Revolted, Michael stopped and told the woman, in terse Romanian, that she should move her child into the shade, not leave it out on the pavement. She stopped rocking for a second, said rather ingratiatingly that it was not hot, then set up her ululating moan for alms once again, while a small girl in a headscarf appeared from nowhere, begging him, in a whining, repetitious voice, for money. She followed him for about ten yards up/the street, until, harried and frustrated, he pulled out some coins and dropped them into her dirty hand. A Romanian woman, noticeably well dressed, looked at him with sympathy mixed with disapproval. Then Michael heard her rebuke the gypsy and her importuning child in a high, shrewish voice, full of contempt. The baby was still on the pavement, spittle still by its head; the mother’s moaning did not cease; the child ran among the passers-by, plucking at sleeves and begging for money for the baby – indifferent to kindness and hostility alike.
Bucharest went about its business. There was, of course, no sign of Ana Popescu. Nobody cared – not even the most amiable of his colleagues, and indeed, Michael thought, why should they? Their expectations of local staff were low – he had not realized how low.
‘… I tell you, Michael, she’s probably a plant, so whatever you do don’t get any ideas in that direction … I just think you’re a soft touch. But don’t worry, another six months here’ll cure you of that. After five years I can categorically state that I never met a Romanian I could trust…’
‘… 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! … For all we know, she could have been reporting on us for months. That’s part of the game – I know it and you know it.’
He knew that John Fitzmaurice, the experienced diplomat, and Sarah Mowbray, the younger, worldly-wise careerist, were both probably right. Yet try as he might, he could not accept Ana’s absence as one of those things that happen in Romania – like a cleaner failing to arrive, and another one starting work in her place, just like that. If she was a plant, why would she fail to turn up to do her double-crossing job? If she was ill, why was she not at home? Why was Ion not at school – that much he had been able to discover? If the reason for her absence was innocent – like a visit to relatives – then why had she not simply asked for time off? And if, to be dramatic, she was involved in subversive politics (which he sometimes wondered, simply because of her passion for the West) and was under house arrest, perhaps, then someone would have answered the phone – wouldn’t they?
‘People do disappear, Michael; remember where we are …’ Sarah Mowbray had reminded him in a grim voice – adding, for the tenth time, that there was absolutely nothing he could do.
Ana and Ion walked through the parks, watching ducks on the Bega canal trailing their furrows, and sprays of blossom drifting on the water. A rowing boat was moored; it looked as if it would sink if even a bird were to perch on its prow. Ion stopped and stared at it. Then he said, ‘I liked going in the boat that time – with the man you work with.’
‘Yes, that was lovely, wasn’t it?’ said Ana.
‘Can we do it again?’
‘Yes, Ion … of course.’
It’s still unreal to him; he has no idea of the reality of what’s going to happen. Oh God, please give me strength, but more than that, let him understand. Let him take it as a game now, and then, when the game is over, let him understand.
Radu carried down to the car a cardboard box which appeared to be full of painting materials. Beneath them was the small suitcase, containing the folded rubber dinghy, and a tight parcel of clothes, wrapped in plastic. A neighbour was standing by the door, and Radu greeted him cheerfully. ‘I’m finally giving up,’ he said. ‘Taking all this stuff to sell. Want to buy some brushes?’
Too late he feared what would happen if the man nodded, and asked to see. He cursed his over-acted bonhomie. But the man laughed and shook his head; most of the neighbours disapproved of Radu and Doina on principle, but the terrible failing of being an artist did afford an excuse for behaviour which, in a normal person, would be a matter for curiosity.
At that moment Doina arrived with a bulging shopping bag which attracted the envious notice of the man by the door. He wanted to know where she had been, what she had found, and once again Radu felt his jaw tighten with panic, though the questions were perfectly normal. If they should arouse suspicion …
‘The trouble with having visitors is you have to feed them,’ grumbled Doina. ‘I’ll be glad when they’ve gone back to Bucharest.’ At ease with selfish ill-humour, the man nodded and stood aside, to allow her to climb the stairs.
‘Look what I found!’ Doina was elated, and spread her trophies on the table: good bread, tomatoes, some salami, a very tired-looking lettuce and – best of all – a lump of pale che
ese. At the bottom of the bag were potatoes, covered with thick soil.
‘We’ll have such a meal on the journey! You didn’t think I’d let you go away with an empty stomach,’ said Doina, smiling broadly at her husband. One strand of thick blonde hair had escaped from her bun, and snaked down across her cheek. The sight of it – as if it were a punctuation mark to her defiant smile – made Radu hold out his arms to her. Wordlessly they embraced.
Then Ion stood in front of Radu, looking up with a question on his face. Radu nodded gravely, giving him permission to speak.
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
The adults glanced at each other; it was the first time the child had mentioned what was about to happen. Ana began to tremble. Radu squatted down, so that his face was level with Ion’s.
‘Of course I do, little bear! Why do you think I invited you? But you’ve got to be very brave, and very quiet and do exactly as I tell you – understood?’ Ion nodded. ‘It’s a great adventure … we’ll be like prisoners escaping from enemy territory! And I’m General Radu Kessler.’
The child grinned. ‘If you’re the General, who can I be?’
‘Oh, I think you’re the Captain. But I have to be in charge because I know the way!’
‘Can I be in charge when we get there?’
‘That depends … If you do everything your mother told you …’
Radu looked up at Ana, who was staring at them, a faint smile on her face, although her eyes were narrowed with pain. Suddenly she turned, and he heard the door of the tiny bathroom slam shut.
‘Come on, Ion,’ said Doina quickly. ‘Help me peel these potatoes. We’re going to have such a feast in the car …’ And she led him away, while Radu followed Ana.
Ana had not locked the door. He saw her sitting on the edge of the hip-bath, her hands loosely in her lap, her head bowed. She looked like a rag-doll. It was a few seconds before she glanced up, not with tears on her cheeks as he expected, but with an expression of acute agony: bleak and drawn, as far beyond normal tears as she was out of reach of human comfort.