Lost Footsteps

by Bel Mooney

  He nodded, staring straight ahead, his eyes fixed and glassy, like those of a doll.

  There was a short silence. Then Bernhardt spoke. ‘Ion, we think it would be much better for you to move to live with a family now. They will treat you like their own child – and when you are settled they will help you write to your mother again. We don’t know what has happened. But you can try again …’

  ‘Yes, dear, you can keep trying, and I’m sure you will hear from her … one day,’ said Irma. She wished he would cry. It was easier to deal with than this silence.

  Ion went on staring. He did not even blink. Then at last he opened his mouth, slowly, like a fish. ‘He is in shock,’ muttered Bernhardt in German, as, to their astonishment, the child began to sing – a thin, faraway sound:

  Nani, nani puiul mamii şi al cucoanei

  Vino peste de mi-l creste

  Şi tu somn de mi-l adorni

  Şi tu stiuca de mi-l culca …

  He rocked to and fro, closing his eyes briefly, as if the lullaby had sent him to sleep.

  Irma and Bernhardt glanced at each other, full of pity, each wishing at that moment that they had chosen some other form of work. Their hands swung helplessly at their sides. ‘Ion?’

  He swivelled his eyes to look at Irma, without moving his head – like a little robot. Then in a flat, bleak voice he said, ‘I think my mother is dead.’

  ‘But we don’t know that. We …’ She faltered, not knowing what they knew, nor what there is to be known, all certainties vanished, and the universe contracting in that second to the blank, abandoned misery on a single child’s face.

  ‘Mama is dead. She will not come for me. I know it.’ Then he looked from one to the other, gave a small, matter-of-fact shrug, and left the room.

  He paused for a second outside the door, shaking his head slightly as a dog flings off the last few drops of water. Then he went across to look at the map of the world, staring for a long, long time at the little marker which represented him, in the middle of Romania. Other children passed by and stared at him but he took no notice; a Kurdish boy his own age tapped him on the shoulder and indicated the cricket bat he was carrying, but Ion shook his head, turning back to his contemplation.

  It was so big, Romania, much bigger than Hungary or Bulgaria. His eyes roved upwards. But Germany was big too, just a different shape. And up there was England, his mother’s favourite, the place she read all those books about, carried home from work and studied under the candle. He never really understood why she liked it so much, although he knew that there were wonderful shops in London, as in Frankfurt, Paris, and New York. Maybe that was it … He frowned. But no; Mama wasn’t like that. What was she like?

  He squinted hard at the map, so that outlines blurred and colours merged – remembering. Suddenly it seemed desperately important to fix an image, in case it faded, and – chase it as he would – could never be caught again. What was she like? Her hair, he thought suddenly, was rather like Italy, long and straight, with that little flick at the end. Staring at the land mass, he seemed to see her pale oval face in the blue of the Adriatic, kind and beautiful … swimming upwards towards him, through water. NO!

  Angry with himself he hit at his eyes, as if to smash the source of the tears, wiping his hands quickly on his trousers. And he started to shiver, although the day was hot, knowing she would never come. He tried to imagine her in the earth somewhere, and wondered yet again what happens: do you feel the worms eating you? Do they eat your eyes (brown and large) and your hair (long, dark brown, smelling of soap and the indescribable perfume of her) and even your nails (cut very short, sometimes with flaking skin around them)? And when the ground is hard, and the snow lies thick, can you feel it down there, or are you warm, tucked away securely in your little home, forever?

  She was dead, and her death was probably his fault. They must have shot her for letting him escape to freedom (the correct phrase still came easily, in preference to words that would worm their way to the surface, sending him away), or maybe when she was trying to come too. People were always punished, he knew that.

  But perhaps she wasn’t dead … Ion was torn between wanting to belive that, with its inevitable implication that therefore she had not come because she had not wanted to come – and needing somehow to accept that she was dead, and so no longer had any choice. Even if her death was his fault.

  Teeth chattering, he closed his eyes. In his imagination Ana was falling in slow motion down a dark tunnel, down and down, cartwheeling slowly, until she reached the bottom. But there was no hard ground there, just sparkling water, and she floated away on the water, hair webbing out around her, eyes closed, until he could see her no more. ‘Mamă, întoarce-te! Come back!’

  Franklin heard him, and stood for a moment in the doorway of the games room. He could see that something had happened; Ion stood stiffly, head thrown back, unseeing but looking up at the map still, and shuddering every now and then as though racked with cold. Slowly, the Tamil made his way across the hall.

  There was, inside Franklin, a silence: something mysterious, strong and impenetrable. The teenager who laughed and played games and squabbled sometimes with fellow-Tamils might suddenly become an old man, brooding and preoccupied. Ion felt it but perhaps because it matched some confusion within himself, was untroubled by such moods, but kept contentedly at Franklin’s side, like a little brother.

  They could sit for a long time, without talking, on a sunny bench behind the house, watching the other children’s games, then rise in unison to join them, although nothing had been said. They knew nothing of each other’s lives but the simplest facts, and yet understood instinctively that what united them – pure loss and mere accident of timing – was strong because it was all they had. Somewhere in their eyes, at times, was the unspoken knowledge that they had both, deliberately, been ‘lost’ – and the reasons for that receded as the pain became numb. Something of Franklin’s silence, which had at its core a will to endure, slipped across to become a part of Ion too – strengthening him, although he did not know it.

  ‘Mama!’ Ion said again, softly this time; not so much a cry as a tiny, pleading statement.

  Franklin stood beside him, and looked down at Ion’s face, saying nothing, but with a question in his eyes.

  ‘My mother is dead,’ answered Ion.

  ‘They tell you?’ Franklin’s eyes were huge, and he placed an hand on Ion’s shoulder.

  ‘Nein…’

  ‘How you know?’

  ‘They telephone her work. They tell them she is not there. She is gone … gone. And in here’ – he jabbed his chest – ‘I know she is dead.’

  ‘A … mm.’ Franklin’s sound was inarticulate, conveying neither agreement nor doubt.

  ‘And Irma says I must go and live with a family. I don’t want a family, I want Mama.’ This was said with no grief, rather a fierceness that startled Franklin, who wrinkled up his nose as if in doubt.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Ion insisted. ‘She will not come. Not never come here.’ He paused, and became in that instant like a much younger child, both sincere and wheedlingly manipulative, ‘I want to stay with you, Franklin. Please.’

  Franklin nodded gravely. Then he said, ‘Yes.’

  Not long afterwards he went up to their room, took hold of his jacket, and from the little zipped pocket in which he kept the piece of sari, took a folded scrap of paper. There were some numbers scribbled on it; Franklin screwed up his face in concentration, moving his mouth again and again, until one was memorized. Then he replaced the paper in his pocket, pausing briefly to take the little piece of material, hold it so the sun made its gold threads glitter, and press it briefly to his mouth.

  When everyone was at supper he rose, casually jingling the coins in his pocket. The food was good; the air rich with the scent of cardamom and cumin.

  ‘Hey, Franklin – don’t you like my cooking?’ called Pushpa in Tamil.

  Franklin mimed clutching his stomach and vomit
ing, grinned broadly, left the room, and headed for the pay-phone.

  Three nights later, just before midnight, he woke Ion, shaking him gently. ‘You awake now, Ion. Quick! You come with me.’

  ‘Come?’ Ion blinked sleepily.

  Franklin nodded urgently. ‘We leave here. We go – together. You and me. A man coming here for me. We go to friends. Quick, Ion!’

  Ion stared at him. Franklin was stuffing his few garments into a white plastic hold-all, muttering from time to time in Tamil, as if he were in a temper. Then he looked at Ion. ‘You and me – brothers. We stay together, Ion.’

  It was one of those moments when the world seems to pause, teetering on the precipice of space, like a top slowing to wobble drunkenly, before being whipped onwards again. Ion did not fully understand what was going on; he was sure of two things only: his mother would never come to fetch him now, and the only person he could love and trust was this fifteen-year-old from Sri Lanka, to whom he had clung from the beginning. And yet everything had taught him to be obedient, afraid of authority … even if it was represented by people as kind as Bernhardt, Irma and Pushpa. To leave here, to walk out into the darkness with Franklin; the thought made his mouth grow dry.

  He wondered – what would you want me to do, Mama? There was no answering voice in his head.

  Without saying anything he nodded, jumped out of bed, and found the small bag he had arrived with. He pushed his few belongings into it, hesitating over the clothes he had been given, then deciding that since they were a gift they were his to take.

  Carrying their shoes they crept down the imposing staircase of the mansion, cringing at every creak. Once outside Franklin strode confidently, motioning to Ion to keep very close behind him. Ion needed no telling. It was a cool, cloudy night; the moon was hidden, and the shadows seemed very black.

  A little way along the main road they paused by a bus stop. Franklin was looking around nervously; then, noticing that Ion was staring up at him, attempted a confident grin.

  Ion thought, where are we going? Who is coming for us? How did Franklin arrange this? What would Mama say? Will she be disappointed? But how can she be, if she is dead? Do I know Franklin? Yes, I know Franklin. He is my family now … But where are we going …? Still he said nothing, clutching his bag to his chest, waiting.

  At last there was the sound of a car. It stopped about a hundred yards down the road, switched off its headlights, then illuminated them again briefly, as a signal.

  Franklin set off towards it at a slow, loping run, Ion keeping up with two steps to every one. When they reached the old Volkswagen Franklin spoke briefly in Tamil to the man at the wheel, then opened the back door for Ion. ‘It’s good. Quick!’

  Cigarette smoke had permeated the furry covers of the seats; there was a pile of old blankets in the back, and newspaper on the floor.

  ‘Lie down. You sleep. We go long way,’ whispered Franklin, closing the door and getting in the front. Then he whispered quickly to the driver in his own language, the man replying in monosyllables.

  Ion pulled a blanket around him, shivering slightly even though it was not cold. But he did not lie down. With wide, fixed eyes he stared out of the window as they left the children’s home behind, and the little town, and even the distant lights of Frankfurt itself – and disappeared into the blackness of Europe.

  Part Three

  With silent voices they sing

  they defend themselves

  admit their faults

  donate their blood

  swear at darkness

  sweat at the light

  and yet

  they are born.

  Liliana Ursu

  Twenty

  The lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel was so cold that delicate ice-patterns were creeping upwards from the corners of the plate-glass windows. Each time the door revolved, a blast of bitter air wafted in the new arrival, rising to the jagged orange lights which hung over the rows of vinyl seats like bizarre crystal formations – uglier, though, than anything in nature. The concierge, a good-looking man in his early forties, wore fingerless gloves, and the bellhops shifted ceaselessly on the spot, shivering and waiting.

  ‘God, it’s cold,’ a Canadian businessman protested, as he registered.

  ‘Soon we have the heating on again,’ said the concierge, Dinu Balescu, smoothly, handing over the key and the little leaflet which explained all the facilities of the luxury hotel. He shrugged. ‘We have a small problem.’

  ‘There’s always a small problem,’ said a dry English voice at his elbow, and the Canadian turned with a grin.

  ‘Oh sure, I know,’ he said. ‘I’ve been trying to do business in this country for four years now. Telephones.’

  ‘Keep trying,’ said the Englishman, then turned to the concierge. ‘Has a Mr Simon Keller checked in yet? From the London Times?’

  ‘See you around,’ said the Canadian, and picked up his bag. The bellhops, recognizing him and knowing he would not change money, made no move to help.

  ‘Are you Mr Edwards? Mr Keller left a message for you. He will be waiting in the German Bar.’

  At the back of the lobby, where the businessman waited for a lift, and a small sign indicated the German Bar, a woman was leaning on an old-fashioned mop, frozen for a moment, barely lit in the gloom. The Canadian stared briefly in her direction, thinking that the German Bar was the only thing that made staying in this place tolerable; tonight it would be full of Bucharest’s best whores … But sensing his glance the woman moved, pushing her mop to and fro in a desultory movement, yet with a blank air of concentration, as one used to observation, and to punishment.

  Then she looked up, and saw the Englishman approaching across the lobby. Immediately she sank to her knees, taking the filthy old cloth that hung over her bucket, and busied herself with trying to remove a stubborn mark from the floor. Her hair hung lankly over her face; her nose was a bare six inches from the floor. Michael Edwards’s polished black brogues clicked past no more than four feet from her, and the dark door to the bar closed behind him.

  The woman glanced up, as if to make sure he had gone, then stopped rubbing, staring down into the black water in her metal pail. Soon its movement ceased; in the dim light she saw herself reflected, hovering, moonlike and distant, like a face glimpsed from the bottom of a well. Who are you? What world do you come from, bitter traveller, defeated by memory? And how did you come to be here, doing this, moving from prison into prison, knowing what you know?

  There was no pressure on Ana to work hard; nobody expected it. The pace was slow, as if everyone, all the hotel staff, full-time and part-time, were moving under the influence of a powerful drug: slowing, numbing. Yet some days she stirred herself to move more quickly; as if she could outrun her own feelings by action. Carpets had to be swept with stiff brooms, dust rising and settling again, day after day; the same smears chased around vinyl flooring with scraggy, dirty mops; the veneered surface of the reception desk polished from time to time, to keep up the reputation of the international chain.

  Sometimes, when she was cleaning the lavatories, Ana allowed herself a bleak smile in the mirror she had just buffed to brightness. Kneeling, her face near to a lavatory pan or urinal, impervious now to the smells of humanity all around her, and not minding what she touched, she could imagine someone, somewhere, rocking back and forth with laughter. Someone who sometimes looked like Pincers, the worst of the guards, sometimes like Luminiţa, sometimes like that third interrogator; all three faces merging with her own in the glass, head thrown back in a terrible rictus: Look, Popescu, where all your books have brought you! Speak some English now, just to show how good you are! Lovely delicate words, so civilized, so clever. Sitting in the kitchen playing the game of names: cup, plate, spoon. Much good it did him, or you. But you believed in it, and in poetry too: now why don’t you give us some Keats, a little Shakespeare, some Eminescu, a bit of Blandiana even? You always used to turn to it. It always used to give you consolati
on. Or has too much happened, Popescu? Has the stink of your cell, and the nearness now to urine and faeces and badly wrapped sanitary towels driven out all your words? Come on – don’t cry or moan; you know you had this coming to you, you know it. Coming to you, all along. And when you think of it, it’s so funny!

  She pocketed the used soaps when she could, and supplied fresh ones.

  Ana had been employed at the hotel since October, desperate then for work, and finding most avenues closed off. They went on punishing you. It was inescapable. Sometimes she would find herself near Strada Jules Michelet and wonder if the guard on the gate would be the same man, if he would let her pass. She imagined herself walking into Michael Edwards’s office, and telling him everything, asking him for help. Then she would set her mouth in a thin line, knowing it was impossible. It was not her appearance, although even a woman so lacking in personal vanity as Ana quailed from the recognition of how much she had changed. Nor was it the prospect of telling him her story, seeing the disbelief on his face, perhaps contempt at all her errors of judgement.

  It was rather that she shrank from the truth which he was (she knew, maybe after a telephone call or two) in a position to tell her: that there was nothing, absolutely nothing she could do to put things right.

  While she held herself aloof from help – and from pity – she could escape, from time to time, into fantasy. She could imagine Ion playing happily in a dream home in Germany, all the time thinking of her, missing her, understanding her. His foster parents were shadowy; she knew they were kind, that’s all. At the same time she could walk, miraculously freed in her imagination, borders dissolved, distances melted, into that room where he was, and be greeted ecstatically by her son; and somehow it would all be healed, all be possible once again.

  She wanted no one to look at her and say, sadly, ‘Ana, it will never happen; you will never be allowed to leave.’ She wanted no one to ask her if she would try to escape again, knowing the truth – that she would not have the courage. Not now. Not after that. Not even in desperation for Ion. Whatever you do, don’t think. Don’t remember…