Lost Footsteps

by Bel Mooney

  Yet at night she was driven into the cul-de-sac of her dreams, and she would wake up crying, and Doina would come and hold her, soothing, ‘Shh, shhh, it’s all over, it’s all over.’

  ‘Who were the parasites who organized your escape?’

  ‘Nobody did … only the people you caught.’

  Ana’s head is rocked by a slap.

  ‘You’re lying, Popescu. What do you know about Daniel Chindris?’

  ‘Nothing. I only met him that day.’

  ‘You say you do not know he is a well-known subversive, in touch with foreign spies?’

  She shakes her head.

  They have put her in a chair, placed so close to the desk that her knees are pressed tight up against the cold metal. One man sits behind the desk, the other perches close by her, hitting her every so often, seemingly at random, whether she has answered or not, whether the answer is true or not.

  ‘Why did you attempt to escape from our motherland, the Socialist Republic of Romania?’

  She is silent.

  ‘Where is your child? You have a child, Popescu?’

  Again, she says nothing, but this time, when the blow comes and her skin sings out she is almost glad. Yes, punish me, torture me, kill me, for don’t I deserve it? But you will never get him back; he is away from here forever!

  ‘Popescu, you have a child – Ion. You were a whore for a foreign spy – the kind of behaviour we expect from female rubbish like you. Did he pay you in dollars? Did he leave you any money for your whelp, Popescu?’

  Furious, she shouts, ‘I was not a prostitute. He paid me nothing – nothing at all.’

  The man behind the desk laughs. ‘So – you were stupid, as well as immoral. Really, Florian, the Conducator should let this kind of rubbish leave for the reactionary countries they want to go to. They pollute the air of Romania! Not just dirty … but stupid too.’ He shakes his head, in mock exasperation.

  ‘She smells like a whore,’ says his colleague, lounging back on the desk, and wrinkling up his nose in an expression of distaste. Then his tone changes. ‘Stand up,’ he shouts.

  Ana rises unsteadily to her feet, half-leaning back on the chair. It is pulled away sharply, and she sways, leaning forward to steady herself with one hand.

  ‘Stand away from the desk.’

  She does so.

  ‘Put your hands in the air.’ ‘I can’t…’

  ‘Put your hands in the air!’

  Now Ana knows what he wants; too late now to protect whatever vestiges of external dignity remain. So she does as instructed. Released, her baggy trousers slip to the ground, zip and waist fastener broken by the soldiers in their assault. As they guffaw, Ana stands still: hair falling in muddy, sweaty tails about her swollen face, thin, grazed arms waving like twigs in the effort of keeping them raised, buttocks and black pubic hair just showing beneath her torn blouse, her white legs revealed, streaked with blood, semen and mud, the livid blue and yellow bruises already showing, like handprints on a dirty wall, all over her thighs.

  ‘I thought so! She looks like a whore too!’ crows the second interrogator.

  Ana hangs her head. ‘Can I … sit down?’ she whispers at last.

  ‘You parasites have no manners, Popescu. Haven’t you heard the word “please”?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘That’s better. Sit.’

  When she bends to pull up her trousers he shouts, ‘Leave them!’ So she sits hurriedly, pulling down her shirt to cover herself, and wondering, as she glances down at her legs, whose is that pale, ugly, abused flesh? Can it have anything to do with the child whose mother washed her, so tenderly, in an old tin bath by the stove? And how could it belong to the body which had known the brief pleasure of abandonment, and (later) the richer, deeper joy of the child growing within? Images of Christ rise before her eyes, the tormented man on the cross, whose long white legs (painted on plaster, wood, or canvas) look as sore and pathetic as these strange limbs attached to her, yet not of her. He too was humiliated; he too felt forsaken. And it was his own father who forsook him, which is why he called to the darkening heavens, demanding to know why. Where did you go, Tată? Didn’t you want me any more?

  Yet … Ana is walking through Suceava with Stelian Popescu, hand in hand, just four weeks before their departure for Aunt Liliana’s. He is elated today, she does not know why. Enough to see his vacant frown has disappeared. He wants to do things, he says, and Ana skips, remembering that when Mamă said that (a vague phrase, but full of purpose) the sun always seemed to be shining. In the museum he tells her stories about Stephen the Great, ‘The Athlete of Christ’, who routed the Turks; and makes her see, in fragments of terracotta, arcades, window frames and keystones, not dusty museum exhibits, but the intense, particular beauty of the everyday past. And then, in the market, they pounce on eggs and vine leaves, and even some white, watery goat cheese, carrying their spoils home in triumph – just like Stephen! says Stelian. In the evening, crowded in the tiny kitchen, they cook the meal together, Stelian telling Ana how clever she is, that at this rate she will be as good a cook as her mother. For the first time, there is no surge of silent grief at the mention of her name, forcing them apart as surely as any wall. Stretching her legs after the meal, her father’s scratchy record of Moldavian music filling the apartment with lilting, dancing song, Ana feels at peace – as if her mother’s soul, hovering and ever present, has managed to calm both of them at last.

  ‘Thank you for a lovely day, Tată,’ she whispers, secure in the knowledge that at least they have each other.

  ‘Who was your contact in the West?’

  ‘Nobody – I told you.’

  ‘Were you helped by the British? You work at their Embassy – what do you know of attempts by Embassy staff to steal Romanian industrial secrets?’

  ‘Nothing – nothing at all,’ says Ana, unable to prevent the twitch at the corner of her mouth.

  Her head jerks first to the right and then sharply to the left. The slaps sting. ‘What are you laughing at, Popescu? So you think plots to undermine the stability of our country are funny? Perhaps you’re admitting your guilt?’

  She feels hysteria start to bubble up within her, like a stream which soon turns into a torrent. And, with a fierce smile, she stares at her chief tormenter across the desk, and shouts, ‘I’m not admitting anything! I’m laughing at the thought of Britain – or Germany, or America – bothering to steal secrets from this diseased, pathetic little failure of a hole you call our country, driven down into madness and poverty by a disgusting peasant and his ignorant peasant wife!’

  The customary portrait of Ceauşescu hangs on the wall, just to the left of the desk. Feeling wild and liberated by words which shouted the truth for the first time in her life, Ana throws back her head and sends a full ball of spit in its direction. It falls short and spatters on the desk itself. Then laughter breaks: a choking, gurgling frenzy that stops only when the slaps so unbalance her that she falls to the floor, cracking her head heavily against the solid desk.

  When Ana comes round, her head drumming, she finds herself alone, lying in front of the desk, legs and buttocks exposed, conscious of a sharp pain between her legs. What if she had been assaulted again, while she was unconscious? They would do anything … Wincing, she scrambles to her feet, pulling up her trousers and clutching them around her waist, feeling suddenly sick. Falling heavily into the chair, she throws back her head and gulps in the dead stale air that smells faintly of sweat and nicotine … and what else? Ana realized that the worst smell, pungent and animal, comes from herself – but is too tired to care.

  So be it. This is what I have become. Let me bleed and stink in this dreadful windowless room; let me be abased; let me even send up prayers which are vomited back down on me, in God’s fair judgement; let me die; let my shivering white soul be cast down to Dracul and torn to pieces by his acolytes. Here – they were here, his acolytes. Two of them. You were right, dear Tată, when you said that Hell is here,
all around us. Mamă and I didn’t believe you – thought you were being difficult and morose as usual; but O Tată, what truths you told me! And Mama, you lied to me, before the icons, when you promised something else. Imagine if, reflected in the warm red glass of that little, precious vase, we could have seen the image of your child’s future – burning, burning, in the scarlet flood which carries away all doomed souls! Imagine it, Mama! Do you think you might have been brave enough to kill your own child, to protect her from such a future? Because it does take courage – it takes such courage, to do something like that for your child. I know. But I did not kill my son; I gave him something more precious than the red glass Uncle broke in one of his tempers. I set my child free, Mama – and don’t you forget it! It was easy for both of you. You were set free. You weren’t left behind, as I am now, waiting for the burning to begin once more, for the black acolytes to come through that door again, and torture me. I read somewhere there is a church in the Maramureş, where the walls of the narthex are painted with such punishments for the damned as only a genius could devise: women who had babies aborted forced to eat them, others who were adulterous penetrated by loathsome demons. A woman is crushed by a hot iron; did she burn the priest’s robes by accident? Never mind; they all deserve it, all of them! And the genius has devised my punishment too: to be left behind here, with demons who ask me, again and again, about my child. My son, my son, my son. Where is your son, Popescu, where is your son? You do have a son, Popescu? Yes, I have a son, but he is far away from here – where you cannot reach him … Ha! Never; he is safe from you forever … But neither can I reach him, Dracul – neither can I.

  Dear God, protect him! And Radu, Radu, are you looking after him for me?

  Her eyes are closed, head still thrown back, when the door opens. Ana refuses to look: his shape might be different but he will be the same underneath, inflicting the same torment.

  ‘Popescu – Ana.’

  The man now sitting at the desk is older than the previous two, with an air of authority, and a softer, more cultivated voice. Heavy pouches under his eyes give him a lugubrious appearance, as if the business of dealing with criminals is unutterably wearisome.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. One must confess to identity.

  He pushes a packet of Kent across the desk and invites her to take one. She shakes her head for a fraction of a second, then seizes the pack greedily. He throws a box of American matches. Ana’s head swims; after initial nausea comes a rush of pleasure, even trust.

  ‘I want to take you through your story, Popescu – with your help, of course.’ The tone is polite. ‘You say that you attempted to escape on an impulse, a kind of female madness, no doubt… and yet there are mysteries here we must unravel. We know you have a son, and yet you had no child with you when you were caught. Why not?’

  ‘He … he is staying with friends,’ she stammers. ‘What friends? Where do they live?’

  ‘I won’t tell you. I know how you make families suffer, when someone’s tried to escape.’

  He looks pained, as though she has said something deeply hurtful. ‘We try to protect our country, Popescu, from elements that might try to destroy it from within … But no matter, let’s continue with our investigation. Do you expect me to believe that a mother would try to escape, leaving her child behind? Do you not love your child, Popescu?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ she says hoarsely.

  ‘Well, surely you want the people he is with to be able to tell him you are alive? Surely you want them to be able to bring him to prison to visit you?’

  Dumbly, she shakes her head.

  ‘A mother who does not want to see her child? You amaze me …’ His eyebrows are arched, his voice mocking. When Ana fails to respond, fixing her eyes instead on a spot on the desk in front of her, he begins to tap a pencil on the cardboard file before him, setting up a faint tattoo. ‘So – let us deduce that you want to leave this country so much you abandon your child. For what reason? I know women – it must be because you love someone else more than your son. You know, Popescu, your English friend has been trying to find you; he has been very busy in his efforts.’

  She looks up, surprised. ‘Yes, your lover, the foreign spy Edwards, made lots of telephone calls to try to find you. So you didn’t tell him you were going to escape. Why not? Let’s say it was because you had grown tired of him; maybe you had another lover? Maybe someone who is paid to help parasites escape? So you, and Doina Kessler, and her husband, and Chandris are all part of a network? But where is Kessler himself – hiding your son?’

  ‘This is absurd,’ she says.

  ‘Is it? Diseases run in families, Popescu. Maybe that is why we should find your son – and make no mistake, we will. Father, daughter, son … Yes, the rot can be passed on, unless we reeducate, to stop it.’

  Ana stares. ‘What do you mean – father?’ she says sharply. ‘What do you know about my father?’

  He raises his eyebrows again. The tapping continues: minute, infuriating. ‘What do you know about your father?’

  ‘My father … disappeared, in 1972.’

  ‘Disappeared?’

  ‘Yes … my aunt, his sister, tried to discover … But there was no information, nothing.’

  He shakes his head. ‘It’s astonishing how many lies one family can spin. Are you telling me none of you knew what a traitor he was?’

  ‘My father?’

  ‘Your father, Stelian Popescu.’

  Ana’s heartbeat seems to keep pace with the tiny, insistent noise of pencil against card. Then, abruptly, the sound ceases, as he opens the folder and glances down. ‘We have all the facts of course, Popescu, but I won’t bother to read them all. You probably know it already. During the years between 1968 and 1972 your father was near the centre of a small organization dedicated to helping counter-revolutionary elements leave the Socialist State of Romania.’ His voice had taken on a sing-song quality; as if these facts were committed to memory. ‘We estimated that he was personally responsible for the escape of at least forty people.’

  ‘How? How do you know?’

  He shrugs. ‘He was clever – there were many routes. Apparently he would accept very little money for himself – just enough to cover the expense of it all; they said he did it for purely political reasons. So he was a clever fool, your father.’

  ‘They?’

  He shrugs at the stupidity of the question. ‘Those who informed.’

  Ana draws in her breath sharply. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He was shot near at the border, near Satu Mare … let me see … on October 8th, 1972.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘The man he was helping was shot too, on the open ground. His footprints didn’t go very far, you can be sure of that!’ He smiles then, for the first time, a cold grin revealing large yellow teeth.

  Ana feels the room shift around her, and reaches out to steady herself. Leaning forward, a new intensity in her voice, she whispers, ‘My father … did he die immediately?’

  He shrugs again. ‘Who knows? It was impossible to tell – once the dogs were pulled off. They can tear someone apart in a few minutes, as you can imagine.’

  As you can imagine! But please God, stop me from imagining, stop me, please stop me …’

  She closes her eyes, trying to regain control. Then she mutters, ‘I … didn’t know.’

  ‘Mmm.’ The noise was indifferent. He writes something in the file. ‘Well, that doesn’t concern us now. We prefer, in any case …’

  ‘Who informed on him?’

  ‘What does it matter? Everyone has a price – even you, Popescu.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ll make myself clear. Since you’re obviously following in your father’s footsteps, we want to know everything about the organization – or the individuals – who helped you. We want names of anyone else they’re involved with. You’ll help yourself if you confirm Doina Kessler approached you with the plan; she’s our lever on Chindris. And if
you tell us where Radu Kessler is hiding, and anyone else you know is involved – then we’ll be sure nothing happens to your son. Do you understand?’

  Triumph begins to flame, making her gasp. ‘But you say you don’t know where Ion is,’ she says slowly.

  He flicks his hand, impatiently. ‘Oh, you’ll tell us, Popescu – people always tell us things. In the end, they have no choice. In any case, we can find out easily – there’s always somebody to give information.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘in Romania, always somebody.’

  As if she had not spoken, he continues, ‘So when you tell us everything we want to know – everything – we shall take special care that your son doesn’t meet with an unpleasant … accident. Do you understand, Popescu?’

  Ana stands up now, pushing back the chair with a clatter. Exultation consumes all the pain of a body beaten and abused, making molten her hatred of the bland, cruel face before her, echoed in the one just to the side of him, framed on the wall. ‘I understand perfectly!’ she shouts. ‘So people always tell you things, because they have no choice? You torture them, don’t you? You make them betray everything they love, everything they believe in … Well, you can torture me, if you like; you can do whatever you want to me! I’m not afraid of you – there’s nothing you can do to hurt me, and you know why? I’ll tell you without all that effort. Because my son isn’t here any more. He’s safe in Germany by now, do you hear? Radu took him out for me – yes, that’s right!

  ‘So it doesn’t matter whether or not you believe me about there being no organization, you … you shit! You can’t touch them now! You can’t get them – you hear me? And shall I tell you something else, something I never dreamt would be possible? I’m really grateful to you – you’ve done me a favour today. You’ve told me the truth about my father, so no matter how long you keep me here, it’ll make it worthwhile, just to know that. I am truly indebted to you, sir!’ Her fist thumps the desk as she speaks, making his pencil jump up and down, and her voice echoes, even in the airless stillness of that room.