by Bel Mooney
Ana raised her head, pulled away from him a fraction and said, in a quiet voice, ‘I will stay the night with you, Michael, if that is what you want.’
‘But do you want it?’
Like a child she nestled back, and waited a few seconds before answering, in a muffled voice, ‘Yes, it is what I want too.’
Michael was more experienced than she, and yet something of her shyness transferred itself, so that they approached each other with a tentativeness akin to awe. Hidden beneath the bedclothes he felt her bones, her intense fragility, and the fearful vulnerability of the flesh he touched. His gentleness then was like a cloak, covering her only to protect – and slowly, slowly. When at last he entered her, and she made a small sound in her throat, an image flashed across his mind of soldiers surrounding her, forcing her again and again. For a second he was transfixed by horror, unable to move. He looked down at her, supporting himself on his arms so that she should not be crushed. Her eyes were closed. Then, feeling his hesitation she opened them and stared up at him, shaking her head slightly, as if in wonder. And then she smiled, pulled his head down, moved beneath him, raising herself, murmuring broken phrases in Romanian in his ear, so that he slid his hands beneath her and allowed himself to meet her rhythms, knowing that she could not be hurt. And might even be healed.
Afterwards she lay with her head on his chest, and he closed his eyes, feeling a more precise peace than he had ever known. Never before such mutuality, he thought, and the notion confounded him, a comment on all that was past: women he had known at University and since, one or two he fancied he was in love with, and yet who drifted away with his lack of commitment. He felt the point of hair at the nape of Ana’s neck, and wondered where this new tenderness came from, lapping him round, easing limbs, mind and spirit into sleep.
‘We can be like this … in the new Romania,’ she whispered, ‘and it’s something to be grateful for, isn’t it?’
‘Grateful – yes,’ he said sleepily, ‘so mulţumesc, Ana.’
He woke to find her watching him, propping herself up on one elbow, smiling. ‘You look funny without your glasses,’ she said, ‘but very nice.’
‘You look … lovely,’ he said awkwardly.
‘What did you think of me – when I worked for you?’
‘I used to want to make you look at me, to treat me as a friend. And sometimes … I imagined you with me in England, going to the opera, in a beautiful dress.’
She laughed. ‘And all the time I was sitting there, in my terrible clothes, translating the old Cobbler’s latest boring speech … my God!’
‘I just wanted to know you, I suppose. And that day in the park’ – he hesitated – ‘when I met … Ion, I felt it more strongly. But you ran away. Anyway, I know it would have been impossible. Do you remember that scandal when one of the German diplomats ran off with one of the local staff? I hear she was very beautiful …’
‘I hope it wasn’t your Herr Fossmeyer!’
He was silent then, stroking her arm. Then he got up quickly and began to dress. She followed suit, glancing at him from time to time.
‘What’s going to happen, Ana?’
‘I think you know. I will get my visa and then …’
‘Won’t you wait for just another couple of weeks? I have some leave still due, I could come with you, I could help you. You don’t speak German, and I do … Let me, Ana!’
She sighed. ‘This is very difficult for me …’
‘What if something goes wrong? How will you cope, on your own?’
‘I’ve been on my own for many years, Michael – I think I’ll be able to manage. Anyway, nothing will go wrong. I know it – here.’ She tapped her own chest almost indignantly.
She was brittle again; he wanted to soothe her. Taking her in his arms he held her firmly, murmuring, ‘It’ll all be fine, it’ll all work out. But please let me help you, please wait for me to come with you. Just give me time to organize it…’
He felt her body relax. ‘Maybe I will,’ she said quietly, and he smiled up at the ceiling.
‘Some people need to be needed, you know,’ he said.
‘Ah yes, but you have to understand that some people need not to need, Michael. It is too dangerous.’
‘Can I telephone you later, to hear what Fossmeyer says?’ She shook her head. ‘We have no phone. But I will write the address for you. Maybe you can write me a letter.’
Michael was angry then and stepped back. ‘That’s ridiculous, Ana! I don’t want to write to you, I want to see you – and soon. Tonight. You must phone me.’
‘I will.’
‘Promise?’
‘I promise, Michael,’ she said, reaching up to kiss him gently on the lips, so that the room shifted for an instant, and he ached to take her back into his bed. But she was leaving the room, she was looking for her coat, she was smiling at him.
‘Please stay for some coffee,’ he said, ‘and then I’ll drive you …’
But she shook her head, smiling, and said that she had many things to do before her appointment at the German Embassy. Quickly he scribbled his home number on a piece of paper and thrust it at her, reminding her though that he would be in the office all day, and she had that number too. Then she was gone.
Left alone in the flat Michael wandered aimlessly about, picking things up and putting them down, making the bed with more care than usual, and standing for a long while in the kitchen, where the two whisky tumblers still stood on the draining board. It was strange, he thought, this feeling of falling. He had not known it for a long time.
Each time the telephone rang in the office he jumped, but it was never her. By the end of the day he despaired, but reassured himself that she was bound to telephone the flat, because that would be more private. He made himself a sandwich, drank a bottle of Pinot Noir, and turned the pages of his Le Carré, hardly bothering to follow the intricacies of a plot which already seemed out of date. At last he allowed it to slip to the floor as he fell asleep in the chair, eyes glazing as he stared at the black telephone which remained stubbornly silent.
He woke after 2 a.m., shivering and miserable, but also angry. Climbing into bed he asked her aloud if she was in the habit of breaking promises, then fell into a restless sleep in which she was screaming to him from inside a prison, calling his name again and again, begging him to find a ladder to rescue her. He could see her tiny face at a barred window, and her fists clinging as somebody tried to pull her back … and yet the walls were too high and he could not reach her.
By lunch time the next day she still had not telephoned. Furious with himself for not taking her address, as she had suggested, he wondered what to do. ‘I can’t lose you again, Ana Popescu,’ he thought angrily.
He drove to the Intercontinental Hotel, and approached the reception desk. As usual the stares were blank, especially when he said he did not have a reservation. ‘I’m trying to find someone who used to work here,’ he said in Romanian, ‘a woman called Ana Popescu.’
The two men glanced at each other. Then the older one said, ‘We do not have anyone of that name working here.’
‘I know that!’ he said impatiently, ‘but I need to get in touch with her. It’s important. And I think that somebody must have her address.’
They looked at each other and shrugged. Michael put his hand in his pocket and drew out some dollar bills which he held in the fist he allowed to rest on the desk.
‘I need to know,’ he said.
‘One moment, please,’ said the older man and walked away.
A few minutes later he returned and pushed a piece of paper across to Michael. ‘I am glad to be able to help you,’ he said in English, with a touch of contempt that was not lost on Michael. Indifferent to it, he gave the man some single dollar bills and was out through the revolving door before Balescu had even looked down to count.
In his car he looked at his watch and hesitated. He had a meeting with the Ambassador and the First Secretary in twenty minutes; i
n any case he should give her another chance to phone him. She was independent; he must not appear to harry her. After all, she had made a promise and he believed she would still keep it.
The niceties of diplomatic life, which normally he enjoyed as a game, seemed insufferably tedious to Michael that afternoon. At last he was able to leave, consult the street map and locate the address. Still he felt tense and offended and wondered what he would say to her. Was this what women felt, after a one-night stand? The thought had never occurred to him before, and it annoyed him still further, putting him in the role of victim, for the first time. Had it meant nothing to Ana – that they had been to bed together? He could not believe it; she had arched her back towards him, she had murmured loving words … He drove more quickly at the thought, as if his foot on the accelerator might take him back into control.
The car moved through streets of unspeakable dreariness, along pockmarked road surfaces, and Michael noticed afresh the new movement in this city, previously so still, as crowds of people gathered inexplicably on street corners and swirled around the men and women selling piles of newspapers. They were hungry and thirsty, not for food now (although that had not disappeared and already people were murmuring that there had been a revolution and yet still there was no cheese, as if change could happen that quickly, Sarah Mowbray said, in her clear, critical tones), but for information. Someone would put up a poster, advertising the most trivial of meetings, and immediately a small group would gather to peer at it, pushing and jostling for a better view. And new slogans had begun to appear, equating the National Salvation Front with the Communist Party. So much anger and suspicion … when still the shrines in the streets burned slender yellow tapers for the dead.
Yet for the first time, it seemed, Michael felt none of the old frustration and contempt, the nagging itch to leave this city. To stay, he thought, to be useful, to witness a rebirth (possibly) … He drummed his fingers on the wheel and thought of Ana and her child. That too. Maybe.
At last, in Sector 6, he found the place, and ran up unlit stairs, feeling for the apartment numbers with his hands until his eyes were used to the gloom. There was a dank smell of damp and of paraffin, mingled with a stale aroma of boiled food. There was no bell or knocker so he rapped sharply on the door. Nobody came. This time he hit it with his fist, several times. ‘Oh come on, Ana!’ he said aloud.
He heard footsteps, then the door was opened. A tall blonde woman stood there, hair piled untidily on top of her head. The lobby was tiny. Behind her, almost filling the small room that was obviously the sum total of the flat, stood a huge, fat man, smoking. They stared at Michael.
‘Are you Doina?’ he asked, in Romanian.
She nodded, looking at him curiously. ‘And 1 think that you are the Englishman …?’
‘Michael Edwards – yes. Look, I’ve come to see Ana – is she in?’
Doina stepped backwards, nodding to him to follow her. ‘Please, come in. This is my friend, Christian Luca.’
Luca had turned away now, shaking his head. Michael stood in the lobby, unwilling to enter the small room where he knew he would not find her.
‘Will she be back soon?’ he asked quickly.
Doina shook her head. Luca turned back and glared at Michael, his head wreathed with filmy grey smoke. ‘You’re a bit late, friend,’ he said harshly.
Doina looked uncomfortable. ‘Hush, Christian!’ she said angrily, then continued in English, polite and precise. ‘I am very sorry to have to tell you, but Ana has gone. She got her visa, you see, for Germany. She told me you helped her …’ She met his eyes; obviously she would know Ana had spent the night with him, and as if to apologize for her friend’s indifference, she said, ‘She had no time for anybody – only her son. All she thinks about is getting him back. You must understand … You see, she went this morning. She took a train – it left just after nine. And we don’t know when she will be back. I’m very sorry.’
Part Four
Don’t be afraid.
Everything will be so easy
That you won’t even understand
Until much later.
You will wait at the beginning
And only when
You begin to believe
That I don’t love you anymore
Will it be hard for you,
But then I will make
A blade of grass grow
In our corner of the garden,
To reach out
And whisper:
Don’t be afraid,
She’s fine
And waiting for you
Near these roots of mine.
Ana Blandiana
Twenty-Nine
There is, in the railway stations of large cities, a melancholy emptiness that chills even those unafflicted by departure. It echoes off the cavernous ceilings, where birds fly in for the briefest respite, fluttering high amongst the steel struts, before darting out the other end. And it sings low and repetitively along the tangle of rails, as finally they sweep off in all directions, outwards and away. Above all it is in the expressions of people waiting, bags and bundles about their feet, as dour men in overalls sweep around them, gathering the detritus of existence into large black plastic bags.
And as disembodied voices crackle over loudspeakers, giving details of this departure and that delay, all heads crane sideways towards nothingness, listening anxiously, while confusion contorts the faces of those with no language. At least, not for here; not for this alien place. There is helplessness on such stations, and a tyranny of timetables and platform numbers, and the terrible fear that you might be whirled onwards to a destination you did not intend, and from which you cannot escape.
In her anxiety to leave, Ana had not calculated the timing of her journey, and so she arrived in Frankfurt one hour before midnight, nearly thirty-nine hours after she had left Bucharest. Her excitement had long disappeared, to be replaced by a terror which made her sweat, though she had spent most of the journey shivering with cold.
It began at the Hungarian border. She had taken her passport from her bag again and again, checking it like a child, unable to believe it was hers. But when they approached the border Ana started to tremble, imagining the cross-examination she thought to be inevitable, picturing herself dragged from the train. She held her hands tight together, to stop them shaking.
But nothing happened. She showed her passport to the border guards and they grunted and passed on. The train lurched forwards and she leaned back in her seat, breathless. It was that easy. She was free. She had left Romania. No one could touch her. She was on her way to Ion, and would find him the next day, she was sure. But late that night, as the train halted at Budapest for an hour, and she alighted to stretch her legs, walking up and down the cold platform, seeing red lights flicker in the distance, and hearing echoes vibrate around the silence, Ana began to feel afraid. She feared nothing human now, although men cast curious glances at her, and occasionally someone would mutter something in a language she did not understand. It was her own loneliness. Suddenly she began to grasp the dimensions of this world into which she had been mad enough to send her son, and doubted her own ability to broach its walls. The railway lines disappeared into mist, and as she stood at the end of the platform, peering into the gloomy haze before the outer blackness, she saw her own life before her, its destination a haze. Yet I have to be strong. I am strong. There is no choice but to be strong.
By the time the train stopped at Sturova, at the border with Czechoslovakia, her confidence had evaporated totally. The border guards stared at her insolently. It was 1.30 a.m. and she was a woman, travelling alone. There was no one else around. They seemed to take a long time studying her passport, passing it one to the other. Ana began to shake once more, huddling into her jacket and gazing up at them with blank, frightened eyes. Blue light from the platform glinted on shiny buttons and the leather of a holster. She remembered such things cold against her skin, and it was as if thousands of tiny insects w
ere crawling through her hair. Her mouth was dry; she bit skin from her lips as she sat there, dreading whatever might happen next.
But at last they muttered something to her, something suggestive she guessed by the accompanying laughter, and walked on. She lit a cigarette, steadying her wrist with the other hand to do so, and when the smoke reached her lungs she was swept by nausea. As the train trundled onwards at last she walked nervously to the lavatory to wash her face and rinse her mouth with water tasting of rust. Then at last she slept, and woke only when the train halted with a jerk at Prague.
For a while she sat, not knowing what to do. Then at last a railway guard came and stared through the window at her, making signs that she should alight. On the platform she said to him, helplessly, ‘Frankfurt?’, and he waved his hands, pointing across the station. Ana glanced back. Something of her was imprinted on the seat she had just vacated, like home, and she was unwilling to leave it. At 9.30 in the morning the station was busy and noisy; people pushed past her as she hesitated, staring up at the platform indicator, terrified of boarding the wrong train. Destinations jumbled before her eyes. Her small bag dragged her down; she felt stiff, tired and dirty.
Then she noticed a young mother walking along, a boy holding her hand. He was about nine, she guessed, with dark straight hair flopping across his forehead. As he walked he talked rapidly, telling her some story, his free hand gesticulating now and then for emphasis. Ana knew that the woman was barely listening to the details of the long anecdote; she glanced down from time to time, smiling fondly, delighting in the fact of him – the hair, the hand, and the rise and fall of the voice – which needed no response, confident in the presence of its audience.
I used to walk like that with Ion. I can hear him now, chattering on, so that sometimes I was bored by his anecdotes about school, and said, ‘Not now, Ionica, you told me that,’ because I was tired. He would be silent then, but not remove his hand from mine. And I would glance down at him and see the whiteness of his scalp where his hair parted, so papery-thin it seemed it could tear even at a harsh word. Then I felt guilty and told him I was sorry, and asked him about the football or the boys or what the teacher said next, and he carried on happily, as if there had been no interruption, while I looked down at him, smiling foolishly like that woman there, not really listening at all.