by Bel Mooney
But not Ion. There is no reason for Ion to be dead. Still, perhaps I will find him and discover that he is, indeed, dead to me. Somewhere, among strangers …
Do you paint, Radu? There? Or maybe you exist somewhere in an explosion of colour, maybe you are becoming colour at last, perhaps you are the thing itself: green, gold, blue. If so, if you are happy, it may be possible for you to forgive me. I shouldn’t have asked you to do what you did. It must have worried you, it must have put more strain on you, maybe it was what drove you out on the road. Or perhaps not. Perhaps you just went mad, Radu; I know it is very easy for all of us to be tipped over that edge.
‘Vous parley français, Madame?’
‘Yes, but my English is much better – please. To explain.’
‘Of course. My name is Marie Keiffer. Now tell me how I can help you.’
Ana looked at the representative of the Central Tracing Agency. She was about fifty, and plump, with fair hair swept up in a chignon. Her face was oddly unlined and she wore no make-up, so that she had the slightly smooth and shiny look of someone young and healthy, trapped somehow in ageing flesh. She sat behind the desk, hands folded on the empty pad in front of her, waiting for Ana to speak.
‘I want to find somebody. They told me that this is the place to come.’
‘Yes, perhaps …’ – a small shrug – ‘Who is this person, Madame, the missing person?’
‘My son. It’s a very long story.’
Marie Keiffer smiled and looked at her watch. ‘Please don’t worry. We can take some time.’ The voice was placid, but instead of reassuring Ana, as intended, it served only to make her impatient.
No, there isn’t enough time, you don’t understand, I have no time, I must find him now …
The woman was waiting. Ana swallowed, feeling words fly from her mouth like birds and flutter in panic about the room, deafening her with the beat of their wings until she wanted to scream, ‘Stop! Stop!’
‘I am sorry,’ she said, and swallowed.
‘What is the matter? I can’t help you unless you tell me your problem, Madame. You are a refugee?’
Ana nodded, then made an effort to gulp in air, so that when the words came they jumbled together, and she knew that if she paused she would lay her head on this desk of pale wood and howl. ‘My name is Ana Popescu and I am from Romania. A year ago I think I must have been mad because you see, I hated my country and Ceauşescu – it was a terrible place, a terrible place. And I was afraid for my son – my son, Ion. Ion is ten – no, he is eleven now … In the British Embassy where I worked I read something. I read that parents sent their children alone to Frankfurt, and even though they have no visa the Germans look after them. I read it and I don’t know if you can understand – I didn’t dare to think at first, because you see, my son is all … But I loved him so much. And there are things we have to choose – all of us. Do you see?’
Marie Keiffer did not stir. She leaned her curious old-young face on her hands and nodded gravely, although she had no idea where this story would lead. ‘Yes … please continue,’ she said.
‘My friend Radu, he is a painter. He was a painter. One day he told me he was escaping. He was getting a false German passport and going to Frankfurt from Belgrade. And then I asked him if … I asked him to …’
‘Yes?’
‘He took my son with him. To get him a better life – away from there. Oh but, please don’t mistake me, I did not just want him to have toys and clothes, not just that. That would not be a good reason, I think. Do you think?’
Madame Keiffer shrugged. ‘But normal.’
‘Securitate came round, and Ion saw him; he was very frightened. Oh, you don’t know what it was like.’
‘I have read things,’ murmured Marie Keiffer.
‘So Radu took Ion. Because you see, I thought it would never be over but that one clay maybe I could follow. No – I didn’t think that; sometimes now I think I didn’t think at all. I imagined Ion in the lovely Children’s Home and I was right, I met them, they were very kind … and then with a good foster family, and knew he would be happy. It would be better for him than what I could give him.’
She began to cry, but waved the proffered tissue aside and carried on, stifling her sobs. ‘I was so stupid. But I didn’t mean … Then suddenly it was over, in Romania, and it was like doors being opened. The light. We could be free to travel. You can’t know how … Then I said to my friend I could come and find Ion. Oh, I didn’t tell you, after he went I did try to escape, it was very foolish, and they put me in prison – but never mind about that now. So I worked hard and I made some dollars, and I went to Frankfurt, thinking that it would all be easy, or a little bit easy. But when I got there … when I got there, they told me …’
‘What did they tell you?’
‘That he had run away. With another boy, an older boy from Sri Lanka. And now I don’t know where he is – except that somebody there thought the Tamil boy might have come here, to Geneva, to see someone. I have the name – no – another name, a different one. I’m sorry. And they also told me that here you find people, you bring families together, and so I thought you would be able to help me. I have his photograph here – look!’
Marie Keiffer leaned forward to glance at the small snapshot, fuzzy black-and-white, held out across the desk. A small boy with dark hair falling diagonally across his forehead, pointed face, no smile – it was like any child, anywhere. And he could be any child, anywhere – so many of them now, shuttling around the world. He might have changed. He might not want to be found. Anything could have happened. But how could she tell this woman that?
‘Usually, Madame, we find people separated by war and …’
‘That is us! It was so bad in Romania.’
‘But you said that your son left before the revolution.’
‘That’s true. But just to live in Romania was to be in conflict, do you understand?’
The other woman nodded. ‘Believe me, I am not saying that your case doesn’t come within our task. More and more now, we’re working for family reunification.’
‘Yes, they told me …’
Marie Keiffer knew she must remove that sudden smile of hope. It was only fair. She said gently, ‘Madame, we have a working code which says that we must tell you at the start we may not succeed. We have a forty-five per cent success rate; in one year we handle about seventy thousand cases, and some of them will have been going on for years. It is wrong for me to raise false hopes. In your case, I have to tell you, it will be very, very hard to trace your son.’
‘Please – don’t tell me.’
Marie Keiffer’s voice was very quiet. ‘But it is very important that you understand. Now – we can do what we can do. We have a form – here – so let us write down all the information you have. Your son’s name, and his date and place of birth, and the name of the boy he is travelling with, if you know it…?’
Her knuckles white as they gripped the edge of the desk, Ana leaned forward and told Madame Keiffer what she needed to know. As she spelt out Ion’s name she was overwhelmed, suddenly, by its strangeness. It was the name of someone she had once known … The distance between them, emphasized by her slow articulation of each letter, seemed unbridgeable.
‘And you have no more information?’
‘No – just this address … a youth worker in Frankfurt gave me the name of a man, here in Geneva, a Tamil. He said he may have heard of the boys coming here. It’s possible …?
Ana pushed her piece of paper across the desk and waited. She could not remove her eyes from Marie Keiffer’s face. That gaze, unwavering and almost animal-like, disconcerted the woman – although she was accustomed to the fixity of human hope. It carried them through years, sometimes – searching for the missing father, the brother lost in South America, the husband who fled from guerrillas, the mother who crossed a border one night and was never seen again.
It carried them through, yet it was often cruel – when the phone call
had to be taken to say that there was, in fact, no hope at all.
Marie Keiffer took the paper. ‘I will make some telephone calls for you, Madame Popescu, but not now. I have a meeting in a few minutes. Can you come back … shall we say in an hour?’
‘So long?’ said Ana.
‘Please don’t worry. When my meeting is over I will telephone a man I know, who works with a Christian Group helping refugees, and I know one of their people is Tamil. There is no telephone number here on your paper – but maybe these people will know of the man. I will take their advice.’
Ana was staring at the floor. She did not speak for a few seconds, then she said, ‘I’m ashamed to tell you all this. I know you will think I am a … a … monster … a mother to send away her child?’
Marie Keiffer heard the question, and reached for a folder on the shelf behind her. She took out a piece of paper, and held it up. ‘Nobody could do my job if they were stupid enough to make such judgements. See – yesterday I had this letter. It is from a woman in Romania …’ Ana looked up sharply. ‘Written in French, yet she says she is not an educated woman – somebody must have written it for her. These things are confidential so I will not tell you her name or where she is from, just her story. I will translate …’
She frowned over the letter. ‘It says: “I am divorced for ten years and have five children, baptised Catholic. Their father has remarried, without helping them. Alone, I have very great difficulty to give them the conditions necessary … er … because they are very intelligent and willing to learn, but you know the situation our country is in … I think always of their … er … welfare, and I have discussed with my children if they would like to go and study in another country. They are in agreement. Perhaps there are families who accept Romanian children, to live in their homes, or to adopt them. Of course it would be better if a family accepted the five, to live together. For example, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, etcetera. I beg you to help me with this problem, and I hope it will be possible, with your … er … intervention …”’
She looked up. Ana was motionless, her eyes fixed on the letter. ‘Now she lists the children, all their names and ages. There is a boy of seventeen, a girl of sixteen, two more girls of fifteen and fourteen, and a boy of eleven. She goes on, “The children are all in good health, pretty, intelligent and capable of accommodating … adjusting … quickly.” Then she says she hopes we can arrange it, and so on …’
‘A boy … of eleven,’ said Ana.
‘Yes – you see, Madame Popescu, you are not the only person. I do not think this woman hates her children, do you?’
Ana shook her head. ‘Can you help her?’ she asked.
‘No – this isn’t within our job here. It’s impossible.’
Marie Keiffer rose. ‘Now, I must go to my meeting. I have an idea for you – to fill your time, why don’t you visit our Red Cross Museum? It tells of the work of the Red Cross since it was begun – I think you’ll find it very interesting. And you can have some coffee there too. Maybe you’d like that?’ She guessed this Romanian woman had no wish to visit the museum; people preferred to sit outside an office, even for five or six hours, simply to be near whatever action was taking place, as if their bodily presence might lend it urgency.
‘Well …’ Ana’s eyes roamed the room.
‘I’ll show you where to go. It is just one minute’s walk …’ said Marie Keiffer briskly. Her determination was not unkind; she knew how slowly the minutes would pass for Ana if she stayed in the corridor. Besides, she was proud of the museum, of the work of ICCR, even (sometimes) of herself.
The sky was bright blue now, and a cool breeze blew in Ana’s face as she walked between narrow walls and found herself in a light courtyard. It was ‘roofed’ by two stretched square banners of cream canvas, one bearing the symbol of the red cross, the other a red crescent, and these were reflected again and again in the plate glass windows of the building opposite. It was still early. No one was around. Yet Ana shared the space with others – white sculpted figures which disconcerted her at first: about ten of them clustered together, all hooded, hands tied behind their backs, as if awaiting execution. They faced her, these ghosts. She felt she should speak to them, in an effort perhaps to offer comfort. Walking across, so that she stood inches from the first figure, she looked up into the petrified fabric of its ‘face’, reached to touch it and whispered, ‘Bună dimineaţă – cum vă numiţi?’ Then louder, ‘Cum vă numiţi? For he must have a name, they must all have names, such hooded ones here and in any other place: forgotten or betrayed perhaps, but nevertheless belonging somewhere.
Even, perhaps, to her.
She entered the museum, to find her fifty-franc note waved aside; Marie Keiffer had telephoned the ticket desk to say that she would pay for the Romanian woman later.
People are kind despite everything. But maybe it is easier for them to be kind when they are not threatened. Do you give when you have nothing at all to spare? At home everybody is too busy scraping themselves off the ground – like that woman, who wants to send away her five children, knowing their life will be better without her.
The word ‘home’ confounded her with its strangeness. Suceava, Timişoara, Bucharest: which of them was home, now? Was home where your mother was buried, where your child was born, or where you lived out the monotony of the everyday? She knew that when she said ‘I am a Romanian’, to people like Marie Keiffer, or the lorry driver, that statement would inevitably carry with it a mess of baggage she could barely begin to guess at. It had been in the eyes of those journalists, when they looked at the children rotting in their filthy cots, turning to her to ask for explanations. ‘This is my country; this is my home; but please – do not hold me responsible’ – is that what she should have said? Nobody would believe it. The soil of your native land was in your fingernails forever, with the seeds of its infinite potential, the dryness of its failures, and all the dirt of its sins.
Behind the reception desk, carved in large letters in the stone of the wall, were the words, ‘Chacun est responsible de tout devant tous.’ The enormity of that intimidated Ana. Surely it was enough simply to confess the faults of your own history? Surely one could not be expected to shoulder more than that?
Downstairs she wandered into a labyrinth of darkness and light which was unlike anything she had ever imagined, let alone seen. The museums in Bucharest were old-fashioned monoliths, dusty and guarded by morose women who locked doors behind you as you moved through. Awed by the sophistication of these displays, Ana sat alone on a bench and watched an audio-visual recreation of the Battle of Solferino, and the story of the Swiss, Jean Henri Dunant, whose published descriptions of the suffering of the wounded and whose pleas for organizations to care for them led to the establishment of the Red Cross. Ana was dazzled, and exclaimed aloud when the screen slid silently aside to reveal a room of white light, and another petrified figure sitting at a desk. She walked nervously forward, expecting the wall to slide back again, imprisoning her. The sculpture showed Jean Henri Dunant writing; Ana reached out a finger to touch it, then drew it back.
There was nobody in the museum but herself. Ana wandered in the underground bunker, wondering and afraid, yet reading the explanatory captions in English, like a studious child. It was as if she’d entered a dream existence where all that survived on earth was the memory of its horrors – fixed permanently on record by the most modern museum technology. She could imagine that the world outside might suddenly be destroyed, leaving her buried forever with its history. And was this it? The sum total?
She stood and watched as the First World War was played through in eight minutes on a large screen: blind men stumbling, feet in the mud of Verdun, explosions, hands nailing wire – and the newsreel voice, thin and dated in its enunciation, announcing, ‘All over Europe camps are being set up …’ Then the children, led and carried, little figures in heavy boots wearing woollen caps, their gait jerky, like puppets. B
odies tumbled in sludge, feet sliding in slime; wooden crosses nailed together, so many crosses; the voice announcing, ‘The Fourth Year of Horror …’
At last the screen went black; Ana sat motionless, seeing children’s eyes in the spots on her retina.
When the whole film began to run again, she rose hastily to avoid it, retreating between tall stacks which reminded her of the tower blocks of Bucharest. Here, enclosed in perspex, was the card index of prisoners of war, seven million of them, in soft brown boxes labelled with fine spidery writing. She paused and saw one name, ‘Stailoff Ivan Gheorgeaff’, and closed her eyes briefly, imagining Ivan’s mother searching for him in 1918, writing a letter care of the Red Cross: ‘Dear Ivan, I miss you, I hope you are well, we are all thinking about you …’
The same things, we all say the same things, and share the same fears, and I am not different from that man’s mother, though she is long dead. It goes on and on … Dear Ivan.
Name after name, box after box, stack after stack. All around her now, on fine nylon screens, were huge images of humanity: faces of suffering, faces of compassion, eyes looking into the distant point just beyond her head, seeking (she thought) some answer. This was to represent the period between the wars, and the surge of hope that a world sick of war might learn a lesson. Ana’s knowledge of modern history was not good; she knew nothing about the League of Nations, but she understood the meaning of the statue she now approached: a nurse kneeling with a wounded soldier leaning on her. And she knew that the cinema screen which chattered eerily beyond it would show scenes of fresh carnage again and again, as people fled in the new wreckage of Europe, under the shadow of the swastika, and the thin voice of Pathé News announced the war in the Pacific.