Lost Footsteps

by Bel Mooney

  ‘But,’ said Ana, ‘the end of communism will not make us rich, or happy. We will still have small apartments and poor food …’

  ‘Ah yes, so the truth is, Madame Popescu, that you are an economic migrant. We must be very clear about these things.’

  Ana could prove nothing. The cross-examinations wearied her; she felt the middle-aged woman’s disapproval when she described how Ion had left, and because she could not tell the full story, she knew the woman thought she was lying. Indeed, Madame Bernard did not believe her; these refugees made up fantastic tales to gain sympathy. She had heard it all before.

  While she was waiting for a decision Ana assisted in the restaurant, and helped Monique with Ion’s lessons. Obviously, the child was torn between them. Franklin (who would, it seemed, almost certainly get his ‘white card’, especially as he had a relative in Paris) was drawn more and more towards the Tamil community, and Ion seemed less dependent on him. But to whom would he turn when he fell off his skateboard? The situation was painful for both women, but especially for Ana. In her heart she knew she had a better chance of restoring her relationship with Ion if they could be alone. Yet where could they go? They needed a formal address for this waiting period. And the Denises were kind.

  She wrote to Doina to tell her what had happened – and that Radu was dead. It was a long letter, and the reply came almost immediately. Doina was relieved; to know that Radu had not abandoned her vindicated the years they had spent together. And she wrote that she could not be happier that Ana had found Ion. ‘Perhaps one day we will all meet again – if I can ever get to France.’ Ana realized her friend assumed she would never return to Romania, and the thought made her sad.

  After much thought, she also sent a postcard to Michael Edwards at the Embassy. She found him in her thoughts more and more, which disturbed her. It was probably because the obvious love and companionship shared by Paul and Monique made her feel shut out; the night spent with Michael was the nearest she had come to such an experience, at least since the few days with Robert. And that was so long ago, when she was young. So despite herself Michael Edwards once again became a focus of fantasy, and Ana would find herself staring into space as she took Ion to the park, remembering the boat on the lake.

  She did not know what to write on the postcard, with the result that it was clumsy:

  I want you to know that my son and I are together in Paris. Perhaps that is a surprise! We are staying with good people, and hope we will be allowed to remain. This is the address, if you come to Paris. I hope you are well.

  Yours sincerely,

  Ana Popescu

  She looked at it for a long time before posting it, thinking that if he wrote to her she would have the excuse to send him a proper letter.

  Two weeks later the reply came, but it was short, formal and typewritten, and Ana had no means of understanding what it really meant:

  It was good to hear from you, and to know that things have worked out. You were obviously right to think that you did not need my help, and so perhaps you were right not to wait. I was rather surprised, though, that you left so quickly. It would have been nice if you had telephoned …

  Still, never mind all that. Things are changing at work, as you can imagine. We are getting new equipment and generally becoming more efficient. And it is an interesting time for Romania, I think – but perhaps you take no interest now.

  If ever I come to Paris I will look you up. Good luck for the future.

  Yours ever …

  He had added a postscript in his own hand, then crossed it out heavily. Ana tried hard to read what it said, needing to find some comfort somewhere. But it was impossible.

  The weeks passed. Ana walked the streets of Paris, this time with her son, and visited monuments and galleries until Ion complained, and even she felt sick – surfeited with culture. The beauty of the city still dazzled her; light glittered on its tiles and windows, hard and impervious. Whereas at first she had noticed foreigners in the streets, now she observed the French themselves, their confidence, their wholeness. From Germany, through Switzerland, now to France, she moved through another culture – one which she thought she had known from her reading, but one which sometimes now seemed as strange to her as that of Africa or India. Her books had not prepared her for the smell of prosperity; her experience at one British Embassy (with a few British staff who struggled to create an island of civilization) had not prepared her for the mental onslaught of freedom – represented by the elegance of the women she saw on the streets, and the confidence of everyone she met.

  Monique told her gently this was a false impression, that the country was as disparate and divided as any other. But Ana could not see it. She felt, as always, like an onlooker at a private celebration which united every guest in rejoicing – but the purpose of which eluded her. In the midst of plenty she yearned for simplicity.

  And unreasonably, she became as irritated by the criticisms of their own country, as she was by the Denises’ simple platitudes about Eastern Europe, capitalism and consumerism. Yet the contradictions were there. She saw people sleeping rough on the streets of Paris; heard talk of racism, and homelessness, and poverty.

  Monique said, ‘Whatever we say about communism, however much we criticize it – and it was terrible, of course – those things didn’t happen, did they? Do you know, in Prague now, there are shops selling pornography, and the place is full of strip clubs, and drunkenness and prostitution. Street crime is everywhere. I suppose that’s what you get with freedom.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Ana.

  The complexity of it bewildered her. She had not lost the ideals of equality and justice that were bred in her together with the knowledge that the day-to-day reality betrayed them. But the ideals remained inviolate, like the deepest spiritual need, and she knew she had convinced herself that they did exist somewhere – in the West, in the world where all was well, in the utopia people craved enough to die in the attempt to reach it. Because the Propaganda Machine had instructed them that poverty, unemployment and homelessness were proof of capitalism’s inhumanity, they refused to believe those things existed. So now Ana was puzzled: she had to acknowledge that there was a little truth in what had been said by the Lie Machine, and yet at the same time she understood that perhaps this enigma called freedom had to be bought at the price of inequality and injustice. She looked at young people begging and old men sleeping rough in doorways, and thought grimly, ‘I have been poorer than you.’ But she was hurt by her own response, as if she had betrayed her own deepest spiritual self.

  Lonely, she was glad when Paul and Monique intoduced her to their friends. Soon she experienced a worse isolation: being the pet ‘cause’ of well-meaning people who presumed to wear her suffering like a badge. They were avid for her stories, and she found herself compelled to talk and talk, not so much because she wanted them to understand, but for her own need to remember:

  ‘You know, you learn by going shopping that it is impossible to find what you want, but you search for things because your family life depends on it. It’s a basic knowledge, especially for girls, that you will always be disappointed. Searching becomes a symbol for living. And the hope that you’ll find a cucumber or a toilet roll or a piece of soap or a cabbage, becomes a substitute for thinking. People hoped, deep inside, that it would all end, but they didn’t believe that was possible. So instead they hoped there would be eggs that day, somewhere. Or at least – an egg. What you didn’t realize was that what you were searching for each day was your deepest hope, and in that lay your only dignity. And of course, you couldn’t find that either. You couldn’t find that most of all.’

  They listened, and made sympathetic noises. Sometimes she was able to make them laugh, because she wanted more than their compassion.

  ‘You know, I used to take home the newspapers from work. You must realize that these weren’t newspapers as you know them, these were no more than Party bulletins – all about Ceauşescu. And we’d cut the
m into squares to use in the toilet, and once when Ion had diarrhoea I told him they deserved their job!’

  The wine would be passed round, someone would translate for those whose English was poor; they would laugh with her, and for a few moments Ana would feel triumphant. Then the mood would pass, and sadness would settle on her like a cloak. She knew she had to use a foreign langauge to translate her past into a foreign way of thinking – or else she could not possibly be understood. So – the totality of what she had been and experienced was reduced to anecdote, and this itself was a betrayal. She surveyed the attractive faces around her, and knew there was nothing in their lives that could possibly correspond to what she knew and that the leap of imagination needed for real understanding was possible for only a few of them. If at all. She would feel then that she belonged nowhere, and had to move on. How could she live in dignity playing the role of dinner-table clown? She began to hear a condescension in the laughter that was probably not there.

  Yet she was with Ion, although his night-time disturbances worried her. He was beset by nightmares, but would never describe them. The television seemed to be his chief consolation, and he would spend hours in front of it, watching anything. Ana disliked this, but Monique said it was inevitable, since he had become addicted in Geneva. Then Ana knew she could say nothing because, after all, it was all her fault. Still, when they talked more and more about the past he became like his old self, and she was reassured. Children, she thought, are far more resilient then we are.

  After three months the decision came: Ana’s application for asylum was refused. Paul Denis lost his temper, Monique said she would start a campaign, and Ion cried. While Paul was on the telephone to a journalist friend, Ana slipped quietly down the stairs.

  It was a warm day; a slight breeze scattered cirrus clouds high across the sky. On impulse she chose to walk all the way to Notre Dame, and leaned on the parapet by the river, watching the tourists buy from the bouquinistes. Her intention had been to enter the cathedral to pray but suddenly now she lost that desire. There was no one who could guide her in this – neither her beloved spirits, nor God. She realized that the chief change within her was the hardest for a personality shaped by communism: the knowledge that for the first time you – not someone else, the government, the Party, whoever – are in charge of your own life. She would not pray.

  She lifted up her head and surveyed the great H–shaped west front, noticing the balance of strong vertical divisions with the horizontals of frieze and gallery, and how the great rose window bound it all together … and felt a profound satisfaction. This was beautiful; she had been so lucky to see it, to be here, to find Ion among the wealth and poverty of Paris. Nevertheless, there were levels of beauty she had not understood before. And she could not prevent herself from thinking of the painted monasteries which touched her at a far deeper level than this church, magnificent though it was. She looked at people passing by (French citizens as well as tourists from Germany, Britain, America …) and wondered how many of them must have applauded when the Berlin wall came down, yet agreed with their governments now that walls are necessary. There was no bitterness in the thought. Ana was beyond surprise.

  There would be new jokes, since the elections. Doina would know them all; Luca would be as cynical as ever. Jokes are only good in your own language; they didn’t work so well when she tried to tell Paul and Monique, although they laughed; they always laughed.

  Ana imagined Timişoara, Suceava, Iaşi – all changed now, in the new dispensation, and Bucharest transformed by freedom. The streets would be smelling of linden; Cişmigiu would be full of people, laughter floating across the lake. Perhaps the boats would be better now. She would go back to the Embassy, he would find her a job … He would still be there. So she hoped.

  Ana found herself planning as she had never done before. If there was no job at the Embassy she could translate, go into publishing … It would be different now, she told herself again and again, it would be safe for Ion. For she felt she owed it to him to give back to him his country, so that his own language – the language of the lost grandparents – might sit less awkwardly on his tongue. Besides, she decided, was it not her duty to help create a new Romania, for Ion, and for all those released from the prison at last? What hope was there if nobody wanted to stay? We are not persons of no account – not any more. We can feel pride. We are Romanians …

  At last she went back to the Passage Rousseau and told Paul and Monique Denis that she would not appeal against the decision. She talked of fate, of things being ‘meant’. They argued, then fell silent before such inexplicable determination. They had not measured this woman, Paul thought, and Monique felt a romantic excitement, despite herself, at the idea that Ana was turning her back on the benefits of capitalism and going home. Their disappointment and Ion’s grief were somewhat assuaged by Ana’s plan: that she would immediately start to find a child for them to adopt, and act as mediator. ‘You will come to Bucharest, and we will look after you – you’d like that, wouldn’t you, Ionica?’ she said, knowing he would become excited at the thought.

  She was right: the novelty of the plan took hold immediately. Reassured by the Denises that he could take all his toys and clothes with him, Ion clattered downstairs to tell Franklin the news. Ana realized with a small shock that he had said nothing about leaving his friend; perhaps that relationship had already become the past.

  Children, she reminded herself, are adaptable.

  ‘We’ll have a farewell party for you, Ana,’ said Monique.

  ‘A cake with candles for Ion,’ said Paul.

  Ana heard a voice say merci. It was her own. But what language was that? She seemed to see them from a long way off, already disappearing with all the others. They had been so kind; generosity existed. Ana knew nothing could alter that, no cynicism devalue the universals an Englishman had spoken of – it seemed like centuries ago. Yet now she would no longer be beholden.

  And she was hearing something beyond their voices and the seductive murmur of Paris in the distance. There was a low chanting in unison, asking God for mercy over and over again; then the sound of a car disappearing into darkness, taking somebody away somewhere … A voice cries out ‘Mama!’ and it is my own.

  Ana closed her eyes and saw, imprinted forever, the smear of squashed flowers in the rain, then a rake obliterating faint footprints from fine soil. Instead of garlic and meat from the kitchen below she could smell the heavy, sacred odour of candle and incense …

  Some things are never lost, Tată, not even on the Day of Judgement. I believe that. I know who I am … and she knew she had no choice but to cross that border once again – to find what might, after all, be retrieved.

  A Note on the Author

  Bel Mooney (born 1946) is an English journalist and broadcaster born in Liverpool, and spent her earliest years in Liverpool on a council estate.

  Mooney became a journalist in 1969 then went on to write for the New Statesman, the Daily Telegraph Magazine, Cosmopolitan and many others. She was a columnist on the Daily Mirror, The Times and The Sunday Times.

  She has honorary degrees from the University of Bath and Liverpool John Moores University, and is a Fellow of University College London. 'Devout Sceptics' (BBC Radio 4) won a Sandford St Martin Trust award for religious broadcasting, and the children's novel The Voices of Silence won a New York Public Library citation and was shortlisted for a Gold Medal in the State of California. She has won special awards for journalism from charities including CRUSE. Mooney is also Patron of Teenage Cancer Trust (South West) and National Family Mediation.

  Having made her name as a journalist, columnist, and broadcaster, she turned her hand to writing fiction for adults and children. In all, she published 26 books for children and young people. Her fiction (adults and children) has been translated into eleven languages. Mooney has reviewed fiction and non-fiction for many newspapers including the Spectator, the Observer, The Times and the Times Literary Supplement. She has b
een a judge for the Whitbread (now Costa) Book of the Year and The Orange Prize.

  Discover books by Bel Mooney published by Bloomsbury Reader at

  www.bloomsbury.com/BelMooney

  Bel Mooney’s Somerset

  Lost Footsteps

  This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Reader

  Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,

  London WC1B 3DP

  First published in Great Britain 1993 by Penguin Books

  Copyright © 1993 Bel Mooney

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  eISBN: 9781448209828

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