by Paul Park
“Mother,” cried the boy. He called all women “mother” and all men “father,” a childhood trait that now had lasted into adolescence. “Let me tell you a secret. I dreamed last night I was swimming underwater. I could breathe perfectly well, and I swam over a reef where there were hundreds of little fish.”
He took a sip of cold coffee. This was a game they played in the mornings. He would confide his dreams. And she with mock-seriousness would pick up the book that lay under the lamp, as she did now: Madame Desostro’s Guide to Slumber. She put on her reading glasses, searched the index, and announced, “What good luck. To dream of swimming underwater means that we are going on a trip! Tell me, have you ever been to the seashore? My husband used to have a place in Dobruja on the beach. Near Constanta—I would love to see it again.”
Both of them, the boy and the graying widow, shared a sense of enthusiasm at these moments, in which there was something artificial. In the same way, the lamplight on the tablecloth could only imitate the sun.
Before the boy had come to Ratisbon, the princess had lived in a different apartment with a window overlooking the town. She had received guests. She had taken newspapers and magazines. But several years before, her host had moved her to this suite of rooms and introduced her to her new companion, who was to take the place of any outside stimulus. There was a bedroom for each of them, a music room, a parlor, a drawing room, a library, all furnished with luxury and taste.
But there were no windows, and the only door fit cunningly into the wall so that it disappeared when closed. Fresh air came through a system of iron grates set into the floor. Food and supplies were delivered by the dumbwaiter. All the princess would have to say, in the middle of what she thought was the afternoon, was, “Oh, I should like some trout tonight. And perhaps a bottle of Orvieto. And perhaps some drawing paper and a tube of cadmium.” In a few hours the bell would ring.
From this they knew that they were under observation. Sometimes when they were talking nonsense they would speak quite loudly in order to be overheard. At other times they forgot entirely and lived as kings or gods, only having to express their wants to have them met, within a certain range. Over the years Princess Clara had stopped thinking about her captor as a human being, imagining instead a soulless, overseeing presence. Otherwise she would have died of shame every time she undressed to take a bath or go to bed.
* * *
SHE NEEDN’T HAVE worried. Only in the parlor, cunningly hidden in the pattern of the wallpaper, was there a pair of small holes. That night or morning, as Miranda was pulling herself up into the saddle of her horse, a man stepped away from the holes that oversaw the room. Or rather not a man but an automaton, one of the mental projections that the master of the house could make as real as flesh. And this one Miranda would have recognized, a handsome blond man with a small moustache.
Dr. Theodore climbed down a stepladder, for the spy-hole to the parlor was set far up on the wall. He found himself in the narrow corridor that described the perimeter of the entire suite of rooms and kept it separate from the rest of the house. It was a dusty, moldy place with uncovered lath on both sides. It was unlit, but Dr. Theodore needed no illumination. Following an internal summons, he turned the corner and the next, and then opened the hidden door that led him into an anonymous reception hall.
He strode across the polished floor, then out into the gallery. At one end was the small staircase that led to the elector’s apartment. Without breath he climbed until he reached the upper landing, then knocked inside the open door.
In its spareness and simplicity, the room at the top of the house contrasted with most other sections of the building, but especially with the ornate and overstuffed abundance of Princess Clara’s parlor. Sometimes as Dr. Theodore mounted the last steps, he contemplated briefly the nesting circles of contradiction that made up this last place of refuge. At first glance the room seemed as plain as a peasant’s cottage. The furniture was unupholstered. The mattress on the bed was small and thin. There were no pictures on the walls.
A closer look would have revealed there were no ugly objects in the room. There were no objects, in fact, that were not of a tremendous rarity. The stools and tables were from China. They were made of purple elmwood and were hundreds of years old. There was a Chinese vase, a Roman statue of Apollo, and an inlaid suit of armor that had belonged to the founder of the house of Ratisbon. There was a paper screen from Abyssinia, decorated with the abstract calligraphy that distinguishes that country.
On the table stood a Japanese basket of plaited bamboo and grapevine, out of which grew a spray of tiny yellow orchids. They trembled in the warm night air. The glass door to the balcony was open, and the master of the room stood with his hand on the frame, looking out over the dark city. He was dressed, as always, in tight, formal clothes, which when he turned made an ironic display of his distorted features.
Dr. Theodore passed him and continued on into a corner of the room, where he opened a closet door. On an upper shelf there stood a line of notebooks, written in the automaton’s elegant, clear hand. At intervals during the day he set down everything he’d seen and heard.
But now he turned, looking back over his shoulder toward where his master stood. The elector seemed scarcely aware of his presence. No doubt he imagined he could now control his simulacra without effort. Dr. Theodore was not the only servant in the building.
Sighing, the elector stepped from the window and sat down at his calligraphy table. Light came from a glowing bulb on a bronze stand—a piece of new technology from Africa. There was a book of maps on the table in front of him, and he ran his manicured, small hand along the one that was open before him. Supernaturally adept, Dr. Theodore squinted to see. He watched his master run his little finger up the Dobruja coast, past Mamaia, past Mamaia Sat. On a high, wooded hill above Lake Sinoie, the finger paused.
9
Ludu Rat-tooth
THEY CAME TO the place in the middle of the night, a bald patch on a hill overlooking the lake. They were helped by the illumination of the fires to the south and then later to the north. The girl, Ludu, went in front. “My brother went on to Istria, to my uncle’s house,” she said. “I was right. I thought the vampire would look there.”
So the road turned inland above Lake Tasaul, and they’d left it and continued north through the grasslands. They’d walked the horses and followed a rough track that sometimes gave out into sand. But when the land was higher, there were trees. Then suddenly they found themselves in a wooded dell, rising on the far side to a high, gorse-strewn ridge over the south edge of the delta. It was too dark to see, and Miranda was too tired, too hungry. She slid off the pony’s back into the coarse grass, then sat hugging herself while the girl attended to everything, the horses first of all. She had some oats in her saddlebag. Then she stripped off the saddles and the bridles and rubbed the animals down, talking to them in an odd language that was full of grunts and moans. The air was humid. Miranda sat cross-legged on a boulder while Ludu lit a fire in a circle of dry earth. “Isn’t it dangerous?”
Ludu rubbed her big, lumpy nose with the flat of her hand. “He won’t come here. He was beaten here and almost died.”
“Who beat him?” Miranda yawned.
For an answer Ludu took from her bag some carved wooden images and placed them in an alcove of the rock above the fire. Then when she was laying out the tarpaulin and blankets, she told a story that put Miranda to sleep as she pulled her boots off and rolled into her bed. It was a love story, lovers separated by their enemies. And the words must have flowed into her dreams, which were full of indistinct figures struggling on grassy hilltops. When she awoke she climbed barefoot in the warm day, up to where she could see the black-and-golden reed beds to the horizon, the barrier islands, and the great, bitten circle of the lagoon. It was the south edge of the Danube delta. Her face was bumpy with mosquito bites. The girl was still asleep.
Miranda had a crick in her neck, and so she stretched and di
d some exercises. She flossed her teeth with the sharp end of a reed, then took out her toothbrush and returned to camp. She stirred the coals of the fire and put on some dry sticks. She saw a metal pot with the remnants of some wet cereal and another pot of water. She remembered nothing of that, though it must have been the first real food she’d had in days.
Now she examined the two statues in the niche of the rock. At their feet was a small bowl of the wet food, sprinkled with some dry grains of rice, and surmounted with a lump of brown sugar. Behind her the girl lay on her stomach, her face hidden in a tangle of curly hair.
Miranda examined the statues as she brushed her teeth—a king and a queen, their faces long and solemn and dark with smoke and grease. They were dressed in dolls’ clothes—scraps and snips of expensive fabric. Crowns of yellow wire twisted around their wooden brows.
She’d thought she’d wait for Ludu to wake up before she ate something more, but she was too hungry. So she sat down with the pot in her lap, and with her fingers she ate lumps of peppery, cold oatmeal while she looked up at the statues. “King Jesus and Queen Mary Magdalene,” said the girl presently. “You’ve heard of them?”
Lying on her stomach, she had raised herself on thick forearms, shaken the hair out of her face. “Sure,” Miranda said. Different stories though, she guessed. “Tell me.”
The girl looked fierce for an instant. Then she relented. “Mary Magdalene fought the vampire in this place when Jesus sent her to Roumania. She brought the Gypsies with her out of Egypt.”
“Well, now you see that’s already a little different,” said Miranda, putting down her pot. A bug was biting her.
Ludu got up. She walked down into the dell where the horses were tethered. Then she came back and packed up the blankets, and turned the tarpaulin over to dry. At the same time she told the story of Jesus of Nazareth, how he led the slaves to revolution on the banks of the Nile. Afterward he led his armies into Italy. He crucified the captured generals before the walls of Rome.
She went away and came back with a pot of brimming water. Gone were the deferential gestures and phrases of the previous night. In simple language she explained how Jesus in the underworld had stormed the devil’s palace and the gates of Mount Olympus. He threw the devil from a cliff into the world. But the pieces came alive and hid themselves. So Jesus sent his generals through the earth, and to Roumania he sent his queen. “People say she was pregnant when she came to Mogosoaia. People say that’s where the Brancoveanus come from.”
Miranda had been interested in the first part of this recitation. She was always looking for ways to understand the difference between this world and the world where she’d grown up. But at the end, finally, she felt her spirits sink. So many of these stories found a way to involve her, weigh her down with expectations.
So she shrugged. “I’ve heard something different.”
“Stories are like leaves,” agreed the girl, setting the pot into the coals.
Miranda stared into the pale flames. Here she was alone without her friends. In America along the river, finally, some measure of control had come to her, a succession of small tasks. Now she had to start again.
“I thought a vampire was someone who sucked your blood,” she grumbled. In the humid, breezy air the statement seemed absurd.
“I never heard that.” Ludu scratched her hands, which were covered with small red spots. Then she continued. “This time his name is Codreanu. Sometimes maybe he’s in prison or a poor man. But when evil people come to power in Roumania, then he comes. Now he is commissioner for Dobruja Province. That’s how my father knew we had to fight. Codreanu hates all Gypsies for Queen Mary’s sake.”
She sniffed, wiped her nose. “My father took me to Insula Calia. Then to the temple where they have a piece of King Jesus’s spear. Maybe he thought you’d be a warrior, a hero. Maybe that’s why he was disappointed.”
Maybe so. “You take what King Jesus gives you,” advised Miranda silently.
“My father prayed and prayed before the altar. Mother Egypt told him in a dream the words to say. How to bring you out of the past time where you were.”
Just a few days before, Miranda had lost herself in the woods in the American wilderness, then found herself outside Constanta on the beach. There was some information here: “I was in America,” she said. “It wasn’t the past time.”
But even as she said this, she realized what she’d known before and not tried to explain—it was springtime here. Almost summer. When she’d last seen Peter and Andromeda, it was in the freezing snow.
“Every day on the anniversary of Mother Egypt’s death…,” the girl went on. Miranda let her talk some more about her father’s hopes and prayers before she pulled her back.
“How long ago did my aunt die?” she interrupted.
“More than five years.”
Miranda heard a buzzing in her ears that was like the roaring of the sea. Then she swallowed and went on. Step by step. “For me it was last week,” she said. “Last week—I don’t know—the empress sent a letter.”
Ludu shrugged. “There’s no empress anymore. Valeria Dragonesti is in the mountains with Antonescu and his men—no friends of ours, except they fight the Germans. Nicola Ceausescu is in Bucharest, calling herself the white tyger.”
The water boiled. Ludu stared it without doing anything. Then suddenly she was in tears, a raw, desperate sobbing that took Miranda by surprise.
Especially since it was Miranda who’d been sitting with a pain in her stomach—five years! Where was Peter now? Where was he in this world, and where was anyone who knew her? Step by step: “I’m afraid for my brothers,” the girl said when she could speak. “I’m afraid for my father! He’s strong, but he can’t walk. Today you are safe here. Many have lost everything—I don’t want to be like that. Now tell me please, where should we go? It can’t be for nothing that my father brought you to Roumania.”
“No, it can’t be for nothing,” Miranda repeated to herself. She put her hands out to the fire, although the air was warm. What comfort was there for this girl, who felt so isolated and alone, and who now continued, “Here in this place Queen Mary came upon the vampire while he was asleep. She came up by those little oaks. On this stone she grabbed hold of his leg and twisted so he screamed for mercy. Then she put him in a prison for a thousand years—can you do that? This morning they are burying the bodies at Mamaia Sat and Istria. My poor father…”
There was nothing to say to this. Miranda held her hands out to the fire. Always in the last few days she’d had a mental image of Peter and Andromeda running through the snow along the river, calling her name. She’d imagined trying to send a message—where to? Now she’d have to give that up, the image and the plan.
In Berkshire County her adoptive mother had always cried when she was punishing her. The Gypsy girl was crying now, rubbing the tears away—Miranda had been paddling down the river with her friend Peter Gross. Before that she’d been living in America. She’d been fifteen years old. She hadn’t asked for any of this. “Listen, Ludu—”
“Don’t call me that!”
“All right!” Miranda cried, frustrated. Then in a moment: “Maybe it’s too dangerous for you to stay with me. Maybe you should go look for your brothers now and leave me.”
The girl stared at her. Her face was red, her complexion bad. She held her hand over her face to hide her mouth.
Sea birds flew overhead. The air smelled of the marshland and the sea. As soon as she saw the girl’s face, Miranda regretted having said what she’d been thinking. “All right, let’s forget it. Can you take me to Insula Calia?” she asked.
Stanley, her American father, had taught her to focus on practical solutions to small problems. Step by step for the Gypsy girl. Step by step for her. First of all she had to stop being a baby. None of this was just her trouble. Last night she’d been a little dazed. Everything that happened, she could wake up from it as if from a dream. But in the morning light she had responsibi
lities. People had already died. And even if there was something dreamlike about the disappearance of Ludu’s father, this much was clear to Miranda in the light of day: The vampire—Codreanu—was setting fire to the coast to find her.
The girl sat hugging her knees, rubbing her face with the heel of her hand, and Miranda felt a stab of guilt. For a moment she remembered her self-indulgence of the day before, the way she’d lolled around the castle as if she were alone in the world. Well, she was alone, more alone than she’d imagined then, and the girl, too.
She pulled the sleeve back from her wrist to show the golden bracelet of tiger-head beads, the bracelet of Miranda Brancoveanu in the ancient days. She also had come of out nowhere, started with nothing—the girl was staring at Miranda’s wrist. She’d stopped crying and was sullen now.
The first of the Brancoveanus had defeated armies, founded a great nation. Here in the grassy dell, Miranda said, “I want to know if you will take me where I need to go, tell me what I need to understand.”
Sullen, the girl stared at her.
“I want to know if you can help me.” She almost added, “For your father’s sake,” but then she bit her tongue.
“And I want to know what I should call you,” she continued after a moment. “Ludu—”
“—is my saint’s name. You call me ‘Rat-tooth.’”
For a moment Miranda thought she hadn’t understood, though the phrase was simple enough. But then the girl smiled a joyless smile, and her teeth were thin and sharp. One of her eyeteeth was especially long, and fitted into a gap in her lower lip.
“Well, so can you get me breakfast?”
It was a good idea to give the girl something to do. She made some sweet tea with the water, and laid out a meal of bread and dried sausage. This she sliced with a hook-shaped knife while she was talking. The oracle was in the marshland north and west, three days away. They had enough food to get them there if they found forage for the horses. After that they needed some supplies.