by Paul Park
The old stones had tumbled down and had not been repaired. The wooden door was split in half. And in the guardhouse the tyger could see a man sitting in the shadows, staring at the lantern on his desk. He had black hair and a bald spot, and the hair combed over. When he looked up, she saw his face had been much ravaged by disease. The window was unbarred and he saw her, but he raised no alarm when she slunk past him through the broken door.
And maybe the city had been emptied by the emigrants who had left it to settle elsewhere in the tyger’s home. Or else it had been emptied by the rush of the departing army. But she saw no one in the darkened street that curled upward in a mounting circle. From the wall, searchlights had shone out in all directions, casting garish shadows on the plain. But once inside the walls, everything was dark and quiet, and the tyger walked along the gutter, up and up into the summit of the town. There she found a little building separate from the rest, an altar or a shrine, she thought, made of white marble. The door was open, and everything was dark. And when she stepped across the threshold, she knew she had come into a place of secret power, and she could smell men sleeping in the little room, a family of brothers perhaps, drugged and unconscious in the hot stinking dark. There were three of them, and one was a little man, a soldier. And there were two others. Dysart had told her about these three men, when he was talking about the new elections in Germany. And as she moved among them she mauled them and bit them and they never cried out.
* * *
IN HER BED of quilts and pine needles, in an abandoned and overgrown log cottage in the Mogosoaia woods, Miranda turned and struggled throughout the night. In the morning in her shelter in the mountains, Valeria Dragonesti awoke for the last time. She’d rested badly and her nurse had despaired of her. Sometimes she had not been able to find a pulse or hear a breath. Toward dawn she’d sent for General Antonescu. But he didn’t arrive until after nine o’clock.
That year the weather had been cold. Summer had come late to the high mountains. But at dawn there were already swarms of mosquitoes in the meadows. Antonescu had grunted and slapped as he stood watching the sky grow pale. And when he climbed down the rock slope into the valley, he could see butterflies among the empty tents, and he was sweating. His boots were muddy and one leaked, so in the antechamber of the little hut he drew them off, rubbed his bare feet, warmed his toes in the sunlight from the open door. From his pocket he pulled out the long silver canister that he’d received from the wreck of the Hephaestion. It was blackened and burned from the ordnance that had blown up in the fire. The top of it was gone. He had been wrong not to go himself and take charge of the assault on the train, whatever the risks. Stefan had obviously made a balls of it. All he had brought back was this one empty canister.
He heard the nurse call and went in, ducking his head. He sat down on a stool, prepared, as he’d been for weeks, to know the worst. He sat looking at the wasted face, reduced to its essentials, all puffiness gone. He reached out his enormous hand, then hesitated as she woke.
Her eyes were watery and blue, her eyelids tinged with red. She smiled at him. “I had such a dream,” she murmured, her voice indistinct and hoarse.
Later he would punish himself by remembering these words, the last she ever spoke to him. Knowing she was near death, still he could not gather his attention sufficiently to listen, because he had no interest in dreams. Instead he watched her as she prattled on—her cheeks were flushed. “And then…,” she said. “And then…”
During his influential days in Bucharest and abroad, it had been the vogue for ladies to write down their dreams and then discuss them in the frankest language, as if they held the key to everything, as if their waking lives had no importance. And maybe he was just a coarse old bumpkin but he couldn’t listen to these fairy stories, even when he tried to be polite, even when, as now, he realized he would look back later and reproach himself.
For a moment he forced himself to pay attention. He was glad to hear that she was saying something hopeful, enumerating a list of things that God would say to her or she to God. Her blue eyes shone. “That’s good,” he murmured, tapping his bare foot on the raw wooden boards—he couldn’t stand it. It disgusted him to think of her dying in this humble shed, her only company a rough uncultured soldier and an idiotic nurse who should have called him sooner. He’d been up waiting the entire night, or only dozed off in his armchair once or twice. He’d had no dreams.
Now he allowed his anger to grow strong—he would not weep like a girl. He found himself turning over in his hands the silver canister from Abyssinia, blackened from the explosion, lead-lined, he could see. What had Nicola Ceausescu wanted it for? Was this the terrible weapon that could make Europe tremble? More than ever he regretted leaving the derailment to Stefan, who had blown up the baggage car—what did he think was going to happen? Along with these canisters (were there any that had not burst open?), the car was packed with ammunition, guns.
Maybe if he’d manage to salvage this mysterious weapon, he could have made Roumania regret the day they’d driven their rightful empress into exile. No, it was too late for that. In his indignation and grief, General Antonescu didn’t notice the exact moment when Valeria Dragonesti stopped speaking, when she closed her eyes, and when her breathing faltered, then subsided. Nor did he notice a little creature at the corner of her mouth, a silverfish or else a worm.
By himself in the hut, he could not keep from weeping. Grief shook him and then left him, as the wind might shake the branches of a tree. He squeezed his eyes closed, put his fist against his mouth, and tears would still come out.
How repulsive it was for a strong man to sit bawling like a child, his eyes red and his nose running! Surely something could be done—he would ask for a meeting with the German governor. He would ask for his men to be released to their own homes. “Go away,” he would tell them. “Get married, go on home.” Maybe the Germans would permit it if he surrendered to stand trial.
Maybe they would permit it if he brought them the canister, evidence of—what? Some plan of Nicola Ceausescu’s. The ordnance in the baggage car was nothing, a diversion or a ruse. That much was clear. These canisters—Stefan had seen dozens of them scattered about—they were the important cargo. Whatever they contained, it was obvious (wasn’t it?) that Ceausescu planned to use it against Germany. Otherwise, why all the secrecy? No doubt she had already cleaned up the site of the accident. Perhaps this was the last canister left.
But Ceausescu was nothing without the Germans. In which case, had she gone mad? It didn’t matter. What was important was what the German governor might believe.
Antonescu turned the silver tube between his hands. He rubbed away some of the black ash. There were markings on the base, hieroglyphs and then some European translations—NEPENTHE. He could just make out the letters.
Vaguely he remembered something from his school days, a classical reference. Nepenthe, a medicine administered by gods, a cure for all unhappiness. If the canister had been intact, maybe now he would have broken it open in his hands, sprayed it around the room where the empress lay dead.
But no, he thought as he sat blowing his nose. My miseries are too precious to give up.
* * *
MIRANDA STARTED AWAKE. She was lying in a tangle of quilts and blankets in a corner of the floor. Around her stood three sides of a log cabin, and the fourth side was broken in. Most of the roof was still intact above her. There was the ape lying in a corner. There was the rat, curled up in its armpit. The ape was moaning in its sleep and Miranda could see why. It had hurt its paw, wrapped in a bloody bandage.
“Wake up,” Miranda said. “Wake up!” and she clapped her hands. She could tell they were in danger. There was a scent of urine around the place, a fox, she thought. It wasn’t safe to sleep like that. She picked a stick from the ground and climbed out through the broken wall into the forest light. Above her in the trees some monkeys screamed. They knew a fox had come. They knew he’d walked around the cabin once. Wit
h the stick in her hand she followed it, hoping she’d find nothing. The fox might have been scared away by her human smell. The woods were beautiful in the bright summer sunlight.
It was a pine forest. Light sifted through black needles onto the thick ground. Her feet made no noise. In front of her on a fallen log she saw a little bird whose feathers glistened in the sun. When she came close she saw the bird was made of precious stones. Diamonds glinted on its breast, rubies and sapphires on its wings. Its beak was made of gold.
As soon as she had seen this bird, Miranda wanted to touch it and capture it. She thought she’d weave a cage out of willow branches and carry it away. So she came up behind it with the stick. But at the last moment the bird hopped a few feet farther along the fallen trunk, and turned back as if to say, “I know what you are doing!” So Miranda slipped into the shadow at the other side of the tree, and with all her strength and swiftness leaped onto the little creature.
But when she held it cupped between her fingers, she could feel its jeweled heart beat. And when it opened its golden beak, she was astonished to find that it could speak. In a soft, small voice it begged her to let it go. And it had guessed Miranda’s plan. “If you put me in a cage I’ll die,” it said.
So Miranda opened her hands and let the bird fly away. It rose above her to the bough of a tree. There it perched with the sunlight on its throat, whispering and singing, cocking its head, winking its pretty emerald eye.
“You are a soft-hearted girl,” it said. “I’ll give you anything you want. So have a care!”
Miranda didn’t need to think. But when she opened her mouth to say she wanted to go home to her own house in Berkshire County, she saw the bird wink once, and she couldn’t make a sound. And when she thought of the two friends she hadn’t seen in a long time, she saw the little bird wink two times with its emerald eye, and for the second time she could say nothing.
Furious and impatient, she tried to ask for humbler things, a meat sandwich and a ginger ale. Even this was too much for the bird, who winked at her. Miranda shook her fist, picked up a stone, and only then did she find her mouth unsealed. Only then could she stammer out a wish. “Tell me what to do.”
Then the bird said, “For the sake of your kindness I will grant your wish. You must go straight on through this wood, not turning to the right or left. In the evening you’ll find what you are looking for.”
Even from the inside, Miranda could recognize the language of fairy stories. Stanley had read her fairy stories, and Rachel, too. Naturally, when she looked around, the three-walled cabin was no longer there. The woods had darkened into evening already. The animals had fled away. Because this was a dream and not real life, everything was different in a moment. The trees had lost their leaves. Nor was there a mulch of fallen leaves and needles, but just the hard gray ground. The trees were rootless, angular, and dead—dry sticks pressed into dirt. The air was cold. Miranda looked at her hands and saw they were chapped and red.
And because this was a dream, she had no choice where she went, but found herself walking in the direction the bird had indicated before it flew away. There was a gap in the trees that way. Miranda walked over the level ground and soon noticed a gray expanse of gravel underfoot. In the failing light she came to a small town, a double row of tiny clapboard houses, and she walked between them on a duckboard made of gray planks.
The houses were identical small cubes with high-pitched roofs. No doors were visible. But there was a four-paned window in the narrow wall of each, set so that Miranda could see into each interior. Stripes of colored light shone from the windows, merged on the surface of the duckboard.
There were eight houses on Miranda’s left hand, eight on her right. Ahead of her was some kind of broken, indeterminate structure, different from this orderly double row. Standing on the rough planks, Miranda chose the second house on the left. She stepped down onto the gravel and walked over to the windowsill, following a path of amber light. She put her hands on the painted wood, noticing as she did so that there was no glass in the mullioned window. And inside the house, in a single, light-filled room, someone was sitting at a wooden table, it and the chair the only pieces of furniture. The table and she took up most of the space, so the room was like a cage. There was no ceiling above her, but just the open roof where the light was shining. All lines and contours were lost. She seemed to sit under the open sky.
The woman had brown hair streaked with gray. Her hands were clenched into fists on the surface of the table. Her hands and face were molded out of the same chalky substance. Miranda recognized her by her sweater and jeans and hair—her American mother. “Rachel,” she said or tried to say.
* * *
IN THAT AIRLESS, sterile place, no sound came out of her. But in the little cottage where Ludu Rat-tooth sat with the Chevalier de Graz, she was able to blurt out a groan, and she rolled onto her side. She was lying in a nest of quilts.
The Gypsy girl, Ludu Rat-tooth, was by the fire, heating a basin of water. Once again she was describing to Pieter how she’d found Miranda in the woods above the cavern of Mary Magdalene. Maybe she’d climbed up through one of the small fissures in the rock. The strain had been too much for her. She hadn’t regained consciousness. Then the ape women had carried her into the village under the cliff where the soldiers had come.
“Hush,” said Pieter, raising his bandaged hand.
Night was drawing in. The fire burned on a low stone hearth, shedding more comfort than warmth. Already the air was hot and stagnant. But the fire was the source of light in the little room.
Ludu Rat-tooth sat beside it, stirring it with an iron poker, making the sparks crackle and dance. She had a spotted, lumpy face. But she was skillful with her hands and careful with Miranda. She was the one who’d bandaged Pieter’s gunshot wound, although it wasn’t much. The ball had passed through the center of his palm, and he could bend each finger. But it was sore, infected, he guessed, and she had put some stuff on it and bound it up, for which he was grateful.
Now she looked up, and he could see her narrow eyes. She didn’t like the forest people—who could blame her? But once again she told him how she had found this place and fixed it up, and the forest woman had led him there—why was she talking about this over and over? It was because she had to talk to cover her anxiety. She knew Radu Luckacz would come after them again. “Quiet,” he said, more urgently, and she was quiet. The sparks crackled in the chimney and on the hearth.
Pieter had heard a noise, a breaking stick. He stood up and took the poker from her. It was time to fight again, and he squeezed the iron bar in his right hand, feeling the protest of the infected flesh. Then he slipped out through the window into the dark.
The cottage was an old wooden structure, long abandoned. Parts of the roof, parts of the wall had fallen in. The forest had grown up around it. Thickets and brambles grew against the outer walls. Crouching underneath their leaves and tangled branches, Pieter moved among the stems, quiet as he could through the dead mulch. The ground was damp.
Below the house there was a small crease in the land, a tiny brook. There was a clearing, too, in a small dell. Some saplings had been cut down. As quietly as he could manage, Pieter circled round until he crossed the stream. There in the mud he found the heavy hoofprints of the horse, the bootprints of the man.
That old fox Dysart was hampered, Pieter guessed, because he needed to bring Miranda out alive. The notice board had specified that she be brought to justice. The reward was offered for her person, not her corpse. He’d have no scruples about the Gypsy, but he didn’t want to share a thousand marks with a lot of policemen. He wanted to bring out the white tyger by himself.
And so he’d leave the horse in a clearing out of earshot from the cottage on the hill. Pieter found it there, a beautiful black gelding, standing absolutely quiet in the dark.
For a few moments Pieter kept to the shelter of the large trees. He wanted to lead the gelding away to a different place so Dysart would
have to look for it. He must move quickly for Ludu Rat-tooth’s sake. Although he didn’t think Dysart would shoot her through the window as she sat beside the hearth—he’d want to question her, to find out where the man had gone. Doubtless Luckacz had told him about Peter Gross.
He watched the horse let its head sink down. It was absolutely calm, although it must have known Pieter was there. He squeezed the poker, feeling the hot flesh of his wounded hand under the bandage, and then stepped into the clearing—a mistake. Dysart was there waiting.
“Stop,” he said in English. Pieter stopped.
“Put it down,” he said, and Pieter let the poker drop.
“Come here,” he said, and stepped out from behind a tree. In the half-moon light, in the clearing, Pieter saw a small, bow-legged man with long white hair and a broad-brimmed hat. He was dressed in pale pants and a white shirt. He had a pistol in his left hand.
“Come here,” he said again, but Pieter didn’t move. He thought if Dysart were going to shoot him, he would shoot him. So he stepped backward toward the horse, who raised its head.
Dysart came toward him. In the moonlight, now, his features became clearer, his seamed, scarred face, his single eye, his white moustache. He had been wounded at Havsa, Pieter had heard. His right eye had been cut out from his head. No trace of it remained.
Past fifty, he was stylishly, even foppishly dressed, Pieter saw when the man paused to light a small cigar. With his right hand he had drawn it from an inside pocket and placed it between his lips. Then from another pocket he had taken his lighter and flicked it open, and had lit the cigar without ever taking his eye from Pieter’s face. Nor did the gun in his hand move a millimeter. It was a revolver, and in the small flame Pieter recognized the inlaid metalwork. Once it had belonged to Frederick Schenck von Schenck.