The Hidden World (A Princess of Roumania)

by Paul Park

  But was the man a Turk, a spy? After his first surprise, when he’d been startled out of sleep, he did not struggle or cry out. He lay tense and terrified under Peter’s hook. And whether his eyes had adjusted or else some of the mist had cleared, now Peter could see he was hurt. His boot protruded at an angle, and he was grimacing and stiff with pain. Nor was he dressed in the green tunic of the Eleventh Mountaineers, but in the black uniform of another Transylvanian regiment, the Fifty-third Light Infantry. He had his service badge, his corporal’s stripe.

  Peter let his hand roam over the man’s body, ascertaining all this. Now he thought he could risk a flame, and so he brought his Turkish lighter from his pocket and flicked the wheel next to the man’s cheek—just for a moment.

  Men rubbed soot or burned cork on their faces when they went on these patrols. But this man was an African. Peter had heard a rumor there were soldiers under the protection of the noncombatant states that made this crossing. He had not believed it.

  “Who are you?” he whispered next to the fellow’s hairless cheek. He adjusted his elbow so the man could talk; he was small in any case, small-boned and weak. His voice, when it came, was soft and cultured, aristocratic. He spoke Roumanian without an accent.

  “Oh my God,” he whispered. “Thank God, I have been lying here. Dreams—I dreamt and told myself I must have fallen near my grandfather’s farm in Sacele, and I have scratched myself in the wet briars. So many cows have come this way, the ground is broken up. I must have put my foot into a rabbit hole. Oh, I think I will die in this place. There is no excuse for me.”

  So: delirious. Sacele was a town near Brasov, north of Bucharest. The Count de Graz had had a hunting lodge near there.

  Suddenly it seemed idiotic to Peter Gross that he was even here. To own or control the no-man’s-land was an advantage mostly in the mind. But men died for it even when there was no fighting. Died or went mad. The colonel believed in these patrols because he thought they kept the soldiers sharp during periods of inactivity. He rarely visited the front line.

  “What is your name?” Peter whispered.

  “Janus Adira, sir, of the Fifty-third, Wolf Company. With dispatches. I ask you, is it possible to stay here on this hillside? If I call out, who will listen? Oh, but I will die in this place, brought down like an animal!”

  Peter looked up at the sky. The light was changing, and there was evidence of a moon. Dispatches—what was he talking about? “Don’t say anything,” Peter said. “You’ll be fine. You’re not fifty meters from the trench. Morning comes, then you cry out. They’ll bring you in under the truce.”

  “Ah, God, don’t leave me. Don’t say these things. You are Captain Gross, I recognize you. I’ve heard of you. Theta Company, from the Eleventh. They will shoot me or else hang me, because I am a brave man, an idealist and a student of liberty. This is not for my own sake!”

  So he was a spy, Peter thought. No doubt under some kind of indirect protection. Officially, the Abyssinians were neutral in this war.

  He raised his head above the crater’s lip. He could see the latrine lantern now, back the way he’d come.

  “Captain Gross, don’t leave me,” whispered Janus Adira. “If I lie here by myself—oh, God. At the university, sometimes we would argue these things. No, I would hear them argue these modern points of view, picked up from German texts. I thought I could believe them. I prayed to God I could believe them, that death was like a soft sleep—that’s all.”

  He swallowed, started again. “My leg—I tell you I have broken my leg. Oh, it hurts, I tell you—I was saying the same things! Except the more beer I drank, the more I realized they were fools. Now I tell you I believe in everything, the hidden world, the country of the dead. What else is possible? In these trenches everyone has seen the cockroaches and vermin erupt out of the earth. So I wonder what kind of animal or insect will come from my own corpse, when I am lying below the gallows or against the wall?”

  Peter cursed under his breath. It was bad luck the man had recognized him. Now as he tried to pull away, the corporal grabbed him by the sleeve. “Please, you must save me. They have given me directions to go to Chiselet, to the wreck of the Hephaestion. Please, I will pay you what you ask. Whatever you ask. I am not a traitor.…”

  Tears were on his cheeks. Peter could see them now. The light was better. Damn it, he thought, the man would cry out if he left. He was sure to cry out.

  He pressed his elbow against Adira’s throat, cutting off the flow of words. God damn it. Adira had called him by his name—known his name and could identify him.

  Now the man lay still. But what had he said about Chiselet and the Hephaestion? What did he know about that?

  He turned Adira onto his side, watched him vomit in shock and pain. “Give me a break,” Peter muttered, in English. But he had already decided to bring him in, for Costache’s sake. He did not want to return empty-handed after a night like this. And so, because there was no other option, he gave up all attempt at secrecy or stealth. He dragged the soldier up and staggered to his feet. He pulled him up across his chest, crushed him against his chest, and the man was quiet at last. He was very small, very light. It was like carrying a child.

  Peter climbed out of the crater and along the ridge, thrown up by the shell. Adira hung from his arms. Maybe he’d lost consciousness. Peter had given up the idea of sneaking or dissembling—it was too late for that. But he would trust the drunkenness of Omega Company’s commander, and stagger back to the line toward the traverse where he’d started. He’d brazen it out, but as he came up to the trench, maybe he needn’t have worried. A soldier saw him as he loomed out of the darkness—“Oh, it’s Captain Gross. Good morning, sir.”

  Then later: “Should I bring a stretcher? Give him here. Trust me, sir.”

  “No, I’ll take him back.”

  He climbed onto the traverse timber, crossing the trench as if over a five-centimeter bridge. The sky had gone gray, and he could see where he was going. So he strolled back toward the support line over the open ground, Adira in his arms. He walked parallel to the communication trench. “Hi, captain, where you going?” called a man from the machine gun post behind the line.

  “I’ll see you before dark.”

  This was agricultural land, or had been, all the way to Staro Selo. Ruined buildings—a farm. Past the third trench, Peter laid his burden in the mud behind the shelter of a stone wall. There had been an orchard here.

  “Now,” he said. “Tell me what you’re doing.”

  Adira turned his face to the side.

  “No more lies,” Peter said. “Talk to me.”

  He squatted down and slid his hook into Adira’s neck just above his breastbone. Delicately, with the point of his prosthesis, he unbuttoned the front of Adira’s tunic. “I felt this before. I wonder what it is.”

  In the afternoon, Peter’s company would return to the front line, and there were rumors of a push. He had no time to waste here, but he was curious about the envelope over Adira’s heart—was it the same as his? A memento, a talisman, a good-luck charm? Peter didn’t think so. With his left hand he unfolded it, opened it up. Underneath, tucked into Adira’s undershirt was a wad of reichmarks. This was what the man had meant when he had talked about paying him.

  The paper on the inside of the envelope was sky blue with threads of silk. There were pages of hieroglyphs drawn in gold. Andromeda might have been able to read them, Peter thought.

  So: an African carrying messages from Africa. Under the bare trees in the dead, long grass, the world was calm. Corporal Adira, if that was really his name, was sniveling because of his broken leg. But even that was a hopeless little noise.

  There were birds in the branches above Peter’s head. And in the dawn light, on the hill south of the town he could see the battery come to life, the men pulling the howitzers out of their pens. It was quiet in that wood behind the line, the day-long hush before the evening thunder.

  “Tell me what this says,” he
said.

  “I—I don’t know. It is from Abyssinia.”

  “I can see that. You don’t know what it says?” Peter removed the wad of currency. “Where are you taking this?”

  “To Brasov, sir. Dispatches. The money is for my sister and my mother. Not for myself—I swear it.”

  Peter wrinkled up his nose. “And you’re from Abyssinia?”

  “Yes. No. My father—”

  “And you think this will help?”

  “Yes. Yes I do. Yes, sir. Something must be done.”

  “I wonder.”

  Around them the day was gathering. The men on the hill were unwrapping the long muzzles of the 75-millimeter cannons.

  Peter Gross looked up. “Thirty years ago, we marched through this country carrying rifled muskets with percussion caps. Now we have machine guns and grenades—from Africa, but they supply both sides. It’s for the money, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s what I think. It’s too much money to resist.”

  They spoke in murmurs behind the ruined wall. The trees above them were full of little birds that suddenly took flight, turning all at once. Now a single long shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds.

  Deep in the east, the light came slipping toward them over the broken fields and the remains of last year’s harvest. “I’m going back,” said Captain Gross. “I’ll turn this over to my colonel. He’ll send someone to pick you up.”

  “Please, sir, no. For the love of God. It’s—it’s about Chiselet. The accident at Chiselet. This is an investigation by the government in Addis Ababa—that’s all. I swear to God.”

  Peter turned the papers over, examined the backs of them. “What do you know about Chiselet?”

  “Nothing, sir—I’m just a messenger.”

  Peter laughed. “And not a good one. You’re not the right man for this.”

  He dropped the wad of money in the dirt. The little man, still weeping, lying on his side, clutched at it feebly. “No, sir.”

  Peter got to his feet. He brushed off the knees of his trousers, stood for a moment squinting into the wide sun, sniffing at the air. From here, looking north toward the great river, you almost wouldn’t know there was a war.

  He turned and walked away through the orchard toward the communication trench. He would inform the military police after he’d returned to Theta Company. In the meantime he was being followed.

  He recognized the scent first of all, an animal and human mixture. In cheap hotels across North Africa and the Levant, he’d gotten used to it. Now he sniffed it with an odd sense of nostalgia. Rank and appealing, heavy and light, there had been a time when it had disgusted him. Those also had been difficult days.

  But difficult or not, now they seemed touched with gold, with the warm morning light that caressed every prewar memory, everything that had happened before the Turks had crossed the line. He turned and lifted up his nose, waiting for her to take shape somewhere in the dead weeds—dog, woman, or man. Standing over the idiotic spy, her name had occurred to him. Was that when he had first caught the scent? Maybe not, because he thought about her often, her and Miranda Popescu. Every hour, maybe more.

  “Where are you?” he whispered.

  “Behind you.” Her harsh, queer voice. Maybe she crouched on the other side of the stone wall. But he heard her clearly. “Don’t turn around,” she said.

  They spoke in English. “What do you want?”

  “Just to see you, first of all. You’re a hard man to find alone.”

  “I must go back,” he said.

  Then after a moment: “How is Miranda? Is she safe?”

  She didn’t answer him. “I have a favor to ask. For old times’ sake. Past times in the Ninth Hussars.”

  They had served together under General Schenck von Schenck. Miranda’s father. That’s where they’d known each other first. So long ago, it seemed like the beginning of the world.

  “Yes?”

  “I know you’re having trouble with conscriptions, all the Transylvanian battalions. I want to know if I could volunteer, and you could bring me in.”

  Now suddenly he remembered that old campaign, the sights and sounds conjured to life as if by a few harsh, toneless words. The smell of leather and horses when they were camping in the birch trees above Nova Zagora. Brandy around the fire. The view from the ridge when on horseback he had taken his men down. Not like now, cowering in a hole.

  “You’re crazy,” he said.

  Then, because she didn’t answer, he went on. “We’re not soldiers anymore. We’re up against machines. Machines stuck in the mud. You know, like those Terminator movies.”

  It was too tempting not to make a little joke, to bring back something from the other past they shared, when they had been kids together in Berkshire County. And she laughed.

  “No,” he said again. “You’re crazy.”

  She was laughing. “Please. Don’t make this hard. I beg you. Think of that: I’m begging you. Take me as a private soldier under your command.”

  He understood it must be true—this must be hard for her to say. She had not loved him then, nor did she love him now. She’d been a lieutenant in the old days, Sasha Prochenko on a big white stallion, so dashing and romantic in his forest-green uniform, high boots, fawn-colored pants, so popular with the ladies, his blue eyes flecked with silver. And later at Mamaia Castle on the beach …

  “No. This is not a place for you. It’s not what we need. How could you pass the physical?”

  When she said nothing, he continued. “Can you see yourself in a latrine with twenty men?”

  That made her pause. “I had not thought you were so cruel.”

  He looked around. Her voice had changed, and she was closer. “What about your own physical exam?” she asked. “Or were you always Captain Hook?”

  Then again: “I am begging you.”

  “No!” he cried, angry now. Morning had come. There was no time. “Wasn’t it your job to stay with Miranda and protect her? Isn’t that what we decided, what we agreed on in Cismigiu Park? I wish that was my job, not to die here in this place. This cesspit.”

  Now he could see her in the morning sunlight. She stood up on the other side of the wall. She climbed over between the tumbled stones. Always the dandy. Civilian clothes—her pants perfectly creased. She carried a silver-headed cane.

  She had a way that both attracted and repulsed him. But he had seen no women for many months, and his heart lifted when he saw her. She was too exotic for mere beauty—her yellow hair under the slouch hat, the soft body hair that made her exposed skin seem to glow, the proud expression and strong features in which her animal nature, now, seemed to predominate. But the sharp, musky smell had disappeared. He was used to it already.

  Though she was dressed as a man, and in spite of the dog or wolf that lurked inside of her, she looked more girlish or womanly than she ever had in Berkshire County. Her hair was longer now, curling down below her ears. “It doesn’t seem so bad,” she said, looking around at the quiet orchard, the guns on the hillside raising their muzzles to the sky.

  “It’s a beautiful sight,” she persisted. “You’d better go. A girl can dream.”

  But now Peter wanted to stay a moment longer. “Promise me you’ll go back to her. This is not the place for you. The Condesa de Rougemont—in Bucharest we had no choice except for her to take Miranda in. But do you remember her on the Hoosick riverbank? Young woman then, old lady now—the place stank of magic.”

  Andromeda gave him a blank look. She didn’t remember. How could she remember? “I don’t trust her,” he went on. “No matter what Madame de Graz says. I wish I could—no … leave a message at the hospital. Will you do that? There’s a corporal of the Fifty-third Light Infantry over in those trees. He’s got a broken leg. And tell me,” he continued. “What does this say?”

  He thrust the envelope of hieroglyphs into her gloved hand. She didn’t need to squint to read it. “This is a s
hopping list. Small arms.”

  “Sure,” said Peter. “Is that all?”

  “No, it’s not all. Chiselet—do you remember Chiselet?”

  She smiled, then went on. “You weren’t yourself. Neither was I. But I saw those lead canisters in the baggage car. That’s what they’re talking about here.”

  Peter shrugged. Andromeda raised the paper to her nose and sniffed it. “They must have been blown up in the explosion,” she said, “except for one. An Abyssinian in a gray suit. He crawled out to die south of the tracks. I took the suit, his money, and his watch. But I left the canister two hundred meters in the marsh—a dead oak tree. You could see from the embankment. Everything else was to the north.”

  Peter scratched his right forearm where the leather cuff chafed. He had his own memories of that day and the wreck of the Hephaestion. From there he’d gone to Mogosoaia, where he’d found Miranda Popescu. “Tell me,” he said, though by now it was too late to listen, “how is everyone in Stanesti-Jui? How is she?”

  He spoke the name of the village like a charm. It was impossible to send a letter, though he had written many, or else the same one over and over. “Tell me, is she safe?”

  Andromeda smiled, cruel in her turn, he thought. Her teeth were sharp and numerous. “You’d better go.” And then after a moment: “In any case, I’ve been in Bucharest.”

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen her!” Peter said. “Promise me you’ll watch over her—is that too much to ask, while I am here? Inez de Rougemont—I saw her on the Hoosick River, dressed in Gypsy clothes. Since then I’ve told myself that was not real. Madame de Graz had vouched for her, her oldest friend. She talks about her in her letters, but how can I be sure? Promise me you’ll go there now.”

  For a moment there was no irony or slyness in her face. But she was as he remembered her—his old comrade in arms.

  “Give her this,” he said. He unbuttoned the first buttons of his tunic, then took from an inside pocket the letter he rewrote every fourth day or so, whenever they pulled his platoon from the front line. He kept it over his heart, a piece of superstition. “‘I have a rendezvous with Death,’” he quoted fiercely. “It’s lucky I learned that one, isn’t it?”