The Hidden World (A Princess of Roumania)

by Paul Park

  “No.”

  The baron smiled. His lips were dark. “Suppose there was a book in your father’s house. And suppose your father used that book for everything he did, a complicated book of directives, like a cookery book, perhaps, and it is very difficult, perhaps in a foreign language. But your mother and your father understand it, because they understand the language and perhaps even wrote the book themselves, or parts of it. In addition, they are cleverer than you. But if you want to use the book, wouldn’t you choose a moment when they were gone from home, or even you might lock them out, lock the door of their study or library, so you could examine this book?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Miranda.

  The baron had replaced his flask. He had laid out his pastries. And with one gloved hand he was fingering the points of silver star on his lapel—they must have been sharp. Miranda could see how the cloth on his fingertips was scored and pierced and bloody from what must have been his constant and obsessive habit. He smiled. “Then you’re a fool. Once you get a taste for deciphering … But look! I have some food for you.”

  Miranda guessed he had never had any children. But wasn’t the boy in the Mycenaean amphitheater, wasn’t that his son? No, he must have died when young Felix was only a baby. He was not a man who could fool you, the way most fathers can. There was an eagerness, a greediness in the way he stared at her, the way he offered the six pastries on his handkerchief, laid out in a perfectly spaced line. And when she smiled, wrinkled her nose, a look of disappointment and anger contorted his thin features.

  He had called her a fool. But she wasn’t so stupid as to never have read any fairy stories or mythologies. Once Andromeda’s cousin had spent a week in the house on Syndicate Road. He was just back from a trip to Thailand, and he told them stories about modern pirates who would sit next to you on some overnight bus, and want to talk English and be your friend, and give you food out of little containers. If you took it, or drank out of the bottles they offered, you woke up four days later in the hospital, robbed of everything. Just like Persephone in the land of the dead, Andromeda’s mother had remarked.

  “What are you doing here?” said the Baron Ceausescu. Now suddenly he was impatient: “You don’t belong here. You don’t deserve Magister Kepler’s precious jewel—you don’t deserve it. You are not one of us.”

  He threw the pastries aside and leapt at her, which was no surprise. She had been eyeing one of the burning sticks. She drew the stick out of the fire as he came at her. Nor did she feel afraid. He was an old man, after all. “Idiot!” he said. “Do you think I care about these things? Do you think they warm me, burn me? No, but I can feel the heat in your body, that much I can feel.”

  But he’d been right. He wasn’t strong enough to overpower her, and whatever he claimed, the stick kept him at bay. Like everything else that happened to her in the hidden world, these events had an unreal quality that made them tolerable—this was not her actual self that was doing these things, facing these dangers. Her actual self—at least she hoped so—had chased the Rezistenta men out of the house. Her actual self had saved Andromeda’s life. What was she doing now? Was she lying in bed? Relaxing or celebrating after a job well done? Or was she talking, moving, eating, sleeping, walking in the fields with the black dogs?

  She backed away out of the half-circle of light. The ghost glared at her. And as she threw the burning stick in his face, he staggered back. His patent-leather boots slipped on the rocks, and he fell down.

  Once under shelter of darkness, she climbed down through the rocks to where the grass began. It was slippery with dew. Her clothes were wet. The moon was behind the peaks. But she could see the rock chute and the pine-clad slope. Better than that, she could see the lantern flickering below her where her aunt waited at the edge of the wood, wearing her old-fashioned velvet dress, lace collar, little fur hat, and her fox-fur stole with the fox heads hanging down. None of these ghosts was exactly dressed for the occasion.

  “Hush,” whispered Aegypta Schenck. She led Miranda into the trees. Miranda didn’t recall this place from her ascent, this tangled patch of pines. The slope was more gradual than she remembered

  The oil lantern was extinguished now, and her aunt had pressed her down into a hollow at the base of a tree, carved out of layers of pine needles and sticky with sap. Sure enough, soon they could see the baron coming toward them down the slope, his light feet clattering on the stones. He continued past them without stopping.

  Miranda tried to move when he’d gone past, but her aunt still held her. She was a powerful woman with strong arms and shoulders under her old-lady clothes. Miranda remembered that, remembered struggling against her in Insula Calia, and lay still.

  “The dead are easy to deceive,” said Aegypta Schenck von Schenck.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “He’s searching for Kepler’s Eye,” whispered Aegypta Schenck.

  “No duh.”

  “What do you mean? Child—don’t be impertinent.”

  But then she let her up, and Miranda pulled herself away. She supposed it was too much to expect a ghost to thank her, but even so—a little more kindness might have been appropriate. The brandywine bird had been caught in the elector’s jaws.

  Miranda looked away, looked into the dark branches above their heads, where another small body hung suspended. A woodchuck or a marten, one of the indiscriminate category of creatures that Stanley had called “wombats.” Had the white tyger thrown him up there? She did not recognize this place. There was a wound over the creature’s furry breast.

  Aunt Aegypta didn’t notice. “He was a suicide, like Ratisbon. They always come back here. They find it difficult to stay quiet in the land of the dead. This I know. It is difficult to leave the things you love. The plans you laid. So they hover here, still at the threshold. Still trying to influence events. They are victims of their own self-control. Their desire to control others, which lingers.”

  She’d released her grip, and they sat among the sticky roots of the tree. It occurred to Miranda that her aunt might have been talking about herself, or else partly about herself. In a literal sense she had planned her own death, prepared for it, goaded Nicola Ceausecu into murder. “He follows his wife,” said Aegypta Schenck. “Always at a distance, because she will not let him come near. But he tries to protect her. I think it is for her sake that he searches for the jewel.”

  Miranda looked up at the pine marten in the tree. Now suddenly she guessed what had happened to the tourmaline. “He doesn’t know she’s already found it,” she said.

  Aunt Aegypta shrugged. She continued on as if she hadn’t heard: “I have seen her up above here in the pass. She takes the shape of a cat sometimes. An orange cat. Half of her destroyed on the stage of the Ambassadors. The other half…” She frowned. “What did you say?”

  It was lighter now. In this place, Miranda thought, perhaps the nights weren’t as long. The sky was pearly. Her aunt sat with her skirt rucked up, her stockings torn and stained. What a joke, Miranda thought, to go through eternity like this. Aegypta Schenck had loved her horses, dogs, and guns. She’d lived alone by herself in a cabin in the woods, a strong woman with a coarse, mannish face, dark eyes that had that odd, yellowish cast. Now she frowned, peered at Miranda with her little eyes. Hanks of grayish hair had come loose from her long, U-shaped, tortoiseshell pins. The round hat was perched on the side of her head. The little veil hung down.

  “Child, what did you say?”

  Miranda hugged her arms across her chest. “I saw a cat just like that. I laid the tourmaline on a rock. It’s gone now.”

  “Child, that is bad news.” Aunt Aegypta’s voice was even and she didn’t sound upset.

  Miranda turned to look at her. In an early memory, one of the few Miranda had taken from Roumania to Berkshire County, her aunt had stood in these same clothes on the platform of Mogosoaia station in the snow. She had pressed the essential history into Miranda’s hands, her expression full of an
guish and regret.

  But the little wicked fox heads had smiled at her. Now there was something else in Aunt Aegypta’s face, a hint of satisfaction.

  9

  Stanesti-Jui

  TIME IS NOT identical in the hidden world, the passage of time, the duration of events. Down below, in the farmhouse in Stanesti-Jui, Miranda lay asleep. She had not woken since the night of the storm. Three women sat around her bed on the second floor. Lieutenant Prochenko was also there, dressed in borrowed clothes.

  “How long has it been?” he asked.

  Inez de Rougemont gave him a long look, but she said nothing. Magda de Graz raised her head. Back bent from osteoporosis, she sat perched on the edge of her armchair, a small woman who peered up at the rest of them through cataract-occluded eyes.

  Her voice was tremulous and soft. “Lieutenant, we have told you we have no desire to listen to your questions or opinions. As far as it concerns myself, your welcome here is at an end. By your own admission you have led these ruffians to our door. By your own carelessness you have ruined a safe haven of fifteen years, as well as caused the death of an old man who never did you any harm. Can you not see the difference? My son the Chevalier de Graz, he left us in Bucharest because he found himself pursued. In Cismigiu Park. But you—”

  Prochenko smiled. “It was your son’s letter they found in my trousers’ pocket. When I saw him in Staro Selo, he was the one who told me to come back.”

  “But these men were hunting you. Because of some carelessness or an adventure. Do you deny it?”

  “Thirty hours,” interrupted Clara Brancoveanu. She sat closest to the bedside on a low stool. She held her daughter’s hand in her own hand, withered and soft at the same time. “Please don’t argue. The lieutenant has been a faithful friend to us.” She smiled shyly, hesitantly. “Domnul, for my part you are welcome here.”

  “I agree,” said Inez de Rougemont. “We are too poor to send away our friends. A great deal needs to be done.”

  Earlier that day they had buried Jean-Baptiste on the hillside. Anton had fetched the cantor from the temple in the village. He had played the violin, and the plaintive noise had set the dogs to howling.

  Jean-Baptiste was the only man they buried. Soldiers had already dragged away the bodies of the Rezistenta men, broken and torn. Bears, the sergeant had speculated. Bears had come out of the forest after the men were dead. But it had been a fiercer beast than that, the Condesa de Rougemont had told herself.

  She had not been in the library when Jean-Baptiste had died. She’d seen nothing of what had happened. She’d been in the stables and had not returned until later. But she recognized the marks of the white tyger.

  Now she sat in a chair in the corner of the bedroom, exhausted, leaning back. That morning she had sent away some of the men to look for another house in some other village—she hated the thought. Half her life she had spent fighting the same fight.

  How was it possible she was still here after all these years, still holding the banner Frederick Schenck von Schenck had let slip from his hands? He was a man she’d loved without ever having possessed. And now the goal of a democratic republic in Roumania seemed further away than ever, further even than it had under the Empress Valeria or the German occupation.

  Now Frederick’s daughter had disappeared into the hidden world and not come back. Madame de Rougemont touched her fingers to the high bridge of her nose. How could she explain to Clara Brancoveanu what had happened, that she had sent the girl alone onto the mountain and had not guided her back down? How could she explain to Frederick in some imaginary conversation in her mind? How would she explain it to Zuzana Knauss and the others if they questioned her, in the castle on Borgo Pass or wherever else they might sit down together? She had not slept since the events of that night, since the death of Nicola Ceausescu’s steward.

  The Rezistenta man with the bad skin and foul breath had pulled his hired thugs away into the darkness of the house. Terrified of the murdered ghost, they had tried to take Prochenko and run away. Jean-Baptiste had pursued them, bleeding and shrieking, until he had collapsed on the threshold. But then something else had caught them in the dark, chased them down the road, dispersed them. Prochenko had come back limping and smiling, but that was all an act. He had drunk four glasses of brandy and then staggered up to bed.

  It was not until she had already spoken with the soldiers and policemen from the village, and the body of the steward had been laid out in the stables, that Madame de Rougemont had come into the library again. Clara Brancoveanu was sitting on the hearth, her daughter’s head in her lap. She’d looked up, bleary-eyed, in tears. “She won’t wake up,” she said.

  But it was a strange kind of sleep, because sometimes Miranda almost woke. Sometimes she cried out, or rolled and struggled under the blankets. Now after thirty hours she lay quiet in her upstairs bed, her eyes open, her breath calm.

  “We will find a use,” murmured Inez de Rougemont. “There are ways he can redeem himself, I know.”

  She was talking about Lieutenant Prochenko and about herself as well. Prochenko paced back and forth scratching his hands. The condesa sighed. “There’s a gun I must find. It is essential—did you see it on the table? It was in the room last night. If the Rezistenta made off with it, there will be a catastrophe. If they bring it to Bocu.”

  “I saw it,” said the lieutenant. “The general’s revolver.”

  “You understand what I am talking about? It was—”

  “Of course. A big Webley-Doenitz, manufactured in the English style. It was not a standard bore—the bullets were made specially. The general used to wear it on his hip.”

  Madame Rougemont shook her head. “It has a different purpose now.”

  “Different to what?”

  She was exhausted. Too tired to prevaricate: “Because of it—what should I say? You will not understand. There are two creatures from a secret place, brought here by force. One is almost like a butterfly, except it stings. The other will have grown by now because of the war. There must not be a third.”

  How could they understand? Clara goggled at her as if she’d lost her mind. Madame de Graz turned her head, squinting at her out of the corner of her eye, where she’d retained some vision. Only Prochenko seemed to find some meaning in her words. Why should that be so? Without a doubt she shouldn’t even be discussing these things, not aloud. Not in front of these two women who were not entirely her friends, and in front of this strange hybrid of a man, conjured into being by Aegypta Schenck von Schenck.

  But where was she to turn in her desperate hour? Her house—her refuge—had been discovered. She had found Isaac Newton’s black book discarded in a corner of the room, but the gun had disappeared. And if she’d lost the girl as well—oh, it was too much to bear.

  She remembered the last time she had seen Frederick in his cell at Jilava prison before his trial. She couldn’t touch him, could not even touch his hands. But she had looked into his eyes and promised him and put her heart into the promise. Clara Brancoveanu was not there. She was home in bed in the middle of her pregnancy. The doctors had prescribed a regimen.

  Lieutenant Prochenko shook his head. Somehow, the condesa thought, he knew what she was talking about. Now he came to squat beside her. He smelled like meat and blood and hair. “Madame,” he said, “I understand it was wrong of me to come. I understand the trouble I have brought. But you must understand—this butterfly…”

  He let his sleeve fall away from his delicate, hairy forearm. De Rougemont saw a line of scabs along his wrist, and then a larger sore—a puncture wound. “I have an interest in this.”

  “Lieutenant, if Bocu finds this gun—”

  “Hush,” he interrupted. “I have an interest. And there are other things I want to say to Colonel Bocu.”

  “Domnul,” said Magda de Graz, peering at him out of the sides of her eyes. “There is also a letter for my son.”

  “Yes,” continued Inez de Rougemont. “I believe the
Turks have a new weapon in the Staro Selo district. I am wondering what to make if it—a line of turtles in the mud. If we could get this information to General Antonescu—”

  It was idiotic, obviously, what she was saying. She was so tired. Magda de Graz blinked at her. Clara rubbed her eyes. Lieutenant Prochenko yawned. “I will retrieve your gun,” he said. “Let’s start with that.”

  He scratched at the sores on his wrist, pulled up his cuff. He stood up, yawned again, stretched. Clara Brancoveanu also rose, surrendered her place by her daughter’s head. Miranda pulled away from her, clenched her hand into a fist. She groaned on the pillows.

  “Lieutenant,” said Princess Clara, and Madame de Rougemont was almost impressed by her quiet dignity, how she swallowed down her tears. “Lieutenant—I beg you will stay. You will not leave three old women and my sick girl? My husband trusted you, and I also—I am a beggar here, but everything I have is yours. You will not leave us?”

  When Prochenko moved away from her, Inez de Rougemont felt a draft of new cold air. The warmth of his body had kept it from her. She watched his little bow, watched him take Princess Clara’s hand, which she had offered him. “Ma’am,” he said, “it’s true these dogs are hunting me. I will come back when I can.”

  He gave her the name of a rooming house in Floreasca where he could be found. Then he went down on his knees beside Miranda’s bed. Perhaps because he’d mentioned dogs, there seemed to the condesa something canine about the way he took Miranda’s fingers, unclenched them, used them to rub his cheek, comb through his hair. Once again Madame de Rougemont was reminded of the last time she had said good-bye to Frederick Schenck in prison—she had not touched him. But she had tried to put her heart and every part of her body into her leave-taking, all without words.