The Hidden World (A Princess of Roumania)

by Paul Park

  “Who? I don’t remember.”

  Miranda stood at the top of the world. “What do you mean?” she cried. “You made him tell me those things for a reason, didn’t you? Step by step. First things first. Everything he told me…”

  Miranda’s aunt shook her head. “It is a vexed question. We always used to argue in the old days. I’ve told you more than once your life inside the book was different from anything we wrote. It grew from the inside, because of you. This is the fundamental question of all alchemical research: When you make something, are you creating something new? Or are you discovering something that already exists?”

  The sun was on the spire of rock above the tower. Miranda took her hand off the iron ring. Stanley’s little maxims and a hundred thousand other things, had they come out of her? Or were they just a way of leading her and keeping her along her road?

  She stood in a perch of granite boulders. She could see the valley open under her feet as the sun rose and the light descended, not toward tara mortilor but east, down and down, a whole hidden world. Above her head, the light gleamed on the stones of Kepler’s tower.

  As the sun moved, every instant it revealed something new among the steep valleys sinking down. She looked out between two long arms of hills, which subsided into the distance. In that bright landscape she could see the river coiling toward the sea. She said: “So was Berkshire County something you invented or discovered?”

  Behind her came her aunt’s impatient, deflating gasp. “I do not think I would care so much about the future or existence of an invented place, a place I’d invented or caused others to invent. I do not think I would have sacrificed myself, everything, any chance of happiness—”

  But if there was any reason to think it might be worth it to give up those things for the sake of an illusion, it was this: When Miranda first came to Roumania … No, not Roumania, but when she had first climbed down from Christmas Hill, she’d felt as if she’d passed from a false world to a true one, and not because anything was better or happier or else suddenly made sense—quite the opposite. No, the difference had been a matter of physical sensations, the intensity of colors, smells, sounds, all of which had faded over time. The warm air drifted up the valley, touched her face.

  She said, “Am I right in thinking you can’t follow me down there? Am I right in thinking that’s the hidden world? Not just this borderland, as you call it—”

  Another irritated gasp: “Child, you must not always look for guidance. A thousand men die every day along the southern front. Another thousand every day in Poland. It is time for you to get out of bed, climb down from this ridge. But I can’t predict…”

  Miranda glanced behind them toward tara mortilor. That valley was still in mist and shadow. Eastward, the sun had burned all that away. Rock cliffs turned black and brown, and then descended into forest.

  “You might search for it and find it in the hidden world,” her aunt had told her not so long ago. She’d been talking about Berkshire County.

  “That’s not what I meant,” Miranda said now. She stood in the rocks below Kepler’s tower. Whatever had moved inside the stone chamber was not moving now.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” she said. “You can travel through those brass gates. You can pass through tara mortilor. Bring me the jewel, the tourmaline. Find it and bring it here to me.”

  And when her aunt replied nothing, she turned away and took her first steps downhill. “You’ve pulled me out of bed,” she continued softly. “You’ve led me to my road. Step by step. What will I find? There is a war down here?”

  She heard her aunt’s voice diminish, because she hadn’t followed her. “I will not quibble like a dressmaker.”

  But as she continued down through the granite boulders, and as the world remade itself, she heard an angry expulsion of breath beside her ear. She turned for the last time, and there behind her on the rocks stood Aegypta Schenck von Schenck in her old lady’s velvet dress, the cruel fox heads hanging down, as they had at Mogosoaia in the snow.

  “I will tell you,” said the old woman. “You should need no excuse to be what you are, or do what is correct, or give your life for Great Roumania. But if there is a first step or a first place or something you should expedite, then I want you to rid the world of President Victor Bocu.”

  And it seemed to Miranda that her aunt was in fact, as it turned out, quibbling like a dressmaker or else agreeing to a bargain. She had already predicted what her aunt would ask of her, and she couldn’t even listen as her Aegypta Schenck explained what she already knew: how Victor Bocu had taken control of the so-called National Assembly, a council of collaborators that had been founded under German auspices to advertise the supposed benefits of German democracy—a sham, obviously, and even more of a sham now because of its superficial legitimacy.…

  Miranda knew all this. She found herself pretending to listen, while at the same time she was wondering how dressmakers had achieved their reputation for quibbling. And she was also wondering if she would find Peter Gross in this forest or this valley down below, and how he would have changed since she’d last seen him, and what form he would take, and whether she would even recognize him.

  13

  Of Two Minds

  CLARA BRANCOVEANU SAT by Miranda’s bedside in Stanesti-Jui, wiping her face, stroking her hair. She was fearful of a new seizure. But the onset of Miranda’s illness had been sudden, and now her recovery was just as quick; irritable after five minutes, she pushed her mother’s hands away.

  And after that she was content for several hours. Her mother had never known her in such high spirits. She seemed strong and full of energy, her old self from before her winter sickness and the worries and anxieties of the past few days. Anton brought her breakfast on a tray, but she refused to stay in bed. She paced back and forth with a hunk of buttered toast in her hand.

  Watching her eat, Clara was almost able to convince herself that everything was all right. The black eel that had squeezed from the barrel of her husband’s revolver had not been real. How could it have been real? No, it was a ghostly image that could not persist in this strong daylight.

  And when Miranda went down by herself to the water closet on the ground floor, Clara was able to say to herself that she’d done something right for a change, that she’d been right to read Aegypta’s letter, fire the gun. Inez’s doleful warnings—what did she know? Doubtless she’d been jealous not to have broken the code herself, found the secret and the cure.

  The princess was unable to deceive herself for very long. Miranda collapsed on the landing, and the servants had to carry her upstairs. She wasn’t hurt or sick. But she wouldn’t wake up, and she slept for another day, and her mother watched over her.

  Sometimes she sank deep in slumber, and she lay immobile, scarcely breathing. At other times she seemed to rise quickly to the surface and struggle there, thrash about on the pillow until her mother came to her. Clara sat by her, held her hand until she was submerged again. Then she returned to the activity that consumed many of these hours. She had built a private altar against one wall beside the bookcase, a few candles on a stool, a bowl of incense. She had got some devotional literature from a woman in the village, and a small wooden carving of Demeter’s wheat sheaves, arranged in a circle around the image of the waxing moon. Sometimes she would still draw at her easel—real and, for the first time, imagined landscapes, as well as portraits of Miranda as she lay asleep. These were obsessive, quick sketches that often reduced her to weeping. Then she would abandon them or cross them out, and flop down on her knees with her little prayer book. She would read the cycle of prayers that begins with the descent of Persephone, Demeter’s daughter, to the land of the dead.

  * * *

  HER DEVOTION IRRITATED Inez de Rougemont. Anxious in their separate ways, the two women sometimes sat together in Miranda’s room, kept vigil there. The village doctor had been useless. It was only in Bucharest that they could hope to find a specialist.

&nbs
p; But that was suddenly possible. Much had changed since Madame de Rougemont’s refuge had been discovered. And many of the changes had not been anticipated. She had received a letter from the office of the President of the Assembly, from Colonel Bocu himself, deploring the damage that had been done and offering restitution. He was astonished that his men had so far exceeded their authority, which was to arrest a fugitive named Prochenko, also known as Andromedes, on a charge of espionage. The Rezistenta men who had come to Stanesti-Jui had been part of a rogue group, and their leader had already been punished for his insubordination.

  In fact, the colonel claimed, though he regretted the intrusion, it gave him an opportunity to invite the entire household back to the capital, where they would be welcomed with the dignity they deserved. Madame (formerly Princess) Brancoveanu was a famous patriot, a heroine of the long struggle against Germany. And the reputation of her husband had been officially rehabilitated by a voice vote in the National Assembly, as a progenitor of the republican movement and a hero of a previous war against the Turks. The colonel himself had read the proclamation into the record. And, if he might be permitted to insert a private sentiment, he was eager to meet Mademoiselle Popescu as well, the daughter of two patriots, and a young woman who had already captivated Bucharest with her beauty and her charm.

  Madame de Rougemont (he claimed) had nothing to fear from the new government, which had repealed all of the Empress Valeria’s anti-conjuring laws. It was the desire of the assembly to encourage all kinds of scientific or alchemical inquiry, to harness them for the glory of the nation. Etc., etc.—the letter was quite long.

  Now, in Miranda’s room, Inez de Rougemont stood up from the settee and went to stand next to the window. The sun was gone from the garden where the men were turning earth.

  She listened to the muttered sounds of prayer, which she could hear from across the room, and which made her angry. Through her stupidity and carelessness, Clara had unlocked a scientific anomaly out of its cell, and now she tried to comfort herself with nonsense and religious superstition. She knelt on the floor, rubbing her hands in the candlelight, a puzzled smile on her soft face as she contemplated a problem that was all her fault.

  As she turned, Madame de Rougemont caught a glimpse of her own face in the looking glass over the dresser. And she looked absurd—she could see she had put on too much cosmetic powder. But in the morning when she made her face, sometimes she could catch a glimpse of the woman Frederick had loved. He had planned to give her Spanish mother’s name to his own daughter, as she’d requested. He’d laughed—“It doesn’t matter. Why not? People will assume I’ve named her for Miranda Brancoveanu.”

  Almost her own daughter, then. As close to her own daughter as could be. And she had taken the girl in, protected her, kept her from harm, watched over her both here and in Aegypta Schenck’s invented world—Clara had ruined all that.

  Now Madame de Rougemont stood above her as she knelt on her cushion. “You are not helping her,” she said.

  When Clara opened her eyes, she continued. “It has been a long time since the gods could help us.”

  She pointed to the candles on the makeshift altar. “You looked at the black book. You tried to read it, didn’t you? There’s a story Newton tells about Johannes Kepler. He found a creature outside the brass gates. In the book it says he was able to seduce it with a mixture of honey and blood, which might not be true. But he lured it up a high hill into a place between two mountains. He built a stone tower and locked it in a stone chamber.”

  Dear Clara’s face had taken on a panicked, bored expression. “Perhaps before that you could pray to God and God might answer,” said Inez de Rougemont. “There were miracles that could be verified. The histories are full of them. Since then, nothing. Not a single visitation or answered prayer. Now we are left with science as a last resort.”

  But the princess, for all her weakness, had an irritating stubbornness. “I don’t believe you,” she said. Then later, “You will see.”

  * * *

  AND SO CLARA Brancoveanu went and sat down on the stool beside Miranda’s head. She held her hand and said the prayers to Persephone, who lived for months among the dead in winter-land. Dear Inez stood above them, glowering, scratching at her long, dry, tapered fingers, and she was the one who first noticed. Clara could concede such a thing—she had closed her eyes for just a moment, so as to better listen to her own prayer. But she opened them when Miranda’s breathing changed, and she saw Inez’s starved, painted face near her own. She could almost forgive the older woman’s cruelty when she saw her expression change into observant hopefulness; Miranda turned onto her side. Her eyelids fluttered, and instantly she was awake. She sat up, started to talk—laugh, even, like a clockwork doll when you release the key.

  “Ah, comme j’ai rêvé—but I am glad to be home again. This is my home from now forward, my own ugly, poky little house. And when I go away and come back, I will depend on you to keep it warm for me, warm and comfortable—I thank you! But there’s no food in the pantry! You have been remiss!”

  Observant hope, and yet Inez de Rougemont didn’t understand. Clara understood. Perhaps she wasn’t clever, and no doubt her education had been neglected. But she had studied her daughter’s face during the past months. She had memorized every line and reproduced it in her sketchbook. “Lieutenant Andromedes,” Miranda said. “I saw him on the train. But he’ll come back here, won’t he? He’s left his luggage here! I believe he loves this ugly, stupid, rustic little house—such a relief to me, after I was prisoner in the People’s Palace. Simple pleasures, though I believe the girl’s lungs are not strong.”

  “She is feverish,” whispered dear Inez—she didn’t understand! Clara understood, and with the intuition she’d learned at her easel (she’d always been praised for her drawing, ever since she was a little girl) she could see Miranda’s face had never managed this precise articulation. Now, as her daughter moved her hands, grimaced, rolled her eyes, Clara imagined she could feel every transient emotion, every gust of sensation in the room.

  There was only one woman who had been able to command this effect, either on stage or in a private chamber. “I shall get used to these,” she said, rubbing her bosom and pressing it together under the flimsy nightgown, and then running her hands down her rib cage to her waist. “Oh, and I have beautiful fingers now. I won’t try to chew them or make them bleed! I shall wear gloves if it is necessary—look!”

  She held up her wrist and gave her bracelet a shake, the golden tiger-head beads of Miranda Brancoveanu. “How it sparkles!” she said. “I did not think it would be so light!”

  “Clara, will you pass me the thermometer?” asked Inez de Rougemont, because she didn’t understand. Clara understood. But then she’d been close to Jean-Baptiste when he had jerked awake and pranced around the library like a broken puppet. She had seen the glint of his eyes, smelled the bitter, citric odor of his skin—all that was less noticeable now. Miranda’s eyes were dark blue, what an artist might call cerulean, not too dissimilar a shade. And she hadn’t bathed in days. She was a woman who perspired freely, and her bed smelled of perspiration. Her mother was sensitive to such things.

  “Oh, but there is something in the larder,” Miranda said. Her hair was spread out over the pillow. “I can feel it stirring now. Do you remember how Jean-Baptiste used to bring me eels steamed in wine, fat lampers from the Danube delta? They had round little mouths, and they were fat with the blood and juice of other fish. There’s something like that here, or I would starve to death. Other houses—I can visit for a short time, but I must leave! An old man in a train, Bocu’s little whore—I must leave after I consume the house. Burn it in a fever. But not here. Here I can stay. Because of these black eels. I have a craving for lampers from the old days.”

  Dear Inez loomed above her. “Clara, could you let me sit down?” she said—she didn’t understand. She was the one who seemed feverish, and the circles of cosmetic powder gave her cheeks a h
ectic flush. Her penciled eyebrows came together when Miranda said, “I have the jewel, of course—my jewel, that I got from the Corellis. When the house is dark, I stand in the front hallway and raise it up. And it gives a light. And the light burns.”

  Then for the first time she turned her head on the pillow and looked her mother in the face. “Maman,” she said, “will you bring me something to eat? I’m so hungry, and it’s not just lampers in the dark.”

  Because Miranda had never called her that before, not for this entire winter and entire spring—never called her “maman,” or used that plaintive tone, Clara found herself murmuring, “Of course, dear. Whatever you might want.”

  14

  The Descent to Chiselet

  WHAT SHE WANTED and she wasn’t getting from anyone else, what she was starving for, was the answers to her questions.

  Or else as she climbed down through the rocks into the valley, Miranda discovered little pieces of answers, not in the hidden world, but in herself. In her travels with the tourmaline and since she’d lost it, she’d become used to a kind of dream-life, in which sensation and experience felt more than real. But in the high, thin air under Kepler’s tower, the conscious part of thinking had seemed weak and starved, the part that depends on volition, and deliberate decisions, and consideration. All that returned to her as she climbed lower, down between the mountain’s outstretched arms.

  So the Baroness Ceausescu had stolen Kepler’s Eye and taken it through the brass gates, where Miranda couldn’t follow. And her aunt Aegypta would go after it, find it, steal it back, if Miranda brought her … something, some token or proof from the defeat of President Bocu.

  Something she could hold in her hand, and she would bring it up the hill to the stone tower where the secret creature lurked inside its cell—so, a quest. The mystic jewel, the small token of enormous power: These were elements in the kind of story she had loved to read when she was sick in bed with a cold, or else on a summer afternoon in the icehouse in Berkshire County.