The Hidden World (A Princess of Roumania)

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The Hidden World (A Princess of Roumania) Page 25

by Paul Park


  A handsome guardsman offered his arm, and Prochenko swept into the gallery of mirrors, which led to the Bessarabian ballroom. Servants dressed as Cossacks poured Moldavian champagne. Two stories high, the entire enormous room had been rigged out in painted leather like the inside of a tribesman’s tent. Victor Bocu stood on the dais in the middle of the dance floor, surrounded by his Gypsy orchestra. He wore red leather boots and leather trousers, a baldric with crossed pistols and cartridges, a black scarf knotted over his face and his round head. He peered out through embroidered eye-holes, a bandit or a captain of the steppes.

  With him were the contestants from the beauty pageant, each representing a separate racial group or district of the country, each wearing a version of her distinctive native dress.

  * * *

  HE STOOD WITH the girls on the dais in their idiotic clothes, the orchestra scraping away. Looking out over the crowd, he could see Miranda Popescu on one side of the hall—what a welcome surprise she had turned out to be! From what he’d heard, he’d expected some kind of ugly, gangling creature, awkward and shy. Her father had not been handsome, and the Brancoveanus were not a prepossessing family, to judge from the portraits which, after all, had been designed to please. No, this blood was tired, Bocu had thought, this aristocratic blood—though beguiling, obviously, to a man whose father had owned a shop: That was easy to understand. But Elena Bibescu had been stupid and faithless after all. As for the white tyger …

  Colonel Bocu climbed down from the dais under the great chandelier. He had to push his way through the crowd, and it was possible that some of these idiots might not know who he was. But now a number of pierrots and scaramouches came to stand around him, ministers and secretaries, blocking his view of the Popescu girl—no, there she was. And it was not that she was beautiful. No one could claim she was beautiful.

  “Sir, I thought that…”

  Who was this idiotic fool in his sea boots and false moustache? It was Voineshti from the Treasury. What did he want? In the meantime Mademoiselle Popescu had disappeared. Bocu turned his head to search for the other one, the stranger in the wolf’s mask. It was to be a night of surprises after all, and there were creatures in the forest he would hunt with Cupid’s arrows. In the meantime, Voineshti nattered on. “Sir, it is only a question of time before…” God damn him! The old fool!

  This scarf around Bocu’s head, of course, did not make it easier for him to see. No, there she was—the wolf. Not for him, finally, the conventional vapid beauties on the dais. Give him something exotic, something unusual, as Elena—curse her—had been. And he could see that no one wanted to talk to the wolf girl. The women pulled away from her, the men didn’t dare look at her—not that there were many men, of course. Except for the buffoons from the artillery, the colonel was as young as any fellow here.

  “So on the first of the month…,” said Voineshti.

  The colonel nodded his head. “Tell me,” he said, “what do you think of Mademoiselle Popescu?”

  The man shrugged. “Sir, she favors her father.…”

  “Hah, I see. So you think her looks are a manifestation of her father’s politics, maybe. You think her long neck is a function of the rights of the citizen—what was it—fifteen articles? You think her eyes reflect his wish for a deep-water port on the Adriatic, and her breasts the separation of religious and state policy—see the rift between them!”

  These professional politicians, Bocu thought, all imagined he was crazy when he talked like this. Voineshti nodded sagely, his face a mask under his little fringed mask. His false whiskers did little to obscure his false teeth, his long thin face. Nor was he capable of seeing below the surface to the heart of things. When he looked at Miranda Popescu, the colonel imagined, all the old man saw was her black, straight hair, her small chin, wide forehead, and protruding ears. He was not capable of reading the proud grace of her gestures, or else understanding the delicate bravado of her movements as she made a little dancing shuffle across the floor. Nor could he appreciate her choice of clothes. She wore a dress that revealed everything that was beautiful in her, while hiding everything that was not. It was white, streaked with gray, cut to the border of immodesty, showing her pretty waist and legs. She wore a diamond and feldspar necklace that had once belonged to Nicola Ceaucescu. Her hair was pulled back from her face.

  And of course, around her wrist was the gold bracelet of the Brancoveanus, a symbol of archaic feudalism, but beguiling even so! She made a little pirouette across the polished floor. The Gypsy violins and concertinas performed a complicated melody, which she anticipated with some complicated footwork in the most modern style, as if from some dance academy in Cairo or Damascus. Why, she danced as well as Nicola Ceausescu had herself! How odd that this exhausted family had still managed to produce one final blossom before it collapsed always and forever into obscurity. How lucky that all he had to do was reach out his hand for the flower to fall into it—that little dance step had been for him, he was convinced. Who else?

  He stepped away from Voineshti and the others. But then he wasn’t so sure after all, because the wolf and the tyger were together now, and it was the wolf who made a little answering figure, pulling back her silver gown to show her silver feet.

  * * *

  IN THE HIDDEN world, and in the real world too, between the Tutrakan bridge and the village of Chiselet, the Danube breaks into a swamp that has from earliest recorded times provided a refuge for bandits and conjurers. This was where the monster had his fortress.

  In that world, in Faurei Castle, where she had reached out to touch the Chevalier de Graz, and after she had kissed him as he lay asleep, Miranda discovered her own bed again in the early morning. Exhausted, she fell into a dream.

  And in the dream she found herself surrounded not by her own men but by the enemy, a grinning throng of demons and familiars. And the goldenass had changed her, turned her into an object of mockery for his own perverted enjoyment. She had hated skirts and dresses her whole life, yet here she was forced to dance or exhibit herself in some tiny, white, slinky number that left her legs bare and the top of her chest uncovered. She found herself reduced to her mere body, her feet squeezed into shoes that crippled her, and that seemed to move and dance with a life of their own—that was the worst part. For instead of running from this place, covering herself up, she could hear herself laughing, hear the vapid question she asked, feel herself turn with her palms open at her waist, as if offering herself up.

  Oh, this was terrible, after the frightening and perfect moments she had spent with Pieter in the upstairs room! Around her there were masks and animals, shadows and flames. Goldenass himself was there, a man who was neither tall nor short, fat nor thin. He wore a black scarf over his head, Zorro-fashion—she knew who he was. She recognized him by his laugh, his strong teeth glinting in the light as he spun away from the others, turned to meet her on the scorched ground.

  Because she was the white tyger, sometimes she could see these ragged beggars in their spirit flesh, a circle of small animals that had joined to bring her down. She could have ripped apart one or a dozen, but not all these. In these moments the goldenass showed himself not as some obscene version of his name, but as a powerful beast, brick red and bloated, a winged dragon or else a slippery-fingered toad. In her own place, in her own skin she might have had nothing to fear.

  Weakened and exhausted, she bowed her head. But here was help when she least expected it. Andromeda was here, and she had slipped in among these beasts in her own skin, as if in disguise. Surely the two of them—

  * * *

  —COULD ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING here, Prochenko thought. The Gypsies on the dais, quaint in their embroidered costumes, were making quite a racket. Men in high boots and long overcoats carried trays of champagne. But there was an open space between him and Miranda, whose dress was surprisingly risqué—much more so than Prochenko’s own. It looked good on her, he had to admit.

  “Hey,” he said in English, when the
y got close. And then a few more words. It didn’t take him long to see she didn’t understand him, not long to recognize her acrid, citrus smell, not long, when he watched for it, to see the glint of violet in her eyes. His heart, having risen, now subsided in his chest. “Dog shit,” he said. “C’est toi.”

  “Naturellement.”

  Now she’d grabbed hold of his arm. She recognized him, too. Disgusted, he pulled away. Was there never anything to hope for? Nothing to go right? Oh, but he would make this monster pay, Beau-cul, who now sauntered toward them over the floor. He was dressed like some Bessarabian chieftan. He had a smile on his odious face. Elena had deserved better. Great Roumania deserved better.

  There was no liquor on his breath. He smelled like pepper, crushed in his strong teeth. “Mesdemoiselles,” he said, the total of his French. He continued in Roumanian: “Si eu cum sa aleg intre voi? How can I choose between you? We men are only mortals, after all!”

  What a clown. It disgusted Prochenko that he might have touched Elena’s body, kissed her lips. And the lieutenant had no desire to converse with Nicola Ceausescu of all people. Instead he turned away, pulled away, noticing for the first time another woman—Ana the chambermaid—who stood gesticulating on the edge of the crowd. She wore the church clothes of a Transylvanian peasant with a voluminous white headdress—yards of cloth, out of which she peeped through a white domino. Prochenko recognized her nose, too big for her face.

  “What is your name?” said the Bessarabian bandit.

  “Andromeda,” he answered as he smiled and slid away, probably not the wisest choice. But the dance floor was loud, and Beau-cul might not have heard; he smiled also, and then he turned back to the Baroness Ceausescu. No doubt he would exercise all his disgusting wiles to talk her into bed with him, then wish he hadn’t.

  “Follow me,” Ana whispered. Away from the dancing floor, Prochenko had to push through the crowd. But they reached a door hidden behind a leather panel, away from the light. “I must thank you,” said the girl. “I must thank you for the pistol.”

  “I wish you’d killed those men.”

  She shrugged, gave him a shy smile. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d never fired such a thing. I broke a window on the second floor. They ran like kittens.”

  An odd phrase. “You look beautiful,” the girl continued, breathless—what did she mean?

  She groped for a door behind the curtains, and led him through a sequence of small rooms. Then there was a staircase that led to a small gallery above the dancing floor. There were chairs and a carved fretwork balustrade. Ropes of streamers led from it to the base of the chandelier. Princess Clara Brancoveanu stood with her hand on one of the wooden knobs, watching her daughter down below. The orchestra was playing a medley of Cossack folk tunes, including “Nights upon the Dnieper,” which was a favorite that spring—a Cossack regiment had particularly distinguished itself at Staro Selo. But now they moved into the love theme from The White Tyger. It was appropriate, Prochenko thought, from several points of view.

  The princess wore no mask. Her gown was simple and undecorated—tasteful, Prochenko thought. Her hair was piled onto her head, revealing her neck, the backs of her ears. The gallery sloped three steps down. Prochenko stayed in the shadow of the back wall. The chambermaid had disappeared.

  “Lieutenant,” said the princess. “I am glad you’re here.”

  She didn’t turn around. She stood with her hand on the balustrade not more than two meters distant. She didn’t have to raise her voice. Prochenko remembered her as a foolish woman, easily flustered, easily made fun of. But she seemed calm tonight, overtaken, perhaps, by some of the same fatalism that had touched Prochenko on the dancing floor—calm and dignified. It occurred to him he had misjudged her. It was not foolishness that had sustained her through the years of her captivity, sustained her when Felix Ceausescu had bled to death in her arms, sustained her in her current excruciating pain—she must know.

  She must. Below her the floor had emptied out, leaving a circle in the middle for the bandit chieftain and his lady love. The dowagers and the debutantes made a rhythm to the music, delicately clapping their gloved hands, rustling their small feet. And in the center Miranda swooned and spun, while the bandit turned around her, stamping out a complicated latticework of steps, then moving in to catch her when she subsided backward without looking—she might as well have a rose in her teeth, Prochenko thought. He remembered ballroom dancing in ninth grade gym, a brief craze because of some stupid movie, and an ordeal for him and Miranda both. “She dances very well,” he said bitterly, now.

  “It is not she.”

  No duh. “She is possessed by an evil spirit,” the princess continued. In spite of the music and the sound of laughing and clapping, she didn’t have to raise her voice, she was so close. Prochenko stood in the darkness, she in the light, and the light shone on her face—prematurely old, he thought, aged and softened from defeat, though she was smiling as she turned toward him, a false smile for whoever might be watching from below.

  In profile she showed the proud nose of the Brancoveanus, which he had never particularly noticed on her face before. “I need to study how to cure her,” she said. “I have a book. But I must get her away from this place. Madame de Rougemont is no help. We came together in the train. Oh, it was frightful—it was as if this spirit were imitating how my daughter used to talk, how she used to move her head, gesture with her hands. She was a great mimic, of course, an actress on the stage. The voice, everything was perfect. But she doesn’t care if I know. When Madame de Rougemont wasn’t looking she would put her tongue out—it amuses her. And she says she will stay in Bucharest. Farm life isn’t for her, she says. She misses this great prison; I know how Miranda hated it, hated every minute she spent here. I learned to see it through her eyes.”

  “It’s not the building that she misses,” murmured Prochenko.

  “No, of course not. She says she means to strangle him on their wedding night—she tells me these things! And then with the condesa and Madame de Graz she would use some turn of phrase only Miranda knew—they are living in Lake Herastrau. Even if she’s joking about him, she means to run for the assembly, she says—oh, she is interested in the democratic rights of women!”

  Down below, the music had changed. The bandit had one bare hand on Miranda’s bare back as they turned together first to one side, then the other. “What about him?” Prochenko asked.

  “Oh, isn’t it obvious? She is von Schenck’s daughter. My husband’s daughter. The first martyr of the republic, murdered by Antonescu and the empress—what else could give legitimacy to this fraudulent government? Oh, but if Frederick were still alive—”

  She smiled and nodded for the crowd. She showed a political sophistication that surprised Prochenko. Now, as he sometimes did, he remembered Prince Frederick at the window of the room in Mogosoaia, remembered the words of his oath to protect the princess and her unborn child, when he’d been a dissolute young lieutenant in the Ninth Hussars—the words had changed him. Here he was in his feathered mask. “Ma’am,” he said, “you sent for me. Here I am. What must I do?”

  He had not thought he would be asking her this question. Striding up the Calea Victoriei, he had thought he would find Miranda, find Inez de Rougemont. But he looked for Miranda now and didn’t see her down below. The dancing was more general. The empty circle under the chandelier was now filled in.

  “She won’t listen to me,” said Princess Clara. “But she might listen to you—both parts of her. Miranda had become your friend, of course. But am I right in thinking that Madame Ceausescu has a … fondness for you?”

  Prochenko shrugged. “I’m not sure she likes to see me dressed like this.”

  And the princess’s artificial smile, which she’d been displaying to the crowd, now for a moment seemed almost genuine. “You could be surprised. After all, this is a masquerade.”

  Then she continued. “I need you to convince her to come with you—some
place where we can restrain her—Ana will help. And her brother, who works in the kitchen. I have been studying part of the book—how one could reverse certain effects. It is possible to perform what Magister Newton calls an exorcism—I need help with some of the English words. Your English is sufficient, isn’t it?”

  All this seemed so half-assed, it was almost poignant. “My English is just fine,” Prochenko answered in that language. “It’s, like, fluent.” Then he returned to French: “C’est que—I’m surprised Madame de Rougemont isn’t part of this. It would seem this might be more an area of her … special expertise.”

  And Clara Brancoveanu turned around, looked him in the face for the first time. “I cannot depend on her,” she said, her voice trembling. “I want to know if I can depend on you.”

  “Ma’am,” he said, obscurely touched.

  “Thank you, lieutenant. Yours has been a long, thankless duty, I understand.”

  She stood with her hand on the baluster knob, dressed in her simple clothes. “Ma’am,” he said. “Miranda—”

  “We must search her out.”

  And she came up the steps and took his hand. Together they passed out through the curtains and the little door to where Ana was waiting in the corridor.

  * * *

  IN THE GOLDENASS’S secret fortress, the dance was over and the fight began. The circle of swamp creatures had closed in, while the wolf prowled its perimeter. Lizards, ferrets, jackrabbits, and snakes all pressed against each other, while every footfall disturbed hordes of seething insects. In the meantime the tyger had grappled with her enemy and pulled him from the circle, away from the crystal faerie lights that hung suspended in the trees. Once, because of the slime that gathered on his skin, the monster was able to twist away, pull free. But then the tyger hooked her claws into his back, a surface of scales, pimples, and blisters many layers thick. She could not dig down through it to release his blood or ichor, the fluid of his life. But still he howled with an agony that also sounded like pleasure, a grotesque simpering babble that burst out of him like some foul discharge.

 

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