by Paul Park
III
The Voyage Home
17
The Hunting Lodge
THE NEWS CAME to Brasov as to all Roumanian provincial towns: first by telegraph, in ominous words and phrases; second by wireless transmissions, full of static and bad information; third by train.
It might have been possible for an experienced politician or newspaper editor to tell the story in manner to inspire confidence. The damage from the air raid had not been catastrophic. Many of the enemy ships had been exploded or shot down.
Certainly it was true that the president of the National Assembly had been assassinated under scandalous and uncertain conditions—a shocking event, and one that justified some of the darkest rumors surrounding him. Because his corpse had been discovered in the same room with a murdered prostitute, only now it could be said: Colonel Victor Bocu was a tyrant who’d achieved his post through manipulation and chicanery. The fact of his death might presage a transition to republican rule in some more genuine form. And it might signal the reconciliation of a divided nation, beset as it was by outside enemies.
But there was no politician or editor to publish these ideas, though many discussed them privately, in artistic, military, religious, and intellectual circles. No word or action from the government, priesthood, or any source of organized authority dispelled the fog of anxious dread that settled over the country, more a product of emotion than of sense. The enemy had reached Bucharest for the first time in over three hundred years, when Sultan Ibrahim I had been defeated on the plains of Cernica outside the city walls. Colonel Bocu had been murdered in the People’s Palace under circumstances that stank of treachery and conjuring. Among the people thought to be involved: a discontented subordinate (chief inspector of police under the Ceausescu government), and the last heiress of the Brancoveanu line. Only the former had been apprehended.
The attack on the capital could only draw attention to what everyone already knew: The enemy continued to advance on Staro Selo and the Tutrakan bridge. If they could cross the river there or just below it where the Danube split into the swamp, then Bucharest could no longer be defended, and the entire second army would be cut off on the wrong side of the river. The Turkish airships had demonstrated once and for all that the enemy had African support. There was talk of other devastating weapons, armored vehicles and barges. General Antonescu had announced so many victories that it was hard to think the fight was going well.
In Brasov, Peter listened to the rumors with the others. Antonescu would use the Eleventh Mountaineers to secure the capital. He would consolidate the power of the army in the new assembly, then let the regiment progress to Tutrakan.
Peter did not speculate about these things. His anxiety had a different source. In Chloe Adira’s bed, in her house in the Strada Cerbului, he had dreamed a dream.
Afterward, that same day he had written a letter to Miranda in Stanesti-Jui, asking her to come to Brasov if she could. Or if she couldn’t, then he would find a way to come to her. No one is looking for us, he’d said. We don’t have to hide anymore.
For a week he had imagined her in her bedroom in the mountain farmhouse, which he had never seen. But every invented detail was clear in his mind—she would be standing by the window with his letter in her hand. What would she think? What would she feel?
Now it turned out she was already in Bucharest. The police were searching door to door. Fresh concerns for her safety now replaced his personal anxieties, which in any case he had no leisure to indulge. In the barracks on the Strada Castelului and on the parade grounds outside of town, the soldiers marched and drilled, marched and drilled. Peter’s regimental duties required time and urgency. Following the census rolls and tax accounts, he rode with other officers into the villages. They gathered up the last conscripts, chased down the last deserters and resisters.
On the regiment’s last day in Brasov he rode out, finally, to Sacele, east of the town, along the banks of the Tarlung River and the lake. This was a village of thatched houses on steep hillsides, where Chloe’s mother’s father had had a dairy farm. Peter had come here in late summer thirty years before, bear hunting with the Count de Graz.
He did not want the townspeople to recognize him from that time. In Brasov he’d begun to grow a beard, which itched. The day was bright and hot. He pulled his service cap over his eyes.
He rode a chestnut mare, a bad-tempered, skittish animal. Ahead on the dusty road was the leader of his team, Lieutenant-Major Crasnaru, a slender gray-haired man with gray moustaches that he waxed and curled. Corporal Sylva rode behind him, and when they reached the village they split up. They knew where they were going. Crasnaru dismounted before the whitewashed temple of Osiris Jupiter, where the priest waited at the gate. Sylva and Peter had other errands in the farms along the river.
But Peter was alone when he rode up the rutted track to the high pasture. The fields were poor and stony. The farmer was growing barley, and a few cows grazed where the pine trees began. A brook fell from the mountain beside the stone wall. The farmer had built a shrine to Demeter of the wheat fields, a wooden pavilion a couple of feet tall, sheltering a crude stone image and a dish of wildflowers. They had been picked fresh that morning, though there was no one at the house.
Peter wiped the sweat out of his eyes. He stood for a moment beside the stream, scratching his chin and remembering the headless statue of the goddess in Staro Selo, and the wagonload of shit. And he was thinkng about Miranda—his letter had not reached her. She had been in Bucharest a full week. What had happened at the masked ball in the People’s Palace?
If Antonescu brought the regiment to Bucharest, then he could find her there. If she was in trouble, then he could help her. He could hope there might be time for him to hold her in his arms and say—what? That he had had a long time to think about what Madame de Graz had told him in Cismigiu Park, about his duty to her father and to her.
No, he wouldn’t have to tell her these things. He would show her. Re-energized, unsure, he replaced his cap and climbed up to the barn where he found them, the farmer and his two sons. They were standing in the hayloft, waiting. The light fell in strips through the uneven boards, catching them as if in a cage of light. Dust from the hay, touched by the sun, floated around their heads.
The old man sat on the bales. Beside him stood his older boy, dressed in overalls and a cloth cap, and leaning on a crutch. His right foot was bare. His left foot had been amputated at the middle of his shin, a common injury. He might have stepped on a mine during a counterattack.
The younger son stood behind his father and his brother, waiting.
Peter stood in the doorway, his eyes adjusting to the light. He didn’t say anything. But in his mind’s eye he saw Miranda standing in her bedroom, his letter in her hand.
After a moment he touched his steel prosthesis to his cap, turned his back, returned the way he had come. At the shrine he took a yellow flower, twirled it between his fingers—he would not play this role anymore, perform these shameful duties, hurt these lives.
He had a more important project. He would go to Bucharest. He would find a way to go. Maybe, by the time he returned to the billet that he shared with Major Crasnaru and a few others, the orders would have come. That would be the easy way. Then tomorrow he would reach the city. Antonescu had no use for cripples—with permission or without it, he would go first to Madame de Graz’s house on Lake Herastrau.
Now he looked down over the valley. He had to account for at least an hour before he returned to Crasnaru with some made-up story. He let his memory run ahead of him. There was the rockfall where the cliff came down into the river. There was the track uphill into the woods, too steep for horses.
At first he didn’t understand why he was searching for the place or what it meant to him. Even after he found it, thirty minutes later, he didn’t understand. The hunting lodge meant nothing to him. It was wrecked and burned. The roof was broken in. Graffiti had been carved into the logs. The iron woods
tove was gone. That was no surprise.
The lodge stood in a high meadow where the pines gave way to beeches and oaks. Under the trees, the ground was littered with the husks of acorns and beechnuts, which the bears love. The grass was around Peter’s shins, and there were wildflowers here, too, the first of the year.
He had come here with his father almost thirty years before. And he had some foggy memories, he supposed. But as he stood there among the wildflowers, he was thinking about Miranda—what had she been doing in Bucharest? How could she have made the decision to return there? If he had been with her, he would have prevented her.
But now he understood—he had dreamed about her in the Strada Cerbului. He had seen the icehouse in his dream, and he had sat with her at the icehouse and they had talked like old friends. That’s why he was here, now, he realized—he had no compelling interest in the childhood of the Chevalier de Graz. But this place brought him back to the icehouse where he and Miranda had first spoken. And maybe, when he’d discovered it in Williamstown in the woods beyond the baseball field, he’d gone back and back because it had reminded him of here: a little cabin at the forest’s edge. And he had felt at home there, and Miranda had spoken to him as he squatted on the dam—where was Miranda now? Right now?
* * *
IN BRASOV, AS he hoped, there were orders waiting. It was to be as everyone suspected. They were returning to Bucharest and then to the front line. Bucharest was far enough for him.
And there was a note from Chloe Adira. He had not seen her since he’d left her house. Nor had she written to him. But she sounded desperate now. So after supper he requested an hour’s leave. He found his way to the Strada Cerbului to say good-bye.
He walked through the streets with his head full of pictures of Miranda, single moments from the past. The Hoosick River, the pebbles on the shore slimy with ice. He’d put up the pup tent, and she’d turned toward him, smiling, the light from the fire on her long neck and collarbone. She wore Blind Rodica’s quilted coat. “Hurry up,” she’d said, “I’m freezing.”
Or in the woods in Mogosoaia. She had been asleep, wrapped in a gray shawl beaded with moisture. Curled up, her black hair hiding her face. He’d been standing above her, keeping watch.
Or in the brick pavilion in Cismigiu Park. What had he said? Why hadn’t he gone with her as she wanted, as she expected? Hadn’t that been his duty, as he had sworn it to her father—to protect her, keep her from harm? No, but he had surrendered that duty to Prochenko, who had screwed it up. There was no mention of him in the newspaper stories about Bocu.
Peter had pretended it was best for them to separate, that Miranda would be safer, because the police would chase him after Felix Ceausescu’s death. He had spoken coldly and sincerely. In the lamplight he had seen the blood in her cheeks, seen her eyebrows come together.
Now he stood at Chloe Adira’s door, his hand on the horse-head knocker. And the door opened, and Chloe’s fat, sad mother stood on the threshold, her gray hair wild and unbrushed, a blanket around her shoulders though the evening was warm. “De Graz has come to call! De Graz has come to call!” she shrieked like a mindless parrot, until her daughter pulled her away.
The door shut before he could get inside, and Peter stood like a fool in the deserted street, wondering if he should stay. He’d caught a single glimpse of Chloe’s face, her dark curls and heavy brows, her dark eyes lined with kohl—she was more beautiful than Miranda. Then the door was open again, and she stood alone, her pale palm outstretched. “My God, I’m so glad. I heard the news. I thought you’d already gone.”
She was in her raw silk tunic, cut in an Aegyptian style. Gold glistened in her ears and on her fingers. She drew him up the steps and over the threshold, murmuring the whole time, “You must forgive me, I was so worried. You must excuse my mother.”
When the door was closed and they stood together in the corridor, Peter wondered why he’d come. He wondered what to say to her. But it was she who solved the problem by pushing him away, turning her face away. “This is your last evening,” she said, more a statement than a question.
The light was uncertain, a petroleum lamp in a corner niche.
“I’ve had a letter from my husband,” said Chloe Adira. With a gesture of her hand, she directed Peter’s eyes to the end of the passageway. Her mother stood there, a bulky silhouette. “There will be a prisoner’s exchange.”
So that was that. “You must forgive her,” Chloe said, still gesturing toward her mother with her pale palm. “She is distressed because the military police have been here—you remember Dumitru? Our servant—yes, of course. He must have told them. No, don’t worry. My father can protect us even at long distances. There are many reasons why Antonescu won’t offend the Abyssinian government.”
All this time she’d scarcely looked him in the face. “This is why I sent for you,” she said. “I must ask you—beg you—to consider what I want from you. Dumitru didn’t tell them about Chiselet. There is still a chance. Only I’m afraid—I was afraid you’d gone.”
Chloe was trembling. Her shoulders trembled, a motion augmented by the lamplight and the flickering tongue of flame. Now she hugged her arms across her breasts. “Come,” she said, “come with me,” and she turned through a narrow door on the right-hand side of the corridor. She bent forward as if her stomach hurt, hurried forward through the small square rooms that still confused him, until she brought him to the room where they first met. She had been playing the piano.
The plaster walls were painted yellow and dark blue. Candles burned in mirrored sconces. The piano’s lid was down; she turned to face him.
“Chloe,” he said.
But she raised her hand, showed him her spread fingers. “When are you leaving?”
He shrugged, and now she glanced at him. Her eyes were wet and full, increased by the dark liner. “I must tell you,” she said. “I told you part of it—you have been to Chiselet! That is why Dumitru was so angry.”
“I remember—”
“Please don’t speak. This is hard for me. Show me your hand.”
She’d said this before, not in this room but some other. He brought his left hand up and showed it to her, turned it over. But she ignored it, could not look at him as she continued, “I’m afraid of what Dumitru will try. He will find this thing, this cylinder. He means to set it off or release it—break it open in the Piata Enescu! Or in the Calea Victoriei in the middle of Bucharest. Or in the Piata Revolutiei, because it would be a kind of revolution—there are people who would support such a thing. Or else they would use the threat of it, because they cannot comprehend.… The war would be lost, but it doesn’t matter. It is not his war, he says. It’s for rich people, this war—not for him.”
Exasperated, Peter shook his head. “This does not concern me,” he murmured, which was not true. Why was he angry? he asked himself. Was it possible he was disappointed, that he’d wanted something more personal from Chloe Adira? What had he expected—that she would try to say good-bye to him, hold his hand? And she would say—what? Some version of what he’d failed to tell Miranda in Cismigiu Park? But she didn’t care about that. Her husband was coming home.
“Yes, it concerns you,” she said. “It concerns all of us. It is because of you he knows where to look—I told him what you said. Two hundred meters in the swamp. By the dead oak tree. South of the embankment—do you see? Because you would not help me.”
He stepped back, put up his hand. When he saw a furtive look of self-satisfaction pass over her face, he felt like striking her.
* * *
AND WHEN, STILL furious, he walked back through the streets of Brasov to his room at the outskirts of the town, he did not think about Miranda for at least an hour.
Nor would he have been reassured if he’d been able to see her at that moment. She was in the house of Ana Cassian and her family. Near the Museum of Municipal History, dilapidated, once-grand buildings had been broken up into apartment flats along the Bulevardul Re
publicii, which runs through the center of Bucharest. Miranda lay in a fourth floor room overlooking the noisy street. She lay on a straw pallet on the floor, beside an ornate, blocked-up fireplace. She was breathing, but she scarcely moved. Her eyes were closed. Her forehead was untroubled. Her mind was far away.
But in the hidden world she stood on the trampled plain of Chiselet, near where the Turks labored to cross the river with their engines. She carried in her hand a trophy, a flabby ear that she had severed from the monster’s body as it lay bobbing in the dirty pool. She looked north and west toward the mountains, a long and weary way.
It had not taken more than a day for her to descend from the high pass and the hillside under Kepler’s tower. But now the line of mountains scarcely showed on the horizon, and all around her stretched the featureless, empty plain. Maybe she could have predicted how the way up from that world was longer than the way down, and maybe she could have predicted that the land would change, would spread away under her feet. And there was no more inn or castle, and the Chevalier de Graz was gone. Andromeda was dead. She had buried her as best she could. Miranda was alone.
But she hoped her aunt was waiting for her at the top of the divide, or had pursued the tourmaline into tara mortilor. And she moved forward step by step.
18
Peter Gross Returns to Town
THE ELEVENTH BRASOV Mountaineers arrived in Bucharest five days after the death of President Bocu and the Turkish aerial attack. Some neighborhoods already had devolved into chaos, because there were no soldiers in the city, except for the Brancoveanu Artillery, the private militia of the Rezistenta party. Fearing reprisals, many of them took off their uniforms and joined the crowds, whose frustrations had spread through the streets.