The Hidden World (A Princess of Roumania)

by Paul Park

  The chair was weirdly comfortable, and he had come a long way. Soon he would get up and knock on the doors of neighboring houses, whose occupants might already be peering at him through the slats of their wooden shutters, surprised, maybe, to see him at his ease there, sitting as if on stage—a cramped domestic tragedy that had gotten out of hand. Soon he would get up, but in the meantime he sat staring at the broken picture in its broken frame, thinking now about the weapon Nicola Ceausescu had brought from Africa.

  Prochenko had been with him when the baggage car exploded in Chiselet. Later, Prochenko had told him a story about an Abyssinian commercial traveler who had crawled into the swamp. And Peter had told Chloe Adira, who had told the lunatic, Dumitru.…

  A dog came down the middle of the dirt road. Small, nondescript, it lifted its leg at the bottom of the fig tree. Peter wondered what it would be like to have a nose more sensitive than his—a thousand times or whatever it was. The stench was terrible, a rotted, charred, miasmic funk. But the dog didn’t seem to notice and it soon went on, leaving Peter alone in his improbably undamaged chair, surrounded by piles of garbage and unable to look away from the image of his own face in the middle of this old-time, black-and-white portrait, as if he had dressed up in an old-time uniform in the concession booth of some traveling fair. The glass was broken, the frame propped at an angle against a fallen chunk of roof.

  In time he took his boots off, squeezed out his filthy socks, examined his blisters, rubbed them with the stump of his right arm. The sun had risen into layers of saturated clouds—where was Miranda now? And what had happened here on the banks of this shallow, reedy lake, which he remembered could be seen from a veranda in the back of the house—what had happened here? How would he find Miranda and Madame de Graz, who had sat here in this chair, comforting herself with this posed photograph?

  In time, after his socks had dried and stiffened, he had replaced them on his feet. Looking up, he saw a tall, skinny woman with a white, old-fashioned bonnet on her head. She came up the street and climbed the ruined steps.

  She walked without any hesitation, stepping over the gaps in the charred floor. Maybe the bonnet served her in the way that blinders would a mule, directing her forward, eliminating distractions. She didn’t pause, didn’t seem to notice him as she passed a dozen feet away. Her clenched fists and determined movements suggested an anxiety that had been overcome, maybe with the bonnet’s help; he couldn’t see her face at all. But she marched past him toward the back wall with its undamaged wallpaper and glass-fronted cabinets. She stopped in front of one of them, unlocked it with a brass key—an action that seemed absurd to Peter in the midst of all that wreckage. He made a noise. She started back, almost lost her balance.

  She turned to face him, and Peter could see her pointed nose and brown eyes, framed in the circle of the bonnet, which tied under her chin. She didn’t say anything, but stared at him, as if too frightened to speak. These deserted neighborhoods, this no-man’s-land was no place for her. But it wasn’t fear he saw in her but rather an astonishment, and he realized she was staring at the photograph, which gave him sudden hope. “Where are they?” he said.

  * * *

  SO IT WAS just a couple of hours later that he climbed the stairs of Camil Cassian’s fourth floor apartment on the Bulevardul Republicii, behind the Museum of Municipal History. Ana Cassian, after she had retrieved the book from Madame de Graz’s cabinet, had been eager to escort him, grateful for his protection. Once they’d crossed the canal into Floreasca they were among the crowds: waves and receding eddies of old men, women, and children, their movements forceful and aimless, powerful and random, capable of knocking them forward, sucking them back. They heard rumors of fighting on the Ploiesti Road, but there was no gun- or cannon-fire, or any evidence of the militias or the police. The day was hot and wet and overcast.

  The streets were empty of wheeled vehicles or even bicycles. A torrent of movement pushed Ana Cassian and Peter down the Bulevardul Republicii. But then they managed to step into the portico between the statues of Atlas supporting the hollowed-out hemisphere of the world; Peter had to grab hold of her long hand, pull her to shore. There he stood, sweating in his hot damp clothes, dripping in the sudden stasis as the people rushed by.

  Peter caught his breath, eager to prolong the moment, for he was sick with anticipation. Ana had told him what to expect. But she could not prepare him for what he found upstairs in the room with the ornate mantelpiece. Miranda lay on a straw pallet between the windows, which had many small square panes. Madame de Graz was also there.

  “Madame la comtesse,” said Ana Cassian. “You see what I have found.”

  Peter sank down to the floor beside the bed. He did not look at the old lady—his mother—did it make sense to call her that? It was enough to be aware of her standing over him, leaning on a cane, her back bent with osteoporosis, her eyes white with cataracts—what could he say to her? This whole way from Herastrau he had been thinking about Miranda, wondering what had happened since he’d last seen her in Cismigiu Park the previous year, wondering if his memory was accurate, wondering what he’d think or feel.

  For the time being, though, he would not have to share those feelings, nascent and unformed as they were. Miranda was asleep. Ana said she had not woken since the night of the aerial attack. On the way from Herastrau, she had told him what she knew about the masquerade in the People’s Palace.

  Ana’s parents had decamped, taking everything of value from their rooms. Her brother had gone with them—they were staying with relatives or friends, or they had left the city. Grand though they might be, characters who had stumbled out of myths, these guests of their daughter were unwelcome and dangerous, Peter imagined. Camil Cassian was an inspector of drains in the central district.

  There was nothing to sit on, just a few stools. Kneeling, Peter took Miranda’s right hand in his left. No one said anything, though he was aware of Madame de Graz’s intense presence. No doubt she had a lot to say and she would say it all, if not now then some other time.

  After a few murmured pleasantries, Ana Cassian left them alone, went to another room to speak, he imagined, with Miranda’s mother, who had never liked him, he recalled, either here or in Berkshire County. Madame de Graz didn’t budge, a chaperone, he supposed, to make sure he didn’t kiss or touch Miranda as she slept—he’d grasped hold of her hand. But he wasn’t likely to do more than that, so exhausted he was, so flummoxed by his own feelings. Because his memory hadn’t been accurate, he saw, or else Miranda had changed in the intervening months—she had been sick, Ana said. Sick and not herself.

  Peter saw that it was true. Her face was worn and thin and showed the bones underneath. The circles around her eyes were like bruises. Her hair was oily and lank. Even in her sleep her face looked pinched, unrested. And if part of him was struck with pity (he also, he imagined, had changed in many ways—not for the best), part of him was on his guard. This was the moment, after all, when the prince discovered Sleeping Beauty in her glass casket, and at such moments physical impressions took on a symbolic value. And he could not but contrast her with Chloe Adira in her bed in Brasov, a bed that had felt as big as an entire country. Chloe Adira was a beautiful woman, the gold jewelry against her skin, the kohl around her eyes—where was she now? Had the police come to her house?

  Peter examined for a moment the golden bracelet of the Brancoveanus on Miranda’s wrist, then looked away. He glanced up at the wallpaper above the bed. Some pictures had been removed. He could see the pale squares.

  How hot it was here, how stuffy! The windows were closed. Cries and yells came from the street. Clara Brancoveanu must have been hovering on the threshold of Miranda’s room, because she flopped down beside him with a napkin, and with her own hands wiped the spit from her daughter’s lips.

  “Mais, cela suffit.…” Then she continued on in French: “You must not agitate her.” So he pulled away, sat back on his boots.

  “Madame la princesse,�
� he said.

  “Monsieur le chevalier.”

  She wore an old-fashioned gown that had spread out over the floor. She turned sideways to sit beside Miranda’s pillow, placed her arm in a protective arch over Miranda’s head.

  Now someone else had come into the room. “You see it is difficult,” said Inez de Rougemont, standing behind his head. “There is an obstruction. I needed a book from the library—I sent Ana for a book. Soon we must begin. Not … immediately.”

  He turned to face her. And he registered an impression of gray hair and painted cheeks. But then he found Miranda’s hand again, gave her fingers what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze—the Condesa de Rougemont was an old woman with long fingers and thin bones. Her face was thin and sharp and colorless: pale hair, pale skin, pale eyes, which was why, he supposed, she put color in her cheeks and on her lips. She wore wire-rimmed spectacles that had worn into the sides of her sharp nose.

  The rouge and powder seemed a kind of armature. Or else they were a vestige from the past, when she might have worn them more lightly. From his mnemonic archives Peter ordered two competing spools of film, two little loops, and one showed the pale, jerky image of a woman in a dark dress dancing at an officer’s ball. She was laughing with her head thrown back. The other showed the phantasm that appeared to him along the Hoosick riverbank, wearing Gypsy clothes à la paysanne.

  He’d keep his guard up. “What book?” he said, though Ana Cassian, returning from Herastrau, had carried under her arm the leather-bound volume she had taken from the glass-fronted cabinet. Along the way, also, she had told him what had happened: how, after her brother had carried Miranda to her parents’ apartment, after the aerial attack on the city and the subsequent panic, after the president’s valet had been arrested and condemned, the princess had sent him out again to retrieve the two old ladies in the house by the lake. They’d had scarcely fifteen minutes to pack. It was no wonder many things had been left behind to burn. “It is not as if she owed them anything. They’d been very stupid. The princess is a very generous woman,” Ana had protested. It was one thing looking after the Brancoveanus. But after the two older women had moved in, Ana’s parents had abandoned their own house.

  Peter wondered if Inez de Rougemont was aware of that. “It is a scientific text,” she said dismissively. From her stool in the corner, Madame de Graz glared at him through her white eyes. What was she thinking? Should he greet her, talk to her, inquire about her health?

  Looking for help, he turned back to Miranda and her mother, who favored him, now, with a little smile. And it was possible the princess had forgiven him, or for her daughter’s sake was willing to grant him another chance: “It’s an exorcism,” she murmured. “You will see. Inez doesn’t believe me. You will see for yourself.”

  He shifted his weight, swiveled around until he sat beside Miranda on the pallet, his left arm across his body, his left hand grasping her right hand. He did not look at Madame de Graz. Now suddenly he remembered his own mother in Berkshire County, who had died of cancer years before.

  Cries, shouts, and a muffled banging came up from the street. The lace curtains trembled. When would Miranda wake? When would she wake up for him? He could see a change in Clara Brancoveanu’s expression, as if she had some sympathy. She was younger than these other women, her face softer and more tentative—a wonderful trait, he thought. “Hey,” he said to Miranda.

  “She cannot wake. There is an obstruction.” Madame de Rougemont’s voice was incisive. “Clara thinks there is a spirit that possesses her. I believe there is an obstacle that keeps her from herself, something conjured by Aegypta Schenck and released by dear Clara’s carelessness—these are not simple matters. They require training. No one blames her, needless to say.”

  “You will see,” murmured Clara Brancoveanu.

  There was a bare wooden table against the inside wall. Madame de Rougemont had laid out the black, leather-bound book, opened it halfway through. From a bundle of papers she produced the black revolver of Frederick Schenck von Schenck.

  What game was she playing? Peter remembered the big gun from long ago, when the general had worn it on his hip. Its long octagonal barrel, decorated with an inlaid pattern of leaves and thorns. Its plain bone handle—what was this old woman doing? It seemed too heavy for her hands and her thin wrists. She held it flat, not like a weapon but like some kind of ritual object. Then she laid it beside the black book. “There is nothing we can do for her,” she said, gesturing toward Miranda. “Not yet. It is obvious she has not … found the means to return to us—this strength comes from inside herself. But in the meantime we must not be idle. We have decided to destroy these … creatures of Aegypta Schenck’s which have done so much damage to ourselves and Great Roumania.…”

  “She has decided,” amended Clara Brancoveanu under her breath.

  Peter squeezed Miranda’s hand.

  * * *

  ALL THIS TIME Miranda had been laboring out of the hidden world, up into the mountains, toward Kepler’s tower in the pass. She labored up as if through layers of consciousness, carrying the monster’s ear, which was drying and curing in the sun. She was thinking about Peter Gross, and whether she would find him when she woke.

  And at intervals she thought about her aunt Aegypta. She was wondering if she’d be true to her part of the bargain.

  She need not have worried. On the far slope of the divide, Aegypta Schenck von Schenck stood at the brass gates of tara mortilor. She had climbed out of the pine forest, and passed the crossroads where she had spoken to her niece. But the landscape had receded. Day after day she had journeyed through the fog until the gates opened before her. This time they did not rise up to heaven, nor were they studded and buttressed and defended, nor did brass automata patrol the parapets, brass trumpets in their hands. Instead she came through a defile where seams of minerals rose to the surface of the rocks, zinc on one side, copper on the other—a degraded ore of little value. The cliffs rose above her as she found her narrow passage, a place where the cold stream ran beside the track, pulverized into dust by the millions of men and women who had passed this way, and over the dark water to the mountain.

  The landscape was new to Aegypta Schenck, and yet she recognized it from the stories she had heard, the fabled mountain whose pits and seams had been exploited over hundreds of years. Whole slopes of it had been scraped clean, hollowed out, burrowed until the rock was worm-eaten and fragile, prone to cave-ins and collapses. But other slopes were still untouched, and there were hundreds of years left, and fabulous riches still to be exploited in the high, dry mountain air that burned the throat: not just silver and gold, but cheaper metals also.

  The defile led her through a cleft and down into the town where the graveyard was, and all the miners who had died from the powder in their lungs. And the town itself was deserted—rows of square stone shacks with tin or tile roofs and floors of dust, untroubled by any bare footprint. But lines of ghosts still trudged into the mountain with their wheelbarrows and picks.

  Princess Aegypta paused at the shrine at the top of the street. It was sacred to the gods of the upper air, a flat-roofed chapel lit with a single lantern. Small, crude clay figures stood in niches. Some had lost their arms and legs, or leaned drunkenly—Mercury, Mars, Venus, and a dozen others, each with his or her clay bowl of evaporating water. King Jesus of Nazareth was there, and Mary Magdalene.

  And then she was on the causeway with the others. The mountain rose in front of her, its lower slope of tailings and slag, rising to its broken crown. The sky was gray, and there was a dusty, cold wind. As she rose higher, step by step, the landscape fell away, enormous, a dozen shades of red and brown and gray.

  There were no trees or leaves or stems of grass. Nothing was alive. Princess Aegypta lagged behind. She wore her velvet dress with the fox-head collar. The veil over her face was caked with dust. Her feet were light on the crushed stones. There were numberless holes into the mountain, small claims worked by teams or fa
milies or even single individuals. By the time she reached the larger entrance at the top of the causeway, everyone had disappeared.

  No, there was one old man. She had expected to see him there or somewhere, an beggar with a broad-brimmed hat, always and forever caressing the eight-pointed Star of Roumania that hung around his neck—the old Baron Ceausescu, unable to break away. He reached out his gloved hand, but she didn’t look at him. Instead she found the mouth of the tunnel, its lintel posts carved from the soft rock, and decorated with Diana’s moon and stars, Venus’s mirror, King Jesus’s cross, on which he’d crucified the Roman generals. In the shadow of the doorway the light was gray and dim, but inside it was brighter, the way lit with tiny acetylene lamps that were set into the rocks, and leered at her with tongues of flame. Beyond the threshold she could see a different altar near where the tunnel divided: the goddess of the underworld, and it was as she’d expected, a bronze statue of a naked woman, lovingly carved, and polished with the caresses of many hands until it shone.

  Doubtless many of the corridors that curved and branched and sank and rose through the porous rock were following rich seams of minerals that directed their twisting paths. But there was one shaft that ran into the heart of the mountain, straight ahead and at a slight declivity. And there was no dust here, and the rock floor was polished smooth. And the way was lit not by torches but by another softer radiance from down below. The smooth walls glistened with reflected light, which caught at the deposits of unmined crystals. Aeygpta continued onward, and the brandywine bird beat its wings faster and faster inside the cold chambers of her heart.

  Then she heard a disturbance up ahead, a child’s laughter. Felix Ceausescu—she knew it was he—came running toward her, a smile on his thin face; he was chasing a ball that gleamed under his foot, a sphere of polished quartz. When he saw her, he gave a little exclamation of delight, grabbed hold of her gloved hand to pull her downward. “Maman,” he cried out, then whispered, “Maman will be so pleased.”