The Hidden World (A Princess of Roumania)

by Paul Park

  “Yes—”

  “Good.” Miranda squinted up toward the tower at the top of the pass, the ramshackle tower that kept the world the way it was. “Because I’m not coming here again.”

  She held up the trophy, the monster’s severed ear. Now she could see the tourmaline in her aunt’s hand. The fingers of her glove were discolored from its juice. “Dear child, don’t say that. I will want to see you.”

  Miranda was not surprised when her aunt closed her hand so that the jewel was hidden in her palm. “We have won a victory,” she said. “But there is more.”

  “There is always more,” Miranda said.

  And perhaps her aunt could not decipher any kind of irony. Or perhaps she made a decision to take Miranda literally: “I did not say this would be easy. There are urgent tasks we must accomplish. I have kept my part of the bargain. But there is a dangerous weapon still in Chiselet.”

  I do not quibble like a dressmaker, thought Miranda. She felt a grim sense of presentiment as Aegypta Schenck went on: “This is something Nicola Ceausescu brought from Africa on the Hephaestion. Radioactive pitchblende from the Congo, as well as more conventional explosives—that was her intended cargo. But a faction of the Abyssinian government secreted something else, some canisters of a virus, which they called nepenthe after the Graecian panacea in the story. A cure-all, as Magister Newton might have said.”

  Miranda knew some of this story. She’d heard parts of it from Peter, parts from Andromeda. “The pitchblende was destroyed in the explosion,” her aunt said. “The pitchblende and all the canisters but one. Most of the effects were mitigated in the conflagration, the ball of fire, which I witnessed from this mountaintop. But there was some sickness in the town. Some dementia.”

  She put her hand to her big nose. “I heard this from a commercial traveler in tara mortilor. The Elysian Fields—he came out of the mist. But he was wounded and could not defend himself against the wild animals in the marsh—this was on the south side of the railway near the dead oak tree. That will be the first place to start, though the location might be different from the way it was described. You must persevere, because it is something that would destroy a city such as Bucharest.”

  She might have known, Miranda told herself. Still, she found herself astonished without being surprised—astonished that her aunt would send her down again into the hidden world, after she’d expended so much labor to climb back up. “I would have told you before,” said Aegypta Schenck, “—it was not urgent. Bocu was more urgent. But now something has happened, and I fear…”

  How could she even ask, when Miranda had only just pulled herself up out of that parched, empty plain? How could she talk about these things so easily, as if it were nothing, what she asked? But aromatic smells drifted up the valley from the hidden world, and when she turned to look, Miranda saw she’d been mistaken—it was not so far. And the dale of Chiselet was beautiful and rich. She could even see the towers of Castle Faurei, where the Chevalier de Graz lay wounded. She could be there by evening.

  Almost she was tempted to begin again. When she turned away from the valley, set her back against it, she found she had already taken a few steps down. She shook her head to clear her thoughts. “Give me my tourmaline,” she said.

  “Yes, I brought it. I do not forget my promises.” And there it was in Aegypta Schenck’s hand, in her discolored glove.

  “Give it to me,” Miranda said, and watched it disappear inside her aunt’s clenched fist.

  “There were a lot of books I used to read in Massachusetts,” Miranda said. “Stories I suppose you gave me to prepare me. There was always something to be accomplished, and it was always difficult. People suffered. But at the end of the book it was all worth it, because the thing was finished and the story was over. That’s not true here.”

  “No,” her aunt admitted. “That’s not true here.”

  “Tasks without end,” Miranda said.

  “Tasks without end.”

  Above them rose the high ice peaks. “Bring me the lead-lined canister from Chiselet,” said Aegypta Schenck. There was some uncertainty, some desperation in her voice as she continued: “Then I will give you your jewel, if you still want it.”

  “I want it now.”

  The old woman shook her head. “Please, my child. I will make another bargain. It is your duty to bring me what I ask, for the sake of Great Roumania. But I will sell you something in return.”

  “Sell me?” Miranda paused. For a moment she closed her eyes. She stood near the top of the pass.

  Now suddenly she imagined she could feel the hidden world re-form below her and behind her back. She imagined if she turned around, she would be able to see, north in the distance beyond Chiselet the range of the Taconic Hills, and maybe even the back side of Christmas Hill above the little valley and the little town.

  She did not turn around to check. She took a few steps forward and reached out her hand. “That was not our bargain,” she said.

  “Besides,” she pleaded, “these things must be accomplished in the real world. Don’t you see? These interventions,” she said, saying the words as they occurred to her. “Real people must accomplish these things. Not these tygers and these ghosts, as if they had some kind of right.”

  “Child,” her aunt said, “there is a secret order to the world. Not everyone can know a secret. Look behind you.”

  But Miranda did not turn around. She raised her head and looked up toward the pass, where the sun glinted from Johannes Kepler’s ramshackle tower. “The stone belongs to me.”

  Now she could see herself where the worlds come together and the paths branched down to Great Roumania, and Massachusetts, and the hidden countries, and the land of the dead. This was where the alchemist had built his tower, sealed up the creature that eats away the knowledge of these things. No, knowledge is too strong a word.

  But that does not mean, because we guess and fail, that we cannot choose. Miranda took a few steps uphill toward where her aunt stood among the rocks. And when Aegypta Schenck tried to move away, it was not as a white tyger that Miranda sprang at her and forced her down, forced open her hand.

  * * *

  PETER FELT MIRANDA’S fingers move, uncurl of their own volition. Behind him, the old ladies were arguing. Inez de Rougemont was crooning over the ball that had fallen, rolled under the table. But it was made of a tougher stuff than glass, Peter decided. Now she held it up, unbroken. She replaced it in its folded nest of cloth.

  After Miranda’s seizure, Peter and her mother had guided her down into the bed. Reclothed, she lay back on the pillows, and Peter sat beside her, holding her hand. She had walked and talked and struggled for a minute or maybe even less—this event, painful and confusing as Peter had found it, seemed to have invigorated Clara Brancoveanu. Her voice was urgent and self-confident: “Dear Inez, for God’s sake. You must agree with me now. You must see I’m right.”

  By contrast, Inez de Rougemont was diminished and unsure. She fussed with the glass balls, examined the surfaces before she turned away. “I agree there is some evidence,” she said. “I will have to consider—”

  “There’s no time,” interrupted Princess Clara. “This is killing her. Can’t you see it?”

  In that moment Peter was brought back to his mother’s hospital room in Berkshire County, in the oncology center in Pittsfield, where he had sat beside her holding her hand, listening to his father talking to the doctors. He had tried to decipher her wishes by the pressure of her fingers—now he felt Miranda stir under his hand. Was this the beginning of another fit?

  “I know you feel responsible,” murmured the Condesa de Rougemont.

  “Dear Inez—you must give me this chance.”

  Noises drifted up out of the street, horns and shouting. The stifling, shrouded little room was separate from all that, cut off in space and time. Outside, there was fighting in Tutrakan, Peter guessed, a big push on the southern front. And had the Eleventh Mountaineers entered the city fr
om the Ploiesti Road? “What’s wrong with her?” he asked.

  No one paid attention. Or they answered him by talking to each other about something he cared about, as the doctors had in Berkshire County: “There is a risk,” said Inez de Rougemont. “Not just to yourself. It is possible this demon has preserved the life of Mademoiselle Popescu to this point. This is why Magister Newton talks about its healing benefit. The purgative effect of the corresponding emotion. In which case, inadvertently, you might already have provided a service. You might already have prevented the parasitic spirit from destroying its host.”

  “This ghost, you mean. Ceausescu. You see now I was right.”

  “If you prefer,” admitted Madame de Rougemont.

  They kept on talking, the princess and the condesa. Peter listened. In time a new structure of information took shape in him, assembled like the array of petroleum lamps and glass pipettes that Ana Cassian now brought into the room, laid out in the center of the table.

  There beside the three glass spheres lay the old-fashioned Webley-Doenitz, which had belonged to his commander, Miranda’s father, General Schenck von Schenck. Useless as a modern weapon, it had been adapted for scientific purposes, redesigned to store and then release small emanations from another world. One of these had gotten loose, a parasitic worm or eel that had been described and named by Isaac Newton. It had found its way into Miranda, must be removed before it poisoned her.

  But there was a disagreement. Sometimes the worm served a therapeutic purpose. A difficulty in translation had been enough to fool her mother when Miranda had first lain unconscious. The creature fed on other illnesses, especially those that involved a proliferation of cells, an explosion (one might say) of life. It choked off the supply of blood, secreted a black poison—Peter knew everything about this. Nor could he listen to the metaphysical applications (how the worm could achieve this in the body of the state as well, the tissue of the present time—the death of Colonel Bocu might be attributable…) because his mind was stuck in the past. A proliferation of cells was what his mother had died of. And she’d been treated with applications of black poison for the last eighteen months of her life.

  So the information covered gaps in two separate narratives, one in the distant past, one in the recent past. Two kinds of love. Miranda had been taken over by a spirit while she lay asleep. But her unconsciousness had saved her, because there was nothing for the spirit to conquer and overwhelm—that was one theory. It was possible (in which case Clara Brancoveanu was unexpectedly justified) that the eel had weakened Miranda so the spirit could take up residence without killing her. And perhaps the eel was deadly enough to poison the spirit, drive it out.

  Because of its healing properties. Because of its connection with a feeling—“detestation,” as Madame de Rougemont called it—that sustains the weak. Although it was also possible that the worm or eel (called “Treacle,” inexplicably) had attracted the spirit in the first place, called to it, even fed it—in which case “dear Clara” had made a blunder. Finally, it was possible that the existence of both “Treacle” and the evil spirit in Miranda’s body were unrelated except coincidentally, in time.

  It didn’t matter. Peter was used to this kind of talk from his experiences in the oncology ward. There was a lot of confusion about the past, none about the future. No matter what had happened up to this point, only one option was now viable: The eel must be removed before it killed its host, choked her, starved her, poisoned her. The ghost (both ladies hoped) had finally been expelled through the application or removal of some mineral or stone or jewel. Miranda was herself again, and now the poison was attacking her.

  As Peter listened, he imagined what might happen if whatever procedure they were talking about was a success. He would feel Miranda come awake under his hand. She would open her eyes, see him, react, smile.

  “Hello,” she might say, in English.

  “Oh, life is a wonderful cycle of song,” he might tell her, and then part of the rest.

  No, there wouldn’t be a lot of that. She might squeeze his fingers, look at him. There wouldn’t be a lot to say. But he might find her face easy to read. And she would roll her eyes at the old ladies talking.

  He tried not to think about her naked body, which he had seen, held briefly in his arms. Behind him he could feel the pressure of Madame de Graz’s gaze, hear her labored breathing, and then her gruff, low voice: “She can’t hear you.” He realized he’d been murmuring aloud.

  And Clara Brancoveanu was there, too. Embarrassed, Peter stood, surrendered his place to Miranda’s mother. He’d scarcely spoken to Madame de Graz since he’d come into this room. He’d scarcely seen her since that night in Cismigiu Park, though he’d had letters in Staro Selo. “You have left your regiment,” she said.

  It was hard to explain. All this long day he had felt detached from what was happening around him, as if buffered by thoughts and feelings he could not describe. Half-formed memories of the oncology ward, his mother’s hospital room—what could he say to this old woman, whom he scarcely knew? “I did what I thought was right”? What stupidity. And yet he could not tell her the truth about anything, scarcely knew it himself. He said, “I had a duty here.”

  She imagined or she hoped for another kind of intimacy, Peter thought. She stood beside him, her cane like a third leg. He asked her about Lake Herastrau, what had happened there. He told her what he had seen. She peered up at him out of the sides of her occluded eyes.

  “I don’t care about that. That house … was easy … to give up. But you have left your regiment.”

  What did she mean—that he had shamed her by coming here this way? Or that she didn’t care about the house, or his honor, or anything except his safety?

  “It is not easy for you,” she murmured. She looked at him. But out of the sides of her eyes she was staring down at Miranda on the bed, and he deciphered what she meant. He had not been able abandon his feelings for Miranda, as she’d directed him in Cismigiu Park. That night she had spoken of his duty to the past, and the harm that he could cause, and how it was useless to want things you couldn’t have.

  He didn’t want to hear any of that again. “Tell me about the creature that’s inside of her. Tell me what you’re doing now.”

  She peered at him out of her white, solid eyes. “It is best if it can be sequestered in one body and then burned. Not, of course, Mademoiselle Popescu. That is the point of this. That is how Madame de Rougemont has explained it.”

  The condesa had been laying out a line of beakers on the table. Now she came to stand beside them, interrupted them hurriedly: “We cannot let it out into the world,” she said. “Because it could cause terrible damage. It could cause a war.”

  “A war,” Peter repeated.

  “A great war,” amended the condesa without irony. “Sequestered in one person—well, you see. But we must be careful,” she said, gesturing toward Miranda with her thin straight fingers.

  Seated by the bed, Clara Brancoveanu gave Peter a shy smile. She did not seem to share the prejudices of Madame de Graz; she had changed her mind about him. His heart went out to her, a pretty, sad woman, prematurely aged. There was a generosity in her that he did not associate with Magda de Graz, arthritic and stiff with disappointment. Or Inez de Rougemont with her painted, powdered face. “I saw you on the riverbank,” he murmured—a young woman then, not so long ago. Had she helped Miranda then, or harmed her? These things were hard to tease apart. He scarcely knew any of these women except Miranda, who might not wake.

  Madame de Rougemont turned away. For the rest of the afternoon she avoided him, did not look at him. She busied herself in her experiment, as Ana Cassian taped butcher’s paper over the windows. The day darkened and by the light of one of the new lamps, Madame de Graz showed him a page from a special supplement to the Evenimentul Zilea, a type of story that could only have appeared since the repeal of the anti-conjuring laws. It showed photographs from two investiture ceremonies, almost thirty years ap
art. It showed two posed portraits of the same young man, the Star of Hercules around his neck. ROUMANIA’S PROTECTOR, said the headline. Captain Peter Gross and the Chevalier de Graz.

  What did she think about this? Peter wondered. Why did she show it to him? Since he had come to the apartment, Peter had sensed he was disappointing her. Almost to pass the time, to take his mind away, he set himself the task of comforting her while the princess sat with her daughter. Surely he was right not to intrude in that.

  Madame de Rougemont assembled what was necessary for her experiment, a structure of glass tubes and alembics held in place with metal rods. She had removed it from the table where the glass balls lay in a row. She was building it again on the bare floor. And as the structure grew, Peter expressed his anxiety by attempting to mollify Madame de Graz, who would not even sit. Cramped, one hip higher than the other, she stood leaning on her cane.

  She asked him questions about Staro Selo, and General Antonescu’s strategy, and whether he’d heard rumors of the new Turkish machines. “Why did you leave your regiment?” she asked again. He told her about Brasov, and about the farmer’s son in Sacele. “Do you think it right,” she said, “that you should help him evade his responsibility? Now others will suffer in his place.”

  It was hopeless. She had kept Peter’s photograph all those years in Herastrau, and yet he had no power to appease her. “When you went to Sacele,” she asked him, “did you climb up to your father’s cabin?”

  He didn’t answer her. He was reminded suddenly of Lieutenant-Major Crasnaru, who had followed him that day. And then later in Buftea—

  Princess Clara sat beside Miranda’s head. And every time she looked up, she smiled. She was kinder to Peter than he would have thought possible under these or any other circumstances. He thought he could remember the type of woman she had been before her husband’s death, vain and proud and superficial. But she smiled at him as she tended to her daughter, wiped the sweat from her face and arms, gave her little sips of broth and wiped her mouth. In these small actions Peter recognized the tender industry that he had sometimes seen in temples or in churches, an impression that was strengthened by the makeshift shrine to Demeter and Persephone in a corner of the room: two wooden statues on a long stool draped in linen cloth, and a bowl of water between them, and a candle whose light grew brighter as it burned away and the day darkened.