I rushed for the covered porch through the pelting rain, feeling as if I were inside a gigantic galvanic bath. I leaned against the door as into an old friend; the house seemed to welcome me, I thought. Perhaps it was lonely, unlived in so long.
What was it like inside? I hadn’t thought to wonder before. I pressed my nose against the window. No furniture or carpets, but a fireplace and richly decorated doorways and doors. I tried the door and, to my surprise, it opened with a rusty creak. In a place like Arcata, there was probably no reason to lock your door.
I slipped into the entryway and then the big main room. Ilona had talked about the doctor and his family who lived here while I was in the changing room today.
“He was collector, painting collector, all kinds things collect. My mother remember when she child she walk past, see the paintings through windows. And so many people come, house always full of people visiting. Arcata different that time ago. No hotels, just nice villas and restaurants by the lake. People come to walk and hunt and fish and swim and dance and laugh. When Transylvania belong to Hungary, but even after, before Ceauşescu.”
Now I walked through the empty, dusty rooms, imagining a night like this one, a spring night seventy-five or a hundred years ago, with a tempest breaking around the sturdy house and inside a crowd dancing to a Gypsy band, eating and drinking and flirting. They wouldn’t have had electricity then, only oil lamps and candles, and the house would have been alight inside and out, protecting, sheltering, embracing.
Upstairs I found bedroom after bedroom, empty of furniture, creaking when I walked on the floorboards. I stood at the curved window of the turret room looking out on the wild night as if I were in a lighthouse and the trees were waves breaking all around me. I had turned off my flashlight and the moon was behind clouds; my only illumination was the intermittent blue-white crackle of lightning. From time to time, through the noise of the wind, came the howling of the dogs, or perhaps they were wolves.
Then, through the trees I spied something white and ghostly. It moved up the street and through the gate. It seemed to be a figure, but because of the darkness and heavy rain I couldn’t see a face or hands or feet. Only a pale, translucent, spectral shape, like a spirit floating, not walking, through the trees. I clutched my flashlight, but didn’t dare turn it on. It wouldn’t reach down far enough, would only serve to highlight me at the window.
The apparition floated up the steps to the house. It was on the porch. I remembered the door was unlocked. My heart was pounding like a dentist’s drill in my mouth. I could hardly breathe. I had lived through some adventures in my time, some frightening moments of wondering if I was going to be killed by a mugger in São Paulo, a wretched time of it in Thailand with dengue fever, a terrifying half-hour when our boat overturned on the Amazon and it was found that one passenger had been eaten by piranhas. But all those adventures had happened in the real world. They gave an edge to life, a feeling of having survived, and—afterwards—were very good stories indeed.
This was my first encounter with the spirit world and I didn’t like it one bit. I pressed myself against the window and wondered if I could possibly climb out and onto the roof. But if a banshee could float into the house like that, it could surely float out of the window after me. Oh Sweet Mary, have mercy on my soul, I knew now my mother was right: the only thing between me and evil was my little silver crucifix on a chain, and I had stopped wearing that when I was fourteen.
Well, that was a big mistake.
Perhaps this house was haunted after all, and the ghost was the daughter of the family, who still lived on here at night, and didn’t take kindly to tourists.
Or—a more frightening thought—perhaps it was the undead body of Dr. Pustulescu, risen from the autopsy table and stalking the dark countryside in search of new victims.
From downstairs I heard a whispering sound, as if the apparition were talking to someone or calling for me. I couldn’t help it: I got down on my knees and prayed.
“Dear Lady Mary, Mother of God, I know I’ve been out of touch for the last thirty years, but it’s not that I haven’t thought of giving you a call from time to time. I’ve got your number somewhere in my book…”
Now it was coming upstairs. I jumped up, and pulled out my Swiss Army knife. Donnerwetter! Like hell I was going to lie down and let some banshee stop my heart with fright. It was more likely that this was the Galvanic Killer, and I had been getting too close to the truth for comfort. Never mind, I’d defend myself to the death. I stood away from the window in the shadow and waited to attack. But it knew my name, how did it know my name?
“Cassandra,” it hissed loudly. “Cassandra?”
I couldn’t do anything but clutch my knife and wait. It was coming down the hall, coming closer; it was standing in the doorway….
“Nadia?” I said. “What the hell are you doing here in your nightgown?”
“I saw you go by,” she said in French. “My flat is above the tourist office. I couldn’t sleep because of the wind and because… I had so many thoughts. I was looking at the lake, I saw you go by. I was only going to go out for a minute… to tell you something… but I couldn’t see where you had gone. Then the thunder and lightning started. I came to the house…”
She was shivering with cold and her nightgown was soaked clear through and sticking to her body. Her long dark hair was no longer in its untidy bun, but hanging in wet strands down her flushed cheeks. She wasn’t wearing her glasses, and her slippers were coated with mud.
I was glad I’d put on so many clothes. “Take off that nightgown right away,” I said. I stripped off one of my sweaters, the long one, and gave it to her, along with my heavy socks. “There’s wood in the fireplace, I saw some. I’ll light a fire and we’ll get you dried out.”
The maelstrom increased outside, but within ten minutes I had a good fire going. Whoever took care of this house must have to keep it warm in winter, for there was kindling and some paper as well as birch logs. Nadia said little as I worked on the fire, but draped her wet nightgown nearby so it could dry out. Although she was rounder than me, I was taller, so the sweater came down to her knees. This was a relief, as the sight of her full stomach and large, pendulous breasts through the clingy wet white nightgown had been mildly disturbing.
Finally I asked her what it was that she had needed to tell me.
“Today you asked me about Dr. Pustelescu,” she said. “I didn’t tell you all I knew.”
“Ah.”
“And do you know why I didn’t tell you?”
“No.”
“Because I knew you would not understand some things.”
“Try me.”
“It is complicated.”
“Yes.”
Nadia was silent a moment and then said softly, “I’m not used to speaking freely, to telling the truth. I keep looking over my shoulder to see if anyone is here, and deep in my bones I feel that the walls must have microphones, even though my head knows they do not.”
The flames caught and I moved closer to the fire with my hands out to warm them. Nadia crept closer too.
“What must be hard for you to understand,” she said, “is that there are so few in this country who are not implicated, who did not collaborate in some way with the Ceauşescu regime. It was a moral poison. In the right universe you should have a clear choice. If you choose one thing, it will affect you like this; if you choose another, something else will happen. But here it wasn’t simple. The Securitate was not often violent in Romania. They did not usually put people in jail, they did not usually torture us, they didn’t send us to concentration camps. They simply created an atmosphere—how can I explain it?—that they knew everything and controlled your life and that if you did not cooperate you would be punished. We were all afraid, and the worst fear we had was that everyone around us was in the Securitate and that there was no one to trust. You talked perhaps to your family, perhaps to a very trusted friend, but not to most people, not to neighbors.
And many of us cooperated with the Securitate too. They came and said, This is what we want to know. Often it was nothing. Simply about your job, who you worked with, et cetera. You told them, because it was easier than not telling them. So you got into a habit of talking to them, not thinking that you were betraying anyone, not thinking that you were doing anything wrong. Until one day they asked you a different question, and it was not so easy then to stop answering, to say, I told you other things, but not this. And often, they knew the answer already to something you were holding back, so you thought, Why not tell them, if they know already.”
“But this was all before the revolution, yes?” I asked.
“Old habits continue,” said Nadia. “And old memories. I came to Arcata to get away from Bucharest, to start over. But there were those here who knew me. Pustulescu knew about me.”
“What did he know about you?”
“About my work.”
“But you were a teacher.”
“No. I mean the work I did after I stopped teaching in the provinces and came back to Bucharest.”
Nadia looked down at her plump knees poking out from under the sweater. Had she been a prostitute? I wondered. A baby broker? A spy?
“I was one of those … who helped women abort,” she said. “Because it was illegal for doctors, and because many women did it themselves and hurt themselves, I helped them. For a fee. It wasn’t long before the Securitate knew. They threatened to jail me at first. Then they said I could continue—everyone knew that abortions were still going on—but that I would have to tell them the names of the women. In this way they were able to go to these women and let them know that they knew, and so extend their influence. This was my choice, my false choice. I could stop helping women and perhaps go to jail myself. Or I could continue to help them and to betray them at the same time.”
“But I don’t understand. Dr. Pustulescu wasn’t a gynecologist. How would you have come in contact with him?”
“He had a wife, didn’t he? He had girlfriends, he had mistresses. He had Margit right here. I have given four abortions to Margit. I told her I would not do this one. She must ask someone else, she must go to Tîrgu Mureş, a proper hospital, not my bedroom.” Nadia covered her face with her hands. “That time is over for me now. I work for Carpaţi, I am a tourist agent, I try to make people happy.”
I was still trying to take all this in, and the possible implications.
“Why were you afraid of Pustulescu knowing what you’d done? After all, the Securitate knew and didn’t put you in jail. And it was before the revolution—abortion is legal now. People should admire you for what you did.”
“Carpaţi said when they sent me to Arcata that Dr. Pustulescu hardly ever came to this hotel, that he was old and sick and ready to die. But very soon after I arrived he came to me, very healthy and strong, and said, Bon, Nadia, we have a secret, don’t we? He didn’t care about the abortions. He knew that I had been an informer for the Securitate, that was the hold he had on me. He said he would tell Gabor and everyone in Arcata if I didn’t help him.”
“What did he want from you?”
“Only information, he said. Just like the Securitate. He was part of the Securitate too, you know. Information on tourists, information on the clinic, on Gabor. He had been used to controlling the treatment center before the revolution and he still thought he should know everything that went on and that he should get most of the money from the tourists. He didn’t need money, he had plenty of money. He just didn’t like Gabor to have money.”
“And then he quarreled with Gabor about something and then he was killed, and you think Gabor killed him.”
“Yes…” Nadia was more hesitant than this morning.
“Was it money they fought about? Was it control? Could it have been anything else?”
“One was Romanian, the other Hungarian.” Nadia shrugged. “They could have fought about anything.”
“Tell me the truth, Nadia. I won’t care if you killed him. But… did you?”
“I know it appears I had a reason. I did have a reason. But I didn’t kill him.”
“Do you still report to anyone?” I thought of Nadia coming out of the police station this morning with her eyes averted.
Again she hesitated. She clearly wanted to say, I’m only a tourist agent, I only want to make people happy. But she said, “It’s not easy. They still ask, but I don’t answer anymore.”
I put another log on the fire. Her nightgown was still soaking wet and the night outside as stormy as ever. Nadia had moved closer to the fire and closer to me during her story. I felt the warmth of her full body at my side, and it was both nourishing and erotic. For such a small woman she had a lot of flesh on her.
We sat for a long while looking into the fire and feeding it with more logs that I found on the back porch. When we touched each other it was in French, the best language for love. The storm went on most of the night, but after a while the fierce bursts of lightning and thunder stopped and there was only the steady, strong drumbeat of rain on the roof and against the windows.
Chapter Seventeen
WHEN I AWOKE the next morning, Nadia was gone and sun poured through the windows of the villa. My sweater and socks lay in a neat heap and the nightgown was gone. If it hadn’t been for that evidence I would have been tempted to believe that the night had been just a dream, and Nadia a visitor from the spirit world.
I walked out into a world transformed. A brilliant morning sky stretched above me, blue as a bright birthday ribbon tying up a splendid and dazzling universe. Water droplets everywhere sparkled like tiny globes of light, and wildflowers—rose, canary yellow, ivory and sapphire—were more abundant than only yesterday. Yesterday was April. Today was May. The air was soft in the sun and crisp under the firs. You could drink air like this. You could swim it.
“O saisons! O châteaux!” I shouted. Then I remembered the rest. “Quelle âme est sans défauts?” What soul is guiltless? Had Nadia been trying to tell me something? Oh well, I’d worry about that later.
The porch gave a friendly creak as I stepped off onto the pebbled walkway. I looked at my watch. If I hurried, I’d be in time for my saline bath, followed by a nice hot packing of mud. At the moment, nothing sounded better.
While soaking in the tub I took the opportunity to question Ilona about Nadia. Did people in Arcata like her even though she was Romanian? Did she come often to the treatment center? Was she friends with anyone in particular? I was afraid that after last night I might not be as objective about her as I should.
“Nadia very nice woman,” said Ilona. “No husband, no children, just like you. But not widow, never married. Sad.” Ilona shook her head. “A woman not married, not happy. Alone. No… sexual relations … sad.”
“She seems happy enough to me,” I said. From a few hints last night I had a suspicion that Nadia might have had some previous practice. “So you don’t mind her being Romanian?”
“Hungarian, Romanian—if you woman you suffer under all government. Important thing, Nadia try to help Arcata. She help everybody. Is good.”
On the way to the basement I ran into Gladys, who was also due for an hour of hot mud. She’d just had her shot of Ionvital from Dr. Gabor, and was manifesting the energy and euphoria I’d heard about. In her red flannel bathrobe she looked like a firecracker about to ignite.
“Cassandra, I can’t tell you how great I’m feeling. Twenty years younger,” she said exuberantly. “Thirty or more. Heck, I didn’t feel this great when I was in my twenties! And to think that before I left the States I was thinking of selling my business and moving to a retirement home! No way, José! The only thing that makes me sad is that Evelyn couldn’t be here with me.”
“So is it Margit or Dr. Gabor who gives you the shots?”
“Dr. Gabor, of course. Between you and me, I’m a little worried about Margit.” Gladys tapped her forehead. “She’s covering something up. You think she did it?”
“If sh
e did, he probably deserved it. He’d sexually abused her for years. But having a motive doesn’t automatically mean you’re guilty. It takes someone who’s willing to cross a moral line, or who doesn’t see that the line is there. Who’s capable of that? I don’t know.”
“Well, I’ll tell you this: I’m not going to be driven out of Arcata by those Romanian bully-boys. Nadia’s been trying to convince me to go to Bucharest and take refuge in the American Embassy, but I’ll be damned if they’re going to hound me out of here before I’ve finished my treatments!”
Optimism in Archie’s case often seemed more like denial, but Gladys’s positive outlook was the real thing. She didn’t think she was in any danger of being arrested or jailed, but if she were she’d put up a fight. She probably didn’t need my help at all.
But I had gotten curious about the incident at the galvanic baths. Whether or not it was murder, there was some mystery surrounding Pustulescu’s death, and I wanted to know what it was.
I was getting with the program on the mud packing. Lie still and turn obediently and, most important, don’t shriek when the hot black mud hits your pubic zone. My medical diagnosis was rheumatoid arthritis of the knee, but I guessed the mud-packing ladies were so used to fertility problems that they just glopped it on in the area of my dormant reproductive organs anyway.
Mummified in my little mud-and-cotton cocoon and listening to the soothing swoosh and drip of water, as the thick silty heat squeezed between my thighs, I thought of Egypt. Yes, I’d been there, but it was long ago. Perhaps the second half of my life would be about retracing my steps. Egypt was one of the first countries I’d dreamed of going to, one of the first places, with its pharaohs and pyramids, that had caught my imagination as a child. I remembered a National Geographic I’d seen in fifth grade about Queen Nefertiti, and how it had not been enough just to read about her, but necessary to vow to go to where she’d lived.
Trouble in Transylvania Page 19