The Roma Plot

by Mario Bolduc

  “And the boots?”

  “Come, Emil.”

  The young Rom didn’t have much choice. If he tried to run, he’d be shot in the back. It was better to risk the car ride, especially since it seemed so warm and comfortable inside. He sat in the back seat beside the youngest of the three men, the one with the handkerchief. The eldest of the trio sat at the wheel. Inside, the car was as comfortable as it had seemed. Emil had been right to go with them. Behind him, over his shoulder, was a small lamp, the height of luxury.

  The ZIS-110 rumbled off toward the camp exit. They were stopped once beneath a gate over which hung a sign on a steel wire: ZAPRETNAYA ZONA — “restricted area.” A junior officer peered through the window and almost tripped over himself as he backed up quickly and waved them through, saluting twice for good measure. Soon enough they’d crossed a few more coils of barbed wire and were out of the camp altogether. Free. The car drove right past the kennels. Soon the entire city of Vorkuta was behind him, growing smaller. They drove across the Pechora coal basin.

  A few kilometres into the tundra, the driver glanced at Emil in the rearview mirror. “My name is Gheorghe Pintilie, but they call me Pantiuşa. Let me introduce you to Oleg Charvadze, who works for the Soviet minister of foreign affairs, Andrey Vyshinski.”

  The man seated in the passenger seat turned slightly. He was the most austere of the three, but the most physically imposing, with an immense neck stuffed into a too-small coat. He looked like a former wrestler.

  “And this is Nicolae Ceauşescu.”

  The young man on Emil’s left offered a small smile. He seemed shy, uncomfortable in his poorly tailored clothes. Emil later understood that Ceauşescu didn’t speak Russian. Everything had to be translated for him.

  Pintilie added, “Nicolae is Romanian, just like you. He, too, was in a concentration camp. In Târgu Jiu, where he became the head of the Communist youth.”

  Ceauşescu smiled again, clearly uneasy at being a topic of conversation.

  “Three years ago Nicolae was elected to the National Assembly. Today he’s in charge of agriculture. Romania’s biggest challenge, right, Nicolae?”

  The young man nodded. “If our agrarian reforms are successful, everything will be different,” he added in Romanian.

  Ceauşescu couldn’t help his stammer. Painfully, he explained that Petru Groza’s government had begun the collectivization of farmland throughout Romanian territory.

  “A colossal task, made doubly hard by landowners united around the National Peasants’ Party, who oppose it.”

  Since their defeat in the 1946 elections, Charvadze explained, the bourgeois parties were attempting to block reform. Today they could no longer count on King Michael’s support. He’d abdicated and left the country. Yet Stalin still feared Romania might veer back into fascism.

  Charvadze’s voice was curiously melodious. The giant spoke softly, like a man trying to sell a pillow.

  “The battle hasn’t yet been won in the countryside,” Ceauşescu continued. “There are peasant revolts throughout the country, unfortunately.”

  “Partisans hiding in the mountains, resisting socialist progress,” Charvadze corrected.

  “Partisans?” Pintilie interjected. “No, more like terrorists who don’t hesitate to murder civilians. For this reason, we must all be vigilant. Even if the victory of the people is close at hand.”

  Emil listened to them converse with one another as the car drove past other labour camps, some of which seemed to still be under construction. He felt as if he were at a party he hadn’t been invited to. They spoke to him, but through each other. What did these people want? All Emil cared about was the coat. And the boots.

  The ZIS-110 was driving through forest now. The three men spoke of Romania, ignoring the landscape around them. They were talking strategy, time frames, balance of power. Emil listened to them distractedly. He watched the forest instead, a forest he’d never had an opportunity to visit. Snow was a rare sight this winter. Large off-white patches hid the grey of the undergrowth. To the east, he saw a mountain range. The Ural Mountains most likely.

  Pintilie brought the car to a halt at the end of a small road beside a rotting wooden grain elevator. A bit farther off, an abandoned cabin, its roof collapsed under the weight of snow, probably last winter. What remained of a camp that might have been active in the 1930s.

  The three men climbed out of the car. Charvadze stretched, cracked his knuckles. Ceauşescu lit a cigarette and offered it to Emil, who thanked him with a movement of his head. Stepping around the snowdrifts, Pintilie came near the two men, as if to continue the conversation. More of a monologue, really. Emil was still wondering why he’d been invited on this little trip. Wondered what the answers were to the questions they weren’t asking him.

  Finally, Pintilie addressed the young Rom. “Do you know what the biggest obstacle to collectivization is, Emil?”

  He shook his head.

  “Gypsies.”

  “Pantiuşa is right,” Ceauşescu continued. “The Gypsies are afraid of losing their privileges as seasonal workers.”

  “When they’ve got nothing to fear.”

  “Of course, some comrades haven’t always been entirely honest with them.”

  “Mistakes were made.”

  “Mistakes were made toward all Romanian people,” Ceauşescu admitted.

  What were they trying to say, exactly? Were they speaking of their attitude during the war? If so, the Communists had a lot to answer for. They had completely disregarded reality when Hitler and Stalin signed the non-aggression pact in 1939. And then the silence of Romanian Communists when the Soviet Union annexed large portions of the country. Emil would later learn that Petru Groza’s victory in the 1946 elections had been the result of widespread fraud. Clearly, Romanians could pin some blame on the Soviets.

  Ceauşescu threw his cigarette into the woods, saying, “One thing is certain. We can’t build socialism in Romania without the Gypsies. Romanians owe a debt to you for your opposition to Ion Antonescu, and later, the Nazis.”

  “Paul Vaneker, a Dutchman, led sabotage and infiltration operations for London,” Pintilie continued. “In Moscow, Stalin knew all about the operations. Right, Oleg?”

  The giant nodded.

  “Gypsies are essential for the new Romania,” Ceauşescu said. “The second most important minority in the country after Hungarians. And the one most often ignored.”

  “They certainly need a bit of rest after all their centuries of wandering,” Pintilie added.

  Charvadze spoke, even more softly, almost a lover’s tender whisper. “Romanestan, Emil. An autonomous territory where you’ll be masters over your own fate.”

  The three men stood in front of the young Rom, who looked back at the trio in turn.

  Romanestan. His father’s old dream.

  “Look at the Jews,” Charvadze said. “The United Nations gave them a state. And what about the Gypsies? Nothing, not even crumbs.… In Nuremberg they even refused to speak of what was done to you as genocide. Your people were exterminated in the camps and yet you won’t get a penny of compensation.”

  “Did you not suffer?” Pintilie asked.

  “The Jews don’t want Gypsies to be associated with the Holocaust,” Ceauşescu said. “They want everything for themselves.”

  Charvadze laughed. “Rabbis with their shekels, am I right?”

  Finally, Ceauşescu laid his hand on Emil’s shoulder as if they were the oldest friends in the world. “Without us, you’re all alone,” he stammered. “The entire world gave up on your people.”

  Emil turned his head away. Heinrich Himmler had made a similar offer to his father in Auschwitz. A pact with the devil. Anton had refused by spitting in the face of the Nazi’s second-in-command. These Communists were offering him the same thing. Should he refuse, as well? Spit in the face of
these three emissaries? Pintilie was right, wasn’t he? The world had changed. Still hangmen, each and every one of them, but of a different flavour now. Emil’s experience in Vorkuta, what thousands of other prisoners were going through in similar camps, was only a variation on the Nazi theme. The urgency of murder wasn’t as strong as in the Nazi camps. But the result came down to the same thing. A hundred and sixty kilometres above the Arctic Circle, death was the true master, just as in Auschwitz. The Soviet Empire would last forever: why hurry?

  Himmler, Pintilie? Two sides of the same coin? Satan on one hand, Lucifer on the other. But these three men were right. Moscow led the world today. At least the world in which the Roma lived. The hangmen couldn’t be ignored; you couldn’t take your vôrdòn and cross the border. There were no more borders, only one country now. A single horizon scattered with watchtowers like those of Vorkuta.

  “Our offer is a serious one, Emil,” Ceauşescu said. “Pantiuşa has just been named the director of the Romanian political police.”

  “The Securitate,” Pintilie added.

  Ceauşescu continued. “But no matter how good a security service is, there are always limits. I need the help of Gypsies to convince the peasants to support collectivization. In exchange we’re ready to guarantee a territory to your people. Near Timişoara, for example, on the Hungarian border.”

  Pintilie smiled. “And Stalin has already agreed. Right, Oleg?”

  Charvadze nodded. He seemed overjoyed. He was the one who’d convinced Stalin, most likely. Later, Emil learned that Ceauşescu had travelled to Moscow to convince Stalin to accept his offer, only two days before coming to Vorkuta.

  Pintilie took Emil by the shoulders and walked with him a few steps away from the others. “The Rosca family must be part of the greatest revolution in history. The world needs new leaders like you, like Nicolae. You’re of the same generation. You were both victims of Nazi horror. Emil, you can’t rob your people of this opportunity.”

  The young Rom hesitated. He wished his father were beside him now so he could ask for the man’s advice. Should he trust these gadje? He disengaged from Pintilie. A small voice was telling him that the Soviet envoy was right. The Roma had stayed too long outside humanity, missing out on its evolution. He understood why his father had spat on the Gestapo chief. He would have done the same thing. But these three weren’t offering him war; quite the opposite. They were offering peace. And to be a part of the future of the world.

  Emil turned around. “All right, I’ll follow you.”

  Smiles lit up the faces of the three men.

  “But I do have one condition. I want to find a German woman. I want to know what happened to her.”

  They looked at one another, confused.

  “The wife of a German officer who died in Auschwitz. Christina Müller.”

  There was a long silence, which Ceauşescu finally broke. He took a step toward Emil. “I’ll find her. I promise.”

  “A plane is waiting for us in Vorkuta,” Pintilie said. “We’ll be in Moscow tonight. And in Bucharest tomorrow.”

  “My accordion.”

  Charvadze opened the trunk of the ZIS-110. The Paolo Soprani was already there. His only possession.

  Pintilie smiled again. “We’ve got no time to lose, Emil. Each moment wasted slows the triumphant forward march of socialism.”

  Emil hadn’t seen Bucharest in seven years. Back then the Kalderash lived far from the centre, beside awful-smelling landfills, abandoned industrial sites, fallow fields. The Roma criss-crossed the country, following the seasons, the harvests. And the rest of the time they juggled, wove baskets, told fortunes. And, of course, repaired pots and did minor metalwork, the Kalderash’s traditional activities. Emil still remembered the story his mother had told him about Roman soldiers searching for nails to crucify Christ. All of Jerusalem’s smiths refused the thankless task, and so the soldiers turned to a Kalderash, who made three nails for them. As he was forging the fourth, he learned what the nails were for: crucifying the Son of God. The Kalderash refused to continue his work, but it was too late. Christ was nailed to the cross due to a Rom’s handiwork. A nail in each hand and the third nailing both feet together — the fourth nail missing. A divine punishment followed, and the smith and his kin were condemned to wander through the world until the end of time.

  There would be no more wandering, Emil told himself, as the small Tupolev landed at Otopeni Airport, still filled with military planes. After the end of the war, Stalin had refused to pull back his occupation army. There were Russians everywhere in Eastern Europe. Trade had begun again, but only the regime’s highest cadres could afford to take a plane.

  Ceauşescu told Emil they had a room reserved for him at the Capitol Hotel. He himself was looking forward to seeing his wife, Elena, again. They’d been married for three years. Like many other members of the Communist Party, the couple had adopted a war orphan, Valentin.

  Emil thanked Ceauşescu for the offer of a room but turned it down. Instead, he climbed into a GAZ-4, a Russian jeep, which took him into the suburbs. A young, smooth-faced Soviet soldier was at the wheel. Along the road Emil saw Bucharest’s citizens hunting through still-ruined buildings for supplies. The war had been over for four years! The Russians had promised law and order. It was likely the same across Europe, Emil thought. Reconstruction would take years, if not decades. And yet, later, Emil would realize that the seeds of doubt were planted on that car ride. What if the promises made by the three emissaries were all smoke and mirrors? But Emil didn’t have the means to think critically. He was being offered a throne, a crown — why would he be difficult about it?

  In the plane, Ceauşescu had revealed that the Roma, the few who’d survived the camps in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, were returning to the country and were now occupying land west of Bucharest. Land the municipality had given them as a stopgap until it figured out what to do with these people. Doctors and nurses had visited them to make sure they weren’t an epidemic risk, and then they’d been abandoned. In 1946 the Communist Party had insisted that these refugees be given a right to vote, but they hadn’t voted, not for the Communists, nor for anyone else. Thousands of people no one had any idea how to deal with, politically or otherwise. That was where Emil came in.

  He got out of the vehicle at the entrance of a shanty­town built from whatever had been pulled from the rubble of bombed-out homes. A rivulet overflowing with garbage ran through the site. Children in rags played in the fetid waters. No vôrdôná, at least not yet. Those from before the war had been destroyed, of course. Those to come were only promises. For now travel was a faraway project. A fantasy. These Roma were trapped in this landfill near Bucharest through no fault of their own.

  Emil grabbed his Paolo Soprani, which he’d kept close by for his entire trip, and slowly, painfully, walked into the shantytown. His body hadn’t had time to recover from the years of deprivation in Auschwitz and Vorkuta, but it was his time to lead. Men repairing pots lifted their heads. Women and children poked their heads out of their miserable lodgings. They all watched this newcomer as if he were a strange beast. Other Roma appeared, dressed in filthy clothes. Right around the middle of the camp, Emil stopped. A curious silence fell around him as his brethren watched this strange, thin, beaten man. Then Emil raised his chin, puffed out his chest, and spoke with all the confidence he thought his father might have had in a moment like this. “I am Emil Rosca, son of Anton Rosca, bulibasha of Wallachia, descendant of Luca le Stevosko.”

  A woman walked out of the group. An old woman, or one worn to the bone by a hard life. She bowed deeply in front of him, forehead practically in the mud. “The King of the Roma,” she murmured in Romani.

  One of the men gestured at the Paolo Soprani. “Play.”

  Emil didn’t need to be asked twice. His gormónya seemed imbued with a life of its own. Even the sad songs, which were his specialty, suddenly became ligh
t, full of joy. Emil played for all Roma everywhere, for all his brothers and sisters. Now he had a mission. An extraordinary project. After centuries of wandering, he would offer his people, who’d been abandoned by history, a country.

  Romanestan.

  20

  Minneapolis, December 7, 2006

  The airport teemed with Boy Scouts back from a winter jamboree in the countryside around Bruges, Belgium. Flags, whistles, calls to order. A general in shorts, despite the weather, leading his troop. Max weaved through the crowd of parents come to pick up their offspring. He took the Hilton shuttle downtown but didn’t get out at the hotel where he’d booked a room. Instead, he got off at the bus stop on Hawthorne Avenue. He hadn’t been followed, hadn’t been noticed.

  Grand Forks, North Dakota. Six hours of fitful sleep in an overheated room at a Holiday Inn. European newspapers, picked up at a magazine stand, devoted a few lines to Adrian Pavlenco’s hunt in Romania and to the disappearance of Max O’Brien and Kevin Dandurand. Not a word, however, about Marilyn Burgess. Out of desperation, the police had come down hard on other suspects to calm rumblings from the Romani community.

  Max learned that Victor Marineci was getting ready to organize a major demonstration in front of the Palace of the Parliament to denounce the nonchalance, the lack of effort, the ineffectiveness of the Romanian police when it came to tackling crimes against the Roma. Marineci, answering a question from a journalist on why the authorities were so slow to act, had quoted an old myth, still alive fifteen years after the fall of Ceauşescu’s regime. Supposedly, the Securitate had recruited informants, rats, spies, and torturers from within the Romani population. Ceauşescu, rumoured to be a Rom himself, chose among his own people those who’d practise the dark arts for his regime. For some, the Roma followed satanic rituals, drank the blood of gadjo children, and provoked earthquakes. Thankfully, the Roma had reached Europe after the great pestilences of the Middle Ages, or they would have been declared responsible for those, as well — instead of the Jews.