The White Tyger

by Paul Park

  After sitting in the back of the car awhile, he began to contemplate another mystery, the problem of the baroness’s beauty and its effect on him after these five years. Nor could he guess that these two mysteries were related, and had their source in what Aegypta Schenck had called the hidden world.

  Luckacz would not, he decided, mention to the baroness the details of his conversation with Joachim Beck. Nor would he convey to her the doctor’s suppositions, at least not yet. It was clear, though, what the man suspected: that the baroness herself had purchased the munitions on the Hephaestion, that she herself bore responsibility for this accident.

  There was no reason to upset her, not yet. Luckacz would make his own inquiries and decide what to do. In the meantime he lay back in the velvet seats, tried to relax—the road was better beyond Soldanu. He closed his eyes, trying to summon in his mind an image of the baroness’s face as she sat poised over her piano, studying the score of her great work, picking out the themes sometimes with difficulty. In the motorcar, Luckacz couldn’t hear them. He had no ear for music. Instead he concentrated on the little grimace that distorted her small mouth, revealed her perfect teeth. A frown puckered the skin between her eyebrows, brought lines to the edges of her purple eyes—she was almost forty, after all! Still she was beautiful—her chestnut hair cut at the line of her jaw, her creamlike skin—with a beauty that was not only decorative, but seemed to achieve, at least for Luckacz, a desperate significance.

  Even intelligent, rational persons, daydreaming and dreaming, sometimes at moments can achieve a kind of access to the secret world. If in his imagination’s eye Luckacz had looked backward through the rear, flat, oval window of the Mercedes, perhaps even he would have caught a glimpse of the disaster that still roiled the sky above Chiselet. He would have seen flashes like lightning burst inside the clouds, which were lit also from beneath by explosions and fires. Near the wreck along the train line there was a raw wound in the earth, a crater almost half a kilometer across. Fires burned in both the marshland and the town among the shattered buildings.

  2

  In the Mogosoaia Woods

  MY DEAR NIECE, this will seem astonishing to you, except for the experiences you have already had in the town in Massachusetts where I protected you. Let me explain how there are places in Roumania and other countries that form an access to this secret world of ghosts, symbols, and animals. One of these places is in Insula Calia where I have written you this letter. One is also in Mogosoaia where you must go and find the key that I have left for you alone. I have hidden it from other prying eyes. This will be for you like opening a door. But you must learn to open it yourself, and wedge it open when it threatens to crash shut. Nor can I help you with this, because I could never find a way to enter through the door as a living woman, and I know about it only in experiments and signs. You come from a mixing of your mother’s and your father’s blood, the mixing of two traits that are not dominant. It is for this reason that I introduced them in Brasov on Saturn’s festival, and I helped her overlook his faults. I hope by God it is enough and I have prepared you sufficiently, though far from my hand. Otherwise the fault is both of ours and God’s as well perhaps … .

  This part of the letter was covered by Miranda’s fingers when she awoke, stretched, smiled at something, the tail end of a dream. She opened her eyes and saw de Graz bending over her, his face strange and well-remembered; startled, she raised her hand. But then she brought the smile back again, deliberately this time as de Graz stepped away and stood up straight. He was a menacing figure in the darkness, her father’s pistol in his left hand, his right hand covered with a wad of dirty bandages that made it look like a club or a boxing glove. Miranda sat up.

  When she slept with her aunt’s letter in her hand, dreams came to her that were like memories. It was as if she could absorb them through her skin, as if the fragile paper had been treated in some way.

  Because or in spite of her deliberate smile, she felt a little gladness coming back. De Graz had been in her dream. And not just de Graz but Peter Gross, who’d been her friend in the faraway town where she’d gone to school, and who had grown and changed into the hulking figure above her, as she had grown and changed.

  “I had a dream,” she said. “Do you remember that Halloween party we went to? It must have been in seventh grade. It was at Angela Eusden’s house. I was trying to remember the first time I saw you. You know, to recognize. It was by the pool. She must have invited the whole class. I was doing something, and I turned around and you were standing right behind me, dressed as—what were you dressed as?”

  De Graz grunted. Stiff as a tree, he stood above her in the pearly dark, his right hand like a club. Maybe he’d been Frankenstein or something, she thought.

  Of course in those days he hadn’t had an arm at all. His forearm had ended in a stump, a birth defect. That’s what she’d thought about on Halloween. She had pitied him as she noticed (now it came back to her) how his costume had given him two arms.

  “What were you dressed as?” she repeated, but he wouldn’t tell her. Instinctively she’d spoken in English. Nowadays he never talked to her except in French, a language—she was sure—he’d never taken in high school. It was the language of rich people in Roumania.

  “Mademoiselle, ce n’est pas la peine …”—blah, blah. These days he was all business. These days he always had a scowl on his face, which she attributed partly to the pain in his wounded hand. Not that he complained, or had a right to. He didn’t take care of it, didn’t allow her or Ludu Rat-tooth to change the bandages. He cursed the Gypsy when she tried. In Massachusetts he had not been so stubborn or so stiff.

  Miranda looked around. Where was Ludu now? But with half an ear she was listening to de Graz as he explained again what they were doing here and what they planned to do. In the darkness they would cross the river at Constantin’s Ford. It was their only chance, or else a trap.

  Soldiers in black uniforms had driven her into this part of the forest, caught her in the river’s curve. The Baroness Ceausescu had offered a reward. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Here’s where they’ve cornered us. How likely is it they don’t know about the ford?”

  “It is a secret place,” muttered the Chevalier de Graz. “Your father showed it to me once when we were hunting.”

  “What if they’re just waiting for us to cross? We’d be in the open. What if they’re just waiting for us to show ourselves?”

  Left unspoken were more basic questions. What do we do once we’re on the other side? “We’re just three people,” she said. “You need to see a doctor.”

  He shrugged. Then he nodded, relenting. “I’m surprised you can still read that,” he said, meaning the letter in her hand.

  “Don’t change the subject,” said Miranda. She glanced down at the fragile pages, folded them, and slid them carefully into the pocket of her filthy shirt. “Most of this I still don’t understand.”

  She wrapped her shawl closer around her shoulders. It was damp now, and wet where she had lain on it. Beads of moisture were in her hair.

  “What if I just give myself up?” she said. “We’ve gone days like this—no food. She’s been chasing me since we first got here. But I still don’t know what would happen if she caught me.”

  “She” was Nicola Ceausescu. With German money and support, she was living in the empress’s former palace in Bucharest. “It is your choice,” muttered de Graz, his hand raised like a club. “But she would kill you.

  “For the sake of your bracelet,” he added, and she was aware of it suddenly, the worn gold beads on her wrist, each in the shape of a tiger’s head.

  “She calls herself the white tyger,” said de Graz. “No one believes her. But if she stands on the boards of the Ambassadors Theatre, that bracelet on her hand … She lives for that moment.”

  “There’s nothing magic about a bracelet,” said Miranda. “What if I send it in the mail?”

  De Graz shrugged. “Besides,�
� he said, “you shot a man.”

  It was true. During the course of another of these endless days, endless escapes, she’d shot a man who’d died.

  Miranda fingered the gold beads on her wrist. Chilled, she rubbed her arm. It was odd, and perhaps it was because she was so tired, but she couldn’t feel a proper sense of urgency. Kill her—how likely was that? And she had killed a man—how likely did that sound? Since her small glimpse of the hidden world in St. Mary’s cave, none of these things and none of this had seemed quite real.

  No, it was all real, rocks and stones, reasons and consequences, all of it sufficient for right now. She sat in a nest of old leaves and pine needles under the low, dark clouds. It was her choice, de Graz had said. What did that mean?

  Above her he stretched out his bandaged hand, pressed it against the bark of a tall tree. “The Baron Ceausescu killed your father,” he said.

  This was unfair, and should have made Miranda angry. But she felt suddenly like crying, though she had never known her father, never seen him. What was he besides a name—Prince Frederick Schenck von Schenck? But she sniffed to unclog her nose, and smelled a deep, piney smell. Her fingers, when she rubbed her face, were sticky with a little sap.

  “And what if we do cross safely?” she asked. “What then—the three of us?”

  “We hide,” he said. “There are people who can help us, friends of my mother’s in Floreasca. Your father was well loved, as I told you. People hate the Germans, hate Ceausescu, too.”

  Then he shrugged again, as if irritated to have to think about the future. “Ça ne fait rien. You struggle to the end.”

  They had been speaking softly. But now they heard a voice call in the darkness not far away—“Where are you? Miss, what I have seen!”

  It was Ludu Rat-tooth. De Graz cursed in Roumanian and raised his gun. Miranda knew he’d chosen this stand of evergreens because the trees grew close together. They gave more shelter than the wide beeches and oaks. But now the Gypsy girl came blundering through, out of breath, excited. “Miss,” she said. “Oh, miss!” And then she laughed.

  It was a welcome sound. The girl stood with her hands on her hips. Because her spotted face was so familiar, Miranda imagined she could see it clearly in the darkness, even see that she was sweating, flushed. Her coarse brown hair was tied behind her neck and held in place by a silver clasp. Her mouth was open wide. Now, self-conscious even in the dark, she raised her right hand to her lips to hide the sharp bicuspid that had given her her name.

  “Be quiet,” hissed the Chevalier de Graz. He took a step toward her, menacing with his bandaged hand. He made as if to grab her, pull her down, but she paid no attention. She was too excited. “Miss, I saw it clear as I see you. Oh, I was frightened—the white tyger!”

  “Quiet,” said de Graz.

  But the Gypsy turned her back. She bent down to seize Miranda’s hands, drag her to her feet. “I thought I’d never see one,” she continued breathlessly. “I thought maybe they’d died out. Or maybe they’d just been a story after all. And it was wrong what I had heard. This was a big animal, as big as you. There was a bird caught in a tree.”

  “Mademoiselle,” de Graz said. “There’s no time for this.” But Miranda didn’t pay attention. Now she was on her feet, following the Gypsy as she crossed over the boggy ground and then into the deeper woods.

  “HERE IT IS,” said Ludu Rat-tooth. But she wasn’t sure. In just fifteen minutes the woods had gotten darker. Had she been this way? Thorns pulled at her long dress.

  She had come with Miranda from the coast. She had never been in woods like these and she distrusted them, not just for ordinary reasons. But this was Mother Egypt’s place. She had died here in Mogosoaia. And there were ghosts here, ghosts of the dead. Miranda had tried to explain it, quoting from Mother Egypt’s letter, which she carried in the pocket of her shirt.

  Ludu stood up in the thicket in the dark. A thorn had caught in her necklace, silver and glass beads that Miranda Popescu had bought for her in some little town. Carefully she plucked it loose, then listened. Where was Miss Popescu now? No, there she was—the sound of crashing in the brush behind her. Taller than Ludu, she couldn’t come as fast.

  The Gypsy turned her head, pulled herself free, stepped into a grove of dark saplings. Heart pounding, out of breath, she was afraid of sudden creatures in the dark. Where were her footprints? Had she come this way? She’d been frightened, yet excited, too—she had not needed to scramble this far through the bushes just to empty her bladder away from the others. Something had drawn her and was drawing her still. “Miss!” she cried out. What was she doing alone in these woods, chasing after a dangerous animal? Oh, but she had seen it! And it had turned its heavy head and looked at her. And there had been a bird above it in the tree. And she had not been frightened, not that she remembered. The animal had stood between two trees. Already the sky was dark, but the white fur along the tyger’s flanks had seemed to shine.

  Above it in the tree the little iridescent bird had flap-flap-flapped. And then also it was still. Where was that tree? It had had wide, spadelike leaves.

  “Miss!” cried Ludu Rat-tooth. Now she was aware of something new, a smell of burning and also something rotten, a small stink she remembered from Insula Calia in the marsh. It was the smell of conjuring and magic tricks. Suddenly terrified, Ludu pulled out from the waist of her chemise a carborundum strip and a pouch of phaetons, long phosphorus matches.

  Now she ignited one. There was no wind, and she held it up. Sparks dripped from it. And in the harsh green light she saw what she had missed, the trail of her own boots. There, just a few meters from her, was the beech tree she had seen, and in the mud the heavy prints of the cat.

  The match burned bright. Nearby in a pile of leaf meal at the base of the tree, Ludu saw movement. As if drawn by the light, a tiny, nervous creature showed itself, a mouse or a wood rat, half hidden underneath a tree root. But now it showed its eyes, which gleamed, a little greenish light.

  She dropped the match before it burned her fingers. As soon as it was out the darkness covered her, blacker than before. Heart pounding, she fumbled with another match and lit it. There in the tree above her was the bird. Whether it had come back or it had been there all the time, she couldn’t say.

  It was a brandywine bird, common in Constanta and the flat parts of Roumania, a small bird with an iridescent sheen. It was on a low branch above Ludu’s head. It cocked its beak, and Ludu could see something else, something that was also gleaming in the harsh light. Now that she saw it, though, she wondered if it had some other property as well—the stink of conjuring was stronger now, and she could smell it even over the burning phosphorus. She took a few steps to the tree, wondering if the bird would fly away, but it did not. And when she had to drop her match again, she saw that she’d been right. Whatever hung there from that vine or twig had a small purple glow that did not disappear in the darkness, which was otherwise so frightening.

  Ludu drew out a third match and lit it. The bird cocked its head. There below it, almost in its feet, hung a berry or a grape. And immediately it occurred to Ludu Rat-tooth that she would pluck it and bring it to Miranda, who seemed so famished and weak, even though Ludu had made her eat up all their meager food over the past day, all their sausage and nuts till there was nothing left. As if it had been whispered in her ear, Ludu knew that she would take this berry or this grape or whatever this was, and she would bring it to Miss Popescu and make her eat it, and refuse any part of it herself, though now she looked at it in the last flare of the match, it looked big enough to share.

  She reached up and the light went out. It didn’t matter. The glow of the grape or berry guided her hand. It was firm and cool in her fingers as she brought it down, and she thought she would bring it to Miss Popescu, who must be close behind her, must have seen the light from the matches.

  But then suddenly she thought she wouldn’t, that she herself was hungry and had given up all her food, and Miranda wou
ldn’t begrudge her something she had found in the woods. So in the darkness she brought the fruit to her lips and slipped it into her mouth where it exploded in juice. “Oh, a stone,” she thought, which was the last thought she had before she heard a crash behind her in the wood, and then another crash and she fell down.

  3

  A Struggle to the End

  MY DEAR, THERE is one other gift I can offer you although I scarcely know its use, a jewel that belonged to a great German alchemist and allowed him, as I understand it from his documents, to pass at will between two worlds. Let me explain another way. This was an ability that he was able to discover and refine, and that he exercised and developed in his mind until it calcified a lobe of his inner brain, a lobe that allows ordinary men and women a capacity for dreams and premonitions. My belief is that this calcification was what killed the alchemist at last, and finally it was dug from his skull in the shape of a great tourmaline. Though more than once when I had money I attempted to purchase this stone from the collector who owned it, still it is true I have not made up my mind as to its dangers. Because this is unclear to me, and because of the constraints of desperation, nevertheless I will attempt to find this tourmaline for you to use or to ignore as you see fit. In the spirit world this stone will take a living form, a piece of fruit. And if you see me as a bird on a branch in Mogosoaia, please …

  A piece of fruit? Miranda didn’t understand this part of her aunt’s letter. Even so, as she followed Ludu Rat-tooth into the woods, she found herself remembering these words and the words around them. They had been summoned by what the Gypsy said about the bird in the tree. Miranda found she had a picture in her mind, a small bird with iridescent feathers desperately beating its wings.