The White Tyger

by Paul Park

  So it was partially with relief that he felt her pull away from him, felt her turn away. She was not ready to take this further than where it was. But she made her little humming gasp. And with her eyes closed she rearranged their bodies so he lay on his back among her discarded dresses. He could smell the fabric and the sweet silk. She lay above him with her fingers on his lips, and when he tried to speak she pressed her fingers against his mouth. Then she lay against his shoulder, making her little sound. Was it possible she intended to fall asleep?

  He was uncomfortable against the bunched clothes, his skin burning, his stomach queasy. Behind their gauzy curtains the windows grew darker as the day settled down. His mouth was dry and his eyes itched. From where he lay he could see valuable things on Elena’s bureau and vanity—a gold watch, some diamond earrings, even a loose amount of German currency. He wondered if he should take it and find a way of slipping out of this house. Presumably the servants would not question him; they knew where he had been. Or was there some further advantage to be pressed out of Elena and her brother? Could he sleep here? Probably not.

  In the dim light he watched Elena Bibescu’s pretty face, her pretty mouth pushed out of shape against his undershirt. In his own nose he reeked to heaven. Where was Miranda now? If the war came to an end, if Clara Brancoveanu took up residence in the city, what did it mean?

  There was a sound at the door. Suddenly Elena was awake, and with a quick, athletic twist she had vaulted over him onto her feet. In the dim, filtered light of the streetlamp he could see her dress bunched around her waist. Then she was out of the room through a side door, just as Valentin came in from the corridor, a bottle of champagne in one hand, three glasses in the other.

  He set them onto the top of Elena’s bureau, then fumbled with the gas. “Where is Madame Beau-cul?” he asked in the new, soft light.

  Lieutenant Prochenko sat up and put his feet on the floor. “I fell asleep.”

  “I should think so. I suppose you were waiting for me to try on some clothes.”

  He pulled open a closet near the bureau. “Elena lets me keep some shirts in here. Please, you might wash. There’s a basin right through there.”

  He indicated the door where Elena had disappeared. Awkward, thirsty, Prochenko followed her into a small cubicle between two rooms, and the door was ajar on the other side. Elena stood motionless next to the toilet, a washcloth in her hands, her dress unbuttoned to her waist. Prochenko went to her and slid his hands along her ribs. Then he was kissing her again, listening to a whispered version of her little gasp. He took the wet washcloth from her fingers and ran it over her neck and face, her shoulders and her breasts, while at the same time Valentin was talking in the other room, discussing the peace proposal in the newspaper.

  Elena, smiling, reclaimed the washcloth and wrung it out in a basin of cold water on a lacquered tripod. Then she was touching the lieutenant in the same way, rubbing the rough cloth under his armpits and down his back. Was it possible she guessed the truth? How could it not be possible? But she was smiling in the almost-dark, the only light from the open door, and through it came her brother’s excited voice: “There was another story, too—an extraordinary thing. Elena especially will be interested; do you remember a Danish choreographer named Koenigslander, who used to direct the performances at the Dinamo each summer? It’s incredible—someone threw acid in his face in his own dressing room in Copenhagen. Vitriol, they say; he’s in the hospital. And the police suspect a bastard son he had with a Russian ballerina—isn’t that horrible? He’s lost an eye.”

  In the bathroom, Elena barely could contain her giggles. Then she put her lips against Prochenko’s ear. “I think there is something else you have forgotten,” she said—what did she mean by that? She had pulled up his undershirt, and now she turned him around and pushed him out the door again, hair wet, face wet, arms and shoulders wet.

  “Better,” said Valentin Bibescu, crinkling his nose. He had poured out the glasses and was drinking from one. And he had taken some shirts from the closet and spread them out on the daybed, silk shirts in startling colors—emerald green, russet brown.

  “You should burn that undershirt,” he suggested. Prochenko chose a peach-colored shirt with an attached collar and French cuffs. Perhaps he could borrow some expensive cufflinks.

  He turned away, stripped off the undershirt. But in the mirror set into the closet door he could see Valentin staring at him as he buttoned his new shirt. “You’ll need some trousers as well, and new shoes,” he said. “Those ones have gotten mud on the carpet.”

  Embarrassed, Prochenko glanced toward the bathroom door. Aware now of his lack of underclothes, he could feel the seam of his trousers chafing him. Nor did he think he wanted to undress further under the eyes of this nineteen-year-old—what was he? A homosexual, perhaps. Urning, as they’d been known at the Chameleon Club. No wonder he hadn’t been cut out for active service in Moldavia. Shirt buttoned, Prochenko turned toward him, smiling.

  “Your teeth are so white,” Valentin murmured, as his sister had done.

  “I’ll rejoin you in a moment,” said Prochenko.

  Blushing furiously, Valentin took his wineglass and went out into the corridor. Prochenko closed the door behind him and then closed the bathroom door as well. Then he stripped off his pants, boots, socks. He chose underwear from the top drawer of Elena’s dresser—soft, without elastic, but it didn’t fit. He held it to his face, smelling the expensive fabric, then pulled on trousers from Valentin’s closet, found socks and Italian boots—the boy was just his size, or close enough. He found cufflinks in a leather case on Elena’s vanity, and filled his pockets with the money that was there, just as Elena knocked and entered through the bathroom. She also had changed her clothes.

  Later they shared a collation of cold meats, melon, and cheese. They smoked cigarettes, drank burgundy, and when the first of the fireworks burst above Elysian Fields they put on jackets to go out. There were crowds in the street, all pushing down toward the city center: old people, young people, and even some children who were up late, riding on their fathers’ shoulders. In the streets there was an atmosphere that had nothing to do with Athena’s feast, and was just as much confused and tentative as celebratory—after all, there was no firm news of anything. But in the course of the past month the German army had reached the gates of Minsk. If the czar made peace, then the soldiers who had marched away so recently could return just as quickly, and that was a good thing, wasn’t it? So far the fighting in Moldavia and the Ukraine had been bloody and intense. And Roumanians were fighting also farther north in Lithuania. Still, it felt odd to celebrate a German victory, as it was clear that only a defeat or multiple defeats could drive them from the city of Bucharest, let alone the parts of Bucovina they had practically annexed.

  On the other hand, Princess Clara was expected at the Gara de Nord, and that was hopeful, wasn’t it? She had been a prisoner since the year of her husband’s death at the hands of the previous empress. Having saved her country from the Germans by copying the invasion plans, smuggling them across the border in Miranda Popescu’s diaper, she had been held for twenty years in the castle at Ratisbon—she was a hero, wasn’t she? Of course the Germans had invaded after all, and the army had surrendered almost without a fight. Now the princess was returning by permission of the German authorities, and the Baroness Ceausescu had gone to meet her. What was to be made of that? Miranda Popescu was still at large. She was in the woods at Mogosoaia, gathering malcontents and shooting at policemen.

  Valentin, Elena, and Prochenko moved through the thickening crowds. And when they came into the Champ de Mars they could see the fireworks above their heads. Prochenko found ways of touching the girl, although she often pulled away. Perhaps she was afraid she would see someone she knew. When they got into the area around the university she didn’t seem to care as much. The streets were full of students. Once she even kissed him.

  Past midnight there were German soldiers on the
boulevard, Hanoverian dragoons on horseback, pushing back the crowds. And there were Roumanian policemen in dress uniforms, with their high, old-fashioned helmets, clearing the way for the baroness’s carriage. And then there she was in an open coach-and-four, moving slowly down the street.

  People cheered. “The white tyger,” they cried out. Nicola Ceausescu stood in the open compartment, holding herself upright with her hand around a silver stanchion. Nor did she wave nor smile nor make any other attempt to acknowledge the crowd. But she showed herself before her audience as if she stood upon a stage, illuminated by the streetlights and the fireworks that still exploded fitfully above her, though the main display was long since over. Her eyes seemed glassy, fixed, so much so that the lieutenant asked himself whether it was in fact her body he saw here on exhibit—she wore a tight black dress cut low, and a black leather coat pushed back, hanging from her elbows. But he had heard in the old days that she had used a simulacrum sometimes to impersonate her onstage, during dull bits when there was no dialogue to speak of—a simulacrum animated partially though conjuring and partially through the old country magic of whores, who had other reasons to dissociate from their own bodies and experiences.

  Nicola Ceausescu—the lieutenant made a rapid calculation—was thirty-nine years old. How was it possible she still looked as she did, her long legs and narrow hips, her smooth and unblemished face, if not through this or some other alchemy? He had not seen her—again he made his quick subtractions—since she was in her mid-teens, and had appeared to stunned audiences in Klaus Israel’s Cleopatra at the Ambassadors Theatre. That was before she’d sold herself to the old baron, her greatest conjuring trick.

  And it occurred to Prochenko as he watched her on display, staring down the crowd, that they had something in common, the two of them. He also had been young when he’d last seen her, a cadet in his last year at the academy. And here he was still young after all that time, his middle-aged soldier’s body mingled (comic-book style) with the body of an adolescent girl in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, not to mention a dog—how old was he in dog years? He suppressed a bark of laughter, and at the same time realized that the baroness’s coach had come abreast and she was staring down at him; he dropped his eyes, noticing for the first time the other people in the carriage. Ostensibly, this parade was in their honor.

  Prochenko stood bareheaded in the second rank away from the curb, hands in his pockets. Around him men and women shouted, raised their arms. But in between the helmets of the German horsemen he could see them now, a gray-haired lady whose features still held some remnants of something noble and good, though she was terrified now, her face stricken and amazed. Clara Brancoveanu—was there anything of Miranda in her face? She shrank against the pillows and blankets or shied back against the shoulder of the boy, Felix Ceausescu, who did not resemble his mother.

  He felt Elena’s fingers insinuate themselves into the pocket of his camel-hair coat, searching for his fingers. Would she find the watch that he had stowed in there? The money was in the other pocket, thank God. But Prochenko closed his palm around the diamond earrings, the gold-and-diamond watch, while he plotted his escape; he must say good-bye to this woman and her brother. He would find Miranda … and what? What now?

  He pulled his hand out of his pocket, transferred Elena’s watch and earrings to a more secure location—he had become skilled at these small manipulations from his days as a pickpocket in Adrianople. Then he replaced his hand and grasped hold of her fingers, squeezing them as the coach passed. And at that moment he became aware of a tall man in front of him in the first row of spectators, dressed in an old coat and a woolen cap.

  Always in Adrianople, in the crowds at the marketplace or in front of the old synagogue, Prochenko had learned to keep an eye out not just for policemen, but for anyone whose body language could not easily be understood. The man in front of him stepped nervously from foot to foot, hands in his bulging pockets. And while others had snatched their hats off and were waving them, he had pulled his cap down over his eyebrows, and had half-turned away from the carriage, as if trying to hide his face. He had not shaved in several days.

  The lieutenant paid particular attention when he pulled a glass jar from his pocket and unscrewed the lid. Since the wreck of the Hephaestion, Prochenko’s nose had been as sensitive as a dog’s, and immediately he was aware of a sharp, insinuating odor that brought moisture to his eyes. The carriage was rolling by the curb, its brass-plated wheels just a few meters away.

  A reflex: He unlocked his fingers from Elena’s in his pocket, then reached out and batted down the jar so that it fell among the legs of the crowd. People were shouting and cheering, but the man jumped back. Prochenko saw the oily, viscous liquid spray across the boots of a policeman at the curb. The jar fell to the gutter in a heap of wet refuse that began to smoke.

  But the man in the woolen cap turned around with a shocked, startled expression, and Prochenko recognized him. And even if he had not seen his face reproduced in profile in the Piata Markasev that afternoon, the lieutenant would have remembered him from that last night in Berkshire County, when he and Miranda and Peter Gross had come down through the cow pasture on Christmas Hill, and seen this same strange fellow build a bonfire on the slope above the art museum.

  Then, caught in a girl’s body, Prochenko had admired his dark, single eyebrow, his height, his air of European (as the girl imagined) superiority. Now his face was hollow, haunted, and his hair unkempt, as the lieutenant saw when he snatched the woolen cap off of his head just to make sure. The police could see there was a disturbance in the crowd, even if the man whose boots had been spattered with vitriol had not leapt back, cursing, swatting at the leather where it had started to smoke and foam.

  The carriage had continued down the street. But Prochenko was aware of the Baroness Ceausescu looking back from where she stood, studying him with an unreadable expression on her face as he wrestled with Kevin Markasev on the curb.

  II

  Ceausescu Triumphant

  5

  Prince Frederick’s Revolver

  THE EMPRESS VALERIA’S Winter Keep, which Nicola Ceausescu had renamed the Palace of the People, was at that time the largest building in Europe. Constructed on the ruins of a Roman temple, it had evolved over the centuries into a disorganized pile of bricks and stone, a tour of which could illustrate the history of Roumania. There, meticulously restored, were the original Roman colonnades, built on Greek foundations in the earliest days of the city. And there were the innermost black walls of the Gothic castle, and, floating like thunderheads above them, the gold and sapphire domes of the Turkish occupation, built by Dragut Pasha and Kara Selim in faux-Byzantine style.

  But it was not until the Brancoveanu restoration that the building had acquired its final perimeter, when the surrounding Turkish gardens were one by one enclosed in rose-colored stone. The largest of these neo-classical façades—Constantin IV’s court of Artemis—had been quarried in Petra, dismantled, transported, and then inaccurately reassembled in enormous sandstone blocks. The grand entrance to the entire building was the so-called Nabataean Gate, which had not been used either by the empress or by Nicola Ceausescu until she opened it past midnight to admit the Princess Clara Brancoveanu and Felix Ceausescu, her own son.

  That same night, when the baroness finally climbed the stairs to her modest apartments overlooking the Piata Revolutiei, it was almost dawn. But she had left word for Radu Luckacz to disturb her. When he knocked on the half-opened door he knew what he would find. He could hear the sound of her piano in the corridor. And for a while he leaned against the doorpost, listening.

  At the Gara de Nord, when the Bavarian Hydra had steamed into the station, the brass band had played some of the baroness’s own uncompleted music, triumphant marches from the story of her life, which for several years she’d been composing in an operatic style. Lingering by the door, Luckacz recognized many of the same themes, intimate and melancholy now, transposed into a
minor key. And though he didn’t claim to be a judge of these things, always he was struck by how poorly she played, at least in a technical sense. In another way the music was sublime, played with a tentative and crude sincerity that was affective beyond measure, particularly when with trembling hands the policeman pushed open the door. There she was in the small room, her face lit with candlelight, a cigarette, ignored, burning in an ashtray like a stick of incense beside her. As always, when he saw her, it was as if she had conjured his heart away, and he could no longer hear any false notes or botched fingering.

  She stopped. “Come in,” she said in her low voice. “Ah, you startled me!”

  As always in her presence, he felt his chest constrict. The air was hard to breathe. To rid himself of the sensation of being buried alive, at once he felt compelled to move and talk. So: tight, constricted gestures with his hat and his gloved hands, harsh, officious speech in his nasal voice.

  Pensive and calm, Nicola Ceausescu sat at the stool between the candelabra, gazing at him over the lid of her miniature grand piano. And because his head was still full of her interrupted music, and because she was as still and beautiful as any statue of any goddess in any temple of the city, he felt as if he’d staggered drunk and unwashed into some perfect sanctuary of potential grace. “Ah, ma‘am,” he continued desperately, “I am privileged to announce to you the culmination of many weeks of investigative toil, which was occurring just as I predicted as I spoke to you last night before the train arrived from Buda-Pest. My sergeant Vladimir O’Brien, whom I left in command there while I was in Chiselet—a few hours ago he visited me in my office with the news that Pieter de Graz and the Popescu girl have been apprehended—taken alive, according to your orders—and are being held in Mogosoaia. I am unhappy to report five patrolmen were killed, shot in cold blood by that devil with the face still of a boy or a young man, obviously the result of some kind of conjuring or manipulation, as well as the Gypsy girl who was traveling with them and who could not be revived. O’Brien brought me as a token of success, two objects which I know have been of a concern to you, and which you have requested—here.”