The White Tyger

by Paul Park

  And in Ratisbon, after Miranda’s father’s death, she had had a baby, and she had given that baby up after one day. What did she have to teach Miranda now? What right did she have even to talk to her? Did she honestly think Miranda was going to listen to her as she continued: “ … No, no, I don’t care what you say—we must be grateful to Madame la Baronne, whose husband was once your father’s friend. It is she who used her influence to liberate me from Ratisbon, as well as her son, Felix—have you met him? No? Well, he is very young. No—here he is!”

  TO NICOLA CEAUSESCU, watching in the glass, the princess in her movements had now lost any suggestion of a cat. Instead she seemed like a chicken circling the base of a young tree. She was studying her daughter’s clothes but not her face, feinting and darting, jerking forward and then pulling back. And now a little chick came hopping behind her out of another room. Nicola Ceausescu put her hand out, eclipsing the image with her hand. Yes, she was feeling discomfort, embarrassment, but no pleasure at this scene. Where was Radu Luckacz, Vladimir O’Brien? They were late.

  But then mercifully the bell began to ring.

  7

  The Ouijah Board

  RADU LUCKACZ WAITED where he often did, in an antechamber off Constantin’s Mezzanine. He sat with his hands on the black knees of his trousers, perched immobile on the front edge of his chair. By contrast, Sergeant Vladimir O’Brien ranged around the room, examining the paintings and the fabric of the curtains. Radu Luckacz watched him.

  The sergeant was a tall man, well formed, slender, with a shock of orange hair above an unformed, freckled face. There was always a sheen of moisture on his thick lips, which seemed vaguely misshapen, and he licked them constantly. So—a thug; Luckacz was a student of criminal physiognomy, and he imagined a careful study of the sergeant’s cranium would reveal all kinds of suggestive lumps, evidence, maybe, of sexual perversion and violent impulses. His eyes, too close together, compelled attention nevertheless, a glossy brown color that seemed at odds with the rest of his face and which betrayed his mixed ancestry: part Roumanian, part riffraff from the English isles, washed up in Europe after the wreck.

  But he moved in an interesting way—self-conscious, athletic, self-controlled. And his dress uniform was beautifully cut; apologetically, Luckacz glanced down at the greasy brim of the black hat in his lap, wondering what a physiognomist or phrenologist might make of him. In particular, he wondered what he might think if he had been able to examine side-by-side two photographic portraits of himself—the kind of tight, focused portraits taken in prisons or madhouses—one showing him today and one five years ago, the first time he had waited for the baroness in this room.

  Perhaps the differences would have suggested to him—an impartial observer—the five-year ravages of drunkenness or an addiction to narcotics. Surely then he’d been a different kind of man, with a young daughter and a loving wife—ambitious, maybe, and willing to compromise. What’s wrong with that? The world is as it is.

  Everything had been so hopeful then, hope plucked from despair after the collapse of the Roumanian armies and the German occupation of the city. When Kevin Markasev was brought to the police station, and Nicola Ceausescu also, and with her Luckacz had lifted a new standard of Roumanian pride, something for his adopted countrymen to catch hold of and believe in after the empress’s flight. The white tyger, born out of the invented sacrifice of Kevin Markasev. And that had been a hoax, but not an evil one. The boy had not been mistreated after all, but had lived in luxury in the Strada Spatarul. Doubtless the Germans would have killed him without qualm. Of course Radu Luckacz had also profited.

  Five years later here he was, bossed and bullied by German officials, surrounded by men like Vladimir O’Brien, and no closer to what he most desired.

  Nicola Ceausescu swept into the room. Luckacz raised his head to look at her, his absinthe, his morphine, and his schnapps. He sprang up from his chair with his hat in his hands, while O’Brien turned from the window. “Oh, I am sorry I am late!” said the baroness, hesitating and then coming toward him so he could smell the faint, astringent odor of her skin. “Oh, my friend! And is this the brave Sergeant O’Brien? The hero of the Mogosoaia woods—not a sergeant for much longer, I am sure!”

  O’Brien stepped toward them, took the hand she offered him, bent over it and maybe even touched it with his rubbery, wet lips—Luckacz couldn’t stand it: “I must insist it is too dangerous to keep that fellow here. I mean the criminal de Graz. This morning we have come from the funeral of one man, a patrolman with seven years’ experience, a widower with three children who are now orphaned. I have come just now from planning a subscription. If this fellow, this devil had not been wounded and without the use of his right hand, I’m sure the death would have been greater. As it was, two mastiffs had to be destroyed. Five men are dead … .”

  His voice—harsh, nasal, unpleasant—trailed away. “Oh, I don’t believe we have a cause to worry,” said Nicola Ceausescu. “Sergeant O’Brien has seen to his accommodations here. A devil, as you call him! So, I wanted to see the devil’s face! I wanted to see the man who as you say has caused such damage, and try to understand why anyone would take up arms against this government. We can learn things from our enemies! Please put me down for a contribution of one thousand marks for your orphans’ subscription.”

  She spoke to him, but she was looking at Vladimir O’Brien, who had released her hand. What was she thinking? Was she disgusted, as she should be, by this fellow’s ugliness, his lips?

  “Madam,” said Luckacz, “your compassion is well known. On behalf of the victims—no, I must insist this is not the only scoundrel left in Bucharest. Two nights ago in the Champ de Mars there was an attack upon your carriage, an anarchist or else the agent of a foreign government. Thankfully the event was not successful due to the interference of a loyal citizen, or so we thought. A bottle of vitriol was discovered at the precise locality, and a soldier of the Timisoara Rifles was slightly injured when the liquid splashed across his foot.”

  Officious, irritating even to himself, Luckacz’s voice grew softer and then stopped. What was the baroness thinking now? She turned to him, gave him her full attention, cocked her eyebrow. “Sergeant O’Brien, will you wait outside?”

  The fellow actually saluted, turned on the heel of his expensive boot, and departed. She didn’t look at him. Her eyes didn’t leave Luckacz’s face, and she was fresh-faced, happy, smiling until the door closed. Then her expression changed, not because she frowned, flared her nostrils, grimaced, or anything like that. In fact she scarcely moved, scarcely breathed. It was the significance of her expression that she altered, as if she spoke the same word in a different context. Like a sensation on his skin, Luckacz could feel her anxiety and wrath. “How dare you?” she said. “How dare you say these things to me?”

  “Ma’am, I must imagine that—”

  She cut him off. “It was Kevin Markasev!”

  “Ma’am, as I say we have no confirmation on that point. But if—”

  “It is Markasev. Don’t you read the papers? There was an attack on Koenigslander in the Danish Opera House. In his dressing room. By his own son!”

  “Ma’am, I’m afraid I cannot see … .”

  OF COURSE HE couldn’t. He could not pretend to understand her. He stood with his hat in his hands, massaging the worn brim, his mouth almost invisible under the black moustache that every day seemed larger and more luxurious as the rest of him dwindled—of course he couldn’t see. Now he was going on about the other man, the yellow-haired stranger in the expensive coat—the beautiful man, and as if sidelong, the baroness caught a sudden glimpse of his clean face and his bright eyes. But then she was pulled back by Luckacz’s droning voice—the stranger who at first (the investigating detective thought) had interrupted or frustrated the assault, but then apparently had disappeared with the anarchist or suspected anarchist, and perhaps was even responsible for hiding him from the police who now were searching door to door in t
he university district where there were many cheap hotels, and where the trail had led. Even at the site of the attack the fellow’s struggle to disarm the anarchist (or alleged anarchist) had resulted in a larger disturbance. Several bystanders had lost their footing, and several policemen and soldiers also; it was during this disturbance that the men had disappeared—one in a woolen cap, one (as the baroness had quite possibly observed) in a camel’s hair coat. His identity had not been discovered, despite the questioning of several persons at the scene, including the Bibescu brother and sister, one recently married to the celebrated Colonel Bocu, the other on medical leave from the armed forces in Moldavia.

  “I understand now why you waited so long to tell me about this. It reflects on the competence of your department.”

  “Ma’am, the Timisoara Rifles are serving under German officers, as you know. I myself had gone to Mogosoaia to secure the prisoners there. I did not return for several hours after these events. When I brought you General Schenck’s revolver, as you recall, I was not aware of the details.”

  She did not care about his excuses. “But you must take personal charge of this. You must be the one who catches Kevin Markasev. And he must not make any kind of statement, and no one must see his face—do you understand?”

  She was close to him, almost close enough to touch him if she’d put out her hand. “My old friend, this is a danger. Already Ambassador Moltke has brought me an official notice of her government’s displeasure over this affair of the Hephaestion and the anti-German rioting in Chiselet.”

  “Ma’am, I was about to tell you …”

  … Nothing, he could tell her nothing, for there was nothing to tell. Now as he was speaking, suddenly the danger she was in was clear to her, although the day was bright and warm. She was aware of the buzzing of a bee on the windowsill. There were fruit trees in the courtyard. Someone had left the window open. Now the bee was in the room.

  Now suddenly her troubles swarmed about her, two at least. First and greatest was the notice she’d received from the German Embassy and the Committee for Roumanian Affairs, advising her of an investigation into the wreck of the Hephaestion—an urgent subject now the violence in Chiselet had spread to neighboring villages. But under her own roof, she could not help but be aware, as if from some malignant self-destructive urge, she had gathered together several candidates for her unofficial but still powerful position, any one of whom the potato-eaters might prefer: Clara Brancoveanu or her daughter, or maybe even the baroness’s own son.

  And it was true what the Germans obviously suspected. It was she who had brought the radium from Abyssinia. Jean-Baptiste had handled the bill of sale. And it was true also that Kevin Markasev was alive, and her dead husband had poisoned him against her, turned him into a weapon he manipulated from the land of the dead. Doubtless also he was responsible for the attack on Koenigslander. And if the potato-eaters or the citizens of Bucharest ever discovered that the cult of Kevin Markasev had been constructed out of lies, then it would be the end of her as well.

  “Ma’am, though I appreciate the difficulty, I must assure you that there is no reason to think the boy Markasev was involved in this event, though as you know my department has been searching day and night for him in workhouses and shelters for the indigent, since you released him from the Strada Spatarul … .”

  How could he dare reproach her in this moment of crisis? She could not explain to him why she was sure the man in the woolen cap was Kevin Markasev, the boy her husband had given her to make up for the son that had been stolen away. Baron Ceausescu had given her a boy, full-formed, half-grown, and he had loved her and helped her and pulled Miranda Popescu out of her aunt’s artificial refuge in Massachusetts—what a peculiar name!

  No, there was nothing about the hidden world that could be revealed to men like Radu Luckacz. So the solution to this problem would not lie with him. “Please,” she said. “When you leave me, send the sergeant in. I have a word for him.”

  She was rewarded by a crease of pain across the policeman’s face—no. not rewarded, for she felt it, too. When he was gone, for several moments she stood alone in the bright room, watching the light shine through the curtains, listening to the buzzing of the bee, feeling sad for the abrupt dismissal of her oldest supporter and confidant. Nor was she encouraged when the sergeant reappeared, a cold-hearted killer, obviously, and one who now felt free to imagine, she was sure, several types of favors and intimacies. The baroness watched the knowledge of them flit across the fellow’s hideous, expressive face.

  “I’m surprised the Chevalier de Graz was taken alive,” she said.

  He shrugged. “Miranda Popescu,” he began, then stopped. But the baroness knew what he was trying to say. His face was easy to read. If the girl had not surrendered when she did …

  He stood against the big looking glass. Nicola Ceausescu examined the reflection of his back—his dark blue uniform with silver braid, his tight collar flecked with powder. She couldn’t decide whether it was natural or artificial. For her old friend Radu Luckacz’s sake, she was glad she’d put him in his place.

  Sulky and defiant, he stood with a smirk on his wet lips—oh, he would work to please her now! “I must be at the theater at seven o’clock,” she said. “But come to me at six. I have a task for you and I rely on your discretion.”

  She also had a task and till six o’clock to find out what it was. “Do not ask for me here and do not come into the gate. Do not wear these clothes. Come to the servant’s door below the chapel. Ask for Jean-Baptiste. Do not give your name. I will tell him to watch out for you.”

  But after she had left him and hurried up the stairs to her own private apartments, she felt sickened with remorse. No doubt it was partly or even mostly due to her bad treatment that Kevin Markasev had turned against her—oh, she had used him and abused him! And for the sake of what strange whim had she told a lie to the ghost of her dead husband, that she had betrayed him with Herr Koenigslander when he worked at the National Academy? Now the ballet master, also, was the victim of her clumsiness. The baroness cast her mind back. He had been a handsome man. He’d had a habit of winking at her, trying to brush against her, trying to kiss her hand, which was why, she supposed, he was punished now.

  This much was certain: She herself was the source of all her difficulties. But was this true for everybody? Or was it a mark of greatness? Her own choices, after all, had taken her from a dirt-floored shack in the Carpathians and brought her to this high room overlooking the Piata Revolutiei.

  She closed the door behind her, leaned against it. She bent over the washstand to cool her face, then continued on past the ornamental screen into her hidden laboratory. She unlocked the little door and ducked inside.

  Some of the machinery, left from her husband’s time, she’d barely touched. Now in the cramped windowless space she lit the lamp. With the phaeton still smoking in her hand, she examined the dusty surfaces, the jumbled masses of glassware she had had transported from Saltpetre Street—what for? Her husband had almost beggared her with his experiments when he was still alive.

  The ansible she used, the crystal pyramid, the adamantine mirror, and a few other devices. And of course she had read his books, his translations of Zosimus and Trismegistus, among others. She had learned from him, she now conceded; how could he have tried to hurt her in this way? And even worse, how could he have been so cruel as to use the boy? In what alembic or beaker had he mixed the stray cells of her flesh and hair, and surely something from himself as well—this must have been after she had closed her bedroom door to him, and after he had ceased to be her husband in the normal way. Nevertheless, this child had been his last, best piece of alchemy, and he had turned it against her now, stolen away its love for her—oil of vitriol! It made her skin crawl to imagine.

  Why couldn’t he leave her in peace after thirteen years? What chains of jealousy, desire, or circumstance still connected him to her? Or was it his fate, in the mansion of hell he lived in with
all other suicides, to pick forever through the garbage and old bones of past mistakes? And he was here now, she could tell. She could smell the garbage and the old bones, too, the stink of death that clung to him after these years.

  She had not summoned him. Still, here he was, an evanescent shadow in the crystal pyramid, and the stink of the barnyard—the red pig of Cluj, as he’d been known in his own regiments when he was Prince Frederick’s friend. There he roamed and wallowed on the ironwood table under the crystal roof, scraping his tusks on the smooth surface in which, silvered and occluded as it seemed, Nicola Ceausescu caught a glimpse of her own reflected face. And as always, it seemed small-featured and sour to her, a constant reproach, a vision of herself that only she could see clearly in all the world.

  And there was a noise, too, the scratching of a rodent somewhere in the chamber—no, it came from under the eaves. There was the wooden card table she had not used in years, and the ouijah board still on it, and the ivory planchette that now was moving softly through accumulated dust, pushing it up into pillows and long trails as it crept from letter to letter. She stood above it with the lamp. DRTY HORE I KLL U FLTHY & DEMON HORE

  His spelling had never been the best. Often she had puzzled over his manuscripts, trying to make out even simple words. But the meaning was plain now as always, and it had the effect of relaxing her and focusing her mind. Her enemies would not rest. All her life she’d been one woman by herself against the world. Sentimentality and the leisure to look backward—these were luxuries she couldn’t afford.