The White Tyger

by Paul Park

  “She is in the amber room,” said Jean-Baptiste.

  SHE WAS IN the amber room. Her nostrils were full of the tawny dust. Open and vulnerable, she sprawled across the floor. But this strange man, Andromedes, was not a danger to her. He was too sick for that. She was aware of some slight disappointment.

  “Please,” she murmured in his ear. “You must tell me where she is. I mean Miranda Popescu. The woman who has killed my son.”

  Lolling on her back with his head against her ribs, she could feel the heat from his body under her hands. Above them Mintbean bumped along the ceiling, his little face impossible to read. “Tell me,” she repeated. “Where is she? For the sake of my dead son.”

  This phrase brought back a memory not of Felix but of Kevin Markasev, whom this man had known. But that was not the connection. For she remembered Markasev as he had been, tied up for her and waiting in his room in the Strada Spatarul—but there’d been nothing filthy about that, nothing obscene. Nothing to make her body feel alive. But here, no, she must do this to get the information she needed. That was all.

  De Graz, she’d have him executed out of hand. But Miranda Popescu, she would punish her, because of her involvement with this crime. And there was no more ambiguity about the baroness’s feelings. She would strip the golden bracelet from the girl’s wrist, and the crowd would roar for her. She would stand up on the cannons in the Piata Victoriei and the crowd would roar for the white tyger. Nor would they remember the half-German girl, tainted as she was by her father’s potato-eating name.

  All this was in the baroness’s mind as she bent over Andromedes on the amber floor, her dress open at the neck, her corset unlaced. The man had penetrated her defenses, that was sure. She had given something, and she wanted something in return: the golden bracelet. Colonel Bocu was establishing his power in Bucharest and the tara Romaneasa. She needed power of her own. Her skill, obviously, was not in public administration.

  She was thinking these things as she pried Andromedes’s mouth open and kissed him on the lips—she couldn’t help herself. For an instant she remembered the repulsive Vladimir O’Brien and his cold, thick, slippery mouth; Andromedes was not like that. His lips were blistered, dry. Under dark eyebrows his astonishing eyes, blue speckled with darker blue and gray, stared maliciously and sightlessly into her eyes. His pale skin glowed or seemed to glow under a layer of hair so fine it was transparent.

  This was a magic, dangerous moment. The door was unsecured. Anyone could walk in on them at any time. Bending over him, pushing his hair back from his forehead, holding his chin in her other hand, the baroness uttered words in the language of Hermes Trismegistus, mispronounced, inappropriate. It was a text she had found in her husband’s papers, and with the sheer power of her intention she made something out of nothing, pried open his mouth so she could see his numerous sharp teeth. “Dog excrement,” she exulted. “Is that what it is?”

  And she was rewarded by a stream of foul words in the English language: “You are such a whore,” etc. “Get off of me, you piece of shirt …”

  And at the same time Mintbean descended as if summoned by these words. He drifted down into the thicker air. The motion was more like swimming than like flying as he kicked down. Andromedes’s collar was laid back, and there were many bites or claw marks there between his neck and his shoulder blades.

  But at the moment when the little creature somersaulted down out of the ceiling once more, it occurred to Nicola Ceausescu to wonder why she wasn’t like everybody else. Why did these situations always fall apart, transform into ugliness and violence despite her best intentions? She had not come here for this. She had dressed herself, painted her face, and for a moment she allowed herself to imagine a different type of encounter with Sasha Andromedes—a table in some secluded restaurant perhaps in Venice or Vienna or someplace far from here. Low, murmuring music. Perhaps some of the new dance steps that had not yet come to Great Roumania—was that too much to ask? Instead she grunted over him like a pig, scratched at him like a cat while he cursed at her. And it was not for her sake he had come, but because of a disease and a compulsion that now forced open his lips, made him choke out a single word: “Stanesti-Jui.”

  It was the name of a village in the Vulcan Mountains. A convent was there, sacred to Demeter. The baroness flapped her hand, and the air forced Mintbean away. There was no reason to torture this man anymore. Not a single moment more. She wouldn’t allow it.

  She rolled him over to his back, where he lay delirious and exhausted. She searched in the pocket of his trousers for a handkerchief and used it to clean his face. And then she leaned down to kiss him again, kiss him again and again, run her hands under his shirt.

  RADU LUCKACZ STOOD in the open doorway.

  As the baroness became aware of his presence, she sat up, put her hand over her chest. Her shoes had come off. Barefoot, she rose quickly and gracefully, but then she didn’t turn away. She stood with her two hands spread over her naked chest. Luckacz watched a blush suffuse her milky skin, moving from her neck across her cheeks and to her ears.

  Never had she seemed more desirable. Her copper-colored hair shone and gleamed, lent luster from the amber walls. Her bare arms and shoulders were perfect to him, and her expression also, a chaotic mix of feelings that included fierceness, shyness, and confusion. Often he had imagined her lying back on her own bed beneath him, just that expression on her face.

  She turned away from him to lace and button herself up. And he could hear his grating and officious voice, coming as if from far away. “Madam, I apologize to have disturbed you. I believe we had an appointment for an interview, and it is already past the hour.”

  He was enraged. If she had even hinted the fellow had assaulted her … But she said nothing about that, only: “Domnul Andromedes is ill.”

  That looked true enough. So she had been trying to cure him or comfort him. No, Luckacz thought, recreating the mix of passions in her face. Did she take him for a fool?

  Still she was turned away, facing the amber wall. “You will send a doctor,” she said. “And you will take some men on the night train to Rimnicu. This is important. The Popescu girl is hiding in Stanesti-Jui.”

  Moaning softly, Andromedes rolled onto his side. This was the man who had been with Kevin Markasev when he died, which made all of this still more indecent. No, she had been pressing him for information. Perhaps that had required some species of false seduction. Ah, God, thought Luckacz. But did she take him for a consummated fool? Go find a doctor, take a train from the Gara de Nord—but why? So she could finish what she started here on the floor like an animal. Oh, this was a bereaved mother with a broken heart!

  “Madam,” he said. “Let me assure you I had no wish to disturb you. And I am gratified if you have discovered a piece of information or a clue, which might well be significant. As you know we are presently undertaking many concurrent lines of questioning. This fellow especially I was eager to interview—”

  An abrupt, dismissive gesture with the back of her hand. She would not even look at him. “It is already done. Please send Doctor Hartnagel and Jean-Baptiste.”

  “Madam, I believe Herr Doctor Hartnagel is already on these premises. I observed his coach inside the gate not half an hour ago. As for your steward …”

  If she noticed the wounded fury in his tone, she gave no sign. Perhaps she was too mortified with shame to look at him, or else she didn’t care. “My friend,” she said, pulling at the laces on her dress, “this village in the mountains—this is a chance for you. I have spoken with Colonel Bocu about returning you to your old post in the police force. It will be possible for me to persuade him, though he has other candidates from his political party. But I think it would be useful for you to prove your worth. As you know, he is hunting down all the old families.”

  So that was it! He had to prove his worth. He must be useful to her, and she to him. But these mechanisms of the heart, this was not how they were intended to operate!


  She was still fussing with her dress, and as he made his bow she didn’t turn around. The man Andromedes had lapsed into something like unconsciousness at her feet. Even so, and even if the doctor failed to revive him, he was the lucky one, Luckacz thought.

  He staggered from the room. In tears, for a moment he leaned his cheek against the wall. He’d left the amber gallery, could no longer see inside the door. What was happening there now?

  For several minutes he stood listening. He took his handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his face.

  Herr Doctor Hartnagel was a neighbor in the Floreasca. Luckacz’s wife was his patient, but he was often in the palace now, looking after Clara Brancoveanu. Since the death of Felix Ceausescu she had suffered from neurasthenia and sleeplessness.

  Slowly now, the door shut. The baroness had closed it from the inside. Luckacz turned away. There was nothing more for him to see or hear.

  De Graz had murdered the boy, but Miranda Popescu was quite obviously his accomplice in this and every other crime. Perhaps that was the source of the old princess’s condition, Luckacz considered grimly as he climbed downstairs. He looked forward to the day when these hereditary titles were condemned by law. The Germans had recently considered such a step, but it had failed by a single vote in the Reichstag.

  And now this German doctor who had chosen to stay in Bucharest—Jean-Baptiste must already have searched him out, and he met the fellow on the stairs. Dressed in a top hat, carrying a black leather bag, he was hurrying toward the amber gallery.

  Despite their acquaintance and their wives’ friendship, he would have passed Luckacz almost without a word. But the policeman stopped him on the landing and took pleasure in stopping him, when every moment perhaps counted. Luckacz couldn’t help himself. Nor could he avoid imagining Andromedes’s prostrate form, spread out along the amber tiles.

  “Herr Doctor Hartnagel, you are the one I am most anxious to see. I must inquire as to the results of your investigation into this sad event, as when I spoke to you most lately it was previous to the autopsy, and I have not yet received your report.”

  “Please, Herr Inspector. The baroness—”

  “—is also interested in this tragedy, because it is a matter of her only son. Allow me to insist. Did you find anything peculiar in your observation? Did you for example retrieve the bullet itself, which was lodged, as I recall you explaining it, in or near the young boy’s heart?”

  “Yes, I did—”

  “And did you find something unusual?”

  “Not at all. Now, if you please—”

  Luckacz had taken the fellow by the arm. Though he was large and prepossessing, like all of these potato-eaters, Luckacz still managed to block his way, because he stood on a higher step. But now the doctor brushed past him, fingering the brim of his top hat. At the landing he turned. “I mean no disrespect. My secretary is just now typing the report. You will have it tomorrow morning, earlier if you prefer. Now I must—”

  His voice was pleasing, his Roumanian flawless, better than Luckacz’s own. Obscurely disappointed, the policeman turned downstairs, then paused to listen to the patter of the doctor’s boots.

  He stood in the middle of the Baltic Stairs. Of course he would gather a detail of men, take the night train to Rimnicu, do whatever was necessary to apprehend these criminals. But in the meantime he rested for a moment with his hand on the marble banister.

  How could he go on like this? No, it was intolerable. He would have several hours before the train. Perhaps he would go home to wait.

  18

  An Act of Mercy

  LATER THAT NIGHT, the Baroness Ceausescu sat at the piano in her upstairs apartment, picking out a tune. Now the dinner hour was past, and she’d been working since the middle of the afternoon on the conclusion of her opera, The White Tyger. Now she was inspired to finish it, and she could almost see the end. For several weeks she’d been unsure, dissatisfied by the marches and crescendos of the first part of the last act, all the stirring music that accompanied her political success. But now all that had given way to intimate and seductive melodies. It was to be expected. Much had changed. Her son was dead.

  The dividing point was the music of that fateful night, initiated by a song that was both toneless and sublime: “What Have We Done?” Though full of anger and wildness, the composition nevertheless contained a theme of self-recrimination, all the more poignant for having been concealed in the cascades of notes. Later, upon reflection, this theme returned, doubled and changed. As is true with all true artists, it was the tone of this new music that revealed to the baroness what she was feeling—not the reverse. A vital spirit such as hers could not persist in misery. Nor was it inappropriate for this new sequence, which was to determine in different forms the entire conclusion of the piece, to grow out of the old—a mother’s love. All love was related. And the pathos that attended the last restatement of the Felix leitmotif—still it was possible to find some hope in it, some vision for the future, after all!

  A mother’s love, that was the key to it. All her life the baroness had been conscious of an instinct to protect. And if circumstances had conspired to rob her of the satisfaction, still the instinct had flourished underneath the surface. Now for the first time she could let it manifest itself. The potato-eaters were gone! No longer did she have to prostitute herself for them while secretly she nursed and fed the flame, the soul of Great Roumania. Now truly she could be a mother to her country, expending on all its citizens the tenderness she had owed to her son—this was an opportunity. And in it she could see the subtle workings of the gods—this was a theme, too—who take that they might give.

  She coaxed out an A minor triad, then the progression, and then the new little tune, as fresh and tentative as a spring flower. Who could have thought her heart could so renew itself, after all her suffering? For most of a week she had scarcely slept, wondering if she would hear on her stairs or in her corridor the footsteps of the metropolitan police or Bocu’s thugs, hear their knock on her door.

  She played it louder, recombined it, her new theme of love. She was no great virtuoso, but even in the mistakes she trusted anyone who heard her could perceive her honesty, the sincerity of her feeling. Finally (and this was the message she was always trying to communicate), nothing was necessary except that, no diplomatic skill or knowledge of statecraft. Even the details of motherhood were unimportant, the day-to-day pleasures that had been stolen from her. And yet always she could hear the hidden melody of regret—Aegypta Schenck, Kevin Markasev, Felix Ceausescu—moving like a snake through the forest of notes. Even when she took her hands from the keys and closed the keyboard. Or even when, as now, she played as loudly as her small strength would permit.

  And it was not just for her own benefit that she played like this, eyes wet, lips trembling. But she imagined she could be heard in the room beside her, which had long stayed empty but was now full. Full of darkness, for the blinds were always closed, the windows covered. The door was locked. She had the key.

  How hot and airless it must be inside that room! Now suddenly she stopped her playing, let her small-featured face sink almost to the level of her hands.

  Almost, if it weren’t for the man who lay listening through the wall (surely the music was a comfort to him!), she could imagine abandoning this room, this piano, and all her plans and intrigues, leaving it all behind! She could imagine listening to the voice of her own suffering. She had choices. She could go or stay. Right now she could turn and go out through the doors, and call for Jean-Baptiste. He would bring her a valise already packed, which would contain an assortment of passports and papers in different names.

  Many times during the past years in moments of despair she’d talked to him about this plan. At first it had been a joke, a way of reassuring herself. But now every step of it was in place; there were passes and letters of safe conduct, scrupulously updated. Nor was there a single way to go, but instead a skein of paths that had proliferated: post horses at var
ious hotels, railway tickets on the local and express trains south, east, west, and even north, for diversion’s sake.

  What person would she be? Could she still manage the young guardsman, in whose clothes she once walked the streets of Bucharest? No, a woman, she would be a woman, and Jean-Baptiste would accompany her, and she would be his servant for a change—a twenty-year-old peasant girl, not too pretty or too clever; could she still do it? Not for long anymore. Once across the border in Trieste she wouldn’t have to hide, and there was money there, enough to bring them in comfort to Geneva and a little house by the lake, and seven million reichmarks in the bank, taken from the discretionary fund of the Committee for Roumanian Affairs. She could live quietly, and perhaps later make a European tour. Jean-Baptiste had handled the details, though she had signed the papers, held the passbook. Several times they had discussed it in the past week alone, a fantasy made real.

  No, she had work to do. And the world still owed her pleasure, after all. She pushed herself up. Half-dressed, she strode the width of the small chamber and pulled open the door into the hall.

  Jean-Baptiste had put her pickled eels on a tray, perched on a low table beside the door. Was it an hour ago? Two? And he had also placed another tray on the threshold of the adjoining room, some sausages and grilled chops. A plate of meat. All cold now and the grease had congealed; the baroness sniffed the air, repulsed but hungry, too. And she drew the chain with its key from between her breasts, fitted it into the lock, opened the door softly, tentatively. “Domnul Andromedes, are you there?”

  Jean-Baptiste had cleared out this room, brought the sick man here, her always faithful Jean-Baptiste. Now she stood in the open doorway, peering into the hot, dark, secret room that might also have been empty for all the noise she heard. No, there was something.

  At the limit of her hearing she could sense her lover’s soft harsh breath. He wasn’t feeling any better. Nor was she able to help him, though her heart bled for him. She wasn’t skilled in any of the healing arts. That was a part of alchemy the baron had not studied. Nor had she.