The White Tyger

by Paul Park

  “I believe Colonel Bocu is in the city,” he said. “With his regiment. He understands the need for public safety.”

  He disliked himself for saying this, though every word was true. Still, what a relief to speak in his native language with his wife, the only time he couldn’t hear his own voice braying like an ass.

  She came down a few steps. “I must tell you. You are to call on him this morning at his house in the Strada Italiana. The soldier came last night.”

  This was a coincidence, an opportunity. He had not hoped things would move so quickly. And yet he felt suddenly downcast. “What time?” he said. But in a moment he changed course. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  It was because he knew her well, knew she was holding something from him. She wasn’t like the Baroness Ceausescu! She couldn’t lead him like a donkey by the nose. “Radu, it’s been very bad. People knocking on the door. That nice Doctor Hartnagel sent his family away last week, you know Frau Hartnagel and the little boy. He thinks they’re safe in Debrecen, where the Germans still have soldiers. But the police came to question him after the young baron’s death—as if he had anything to do with that! He tried to save the boy, he told me. Everything’s the opposite now; I’m so frightened. Anyway, last night he came again after supper. Someone had broken into his house. Broken the windows—he said he’d seen you. He had a message for you, some report you wanted, and when he came to the door I—”

  Again the coincidence, and if Radu Luckacz been a superstitious man, he might have imagined the workings of some providence or fate hurrying him along, smoothing his path. “Where is he?” he asked.

  Already he had promised himself he must search Hartnagel out, talk to him again, though he had not looked forward to the interview. And now here was the man on his doorstep.

  He felt a combination of hope and fear. Ibolya came down the last few steps until she stood in front of him. “He’s upstairs. I kept him upstairs in the spare room. He thought you might help him because of the special circumstances. Last night they were going door-to-door, looking for German citizens—”

  How long had it been since he’d embraced his wife? He felt like embracing her now. Was it only because the doctor might give him some new information about Nicola Ceausescu? Surely not, or not entirely. “Come,” he said. “I smell some coffee.”

  But even as they sat and chatted in the kitchen, waiting for their daughter to come down, he found himself rehearsing the phrases he might use in a foreign language once again, to discover the two separate facts he needed to know. Both of them Herr Doctor Hartnagel was in a position to reveal to him. This was not providence, but luck, perhaps.

  Later, in an upstairs room, he took the doctor by the hand. A large man, he was deflated now. The previous afternoon, when Luckacz had seen him on the palace stairs, he might have passed without speaking. Now he grasped both Luckacz’s hands in his. “Your wife has told me you will try to help me. Sir, I cannot express …”

  Luckacz let him go on. He hoped he had some help to give, some influence in the proper quarters. But he wouldn’t show any doubt about that. There would be no point.

  After today, it was impossible to guess what might happen. Who could predict the future, even just a single day? Nevertheless it was important for honest and uncorrupted men to show themselves, and to walk forward in the pretense that the world is a simple place, simpler than we know it to be. Men like Dr. Hartnagel would be the beneficiaries. “Tell me,” said Radu Luckacz. “My wife mentioned a report you had for me.”

  “Yes, I was going over my notes. You asked me a question that seemed peculiar to me, and so I went back to assure myself. You remember you questioned me about the bullet itself, which was your phrase. Do you remember asking me?”

  His face was big and florid. His thinning hair was combed into long, separate lines across his scalp. He seemed eager, even desperate to please. These potato-eaters, Luckacz mused, a random thought. “Yes?” he said aloud.

  “Well, you were right. I had assumed it was a matter of an ordinary lead bullet, because of the morphology and because I had been shown an example of the service weapon issued to members of the metropolitan police force—of German manufacture, as you are aware. I was not concerned. But after the boy’s death and after your question, I went back and discovered that this bullet is of a different metal entirely, lighter and with a larger mass … .”

  This was the first of the facts that Radu Luckacz needed. Perhaps, he thought, a stronger man would have found it the more important of the two. But he pressed on. “I take it you have prepared a document for me … .”

  “ … Yes, yes! Signed and witnessed by my assistant …”

  “That is all correct,” Luckacz said. “Now I want you to remember when I left you, because you were on your way to an examination of a person who exists under the name of Sasha Andromedes … .”

  “Well, yes. Of course.”

  “And you found this person with the Baroness Nicola Ceausescu?”

  “Well, yes. It was her steward who stayed with me after she left.”

  “And?”

  “And?”

  “And so what … did you observe?” said Luckacz. The sound of his voice came to him, harsh, awkward, foreign, insincere.

  The doctor had blue eyes. Staring up at them, Luckacz imagined the fellow had regained some of his superior air: “Well, it’s a peculiar case. A high fever, of course. So, aspirin for that. Still, a peculiar individual. Very … hirsute, is the word. I believe a Roentgen ray, an x-ray as we call them, would reveal some abnormalities. A properly established scientific laboratory such as the one at Humboldt University—well, I believe these tests would reveal more. There was a report of exposure to the incident in Chiselet.”

  “So, but he is stable? Out of danger?”

  “He?”

  Hartnagel seemed puzzled. Was he a fool after all? “I mean the man Andromedes. This is the fellow we are discussing.”

  The doctor did not blink, did not answer right away. “Without a diagnosis or access to a proper laboratory, I could be of no assistance,” he said finally. “But the person you mention, she is not a man.”

  “Ah,” Luckacz murmured. He felt as though he had been stabbed with a needle or a leather-maker’s awl in a private place. And yet, how peculiar the mind is! He had known this all along, all this night and day, though it had taken the doctor to tell him. But the afternoon before in the amber gallery, he had passed right next to Sasha Andromedes as he lay on the amber tiles, hoping, perhaps, to give him a little kick with the point of his boot when the baroness wasn’t looking. And the fellow had turned over onto his back. His shirt was unbuttoned, his undershirt pulled up where the baroness had caressed him, loosened his clothes for him to breathe. As the doctor had mentioned, his naked flesh was covered with a kind of hair.

  “Ah, God,” murmured Luckacz.

  “I must insist this is a peculiar case,” continued the doctor. “When you speak to the authorities on my behalf, you might mention I am prepared to make a new investigation of this phenomenon in Chiselet, provided I am allowed to remain in Bucharest or in Roumania. If there are other examples like this unfortunate woman, it might be the basis of a scientific article.”

  Luckacz doubted if Colonel Bocu was interested in such a thing. He decided he wouldn’t mention it when he saw him, wouldn’t mention the doctor at all unless he had to. In the first instance he must try to regain some of his previous responsibilities, if he wanted to help men like Hartnagel or even his own family.

  So now he sent him away, paced the floor of his study as he prepared himself for his interview. To be summoned to the Strada Italiana was unusual, and Luckacz had no reason not to be optimistic under the circumstances. But he must be nervous, he decided, as he joined his wife and daughter at the luncheon table. All the gentleness he’d felt that morning had now dissipated, and he found himself irritable as he found his wife and Katalin laughing at some foolish joke. Ibolya had been forty when Katalin
was born, and the girl was a younger version of her mother.

  Who could predict what might happen? And because Luckacz bore the weight of many responsibilities, it was normal for him to be disagreeable. To laugh at these inanities, to be calm and pleasant and sentimental, that was too much to ask. “Oh, papa, don’t be so grouchy!”—what did these women know about the world? He had protected them from it, so they could laugh at his expense.

  But he wished he could be sure of the source of his bad temper as he left the house and walked along the street. Someone had decorated the brick wall with an obscene drawing and the words “Beau Cul”—was that anything for Katalin to see not fifty meters from her house? No, there was more to it, other reasons for the sorrow and jealousy that threatened to destroy him. But the political situation was intolerable. In the foreign papers there had been a speculation that the Turks might break the Peace of Havsa.

  When he reached the house in the Strada Italiana, he was made to wait, first at the guard’s kiosk at the bottom of the street and then inside the gate. The sky was threatening, the air wet. Luckacz had not brought his umbrella, and he protested to the guard, whose face he almost recognized. But Colonel Bocu was not yet at home.

  Eventually, though, because his name was on the register, and because he had once been, after all, chief of the metropolitan police, the soldiers let him climb the steps into the house. Then another man in the same anonymous uniform led him to the “library” as it was called, though there were no books in it. But there was an armchair and a desk and a long table with newspapers and periodicals in several languages. Luckacz glanced at the headlines. They advertised the German defeat, the Russian counterattack, the diplomatic triumph in Galati. The Turkish ambassador had been withdrawn. There was no speculation as to why, although Luckacz had heard rumors that alarmed him. There was talk in the city of a secret pact between the Germans and the Turks. Once he had regained his old employment, Luckacz would be in a position to verify this gossip, separate the rumors from the truth.

  Then he heard a movement behind him at the door, and he turned. On the way from his house, he had asked himself whether he should first tell Bocu what he had rehearsed, or else wait for whatever news the colonel had for him. The words he’d memorized and gone over now seemed caught in his throat, and he longed to spit them out, disgorge them right away. But it would be more intelligent to wait—there was no need. He had no choice. It was not Bocu, after all.

  A woman entered, closed the door behind her, turned. Not yet twenty, he guessed, scarcely older than Katalin, and very pretty with her dark eyes, brown hair. Surely this was Elena Bibescu, the colonel’s young wife; how sad she looked! Her eyes were smudged with dark cosmetic powder, rimmed with tears. But her hair was brushed, her hands clean, he noticed at once. She wore a summer dress, one of the gray shades of pink.

  All her gestures were furtive and hesitant. She glanced behind her, then stepped into the room. “Oh, monsieur,” she said. “You are a policeman, an inspector. Isn’t it so?”

  He shrugged.

  “I want to ask something privately. I have no choice but to assume you are a gentleman. Do you understand me?”

  And his face must have confessed he didn’t, because she persevered. “I mean you must give me your word. It isn’t possible for me to make a confidential inquiry. That’s all—no, I’ve said too much.”

  “Madame—”

  She pressed her hands together. “A woman in my position, there are always people watching, you understand. But you’re an honest man, my brother said, the only one in Bucharest to never take a bribe. He’s dead now, dead in this stupid war in the Ukraine—what could I expect? He was not a soldier. I knew the minute Antonescu let the Russians through the front; this wasn’t the end of all the fighting. Valentin explained it. Blown up by a bomb. The letter came on Thursday.”

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry—”

  “This is not what I want to tell you! I don’t need your pity! I want you to promise not to betray me. No, I don’t care. We have only a moment. But I have a friend who has disappeared. I must give his name to the police.”

  “Ma’am—”

  “And I know where he is! Sasha Andromedes is his name—he is not well. Otherwise this woman would not have this hold on him. I remember you used to prosecute these women, conjurers and magicians not so long ago. Every month this was in the papers, jail terms and fines. Now you’ve stopped. Is it because this witch is living in the palace now? Sasha Andromedes was a friend of my poor brother. He is very sick.”

  “Then you must search in the hospitals.”

  She studied him. How painful—the sureness of the young. Sometimes his daughter looked at him like this.

  But what was the point of appealing to his honesty if she was going to lie to him? A friend of her brother’s—was that why she was in tears? Was that why she was afraid to question her own husband? Sasha Andromedes—God curse him. What did he represent? The inadequacy of men.

  But Luckacz would not be cruel, not to Colonel Bocu’s wife. He could not promise her, but it was true: The baroness would be punished for this last piece of conjuring. Elena Bocu-Bibescu would be revenged on her rival. And he would be the instrument of her revenge—that was a way to think about it. Perhaps there was some comfort there for him. “I do not mean to make a joke,” he said. “You understand that in the present circumstances these things are difficult. But I will make an inquiry, as you say, a confidential inquiry as you prefer … .”

  Behind them there were footsteps and the doorknob jiggled. Quick as a weasel, Madame Bocu slipped forward and embraced him, put her cheek against his cheek. Then she was out the door on the opposite side, just as the door behind him opened and the colonel strode into the room.

  For a moment he glanced around and his eyes narrowed, as if he smelled something. Then he came forward with his hand out, a broad-chested man with a powerful grip, younger than Luckacz as so many people were. People of importance. People of influence. He had colorless eyes, cropped hair, a gray moustache. He wore the symbol of his party, an eagle’s foot with the talons outstretched, on an enameled button pinned to his lapel, where Luckacz had formerly worn his own pin of the white tyger. And he started in at once. “I value punctuality and I am sorry to be late. My excuse is this Ceausescu woman, who once more has found a way to embarrass me. You will appreciate this, as it is a matter of public order. Four criminals under arraignment, all disappeared from the People’s Keep. Two men poisoned or some such, one with a wife and child. I tell you if you get your old job back, it will be your first priority to dispose of this—difficult, of course. The two men are useless as witnesses, I can assure you.”

  So Luckacz didn’t have to choose whether to wait or give his speech. Circumstances came together. “Colonel Bocu-Bibescu,” he ennunciated carefully. “I have come to offer you some information.”

  But he could not help but picture the face of the pretty young woman who had stood here praising his discretion not five minutes before. “Sir,” he said, and then he went on in his ugly voice, describing first his investigation into the death of the boy at 351 Camatei—the saturated gloves, the partial interview with Vladimir O’Brien. Then he described the scientific evidence as it pertained to his examination of the bullets in the long revolver, Prince Frederick’s gun.

  As he was speaking, Colonel Bocu moved around the room. Then he drew out the leather armchair and sat down behind the desk. He took a cigar from a wooden box, sniffed it, crinkled it beside his ear. Then he snipped the end and lit it while he put his boots up on the empty leather surface of the desk, staring at Luckacz as he spoke.

  Luckacz watched the toes of his own muddy shoes. He watched the pattern on the carpet spread away from them. So he was taken by surprise when he heard the colonel chuckle and then burst out laughing, while gouts of pungent smoke drifted above his head. He brought his fist up to his mouth to cough, and then sat forward with his eyes wet from mirth. Luckacz stopped talking, reached a kind of
end, while at the same time he was astonished by this man—how long had it been since he’d heard anyone laugh like this? Doubtless the colonel now saw his way clear and straight ahead of him. But that wasn’t the cause of his laughter; it couldn’t be.

  “Do you remember,” he gasped, “how we used to go see her at the old Ambassadors? And now here she is more than twenty years later and she’s still showing her same backside. She’s got a performance tonight; she’s still got us by the short hairs! Kevin Markasev, you say—Kevin Markasev the bold! Admit it is a kind of genius, all these years.”

  And he laughed with his face red, his mouth open wide enough to swallow the whole city. Watching him, astonished, even Radu Luckacz was forced to smile.

  19

  A Final Act

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, he arrived at the People’s Palace with an escort of soldiers from the Brancoveanu Artillery. He climbed the stairs to the baroness’s apartment overlooking the Piata Revolutiei.

  She was at her mirror, looking at her face in preparation for the evening performance at the Ambassadors. Lately she had had to ponder the occasional line or crease, and today a knotted blood vessel that seemed to have risen quite suddenly to the surface over her right temple. These small blemishes, of course, were immaterial. They could be hidden with a little powder, and in any case they were invisible onstage.

  She knew it was he. Jean-Baptiste had a rude way of knocking, a sudden pounding on the jamb with the heel of his hand. But Radu Luckacz was more tentative, the way he scratched at the panel with his nails.

  “Come in,” she said, and he came in.

  But if his knocking was the same, she had to admit he had changed in other ways. Sitting at her mirror, smiling at him with the long brush in her hand, she thought about the day he’d first come to her house in Saltpetre Street. Not so long. Five years or so ago. And he’d been quite well dressed and quite distinguished, with his gray hair combed straight back, his glossy moustache. After that he had lost weight, of course, and taken to wearing the same black suit of clothes. Now he had shaved, and he was bald as an egg. She was responsible for that. And in place of his ordinary felt hat, now he was wearing this new fashion in official circles, this brimless gray soldier’s cap that was constructed like an envelope. And of course this gray uniform of Colonel Bocu’s, with its tin button—a bird’s foot. She had not seem him wear it before.