The White Tyger

by Paul Park

  She had always excelled at reading people’s faces. He almost didn’t need to speak. “So,” she said. “My old friend.”

  All day long it had been threatening to rain. The heat and dampness were oppressive. Nicola Ceausescu sat back in her chair. A small book of poetry was lying open on the table, just a dozen pages tied together. She picked it up and fanned herself, a few slow strokes. Even his nasal, officious speech, when it came all in a rush, would be endearing, she decided.

  IT DID NOT seem that way to him. “Madam, I have just come directly from the offices of the Roumania Libera, where I was able to receive a preliminary copy of tomorrow’s newspaper. At the beginning of the week as you must know, the editors will publish an artistic commentary and their theatrical reviews. Because of your long service to the Roumanian people, they have allowed me to show you this.”

  The article took up most of the front page. It was in the form of a general editorial under a bold-faced headline: THE CANCER OF DECADENCE. And then in smaller type: In Defense of Our Traditions.

  The ink was so new, it came off on his hands as he passed her the folded sheet. He watched her spread it out on her small table, watched her grope for her wire spectacles and hook them behind her ears. For the first time he imagined her beauty might have a kind of frailty and one day it might disappear—a thought that made it hard for him to breathe. He watched the lines form and re-form on her forehead as she tried to puzzle out the words. Perhaps she’d assumed, because of what he’d said about her service to Roumania, that she would see the usual list of bewildered encomiums—the Libera had always been the more radical of the two daily papers. The baroness had often boasted of her contempt for all her critics, whether they praised her or blamed her. But Luckacz could see she was reading avidly.

  How painful it was for him to watch her, because he knew what she was seeing, had seen it himself—indeed, had seen it written. By her various exclamations and expressions he imagined where she might be in the text. He pitied her and at the same time admired her calmness as she sighed, unhooked her spectacles, and turned to face him.

  “What garbage,” she said.

  But he knew her well enough to know she was affected. How could she not be? “Garbage,” she repeated. “They must hate everything they haven’t seen a thousand times before.”

  And then she went through the process of putting on her spectacles again so she could quote to him: “‘ … When she retired at the apex of her fame, it was from the purest of motives and in order to pursue another nobler vocation, that of wife to a distinguished hero and of mother to his son. In this she showed herself to be an artist of a pure Roumanian kind. For it she justly earned the plaudits of her countrymen, who saw in this choice a culmination of her entire career, during which she had shown herself over the course of many performances to personify in every changing character the spirit and genius of her race, a true daughter of Great Roumania—’ This is not even grammatical! ‘Now, since her ill-advised return to the stage, we have seen creep into her performances the effect of many years of German occupation, by which we mean theatrical ideas that flout our traditions for the sake of flouting them, and for the sake of a so-called modernity that was always more appropriate in Berlin. Most unfortunate has been the way she has chosen to reprise her greatest triumphs, betraying our memories and her own gifts. Chief among these is the travesty of her performance of Medea, at the Ambassadors through the end of next week … .’ Etcetera, etcetera—can you believe it?”

  She was angry. “How can they even say such things to me? All that work when I was young, every line of it was translated from some foreign language. Every note of it was foreign. Now finally there is something that is authentic here in Bucharest—the Germans hate it, too! But for these idiots, what do they want except folk tales and folk music—Gypsy girls with fat knees dancing in embroidered dresses, and copies of copies of something terrible!”

  She did not mention, Luckacz noticed, a single word of one thick paragraph. An actress at thirty-nine could scarcely hope to re-create the roles she had made famous at sixteen, particularly not in the same costumes—this was what the editors maintained. To Luckacz these lines seemed particularly cruel, particularly untrue. Never had the baroness appeared so beautiful to him, as she ran her fingers through her copper-colored hair, and stripped the glasses from her nose for one last time. She looked—tired, he supposed.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter. The carriage will come for me in half an hour. Will you come see an old woman perform tonight? You remember when I first met you, it was because of some misplaced tickets.”

  Yes, he supposed it was. “Madam,” he persevered. “Colonel Bocu-Bibescu is fond of Gypsy dancing.”

  Nicola Ceausecu laughed. “You don’t surprise me.” Then after a moment her expression changed. “Tell me what you mean.”

  He told her how the colonel had withdrawn the lease for the Ambassadors Theatre, on the strength of this article and others still to come. He would close it down for renovations. The new National Theatre and Dinamo Stadium, both symbols of Germanic excess, would also be closed during this period of crisis.

  She looked at him. He blinked, admiring the late-afternoon sunlight on her perfect skin, perfect teeth. “I don’t understand,” she said.

  Then he told her about the militiamen who waited for her at the Malachite Stairs, and who would escort her to her house in Saltpetre Street and keep her under watch until these charges of murder and conjuring could be investigated.

  Despite his anger, despite his disgust and contempt for her behavior, he felt his heart was breaking as he looked at her. One of her big, thick-knuckled hands was laid out on the newspaper. With the other, she touched her hair and neck and collarbone as he spoke to her in his harsh, foreign voice.

  He noticed there was no ashtray beside her, and he had not seen her with a cigarette after that fatal night when he stood with her on the balcony above the Mycenean Gate. And the smell of tobacco smoke seemed to have dissipated from the room. Was it possible she’d managed to abandon this dirty habit? He’d always deplored it, thought it was unsuitable for women. She had washed her hands, he noticed. The nails were unlined, unstained with nicotine. So was she capable of change? Was it possible that she could transform herself in the right circumstances?

  She rose. She turned, stood with her back to him at the threshold of her bedchamber, where she kept her alchemical machines, he knew. “And this is for the sake of an editorial letter that has not yet appeared. Radu,” she said, the first time she had used his given name. “You are a brave man to tell me these things.”

  But she didn’t reproach him, even though he had betrayed her. Even though she must have guessed he had betrayed her. Instead she faltered and went on: “Aren’t you—doesn’t it occur to you—to be afraid of me?”

  Then she turned. She stood by the piano in her summer dress. As was her habit, she wore no jewelry or any other adornment. But he imagined, as he saw her lips move, that she was muttering some kind of spell, because she did seem to change a little bit. And perhaps it was a trick of the light where she stood now in shadow. But she did seem ominous to him, and sinister, and beautiful beyond words. Perhaps she’d released something into the air that made it hard for him to breathe. Even now, he asked himself, what would happen if he forced himself to go to her and take her in his arms?

  “These are superstitions, ma’am,” he croaked.

  She relaxed and smiled. “I suppose you’re right.”

  Her next expression was so melancholy and regretful, he had to speak. “Ma’am, it might not be too late. If I could take you to the colonel and if you could promise to release a statement of support for his people, his candidates in the elections he has planned—something of that nature …”

  She laughed. “Beau-cul,” she said—beautiful bottom. “Perhaps on the election cards there could be a symbol to express his name.”

  So that was that. But she went on: “There is one thing. This article, as
you call it, though it is nothing but slander, as you know. It will appear in tomorrow’s edition of the Libera?”

  “A special edition,” murmured Radu Luckacz.

  “A special edition. And because of it, Colonel Bocu will close the Ambassadors for renovations?”

  “Yes. I will speak to the manager tonight.”

  “He will be disappointed. Every night they have pulled me back onto the stage with their bravos, sometimes more than twenty times.”

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry.”

  She raised her hand, showing her unbitten nails. “That does not interest me. But you must tell me—what about tonight? People will be arriving at the theater in half an hour. The soldiers could take me and bring me back, or to Saltpetre Street. You yourself could accompany me. You will understand that these are lies,” she said, indicating the paper on the table. “All of them are lies, except the things you know that are the truth.”

  She was talking about the death of Kevin Markasev, Luckacz guessed. “Please. My art has been my comfort,” she said. “Now that Felix is gone.”

  It was impossible, what she suggested. He’d always avoided seeing her on stage, because he understood nothing about modern art. No, that wasn’t it. But he did not wish to share her in a crowd of men.

  Never had she seemed more beautiful to him. Was it possible, after tonight, that he would never again stand beside her like this, intimate in the same room? And in the newspaper he had read a description of one of her costumes. It occurred to him that he would like very much to see her wearing such a thing.

  “Please,” she said. “Perhaps I’ve gone on too long—it’s true. Perhaps it is time for me to retire. Perhaps you will tell me, my old friend. You’ll be the judge. I promise you have nothing to fear from a poor woman with the world against her. But you must not rob me of my last performance, my finale.”

  No, he could not. And he would not rob himself of the pleasure of her company. Coming up the stairs to her apartment, he had imagined terrible reproaches from her lips. But even without that, everything would change after tonight, and perhaps it had all changed already. He could tell from her and how she treated him. But perhaps that was what the theater was—a pretense of reality, of authenticity. The Baroness Ceausescu was famous throughout Europe for her skill.

  And Luckacz also might have hidden talents. Bocu be damned!

  But they would have an escort of soldiers. And more policemen would surround the theater. Nothing would go wrong. This is what he would say to Bocu: He was protecting him from moving too fast in advance of public opinion, as it was interpreted in the pages of the newspaper.

  He would let Nicola Ceausescu play Medea one more time. And he would sit and watch her or else wait for her backstage. He imagined all this in the corridor outside her chamber, while she composed herself and made her preparations. As he spoke to one of his men and sent him off, Luckacz asked himself for a moment if she might try to trick him or make a fool of him. He checked his watch and hesitated by the door. When all the soldiers were dispatched, he wondered if he should bring them back to fetch her out. He put his hand on the knob to see if she had locked the door, but then it opened inward and she swept past him without a word. She wore her long red coat, and her expression when she looked at him was sad and gentle and contemptuous.

  He deserved nothing more. All that day he had nursed his sense of outrage and humiliation, preparing for the moment when she would be gone from him, dead to him, and here it was. He followed her downstairs. And he supposed her attitude, regardless of anything that had passed between them, was natural for an artist putting on a role—she couldn’t talk to him, couldn’t acknowledge his presence if she wanted to, even if she felt she had to justify herself to him one final time before the end. No, she was the prisoner of her art, and she would treat him like a spy and a thief and a traitor whatever she felt, not that he deserved anything different. Perhaps he was the one who should beg for her forgiveness.

  How could she have forced him to do what he had done? Was it possible he could explain himself? No, the time was past. As he followed her, he could tell she had assumed a personality that was not herself, that would reject all explanation as weak and craven. For tonight, for one last time she was the ancient queen of Colchis, imperious and passionate—not that he knew much about the character of Medea, other than what everybody knew. She had had a palace near Constanta, and she had murdered her own sons in the old days.

  “Ma’am,” he said, “please …,” but she wouldn’t answer him. Perhaps after the performance, when she could drop this artifice … What nonsense was he thinking? Tonight she would not sleep in the People’s Palace. She would not come back to these rooms. No, she was making her good-byes as she walked the corridors to the Spanish Gate, nodding at servants or soldiers or Bocu’s officers, or else ignoring them. Tonight she’d spend in house arrest in Saltpetre Street. Was it possible Luckacz would never be alone with her again? That from now on he would have to share her with all the other men who loved her and hated her, all the men who bowed or stood out of her way in these lower rooms?

  He stopped and let her go. He watched the back of her red coat move through the crowd in the empress’s reception hall; there were soldiers at the opposite doors to wait for her. Several men came up to him and he refined his orders, wondering what Bocu would make of this. Was he disobeying his instructions? He no longer knew. There was some imprecision, some room for independent choices, and the main thing was accomplished. He had caught the white tyger in a trap.

  He followed her carriage to the theater. Soldiers on horseback rode in front of her, clearing the way. Soldiers rode behind her with their sabers drawn, while the crowd stood on the pavement; Luckacz arrived close to the hour. He had given himself time to speak to the manager and procure a ticket at the last minute, one of a pair that had been reserved for Colonel Bocu and his wife. The reservations had been cancelled suddenly that afternoon.

  Luckacz was relieved. Elena Bibescu would not have enjoyed herself, he felt sure. In his carriage he’d been nervous he wouldn’t find a seat, particularly when he saw the people massed between the columns of the porch. He was also nervous he might not be properly dressed—it didn’t matter. There were plenty of men like him in Bocu’s gray uniform, and plenty of others in Antonescu’s black and green. There would be a fight between the two of them, that much was sure.

  His fauteuil was in the middle of the third row. The Ambassadors was a brick building in the center of the old city, built in a maze of cobblestone alleys. Bocu was right: The building was in need of restoration, Luckacz thought as he sat watching the people take their seats under the gas chandelier, as he listened to the loud, flat talk. The white paint was faded in the hall, streaked with soot. There was no magic here, no conjuring. The footlights smoked and flickered in a semicircle under the proscenium. Then the room was dark, and everyone was quiet, and Nicola Ceausescu was onstage.

  He had noticed in the program a synopsis of the play, which mentioned a number of supporting characters and musicians. So he was surprised to see the baroness standing by herself, dressed not in some approximation of antique royal splendor—he had expected, he supposed, a gold headdress, and necklaces, and earrings, such as he’d once seen in the museum in Constanta when he had first come to Roumania. Instead she wore an ordinary peasant’s costume from the mountains, a colorless ragged dress below her knees. And when she opened her mouth, he found he could recognize the tune. There was a flute playing somewhere behind the painted scene.

  But he knew nothing of Florio Lucian’s music! No, this was part of a melody he had heard the baroness go over late at night while he waited outside her room in the People’s Palace. With a dawning sense of confusion and horror and fascination, Luckacz realized he was listening to the overture from The White Tyger, which the baroness had been preparing all these years.

  Later this work would be performed in all the capitals of Europe and in all the great opera houses. There would be a f
ull orchestra and a stage full of actors, dancers, singers. But at its premiere in Bucharest, it was presented for the most part as an unaccompanied cycle of songs. And when Nicola Ceausescu started to sing, her voice was low, toneless, weak, cracked, and faltering—it didn’t matter. Radu Luckacz found himself sitting forward like the others, straining to catch and understand each note, each word.

  This was the story of the baroness’s life, how she’d been born in a hut with a sod roof, all that. Everyone knew this story. The details didn’t matter. But the crowd sat bewildered, hypnotized, and astonished. It was as if they watched a magician or a conjurer produce a series of predictable effects—a rabbit in a hat, perhaps, or a pigeon, or a bouquet, or an endless stream of colored handkerchiefs—yet with an intensity and conviction that suggested an entire world of magic, genuine and menacing and beautiful beyond belief. If the magician’s coat is threadbare, it doesn’t matter. Even if you see and understand the trick, it doesn’t matter.

  At each break in the story or else each new song, Nicola Ceausescu would change her clothes. She wouldn’t leave the stage. Luckacz saw there were many costumes scattered on the floor in little clumps around her feet, and she would strip them off or draw them on with scarcely a gap in the music. But the footlights would dim and flicker without human agency, it seemed. For a moment, always, she’d be standing unclothed, naked on the boards, making no attempt to hide or display herself. And at these moments she was never more than almost seen, almost unseen, her small breasts and narrow hips, the shadow between her legs. Prostitute, beggar, pickpocket, actress, bride, baroness, mother, widow, bankrupt, conjurer, murderess—all the familiar and hidden stations of her life’s journey. Luckacz found himself traveling with her along that road, as if her theme or subject was his own failure and triumph, his own moments of nakedness. Sometimes she danced.