The Story That Cannot Be Told

by J. Kasper Kramer

  For a moment Tataie stopped playing, and the cottage went quiet except for the crackle of wood. But then, after a twist of a peg, he nodded, and my Mamaie’s eyes went back to her work. She passed the shuttle through yarn as she spoke, the rhythmic slide of the reed and creak of her feet at the treadles weaving the story into the world.

  “Once upon a time, something happened,” she said.

  I took out my notebook and readied my pen.

  The One About Old Constanta

  There once was a devout woman named Constanta who lived in a village in the mountains. She prayed every day, and though she could not read, she always kept close her psalm book. Her house was modest and yellow and right across from the lovely old church, which had colorful paintings of icons all over the walls. She appreciated that she never had to walk far for services.

  Constanta’s life largely consisted of tending her garden and taking care of her family, but eventually her children, all girls, married and left. Soon after, her husband, who’d survived the First World War, was killed in the Second. Some women might have crumbled, but Constanta stood strong. With the church so nearby, and with such a nice priest, she wasn’t lonely at all. Most of her time she spent praying and generally minding her own business.

  She was still a mild, sensible woman back then.

  She was a mild, sensible woman until the night the priest vanished right out of his home—right out of his bed—never again to be seen.

  The man had been kind but so simple. He’d spoken his mind far too loudly. The Red Army’s occupation since the Second World War was nothing to bring up in a sermon. Soldiers appeared in the village soon after the priest disappeared. Everyone gathered to listen as an official in a brown suit and tie explained how the land and the animals and the tools now belonged to all the people.

  The property of the church became the property of the country—as did the property of the farmers. And the villagers came together to churn the dirt and grow the crops. And the state came to take the crops far away.

  The church across the road from Constanta’s house sat quiet and empty. Vines grew through its glass windows and painted walls. The colorful icons chipped and faded.

  Constanta became Old Constanta, though she’d been old a long time already.

  Her neighbors took pity, believing she was a tame, fragile thing, liable to break at a whisper now that so much had been lost. They checked on her regularly. They brought her food and helped with her chores. When she called them nasty names or spat at their feet, their only reaction was to shake their heads.

  “Poor old dear, hardly knows where she is.”

  The village children were not quite as forgiving. They were frightened of Old Constanta’s sagging skin and sharp tongue. When she approached, they scattered like mice, but behind her back they were vicious. They left pig dung and dead birds at her door. They told stories claiming that she’d eaten her daughters, cooked them up in sour soup—that she’d cursed her husband so he’d die in the war.

  The stories only got worse when Old Constanta started taking walks up the mountain.

  Every Sunday, in the dark before dawn, she’d disappear into the woods.

  When my mother was still a little girl, it was all the rage around harvest time to loiter in the road that ran through the village. The trucks would come up and stop to load crops. And since the trucks were driven by young, eligible bachelors from down the mountain, the girls would scurry out of their homes and stand in little groups near the well. The brave ones would lean into the driver’s-side windows and bat their lashes and smile with teeth. Old Constanta always watched from her porch, palm flat on the top of her prayer book. She would stare with cold eyes till the trucks drove away.

  My young mother, unloading vegetables and fruit from horse-drawn carts, would not talk to the men in the trucks, though they always tried to get her attention. She would not giggle with the girls by the side of the road. Instead she would hum to herself as she watched Old Constanta.

  To the rest of the villagers, the woman was a shame and a burden. She celebrated holidays thirteen days after everyone else, refusing to change to the Gregorian calendar. She prayed in the ruins of the old church.

  To my mother, Old Constanta was the most interesting person in town.

  Some Sundays before dawn, my mother would sneak out the front door in the dark, take the stairs down the porch of the cottage, and hurry beyond the stone walkway to the edge of the trees. If she timed it just right, she could catch Old Constanta in passing. Eventually, these Sundays became ritual—my mother rose in the dark as if to a call, watching the wrinkled old woman creep up the mountain step by haggard step, a great hump under the shawl on her back.

  Then one early, early morning, while the world was still black as night, my mother tiptoed out of the cottage and crouched down in her usual place just as a lantern appeared through the trees. Cloth shuffled. Bones creaked. A cane tapped on the stones.

  “I’ll have a word with the one who’s been watching me,” a croaking voice called.

  My mother froze, terrified. She imagined Old Constanta pinching her by the ear and dragging her back into the cottage. But even though she was frightened, she peeked her head out from the bushes.

  “I’m sorry, Old Constanta. I didn’t mean anything rude. I just wanted to find out where you go every week. Will you tell my mama?”

  Old Constanta scoffed and again began hobbling up the mountain.

  “If you want to know where I’m going, then come.” With a glance at my mother’s nightdress and shawl, she added, “But make sure you cover your head. We’ll soon be in the house of the Lord.”

  My mother didn’t hesitate. In a breath she was trailing the old woman’s heels. “Is it far? What sort of house could possibly be out in the forest?”

  “There’s an ancient monastery at the top of the world,” Old Constanta replied, “one of the few in these mountains left standing. The monks there have kept themselves hidden, copying books. Their brains are still all their own—not washed and dried up like the others.”

  “How exciting!” my mother said, but then looked over her shoulder. Already her cottage was out of sight through the trees. “Will I be home before dawn, Old Constanta?”

  “If we hurry,” the woman said. After a moment, though, she looked back. “But you’ll cover your head or I’ll guide you no farther. And don’t ask me to stop and let you rest, because I won’t.”

  My mother covered her head with her shawl, eyes wide. Up the mountains they went. Up higher and higher. For an hour they walked in the dark, the lantern swinging from Old Constanta’s wrist. Then, quite unexpectedly, following no sign in the path that my mother could see, the woman turned away from the worn stone stairs and stepped into the trees. Farther and farther they traveled this way, till a wolf howled in the distance and my mother stopped in her tracks. Ahead, Old Constanta did not slow.

  It was in that moment that my mother realized no one knew where she was. No one even knew she had left. She was in the middle of the woods, in the night, off the path. Already she was tired from hiking.

  And something was wrong with the trees.

  The deeper into the forest they traveled, the higher and higher up the mountain they climbed, the stranger the trees looked. Some bent at their trunks in the middle. Some spiraled round and round and up like a screw. Some had branches jutting out of their thick, exposed roots.

  Worst of all, my mother wasn’t even sure it was still Old Constanta she followed.

  Watching the feeble, hunched woman ahead, she feared she’d been tricked by the Mother of the Forest and was being led away to the witch’s dreadful little house.

  But my mother had no choice. Surely, she couldn’t find her way back on her own. She hurried forward and kept near the old woman, night sounds edging closer. The twisted, ugly trees grew stranger and larger in size. Again the wolves howled. Ferns shifted at my mother’s ankles as dark shapes were disturbed from their hovels. When she reached
up to move a low-hanging branch, something long, slick, and heavy dropped with a thud to the grass and slithered away.

  Finally, moonlight from a distant clearing could be seen through the trees. Old Constanta crossed herself again and again. “Not much farther now,” she said.

  But my mother was exhausted. She had to rest. Her feet were aching. She was hungry, and her nightdress was stained brown and black at the hem. Mud stuck to the soles of her boots.

  “I don’t think I can go on. Could we stop for a minute, Constanta?”

  The old woman didn’t even glance back. “It’s not safe here in the forest.”

  They walked a bit farther, and again my mother complained.

  “Just for a few minutes. Please, Constanta, please.”

  “Didn’t you hear me, child? It’s not safe. Just over this hill, then we’re there.”

  They walked a bit farther, and this time my mother could take it no more.

  “Constanta, I must catch my breath. There’s a stick in my shoe and my shawl won’t stay put. Can’t we just sit down on that rock while I fix it?”

  Old Constanta looked over her shoulders, and sure enough my mother’s shawl had fallen, dragging now through the leaves. The old woman peered around. All was quiet, moonlight spilling down through the boughs. A few paces away was a white-faced rock, jutting out from the earth.

  “Just for a moment. Just to tidy your shawl. We shouldn’t linger,” she said.

  So together they sat on the rock. My mother unlaced her boot to fish out the stick, and Old Constanta picked the leaves off the shawl with her knobby, pale hands.

  And then the wolves howled again.

  One call came from below. A dark figure dashed through the trees. The other call came from just at their backs. They didn’t have time to look, time to turn, time to duck before it leaped right over their shoulders.

  A massive white beast.

  My mother’s scream caught in her throat as he slid to a stop on the trail just below, then looked up—straight into her eyes. The wolf’s silken coat shimmered, and in the space of a drawn breath, he darted into the woods and was gone.

  My mother couldn’t find her feet fast enough.

  She ran past Old Constanta, not stopping till she’d reached the top of the world. There, outside the monastery, she collapsed to her knees, gasping for air. When the old widow finally caught up, she pursed her lips disapprovingly.

  “Perhaps next time you’ll listen,” she said. “Always remember, in this forest you’re never alone.”

  Together they went inside the monastery to pray, and on the way back down the mountain, my mother did not ask once to rest.

  Tracks

  It had been nearly a month since I’d left home, and still there was no sign of my parents—not a letter, not a phone call, not anything. School was set to start in a little over three weeks, and it was becoming a serious possibility that I’d have to attend class in the village, so Mamaie and Tataie took me down the hill to meet Mrs. Sala, the teacher.

  On our walk through the valley we passed the two-room schoolhouse, which in the summer was used to store produce and seeds. I peeked through a window and saw the desks all pushed up to the walls, piled with tools and burlap sacks. The floor was covered in dirt, and from the tracks on the wood, it looked like a goat or two had gotten inside. I thought it was funny, picturing a goat in the school, so I made a note in my book.

  Mrs. Sala’s house was little and blue, with a fenced-in place out back for the pigs. Right down the street was the abandoned old church, where vines grew through broken glass and over the faded paintings of icons. I squinted, looking closer, and spotted a lonely wicker basket sitting outside the busted double doors, which seemed a bit strange. The townspeople thought the old place was haunted. They wouldn’t even use it for storing goats.

  Since Mrs. Sala lived near the schoolhouse and the abandoned church, that meant she lived near Old Constanta’s house too. Everything was nearby in the village. I could see the old woman’s cottage from Mrs. Sala’s front porch. The curtains were drawn and the grass was overgrown.

  “Does she still go for walks up the mountain at night?” I whispered.

  “Of course not!” Mamaie said. “She’s far too old now. And the monastery has been empty for many, many years.”

  But Tataie made a noise in his throat. “Well, someone’s been traveling up that path. Seen their footprints in the forest.”

  Mamaie prodded him with her elbow as Mrs. Sala opened the door. She was plump and she wore her head scarf much tighter than my grandmother. Her nose was straight and thin, and her eyebrows rose right to the top of her forehead when she saw me.

  “My gracious, look at those clothes. Do they let girls dress like this in the city?”

  “I suppose they do,” Mamaie answered politely.

  I tugged on my white shorts and looked down at my brown tank top. Here in the village they had many more colors. Some people dyed the cotton themselves or embroidered vests with designs. At first, I’d thought that was the trouble—that I looked horribly plain. Now I realized that the problem was that I didn’t wear dresses, but I still couldn’t understand why it mattered.

  Mamaie explained that my parents were “having some trouble financially” and that I would be staying “till things even out.” I knew this was at least partly a lie.

  “Don’t worry,” I added. “They’re coming to get me real soon. I probably don’t have to go to school with you at all.”

  “But just to be safe,” said Mamaie, placing a hand on my shoulder.

  I nodded. “Yeah, you know, just to be safe.”

  Mrs. Sala’s eyebrows were still clinging to the top of her forehead, but she smiled and nodded and stepped to the side.

  “Why don’t you all come in, then, and we’ll have a nice chat,” she said.

  Mrs. Sala’s husband was out back helping birth some piglets, so he didn’t join us. We could hear squealing in the yard as the schoolteacher stepped into the kitchen. It was very difficult to find coffee—my parents complained all the time—so no one was surprised when Mrs. Sala explained she didn’t have any. However, since she was a proper host, she returned with glasses of water and tiny plates of chunky black cherry jam for each of us. I picked at the treat with my spoon while the adults talked.

  “We were hoping you could give Ileana your homework assignments. That way she won’t be behind when class starts,” Mamaie said.

  My mouth fell open.

  “We’re so close to the end of the holiday, though,” said Mrs. Sala. “Didn’t you have homework for your city school?”

  I nodded, sitting forward. “So much. Tons of homework. Boatloads of it.”

  “And how much have you finished?”

  “All of it, like forever ago,” I said, and Mrs. Sala’s eyes narrowed. I’d always found it both enchanting and frustrating how easily teachers could sniff out a lie.

  “You have it with you here in the village, of course?”

  I glanced at my grandparents, then looked down at my feet.

  “She was so excited to come stay with us,” Mamaie said. “Poor dear forgot to pack it.”

  “I see,” said the schoolteacher. She picked up a pad of paper and a pencil and passed them to me. “Could you write down the assignments you remember?”

  I smiled, big and cheesy, panicking. It would have been much easier to remember something I’d done—or at least something I’d considered doing. After a couple of minutes I passed back the paper with only a few items, half of which I’d made up. Mrs. Sala barely glanced at the list before setting it down. She explained the importance of following the state curriculum, how unfortunate it would be if I got behind. Mrs. Sala was a good Communist.

  “If there’s even a chance you’ll be joining our class here in the village, you’ll need to have studied the same material as the other children,” she said.

  My heart sank to my toes as she brought out books and supplies, calling special attention to t
he bug project. It was the hardest of all the assignments. It had a list five pages long with little boxes to check and black-and-white pictures to use as a guide. Everyone was supposed to catch as many bugs as they could and pin them to a board. While Mrs. Sala was going over the instructions, I started to feel really awful. I’d been sure I’d left my homework so far behind that there was no way it would ever catch up to me. Now I had three weeks to complete a whole summer’s work.

  “Since you’ve already finished so many similar projects at home, this should take you no time at all.” The schoolteacher smiled—a special, knowing smile just for me. I gave it right back but with teeth.

  The next day, in the grass behind the cottage, I spread out my books, lining them up by size and weight, and then made dandelion wreaths for the goats to wear on their heads.

  In the back of my mind was the bug project, but I had serious qualms about the whole thing. I’d never liked catching bugs for science. I only liked catching them for fun, then letting them go. I hated the way their tiny bodies popped when I poked them through with the pin. I hated how they tried to flutter or climb out of the cotton-ball jar. Earlier that morning I’d tried to catch a few beetles and worms, but they were worth very few points, and I’d wound up freeing almost all of them.

  Just as I was wondering how much trouble I’d get in for turning in nothing at all, a thin, white-and-green, veiny butterfly landed on top of my notebook. My eyes darted to the homework sheets on my left. I picked up the checklist, trying to move as slowly as I could, and turned pages till I found the right section. Sure enough, she was there—a type of Pieridae. While playing alone, I’d spotted dozens of butterflies with shimmery blue wings, and more than a couple of the fat, fuzzy kind, but I’d never seen any like this. Because she looked just like a leaf and was so hard to find, she was worth twenty points—a gold mine, more than triple most anything else.

  The butterfly twitched up off my notebook and alighted on the gate of the goat pen, balancing on the tip of a wire. I reached for my net without looking. I stood up and inched forward. But a breeze swept through the backyard and the Pieridae took flight.