The Story That Cannot Be Told

by J. Kasper Kramer

  As usual she was right. When wood burned in the kitchen, it heated up the whole cottage.

  The snow changed life a great deal in the mountains. I had to bundle up till I waddled every time I went outside. It took a lot of effort to keep the animals dry and fed and make sure their water didn’t freeze. Sometimes we had to use blankets to cover the goats. Not watching your step could be treacherous too—snowdrifts were often deeper than they looked, and icy patches were everywhere. As long as we were careful and dressed right, though—like in my tataie’s white sheepskin coat, which was big enough to cover us both—spying on the soldiers became much easier for Gabi and me. We could drop down out of sight or dip behind a snowdrift in a heartbeat.

  Unfortunately, the snow and the late arrival of the bulldozer did little to help the poor Bălans. The man in the brown suit made their tavern and inn his base of operations, eventually forcing the family to leave. Gabi and I watched from her doorway on the day that an army truck came to drive Ioan and his family away.

  “I know he wasn’t always nice,” I said, “but I still feel bad for him.”

  My friend nodded as the innkeeper loaded the last box of things into the truck. They could take only what they could carry. They’d only been given a day.

  Just before Ioan climbed up into the cab, he spotted us and told his father to wait, running over. My friend went stiff as a board.

  “You two are planning something, aren’t you?” Ioan said. “I’ve seen you darting around, whispering all the time.”

  Gabi stepped behind me, so I puffed out my chest. “If you want us to tell you our secrets, we won’t.”

  Ioan shoved a piece of crumpled paper into my hand.

  “I don’t want your secrets,” he said. “But you can have mine. These are directions. Some of the older boys and I were going to fight off the soldiers, but I’m the last one left. You’ve got to take over. You’ve got to make them leave. I hope you’re as tough as you act, Ileana.”

  Gabi and I looked at each other when Ioan was gone. Later that day, we followed the notes scribbled on the paper, walking first down to the half-frozen stream, then farther out into the woods. Finally, in a small cave under drooping evergreen branches, we found what the boys had been hiding: weapons. A stash of good throwing rocks, some of them already stuffed into snowballs, which were heaped in a great pile. Homemade slingshots and sticks sharpened to points. Our eyes widened.

  For the rest of the afternoon, Gabi and I sat in the cave and made plans. Attacking the soldiers head-on would be foolish, but at the very least we needed to be ready for them to attack us. Since I’d nearly been caught outside Old Constanta’s, we’d been too scared to keep meeting in the church, so we made the cave our new headquarters. Gabi drew diagrams and sketches. I organized all my notes, searching for clues. We perfected birdcalls as signals. Mine was a female Ural owl’s warning bark. Hers was the male’s mating song. We took the boys’ weapons and hid them all over town. There were some by the schoolhouse, some at the hill by my grandparents’ cottage. The best stick—the one with the strongest wood and pointiest tip—was just inside Gabi’s yard, tucked in the snow-covered bushes up next to the fence. Sometimes, on days when Mrs. Sala didn’t open the school—which were becoming ever more frequent—we’d sneak to the barren fields and practice fighting.

  “So if this was the tavern and someone came from around here”—I gestured, motioning to an icy tower of hay—“then you could knock the gun out of his hands.”

  I demonstrated with a stick.

  “And if you were over here by the store,” Gabi added, “then you could fire a rock at his head.”

  She demonstrated with a slingshot. Her aim was very good.

  Gabi’s map had all sorts of symbols, like for our stockpiles of weapons or the places to hide if things got really bad. She wouldn’t draw a key, in case the paper fell into enemy hands, so we had to memorize all the meanings. Spying on the soldiers continued to go well. One man always smoked four cigarettes back to back, lighting each with the tip of another. One had an allergy to dairy products and got angry if anyone offered him cheese. The Securitate officer who’d stopped me sometimes whistled folk songs when he was alone. This all seemed like very important information.

  No matter how much we planned, though, most things we couldn’t control.

  The officer in the brown suit ordered the remaining villagers to the tavern one by one. When Mrs. Ursu finished her talk with him—still dressed in black from her head scarf to her shoes—she went straight to her house, got a bag, and walked right out of town. A soldier offered her a ride, but she cursed at him and he backed away. The man in the brown suit was still feigning patience with stubborn old farmers like my grandparents, who simply refused outright to leave—though quite a bit more delicately than Mr. Bălan had done. The man nodded a lot and expressed sympathy, insincere as it was. He told them to spend some time coming to terms with the situation, hinting about consequences if they weren’t gone by the new year.

  The truth was, if the soldiers needed the rest of the villagers out, they could have forced us to go at any moment. Their real focus was on something entirely unrelated. Gabi and I donned my grandfather’s sheepskin coat when we went out to collect clues. It was hard to perfect our movement together beneath it, but over time we became experts—able to blend perfectly into the snow at a moment’s notice. We watched as groups of men disappeared into the forest, sometimes not returning for days. There was also a wall inside the tavern you could see through the window that had a map of the mountains all marked up. More suspicious than even that, the mysterious tarp-covered pile of metal boxes kept growing. Every week it got taller and taller.

  “I know it’s a dangerous mission, but we’ve got to find out what it is,” I told my friend.

  She agreed.

  That evening, when my grandparents were cleaning up from supper, I lied about having forgotten something for school and managed to get permission to go down the hill. I took a flashlight and met Gabi near the edge of the woods. She kept watch while I burrowed through the snow on my belly. When I was close enough to the pile, I rolled onto my back and read the word spray-painted with stencils onto the boxes: AMMUNITION.

  “Do you think there really are terrorists in the woods?” Gabi asked after we were safe.

  “My uncle’s pretty hard-core, but he’s no Rambo,” I said. “I can’t imagine all that’s for him.”

  Gabi gave me a weird look. “Who’s Rambo?”

  “A really angry guy with a bandanna.”

  On top of everything else, things were happening in other parts of our country. Sometimes my tataie and mamaie and I would go to Sanda and Gabi’s to listen to the news. The veterinarian would check outside to make sure we were alone, and then she’d go down to the basement to retrieve Mr. Ursu’s portable radio, which his wife had left behind. Sanda would thread a long, thin wire out the window so we could catch illegal programs broadcast by the Americans. There was news of a student protest in the capital, of civil unrest at one of the Leader’s speeches—something almost too extreme for us to believe. The adults didn’t know what to make of it.

  “What do you think’s going on?” Sanda whispered.

  “Could all this here be related?” Mamaie asked.

  “Please, please, put away the radio,” Gabi begged, tugging her mother’s sleeve.

  She hated when the adults took it out, certain the soldiers would find us—that they’d brought all those bullets for just this kind of thing.

  “Don’t worry so much,” I told her one evening after we’d gone back into her room. “If they attack, we’ve got our plan.”

  “I don’t know, Ileana,” said Gabi. “I mean, look.” She pointed to an empty box on the floor. “Even my mom’s talking now about going. And think about it. Seriously. It’s just you and me. Are we gonna fight all those men? Won’t they only send more if we do?”

  “So what?” I shrugged.

  My friend stared at me like a c
at at a calendar, but I couldn’t say anything more. I couldn’t tell her about my visit with Old Constanta, because no matter what the old widow had said, I didn’t feel right repeating the story that could not be told. I still wasn’t sure what to think of the White Wolf—except for a few stories about ghosts, which of course were all real, I didn’t really believe in my fairy tales anymore. But Old Constanta had been quite convincing. And hoping for the White Wolf to come save us was better than not hoping at all.

  When the bulldozer arrived, though, the last of my optimism vanished.

  Gabi and I were standing at the schoolhouse, stomping our feet, waiting for Mrs. Sala to unlock the door. From down by the roadblock at the edge of town came a great mechanical whir, followed by cracking branches and ice. A black metal beast emerged from the forest, barreling straight ahead—straight toward our teacher’s house. Mrs. Sala cried out, rushing down the road, slipping on snow and skinning her knee through her long skirt.

  “Stop! Stop, will you!” she cried.

  The bulldozer trampled over her fence, splintering the wood all to bits, before coming to a halt at her front door. A young soldier with a mustache came up behind us, breathing hot air onto his fingerless gloves as we stood staring.

  “They were supposed to start with the empty ones.” He smirked. “Oh well. Seems you’re on early holiday. Lucky, huh?”

  I didn’t smirk back, and as we walked home, I realized Gabi looked scared.

  “I told you,” she said, squeezing my hand. “We can’t win against something like that. It’s impossible.”

  When I made it up the hill and told my grandparents what had happened, Mamaie began to collect woven blankets and set them in different stacks by the door, organized by how much she loved them. The same system went into effect for her embroidered pillows.

  “This place is a filthy hovel,” she told Tataie. “I’m just tidying up.”

  My grandfather’s face fell. He buttoned his vest and put on his hat and his coat and excused himself to go outside. From the porch, through the bare trees, he watched the bulldozer start tearing up houses below. I wanted to go stand with him, but my mamaie caught me by the arm.

  “Let him have his air,” she said. “This cottage was built by his father, you know? Your great-grandfather. He’s got deep roots in this mountain.”

  “They can’t make us leave,” I said. “I’ll fight off the soldiers myself if I have to.”

  Mamaie tsked, smacking my hand. “Where do you get these ideas? And here I was starting to think you were clever.”

  “I just want to protect the people I love,” I said, crossing my arms. At the window I watched through the bare trees as the front wall of Mr. Ursu’s butcher shop caved in. Mamaie came over and sighed, stroking my hair, which was long enough now to be braided.

  “Sometimes,” she said, “the best way to protect someone is to hide them or help them get away. I hate it as much as your grandfather, but the truth is, we may have to leave.”

  I clenched my jaw, but deep down I knew she was right. Gabi was too. I couldn’t fight all these soldiers. When faced with just the one, I hadn’t even been able to speak.

  Scanning the frosty branches of the trees in our yard, I searched for dark silhouettes, but the Ural owl was nowhere to be found. With an ache I realized I hadn’t heard her in days.

  Winter was here and she’d left, just like they’d said.

  “What about me?” I asked quietly. “What if my parents never come? What if they’re dead or in prison? What if the soldiers figure out who I am and take me away too?”

  Mamaie shushed me, squeezing my shoulder.

  “Don’t you worry about any of that,” she said, so sharp she sounded angry. “Your parents are safe. And no matter what happens, you’ll be safe too.”

  Late that night, sitting up in the dark by the glow of the stove, I x-ed out on Gabi’s map all the houses in the valley that were now demolished or abandoned. Tataie was so quiet creeping in from the bedroom that I didn’t notice him till he lowered himself down in his chair. I looked up, surprised, and stuffed my papers under the covers.

  “Do you know why Old Constanta went up the mountain each week before dawn?” he asked, looking into the fire.

  I blinked, then answered softly, “To pray?”

  Tataie clasped his hands between his legs and bent down his head.

  “Long before you were born, right after the Second World War, Romania was under great pressure to change—in many ways not for the better—but there were those who refused to give in. They collected guns from the forest floor, where the Germans had dropped them as they retreated. The resisters went into hiding in these very mountains, sneaking out in the dark to fight against the same government they’d just finished fighting to save. Little villages like ours tried to help. We snuck them food and clothes, dug up ammunition buried under our houses. But the state’s soldiers kept coming, and the Securitate found out who was where, giving what. Many of the resisters gave themselves up to save the people who’d helped them. They were shot in the streets right in front of the farmers and bakers and children who’d risked their lives to smuggle blankets and bread. Their bodies were thrown in mass graves.”

  I was still as a stone, my lips dry.

  “Sometimes I wonder,” Tataie said, “if we hadn’t tried to help them, would more have survived? Would they have won in the end? You can never really know what the right choice is. No matter what, you always take risks.” He turned to me then, head lifting, and in the firelight and shadows he seemed younger. “Old Constanta went up that mountain each week to do much more than pray.”

  Eyes wide, I whispered, “There were resisters in the monastery with the monks.”

  “The very last of them,” Tataie said. “The fighting had been over a long time, but they had nowhere else to go, I suppose. Old Constanta brought them news. Carried messages. Sometimes she toted food and supplies hidden in baskets or up under her shawl. It made her look stooped and feeble.” He shook his head. “But there were eyes for the Securitate in our village. There are eyes everywhere—you know that. And when they began to suspect even an old, lonely widow, she found someone new to start helping: a young girl who could steal potatoes and milk and run secret errands, traveling up the mountain in the dark to deliver letters and medicine.”

  I couldn’t help the smile that crept to the edge of my mouth. “My mother did all of that?”

  Tataie nodded. “I suppose she’s never really stopped, has she? Copying those poems for your uncle. Risks, like I said. Not just to her, either. Look what it’s done to your family. Look at the ruin it’s brought here.”

  My eyes fell to my toes, ashamed, because it was true. If my uncle hadn’t come, the Securitate wouldn’t have followed. The village might never have found its way onto the Leader’s systemization list. Dim, warm light from the stove flickered for a long time between us, and when my tataie spoke again, the words came from somewhere distant.

  “You can never really be sure how stories will end, Ileana. The only thing certain in the whole world is that the whole world will change.”

  I looked back up at him and saw his lips purse.

  He said in a low, sad, sad voice, “They’ve found your uncle. Your mamaie didn’t want to tell you, but I thought that wasn’t fair.”

  My eyes widened, and I thought I would cry, but I didn’t. I suppose I’d only been waiting to hear it out loud. I lifted my knees and wrapped my arms around my legs, looking away.

  “I know you’ve been keeping some secrets,” my grandfather continued. “I won’t tell you what to think or how to act. We all have to do what we believe is right, and those are choices no one else can make for you. But know that there are people who love you dearly. And know that everything has consequences. Everything has a cost.”

  For a moment my heart froze in my chest. I thought he had discovered the plan. It would have been easy, I realized—to peek into my notebook, to stumble across a stash of weapons hidden som
ewhere in the yard. But Tataie’s eyes had fallen on something nearby, and I followed his gaze with my own.

  The loose floorboard, barely peeking out from under my pallet.

  “I understand you have a responsibility to your family,” he said, “but remember that part of that responsibility is keeping yourself out of harm’s way.”

  When my tataie went back to bed, I lay awake by the light of the stove, watching the last of the coals turn cold and black.

  Had I imagined it? The connection between my uncle and the tale about Old Constanta? Had Tataie intended to reveal it at all?

  Like in Mamaie’s phone call to my mother, all those months ago, were there words hidden in my grandfather’s story?

  Above my head came a scratching and tapping on top of the roof. Snow, disturbed from the frozen, stiff hay, slid down in great, noisy heaps, thunking onto the hard ground below.

  Clack-clack-clack. A hoarse, high-pitched bark.

  She had not abandoned us, our owl.

  And even though I’d lost my voice, I would not abandon him, either. Not now. Not ever.

  Not when I knew exactly where my uncle was.

  Snowbound

  In early December, more Securitate and army trucks arrived in a swarm. Huge vehicles crowded the dirt road through town, giant guns built right into their backs.

  “What is all this?” Mamaie hissed, watching the soldiers march by as we walked down the hill. “Who are they planning to fight?”

  I glanced at Tataie, but kept my mouth closed.

  Besides my grandparents and Sanda and Gabi, only a dozen or so villagers were left: a few stubborn farmers and, of course, Old Constanta. Several relatives had tried to get her to leave, but the widow refused to be moved. Soldiers had even gone in, meaning to carry her out, but Old Constanta spat and clawed and bit and swore till the men stumbled from the yellow house bleeding and furious. When her last caretaker left town, Mamaie and Sanda started checking on the old woman each day, feeding her broth and making sure she was warm.

  “If we go,” my grandmother said, glancing at my grandfather, “and I’m not saying we will, but if we do, we’ll have to make sure she comes with us. We’ve got to think of a way to convince her.”