In the Red (18 page)

T
his image here is a royal seal for a medieval voivode who bore the same name as the last man Romania ever called voivode. It is round, like a coin. At its summit, between the sun and the moon, flies an eagle with a cross in its beak. This is the coat of arms of the principality of Wallachia. Below this is a shield bearing the head of an aurochs, crowned by a star. This is the coat of arms of the principality of Moldavia. Below this are two standing lions gripping a sword, treading on seven mountains. This is the coat of arms of the principality of Transylvania. Bracketing the three symbols are two crowned figures. Who is this voivode who ruled all three principalities hundreds of years before they would come together as Romania?

Along the circular edge of the seal is written in Cyrillic Old Church Slavonic,
Io Michael Voivode of the Lands Wallachia Transylvania Moldavia through the very Grace of God
.

The voivode on the seal held these three lands together for a solitary summer in the year 1600. He was assassinated the following year by a former ally. A twentieth-century scholar was known to have observed that never in Romanian history was such glory so closely followed by such failure. Nineteenth-century unifiers were known to have cited Michael the Brave as their precursor. It is not known whether the voivode Michael had in mind any such nation. It is known that he was greatly ambitious, an exceptional personality. His rule was war-filled.

A stern bearded face. A voluminous hat. Those are sustained in representations of him. However, the features of the face change shape; his gaze shifts from straight on to sideways and back again in various portraits of him. He is praised as a great Turk killer, a force against the oppressor. Unless he is himself an oppressor. Sometimes it takes a bit of work to piece together whose neck is under the boot, and what's more, it is not certain who is wearing the boot. Somebody must be. There are a lot of crushed necks.

Like all Romanian voivodes under Ottoman rule, he had to purchase his throne with heavy bribes and then pay extortionate tributes to the Porte. For this the prince placed a heavy tax burden on the peasantry, and carried much debt with Ottoman creditors. The story about Michael states that this arrangement did not suit him. The story states that he summoned all his creditors to his palace to divide some of the money owed among them. There would be a great feast in a wooden hall in which the gold would be dispensed. It was a foggy late afternoon when the delegates arrived, the growing crepuscular dark aiding the mist in shrouding everything so that one unfamiliar with the landscape could not be quite certain of the shape of things. The voivode Michael himself was waiting to honor them; he was easy to recognize by the large bulbous fur hat on which bobbed a great plume. Draped over him was a ponderous cape of a red so saturated that it left no doubt that massive quantities of expensive dye were used to achieve the color. This made a good impression of the delegates: it spoke of the wealth he'd accumulated, guaranteeing the large payment he would imminently bestow upon them. With interest.

Known for being acerbic and terse, Michael was with them conciliatory and flower-tongued. We have set a great hall for you, he told them. It is across the courtyard. Enter first, will you please, as my welcomed guests of honor.

There was indeed an appealing scent of cookery, which the delegates followed through a door into a large, dim space. One looked up into the wooden latticework under the roof and thought, These Wallachians are truly backward—their grand hall looks no better constructed than a barn. Another looked down and saw the dirt floor. Another looked around and saw the immense hollowness of the place. There was only a pit inside, over which roasted a solitary pig, impaled from mouth to fundament, its face still reading an expression of startlement. The spit had not been turned in a while; the soft flesh of the pig's underside was starting to char, tinting the good meat smell with the tang of something burned. There was another smell too, underpinning the others, as if something had been soaked into the straw stuffed in the dank corners of the edifice. Only one of the delegates had time to whirl around on his boot heel before the door was slammed shut behind them with a thunderous clap. He threw himself against the entrance as fast as he could but it would not budge—already bolted.

Another delegate took a step backward farther into the darkness and disturbed something leafy with his foot. The voivode Michael's voice came through the wall, as intimate as if he were standing right among them, his announcement carried on breath instead of shivering through the wood. Your tribute, my lords, the voice said, and then somehow found the self-restraint not to laugh despite its evident glee. It might have been that Michael was listening for their reaction.

It was then that the delegates saw that the leafy things were records documenting all the loans they had given the voivode, neatly stacked. The parchment had on them the same smell that emanated from the sprawling straw. The Turks had been locked in the barn with their own accounting. Outside, Michael's voice barked an order in a language they did not understand. One of the delegates screamed. Howled, even, like a cornered wolf. It did not take long for the great heat to surround them close as the devil's breath, the fire licking away at the walls. Their eyes stung with smoke. The flames exploded into a true blaze when they touched the straw, whatever was soaked into it making the conflagration bloom forth into a great yellow plume. One of the delegates violently shoved the accounting documents away with his foot when he realized that they, like all things permeable in this death trap, had been splashed in something that made the fire burn hotter and faster.

It was no use kicking up the papers, snared as they were. But the pages were beautiful as they caught flame while they flew up, up, up farther into the eaves, the voivode's debt tremblingly devoured by heat and light.

I
rina, what do you think I can do about it? Do you think I can go to the police?”

“We have to do something! We can't just let him go on cutting her like that.”

“Look, it is very sad, but there is nothing we can do about it.”

“You need to talk to Vasilii. If you don't talk to him, I will.”

Andrei gave Irina a long, hard look. She would not avert her furious eyes from his. “I would strongly advise you not to do that,” he said evenly.

“You are a maggot.” Irina's voice turned strident.

Andrei did not respond.

“A cringing coward,” Irina went on.

“Look, he is not going to kill her. If he was going to do that, he would have done it by now. And he is not going to cut her up where anyone can see, a pretty girl like that. He has no use for a maimed wife.”

Irina could not remember the last time she felt this angry. And yet she was totally impotent. Her powerlessness only stoked her rage. As Andrei's little woman, she was a subordinate's subordinate, a position that had seldom bothered her before. It was usually rather pleasant to be beneath notice. But when something needed to be done, the freedom of not mattering closed its metal teeth on her and turned into a prison.

Andrei was staring at Irina curiously. “So,” he said, “what was the other thing?”

“The other thing?”

“You said you had two things to talk to me about. If the first thing was about Vasilii carving obscenities into his young bride with a razor, what could the second thing possibly be? What follows that?”

“A scalpel. She said it was a scalpel. And I don't know that they were obscenities. They were in Russian.”

“Darling, I'm making the rather simple assumption that anything written into the flesh of a young girl with a blade is bound to be obscene, even if it's Bible verses. You cannot argue against that, no?”

Indeed she could not. It was difficult for her to speak today. Her dissent was inchoate, and would go unheeded anyway.

“They called him the butcher scribe, in the Soviet Army,” Andrei said to fill the silence, with a certain wonder. “He was a master of the question. He could make anyone admit anything with no props whatsoever. No cattle prod to the anus, no pretend executions, no bucket drownings. With just the words from his clever mouth and his two hands, he could make any prisoner sing whatever was requested. He made up the lyrics and they sang. They said he enjoyed wielding a blade. Nothing big, something small like a razor. It was enough. He was like an alpinist who could reach the summit of a mountain with nearly no equipment. Just a rope and some crampons. An artist.”

“What? You mean he's trying to get some kind of information out of Elena?”

“Oh no, I don't think so. He probably does it for old time's sake. To relive his youth and all that. Why else would he order a girl all the way from home when he could get one here with all his money? He could cut up an American if he wanted. If he paid her enough.”

Did Andrei really not feel anything for Elena? Was he really that comfortable with the sick ways of this shit world? Could she really love such a man? His callousness had to be a shield. It had to be. His irony, his detachment, his seamy jokes—they were all to hide something soft or else she could not love him.

Or maybe it was just the taste of his body she loved so much.

“The other thing, Irina. Go on. You did not have that urgent look on your face just for your sliced-up little Russian friend. Tell me the other thing—you would rather not be put to the question, would you?”

The question. It was such a delicate way to refer to torture. As if there were only one question.

Irina felt as if she were standing at a windy cliff edge, getting up the courage to leap over the side, into a churning pool of ice-cold water. She didn't know the depth of this pool. It would, at best, shock her body into breathlessness. It might be shallow, the rocks just below the surface, waiting to dash her bones to jagged fragments. Little fishes would peck bits of brain from her shattered skull. She would dissolve into the blind sea.

“Andrei,” she said, “I'm pretty sure I'm pregnant.”

It was Andrei's turn to have nothing to say. His eyes widened. He didn't need to ask her to repeat herself. For a moment he looked downright scared. It was an expression so unusual for his face that it made Irina want to reach out and hold his trembling hand.

“No.” He exhaled weakly, as if the word had been punched out of him.

Irina went to soothe him but he subtracted himself from her touch like a wounded animal. He left the room quickly, as if afraid her affection might burn him. She didn't know whether to go after him. She didn't know whether to comfort him or seek his comfort—or if it was better to let his body do whatever it needed to do.

It took him less than a minute to come back. When he entered the room, his stride was calm and decisive. But his face was distorted. There was something wrenched about the mouth, a metal glint in the eyes. In his right hand he carried the pistol from his desk drawer. In his left hand he clenched three bullets, their smooth dull brass warming up in his sweaty palm. Without looking at Irina, he opened the gun's chamber with a flick of his wrist and loaded in the bullets: “One for you,” he said, “one for Dragos, and maybe, if I deem it necessary after, one in reserve for me.”

He aimed the gun—not at her face or her heart, but at her womb. Irina felt the cold from his eyes penetrate her very flesh, course its way around her body like blood. The edges of her vision were starting to blur with white, as if snow were trying to eat her sight.

“You're not serious,” she said, in a voice she attempted to keep steady.

“I am not serious,” he repeated, dryly, as if considering the idea that he was joking and dismissing it.

“Andrei, I love you,” she said, pleading.

“You little whore, I love you too, too much. What a disaster, darling. What a fucking disaster.”

He lowered the gun. With great care, he put it down on the couch pillow, as if it were delicate and needed a rest. Then he sat heavily and suddenly on the couch next to his downed weapon, as if someone had kicked the backs of his knees. “What you are is my fault,” he said, the chill draining from his eyes.

Irina put her trembling hand on her belly. She was mother to whatever was in there, fed by her own blood.

“The baby is yours, Andrei. It doesn't belong to Dragos.”

It was the first time Irina had called the thing inside her a baby. The word clearly hit Andrei hard too; he had tears in his eyes when he answered, “I know it could not possibly be mine.”

“How many times was I with you? I was with Dragos for one afternoon. It has to be yours.”

“Irina, in all my life I have never made a woman pregnant. And Dragos—Dragos might be twice as rich if he hadn't had to pay for all the abortions of his pillhead lady friends. The timing is just too damned convenient, darling, isn't it?”

“Even if it's not yours, it's yours. As I am yours.”

Irina watched Andrei trying to swallow down the idea that he had made life. She knew how he felt. She still could not wrap her mind around the fact that she had made life herself. For a man, it was easier to turn the idea away, to say,
That thing is not mine
. For a woman, there was no escape.

Andrei opened his arms to Irina, but for a moment she did not obey the summons. She could still see the revolver sitting quietly among the pillows. Then something broke in her and she went to him. She went to him and let him enfold her, breathing in the warm scent of his neck, which she loved so much. She felt his body tremble like a fallen leaf in the wind. There was a ragged gasp. Was it a sob? Was he crying?

“What are we to do?” he said. “Are we to marry? To make a little American family? That is more than crazy for us.”

She looked up at him, at his swollen red lips and his wet, gleaming eyes, and could not imagine how to answer such a proposal, if what he'd said had been a proposal. He must have seen the questioning terror in her eyes because he smiled and said, without the rising inflection of a question, “How do you stand me, my darling. How can you possibly stand me.”