In the Red (8 page)

C
ars. Irina knew that the business meeting in the building she was waiting for Andrei to come out of was about cars. She'd heard that much when he was on the phone that morning. Rows and rows of glinting cars in a warehouse somewhere. A warehouse Vasilii owned that Irina had never seen. She imagined standing in the middle of it among all the empty, silent carapaces of shiny cars receding infinitely into the darkness. The warehouse in Irina's mind had no walls, only luxury cars parked so tightly together that not a single one could be driven anywhere.

Thousands of cars disappeared every year off the streets, but the cars in Vasilii's warehouse were not those cars. The stolen cars were broken down into parts. The parts were shuffled and put back together as different cars. These reconstituted cars were given new coats of glimmering paint before making their way to Vasilii's warehouse. From Vasilii's warehouse, the cars would be loaded onto container ships to be sold overseas. It was a good, fast business. A business so good, in fact, that Andrei could have meetings about it in conference rooms downtown, in the same spaces as men who did their business in the open, legal world.

There was something about the cars that Irina liked: you could take things apart and use the parts to build new things. Being pulled into the underworld was not so much the end as another beginning. That was the way people thought of weddings—as new beginnings, Irina mused as she gazed at the dress in the glass case. The dress was not quite white. It had a cream bodice, and a full skirt in the faint golden color that retailers call
champagne
.

“Want to try it on?”

Andrei startled her. Irina hadn't heard him come up behind her.

“How did it go?” Irina ignored Andrei's question.

Andrei shrugged. “You know. Investors can be fussy. But it was fine. Everything's moving. So you want to try that costume on or not?”

“Don't be mean, Andrei.”

“Why should I be mean? I want to see how you look,” he said as he guided her into the bridal shop.

The sales representative eyeballed them suspiciously the moment they walked in, and she raised her eyebrows when Andrei asked her to let Irina try on the dress in the window. “Do you have an appointment?”

“Why should I need an appointment? There is nobody here.”

The representative was already bristling in her tidy suit as she slowly looked Irina up and down. “Are you…a relative?” she asked Andrei.

“I am her dear uncle. I think that dress there will quite dazzle the whole family when they come from the old country for the wedding, no?”

“Do have a seat, then,” she said, designating a lavender velvet divan. “I will take her to a fitting room.”

“If you will allow, I must go with her to put her in the dress. It is traditional, in my country, you see.”

Was he stilting his English more than usual? Hamming up his accent? His request gave the saleswoman pause. She was clearly evaluating him, evaluating the two of them. The cut of Andrei's suit meant that he could clearly afford the dress, so she let him follow. She parted heavy white curtains and ushered them into a brightly lit room lined with large mirrors, with a small round platform at the center for the bride. The saleswoman watched Irina hesitate, afraid to step up to it.

“Do fetch us the frock,” Andrei ordered. “I will undress her.”

She didn't answer as she let the curtains fall shut behind her. Andrei laughed. “Did you see that look she gave me? She is dying to know what barbarous country I come from where it is customary for uncles to dress and undress child brides! You can do anything if you say it is the custom in your country. Americans are so afraid to offend.”

As he offered his hand to guide Irina to the platform, he added, “Americans of a certain class, anyway.” He stood back to look at her and then sat on a plush chair in the corner of the room. Everywhere she looked was another nervous reflection of her—and somehow only one Andrei, taking them all in.

“Undress for your uncle,” he said, and her heart hiccuped. She slipped off her sandals, wiggled out of her jeans, and pulled off her T-shirt. It was alarming, in a way, how fast she was standing there in the expensive underthings that Andrei had bought for her. The distance between clothed and unclothed was so short. The sales representative came back as Irina was draping her things on the chair next to Andrei's. In the representative's arms, the bagged dress looked as voluminous as a body. “It's lucky,” she said, “our bride is just the sample size.” She was about to sidle into the fitting room when Andrei stood up and took the bag from her. “You may go, thank you.”

“It's kind of complicated. There's a petticoat—”

“Yes, yes, I am quite familiar with such things, thank you.” Andrei gently pushed her away, and at this point the representative flashed Irina a look that said,
There is something highly irregular here; this is not how these proceedings are supposed to go
. After he had gotten rid of her, Andrei laid down the big crinkly bag and unzipped it. He rooted around until he found the petticoat, an enormously full, ankle-length skirt boosted with tulle.

“Are you really quite familiar with such things?” Irina asked, amused.

“No, but how much of a science is it, really? See, you just open this thing here and step into it and pull it up and close it again. Get back on the podium.”

Once fastened on, the petticoat was a little snug. Even through the protective slip, Irina could feel the crunchy tulle against her legs. “It's itchy,” she said, “and it looks lumpy.”

“Well, it just needs to be arranged a bit.” Andrei knelt at her feet and began to uncrinkle the crushed tulle until it was fully fluffed. It was strange to see him there, tending to her clothes like a mother. When he was done, the petticoat felt enormous, a halo of white swallowing her lower body.

“I look like a meringue,” she said.

“Well, that's what brides are supposed to be, no? All sweetness and air,” he answered as he pulled the long champagne skirt from the garment bag. “Raise your arms now.”

Irina submitted and closed her eyes as she felt the cool fabric slide over her face. She opened them again when she felt Andrei tug the waistband to fasten it. The yards of golden satin felt heavier than expected. The platform had almost entirely disappeared beneath the prodigious outfit, the train unfurled to take up almost half of the room.

“What lovely pageantry,” Andrei said, sighing. “Now for the top. You will have to take off your bra, darling; otherwise the straps will show.”

Why did Irina blush? Had he not seen her breasts many times before? And yet she felt more naked than ever, her skin electric with anticipation when he fitted the bodice over her torso. It was a corset with a sweetheart neckline, an ivory satin jacquard with a leaf pattern and a golden border at the top to match the skirt. Andrei gave the laces a good yank, cutting Irina's breath as the severe paneling pressed in on her body. “Oh, I like that gasp,” he whispered, as if the sly glance he gave her in the mirror when he tightened the corset further wasn't enough to let her know that he wanted to fuck her now. He wanted to fuck her right there in the fitting room, hike up all the crinkly white fluff under the long skirt and fuck her while she braced herself on the cold mirror with the flats of her hands.

“You're dreadful,” Irina said. “She'll hear us.”

“It would be better if she fetched us a veil. I wonder if she would fetch us a veil. Do you feel like a virgin?”

“The dress isn't white.”

“You need to reach in and hike up your tits, dear niece, so they bulge nicely out the top.”

Irina did as he asked, her breasts cool and heavy in her heated palms. “I should buy the dress and marry you,” Andrei said. “Give you a proper Romanian family name.”

The girl in the mirror was Irina but not quite. With a complicated ceremonial white dress, a girl could be pieced into a bride just the same way a new car could be pieced together from several old ones. The dress had power. Irina looked like a painting she'd once seen in a history book. Another pretty woman in a big white dress, the consort of a Romanian head of state. It occurred to her for the first time that the painted woman, under all the white fluff, had a body.

“You won't buy the dress, Andrei, so you better not stain it with come,” Irina said with a sarcasm she hoped would steel her.

Andrei snorted derisively, smiling as he tied up the laces. He didn't have to say that it didn't matter if he stained the dress with come. He had enough money to buy it even if just to throw it away. He didn't have to point out that whatever Irina said, her body was ready for him, that she wanted him to fuck her, that she always wanted him to fuck her, it didn't matter if the corset was stiff enough to hurt her, tight enough to make her dizzy—she always disastrously abjectly pitifully wanted him to fuck her.

“If you faint,” he said, breathing in her ear, “I will cut you loose.”

T
he colors of the image are saturated, almost touchable. The orange velvet on a posh armchair matches that of the curtains in the background, heavily tasseled. The tablecloth is a vivid blue. The bright red of a sash across the subject's chest signals his rank, along with the golden sheen of his clustered military medals and the braiding on his collar and sleeves. A ceremonial sword is at his side. It is not known whether the hues are a touch darkened because this was the painter's style, or whether the lighting in the room where Alexandru Ioan Cuza sat for the portrait was a little dim, or whether the darkness is the accumulated grime of passing time on the paint. Still, plainly visible here is the face of a man long dead. A handsome one, it seems, with well-defined cheekbones, a well-proportioned nose, and a neatly trimmed beard, his gaze looking not directly out at you from the painting but slightly to the right of you, so you are compelled to glance over your shoulder to catch what he sees there.

Perhaps he is a touch melancholy. Or just bored: it is long and tedious to sit for a portrait, especially when there is so much to be done. When the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia were allowed to elect their own heads of state by the Ottoman Porte, they both chose Cuza, handing him the task of stitching together the idea of this new nation, Romania. Handing him the task of breaking the choke hold of the boyar class on the peasantry—the boyar class into which he was born. He is noble as they come, though he cannot trace his bloodline to any of the true voivodes. His long and illustrious heritage may be fit for a king, but he is not a king, and perhaps that is part of his downfall. The new nation, in the pained and dazzled moments of its fledging consciousness, needs a man of flawless lineage, a man with a number or a superlative for his last name, a man they can call voivode.

At four o'clock on the morning of February 22, 1866, they break into the palace. They make him sign his abdication. This happens because he tries to do too much too fast; there is a conservative backlash. It happens because there is an ugly scandal with a mistress. It happens because history says so. On the following day they are kind enough to escort him safely across the frontier. They will import a king from Germany who does not speak the language of the nation he is to rule, but he will try his best.

Cuza settles in France, the modern country he had attempted to mold the new Romania after, with his wife and his two illegitimate sons by his mistress and his mistress herself, who bears the same name as his wife who bears the same name as the scandalous mistress of the one they will call the playboy king who bears the same name as the wife he left her for, the mother of the next king, who bears the same name as one of the daughters of this next king who will be the last man Romania will ever call voivode, who bears the same name as the wife of the dictator who will be executed on the day of the birth of our Lord in the year 1989. There are so many dead Elenas, it is hard to keep them straight.

The homonym, Cuza's wife, you may look at her portrait too, if you like. This one is unfinished, a sketch for a later official portrait. Ink, pencil, and a dash of dilute watercolor to give texture to the dress—but no real hues. You can see the brushstrokes on the yellowed paper, which is in some places turning brown. In its voluminous stateliness, the dress is in its way as impressive as her husband's military vestments. White, a color that shows the slightest speck of soil immediately. Yards and yards of satin with many bows, with much delicate lace at the neckline framing her bare shoulders. There are untold petticoats under her dress, untold boning in her corset to form the large, beautiful bell shape that blooms forth from her tiny cinched waist. A rich, inverted, many-petaled flower. The dress must be heavy, trapping heat with frightening efficiency in its many layers. There is skill in moving gracefully in such a contraption, in not making it look like the enormous impediment that it is. Like her husband, she rests one lax hand on a table. His fingers trail on documents that must be of importance to the welfare of the state. Her fingers arch gently over something that looks like a small box, closed. Some feminine object we are not to identify.

She looks more determined than her husband, perhaps being more used to stillness and boredom, but her gaze, like his, does not fix you directly. Her eyes look slightly to your left, so that once again you are compelled to look—over your other shoulder this time. Still nothing. Was she wearing such a prodigious dress when they burst in on her husband as he was spending the night with his mistress, to make him sign that odious paper? No, probably she was in her nightclothes. Still white, but gauzy and free-flowing. She did not understand what was happening when they sequestered her in her apartments, did not know that she would be gone the next day and would never set foot in the palace again when she shielded her startled eyes against the light of their torches.

At least the overthrown would be allowed to keep their sons, their two sons. The sons of Cuza born of one Elena and raised by the other, born of the mistress and raised by the wife who would not have to watch them die for many more years. A coup d'état, they called this sort of seizure then. Two centuries later they would call it a putsch, when the last man that Romania will ever call voivode would be toppled by a dictator. The dictator is dead now as you look at the painted face of a consort of a bygone head of state. The last king, the last man Romania has ever called voivode, he is alive and in exile on this very day. This very day on which you can visit a replica of the big white dress Cuza's wife wore in her portrait, in a museum situated in the palace built by the imported German king, home of the current Romanian president.