Mirage Beyond Flames (Coriola) (13 page)

Mrs. Adams had come the previous evening to take Pirata to her own home. The cat had left a bit panicked, to
Linda’s maternal despair. The woman had called a couple hours later to report Pirata was cheerful and had perfectly adapted, to the point that he’d become suspiciously friendly toward Dixie -Mrs. Adam’s neighbor’s cat.

“I hope I won’t be stuck with illeg
itimate grand-cats at this age,” Linda had told him.

Having checked the luggage one more time to make
sure they had all they could possibly need during such a short trip, he called the cab company and ordered a car, giving them Linda’s address.

They reached the airport a little earlier than boarding
time. After all formalities and check-ups were done, they finally embarked.

Gerard found out
startled that his lover was terrified of flying, as well as of any height over ten feet. Considering this, he felt obliged to distract her by talking almost non-stop during the three and a half hours flight.

“
Tell me more about your friend,” she almost begged him, clasping his hand, breathing like an asthmatic in the throes of an attack.

“Breathe calm and deeply, my love, or you’ll hyperventila
te and faint,” he advised. “Now, let me tell you about Jean-Paul. He’s almost sixty, born in Paris. He and my father met during the military service, which was mandatory back then, and they’d remained friends. Jean-Paul graduated the Medical School of Paris. Since then he’s been doing this job with complete abnegation.”

“So how did he land in Romania?”

“He’s married to a Romanian woman, Mariana, but I don’t know how they met. A while back he opened his own private clinic in Cluj-Napoca, the city where they live.”

“And he already started curing people with this treatme
nt he invented?” she asked interested, seeming to have forgotten about her discomfort.

“We ha
ve to clarify one thing, baby. Jean-Paul didn’t invent this treatment. There were others who discovered the healing characteristics of hellebore. They’d even created medication to cure some forms of cancer using it. In fact, everywhere in the world have been discovered methods of treating cancer, HIV, etcetera. But they were never put out on the market. Shortly after an announcement was made regarding such a magic treatment’s discovery, nothing was ever heard again about it.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Good question, baby,” he replied sighing, arranging himself more comfortably in his window seat. “The most plausible and popular hypothesis is that there’s a worldwide conspiracy. A group of people who don’t want these diseases to be cured, for reasons known only by them.”

“People? You mean monsters!” she exclaimed horrified. “Who could do such a thing? Who could indirectly kill so many millions of suffering souls by hiding the existenc
e of a potential cure? Only sick, diabolic minds could do that.”

“Some very powerful people or groups of people, Linda. People who control the human kind. Who can know what their purpose is? It can be one as simple as avoiding the planet being over-populated and all natur
al resources being exhausted, for example.”

“But it’s inhuman! There are other solutions – the balanced division of those resources, the eliminatio
n of waste and this consumption-oriented society. Not use as a weapon illness, despair and premature death…”

She stopped abruptly, a thought flashing through her mind.

“Gerard, if you will succeed in developing a more complex treatment from the snake venom, to treat many forms of cancer, you will become known. What do you think will happen then? What if someone will try to silence you too?” she asked panicked.

He looked throu
gh the window at the clouds which resembled huge cotton rolls. Then he said, with a strange sadness in his voice:

“Linda, I think there’s
a
thin
chance this might happen. I don’t mean about the fame, I couldn’t care less about that. I’m talking about the fact that I could heal extended or complex forms of cancer. There’s a thin chance because the treatment must be a local one. It’s much too dangerous to be used systemically, do you understand? I can use it for a melanoma - a malignant mole, maybe for some nodules or external tumors, but… In severe cases, I think it could do more damage than good. Nevertheless, every life is important to me, so I’m gonna keep fighting with all weapons, just to save even one.”

They sank into silence for a while, meditating on all the atrocities hidden behind daily life’s trivialities.

“Speaking of Romania,” he resumed, “there are a lot of valuable doctors and institutes out there. For instance, I’ve heard of a doctor who created a line of products made from insects. He uses them to heal all kinds of diseases, hepatitis, even some forms of cancer.”

“Drugs made from insects?” she exclaimed with an involuntary grimace.

He smiled.

“Yeah. If I’m not mistaken, it’s something to do with kitchen bugs’ sa
livary glands, but I’m not sure. There’s also an institute called
Cantacuzino.
Among multiple valuable medical discoveries, they’d created an extraordinary vaccine against numerous strains of the flu virus. It had become known and efficient in all Europe, until it stopped its production.”

“Why?”

“Unknown cause. Lack of funds, I seem to recall this was the reason invoked, but, again, I’m not sure. Anyway, the point is that, although worldwide Romania is considered just a lousy third world country, they have some very valuable people there, not only doctors. Jean-Paul is fascinated by their history. He told me a bit about it and I confess I was impressed.”

“Hmm,” she said thoughtfully. “I’m beginning to become more and
more intrigued by this country.”

Their plane landed right on time on the Otopeni airport in Bucharest. They were convinced they would confront with major communication difficulties, none of them knowing a single word in Romanian. However, they were pleasantly surprised to learn almost everyone seemed to speak at least a rudiment of English. From the airport they got into a cab, explaining to the driver, using words and gestures, that they wanted to go to a car rental center. In a strongly accented English, the driver guaranteed them they will promptly reach their destination, which in fact they had.

The car rental
staff’s English was much superior to that of the cab driver. The couple decided over a blue Jeep. After filling all the forms and paying the necessary fee in Euros, they entered the capital’s traffic. It seemed extremely crowded, even chaotic.

At first
, Linda had expressed her concern because everything seemed to be backward, compared to Great Britain. The car’s wheel was on the left side and they had to drive on the right side of the road, a thing to which she wasn’t accustomed. Besides, distance was measured in kilometers, not miles. But Gerard, who had driven in France as well as in England, quickly adjusted to the new road conditions. They both breathed easily when they got out of town.

They had a classic map
he’d printed from the Internet before leaving. Linda kept turning it on all sides, trying to understand the route, cursing expansively all the Geography classes she’d skipped. In all appearance, it was a three hundred and twenty kilometers distance to Cluj-Napoca.

The highway was quite crowded, so Gerard maintained the speed to a reasonable limit, taking advantage to admire some of the scenery.

As he’d expected, Romania was an extremely beautiful country, with every form of relief. The road began at lowlands level. When they weren’t crossing villages or towns, on both sides of the road they saw large fields of corn, sun-flower, wheat and other cultures they couldn’t identify.

Here and there, they h
ad the feeling they hovered into an ocean of green under the clear sky. They stopped by the roadside to admire the magnificent fields and move their numb muscles. The air was much cleaner than in London, having a special fragrance. Every breeze carried a scent of freshly mown grass.

They res
umed their journey. The road was sprinkled with curves, the more so as the altitude grew and they entered the hills area. They both yawned, gulping to release the pressure in their ears. After another hour, Linda spotted a sign which read
RESTAURANT –
a word whose meaning was unmistakable – and urged him to stop in the parking lot.

“I’m starving!” she exclaimed.

“Me too, darling, but you forget we can’t even read the menu.”

“We’ll figure it out,”
she replied while they headed toward the long building, having the rustic aspect of a large cabin.

The dim interior was cool
, everything smelled of wood and delicious food. Only two tables were occupied.

The couple sat at a table
near a window revealing a breathtaking view. A thin waiter came to bring their menus. When he concluded they were tourists and didn’t speak a single word of Romanian, the young man shrugged, not understanding either English or Gerard’s French. Linda opened the menu randomly. They all seemed to be written in Sanskrit. She chose something called
sarmale cu mamaliga. F
rom the section DESSERT – another word she thought she understood – she chose
papanasi.

Gerard burst
out laughing. Entering her game, he also chose something randomly, indicating to the waiter what he wanted:
ciorba de burta.

The young man watched them dubiously, saying
something that could mean anything, then left.

Shortly
, their food arrived. Linda had on her plate three rolls made from sour cabbage leaves filled with minced meat, accompanied by a yellowish paste she said was delicious.

Gerard wasn’t too excited by his food.

“It looks like baby-puke,” he told her grimacing and shuffled his spoon around the bowl full of a yellowish liquid in which were floating meat pieces whose origin was a mystery.

Linda carefully scrutinized his food
. She smelled it, taking a spoon full.

“
Mm, it’s delicious. Granted, it’s not as good as mine, but it’s not bad. It doesn’t resemble anything I’ve tasted in my life. Here, try it!”

He took a few testing sips, then
began eating more enthusiastically. Still, after tasting her food, he thought she’d gotten a better bargain.

Dess
ert met with a mad success. They both showed their appreciation to the waiter using signs, making him feel extremely pleased.
Papanasi
were some kind of fried donuts made of cheese, served with jam and sour cream. Linda noted down the names of all the dishes they had, intending to look up the recipes and learn to cook them. When their bill was brought, he congratulated her for having a considerable amount of Romanian
lei.
She’d made the exchange near the car rental center, because in few places Euros were accepted.

Full and rested, they climb
ed once again into the Jeep, resuming their journey to the smoky peaks of majestic mountains, which filled the horizon.   

The road had cleared some
and the view was spectacular. While looking in the distance at the forested ridges, seeming to support rolls of blue and yellow clouds, he noticed Linda’s eyelids began to droop. She had dozed, probably rocked by the car’s motion and the radio playing in the background.

Chapter Fifteen

She woke up abruptly with the feeling something was very wrong. Gerard’s voice whispered insistently:

“Linda, baby, wake up!”

“What happened?” she asked, adjusting her position in the seat.

“Take a look at that map.
I think we got lost and the damned GPS isn’t working anymore. We drove almost four hundred kilometers, but we’re not the right place. I don’t have service to my cell either, so I can’t call Jean-Paul.”

Linda looked around, disoriented. They weren’t on
the road now, but on a sort of country path. From both right and left, as far as the eye could see, they were surrounded by trees. They seemed to be in the densest forest on Earth, because not even the evening sunlight was well-filtered through the thick branches. It was almost dark.

“Stop the car,”
she said. “How the hell did we get here?”

“I follow
ed the directions of that shit,” he replied annoyed, indicating the GPS. “But now it stopped, it doesn’t have a signal, nor my phone either. Check yours.”

“D
ead,” she confirmed after getting her cell out from her purse. “Let’s see what this map tells us.”

They both bent over the piece of paper, analyzing it from all angles.

“If you say we drove almost four hundred kilometers and obviously we’re in a pretty big forest, I don’t think we can be anywhere else but here.” She put her index on a green area, somewhere west of Cluj-Napoca – their destination. “Look, here the road splits in two. To reach Cluj-Napoca we had to turn right. We probably went straight ahead. If I’m right, this is the Hoia Forest, that’s what the map says.”