I Must Betray You(36)

    FREEDOM



I stood, staring at the seven letters, while a lump the size of a fist formed in my throat. Half a dozen communist regimes had fallen in succession, yet Romania remained unaffected. Why?

Had the world forgotten us? Or had Ceau?escu ingeniously built a fence of national communism that was impenetrable from the outside as well as the inside?

He had stolen us from ourselves, for himself. He had broken the soul of Romania and parched a beautiful country into an apocalyptic landscape of the lost. My notebook told the real story. But would Mr. Van Dorn do anything with it?

“You okay?” Dan asked as we left the library.

I shrugged.

“Yeah, I imagine it’s hard, seeing the progress of other countries while things remain the same here. Sorry about that.”

I nodded and removed the folded Springsteen article from my pocket. I handed it to him. “I should give this back. If I’m caught with it, it could cause more trouble than the dollar you gave me.”

“What dollar?” asked Dan.

“The U.S. dollar you put in my stamp album,” I whispered.

“What?” He looked at me, confused. “I never put a dollar in your stamp album. Just toss the article if you don’t want it.”

I did want it. I still held hope of giving it to Liliana. I returned it to my pocket, trying to appear calm. We said goodbye and agreed to meet the following Saturday. And then I stood, hands clenched, as Dan disappeared into the dark. The anger burned, flaring within me.

That U.S. dollar had led the Securitate to me.

It gave them leverage to recruit me as an informer and plunged me into moral misery.

It crushed my conscience.

It crushed my relationship with Liliana.

But if Dan didn’t put the dollar in my stamp album—

Who did?





45


    PATRUZECI ?I CINCI




Blinks of orange.

I saw them as I approached our building. Burning taper candles stood in pots of sand, flickering through the darkness. A six-foot wooden cross, hauled from a nearby church, leaned against the entry of our building. The tradition when someone dies.

At least Mrs. Drucan hadn’t suffered long. Her daughter was probably already packed for Boston. Her comment still haunted me.

How many Kents will I need to make sure they turn up the gas?

I shook off the thought.

The Reporters were absent from their perch. I passed Mirel, standing in his familiar spot near the building. I nodded to him.

“Sorry,” he said.

I shrugged. What was he sorry for?

My feet stopped.

The candles. The cross.

No.

Bunu?

I ran inside and up the stairs. My father stood outside our apartment door.

“Go inside. Now. I’m waiting for Cici.”

“But—”

“I said, go inside.”

His tone wasn’t of someone who had just lost his father. It was terse, urgent.

Mama sat at the table, a shadowed stick figure beneath a crooked beam of light, smoking an open package of Kents. Her thin hand trembled. The tip of the cigarette glowed as she pressed it to her lips. We used Kents for bribes. We didn’t smoke them.

“Mama?” I looked into the kitchen toward Bunu’s narrow couch. Empty.

“Come here, Cristian.”

“Mama, where’s Bunu?”

“Come here, please.”

A cold twist of fear seized my abdomen. I slowly approached the table.

“I came home from work,” she whispered, “and found your grandfather.” The illuminated cigarette in her hand began to vibrate. “We’ve put him . . . in the bedroom.” She set the quivering cigarette on the lip of the ashtray and reached for my hand. I helped her out of the chair, then followed her to the closed door. She took a breath, turned the knob, and pushed the door open.

And then she turned her back.

Bunu lay on the bed. But it wasn’t Bunu. Life had fled and left a waxy corpse—a withered leaf that had lost its water. Bunu’s gray skin stretched gaunt and taut over his angular cheekbones. His open eyes stared hollow and his mouth pulled wide, as if living a silent scream, gasping for freedom.

My chest rose and fell, panting. “Bunu . . . no. He was feeling better.” I stared at the husk of my grandfather and then I realized.

“Mama—”

She turned to me, shook her head, and put a finger to her lips.

I took a step closer to the bed.

Bunu’s hands lay like broken birds. Their color, a purple so dark, nearly black. The bones above his palms were snapped, smashed.

Mama pulled back the blanket covering his legs. A wave of nausea rolled through me. Bunu’s bare feet had been clubbed beyond recognition.

“His chest. The same. All ribs broken,” she whispered in my ear. “They beat him to death.”

My body was instantly cold. A rush of shock and frozen fury. I stood shaking at the side of the bed and felt myself buckling to the floor. Who did this? Who would viciously beat an elderly man? And why? My god, was leukemia not enough?

Bunu. My grandfather, my teacher, my inspiration.

My hero.

How could I ever live without him?

My mother kneeled down. She laid her hand upon my shoulder.