Tsura: A World War II Romance

Tsura’s grip tightened on the broom as she jolted at the sound. There had been plenty of raid alarms early in the war, but none since she’d been back in the city. Bucharest had been on high alert since the recent bombings on the oil fields an hour north, though, and she had known it was only a matter of time. Still, her heart beat jumped to a heady thrum in her ears.

  “Come.” Mihai immediately went into action, stepping closer to take her elbow and guiding her toward the door. Mihai was back to his calm, cool self, though she noticed he did shove his feet into his untied shoes instead of the meticulous bow he normally tied. Then he grabbed a newspaper he’d dropped by his briefcase and a tin water bottle that stood on the shelf nearest the door and gestured her through first. His eyes were out on the hallway, sharp and assessing as she passed by him.

  Tsura stepped into the hallway right as a young blonde woman herded three small children out of the apartment across the hall, a baby in her arms. All of the children were crying and the woman didn’t look far from it herself.

  “Hush, hush,” the harried woman said to the swaddled baby in her arms, rocking him while also trying to keep an overstuffed canvas bag from falling off her shoulder. The air raid siren continued wailing on and people from the upper floors pushed past them to get down the stairs. The mother’s curling hair fell haphazardly out of its pins as she looked to the oldest child, a boy. “Dieter, take both your sisters’ hands. We need to hurry.”

  But Dieter himself had large tears running down his face and he clung to his mother’s skirt. The smaller of the two girls toddled away from them toward the stairs. Tsura leaned down and scooped her up before she could make it to the top step.

  “Oh thank you, thank you!” the woman said in accented Romanian.

  Tsura perched the squirming toddler on her hip and smiled in sympathy. “Why don’t I carry her down?”

  The woman nodded gratefully and finally coaxed the older boy to take his other sister’s hand. They joined the group crowding down the stairs. The apartment building was five stories tall with many apartments on each floor. Since they were on the third story, that meant plenty of traffic coming behind them. Mihai hung back until Tsura and all the children started the descent and then followed. She glanced back only once and saw that he was using his body as a buffer, holding back their overeager neighbors from trampling her or the children.

  Tsura quickly averted her eyes back to the stairs in front of her and focused on the squirming, crying little girl in her arms. The cacophony of all the voices echoing in the stairwell was bad enough, but the ear-piercing air-raid siren on top of it was enough to set her teeth on edge. She wished they would turn it off already. She couldn’t imagine anyone left in the city who hadn’t heard it by now. It was so loud, it had no doubt rattled the bones of the dead in the cemeteries. Then, as if her mere thought had wished it so, the siren shut off.

  She breathed out a sigh of relief right as she stepped off the last of the stairs into the basement. Many of the apartment’s residents milled around, but the children’s mother walked straight to the far corner with purpose. Tsura followed, watching in curiosity as she dropped the overstuffed bag she’d been carrying on her shoulder.

  “Dieter, pull out the blanket,” she said. “Irmgard, if you help him, then you can both play with the trains.” The overwhelmed looking woman from the top of the stairs was gone. She was firing off commands now. The little boy had stopped crying, and he and the older girl pulled out a large quilt and spread it on the concrete floor.

  The woman settled herself, leaning against the wall. She let out a long breath that fluffed her bangs away from her face. The baby was still wailing, but she expertly swung an embroidered little shawl over her shoulder and dipped the baby beneath it. Almost immediately, the baby quieted. The woman must be nursing. She looked up at Tsura gratefully.

  “Thank you for helping with Brigitte. You can put her down on the blanket here. I’m Elena, by the way.” Elena laughed and it was a merry, musical sound. “Did I forget to introduce myself in all the insanity? I think I did! Come, come,” with the arm that wasn’t cradling her baby, she waved Tsura to sit.

  Tsura dropped down, the little girl already wiggling to get out of her arms. Tsura looked down at the red-faced toddler and kissed the mop of blond curls before setting her on the ground. Dieter had also pulled a worn doll out of the bag and Brigitte ran toward it on her chubby legs, arms outstretched. The girl couldn’t be much older than two. She grabbed the doll and then plopped herself down on the quilt.

  Elena looked around and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “The secret is to scout the best location before people have settled in. I learned this with the first raid when we were left no place to sit and had to stand by the pipes over there,” Elena nodded across the basement to a mass of uncovered plumbing and heating pipes. The basement was almost full now. Others like Elena had staked out areas of the floor, especially places along the wall where they could relax to wait out the raid. Some had also brought quilts, a few even pillows.

  Mihai must have followed her because he’d claimed the spot on the wall right beside them and was calmly reading the newspaper he’d brought. He’d placed the water bottle between his body and Tsura’s, along with half a hard salami she hadn’t seen him grab. How many raids had there been since she was last living in Bucharest? She looked up. Were bombs falling in other parts of the city? She couldn’t hear anything beyond the low murmur of voices.

  Elena shuddered, continuing where she left off. “The pipes smelled wet and moldy and made these strange noises. Irmgard was scared and crying the entire three hours we were stuck down here. So I say to myself, well, the next time this happens, I will not be in that situation again, no I will not! I get down as quick as possible and stake my corner!”

  “Aha, yes, a very wise strategy,” Tsura said. She looked around the already full basement. After seeing no one but Mihai for a month, it was unnerving to be surrounded by so many people. The basement was a wide brick space, open except for three large tanks along the west wall and lots of pipes running along the ceiling. There was technically room for everyone to sit, but it would be a tight squeeze. Many were standing anyway, a low hum of voices chatting. Others were crowded around a radio that was set up in the corner opposite to them.

  Tsura turned back to Elena and smiled. “I’m—” she caught herself right in time before blurting her real name. “Alexandra. This is my husband Mihai.” She gestured at him. He looked up from the paper long enough to nod.

  “A pleasure to meet you both,” Elena said, then wrinkled her nose, “if not in the best circumstances. Often the bombs, they don’t even fall. But if they even suspect there is anything in the sky, they set off the siren.”

  Elena removed the baby and rearranged herself under the shawl. The baby yawned and didn’t fuss when Elena put him up on her shoulder. She patted his back a few times, then held him expertly with one hand while pulling items out of the large bag with the other: a couple small pillows, a pack of playing cards, two well worn books, and several carved wooden train cars. The two oldest children immediately reached for the trains.

  Tsura smiled and leaned against the wall beside the family. “You come prepared.”

  Elena laughed. She was a plump woman but not fat and didn’t look old enough even to be thirty. Her porcelain skin was flushed and Tsura thought she looked like the picture perfect image of a mother. “Ah yes, the second air raid we had a space on the floor but nothing to distract or entertain them. Second lesson learned!” Elena laughed again.

  “Is their father in the army?” Tsura asked.

  “Oh no, no,” Elena waved a hand. “He works in the embassy. He’s there working late tonight. Klaus Müller, he’s an undersecretary to the Ambassador.” She addressed herself to Mihai now. “You were there as well, is that right? Klaus says he’s seen you coming in the building sometimes.” Mihai had told Tsura that the German embassy had arranged the apartment for him, she supposed she shouldn’t be surpri
sed there were more people in the building who worked there.

  Mihai nodded. “I know him. He’s a good man.”

  Elena beamed even as Tsura felt her stomach sour.

  “So he’s German,” Tsura said before she could stop herself.

  Elena only laughed, not noticing the biting tone to Tsura’s words. “As German as they come. My mother is German, too, though we always lived here in Bucharest. We went to Berlin the summer I turned eighteen to visit family. That must have been nine years ago now. Lord, time passes by so fast!” the woman prattled on, not noticing the stiffening of Tsura’s shoulders. Now Tsura placed the slight accent to Elena’s Romanian.

  “Of course my dear mama and tati had no idea that I’d be engaged by the end of the summer and not want to come back to Romania with the rest of the family! Oh Tati was furious with me—and Klaus. Klaus was only forgiven when we moved back to Bucharest at the beginning of the war. It was a lucky thing, yes?” Then she waved her hand expressively, laughing again. “No, no, that is a lie, it wasn’t luck, but a blessing from God above that Klaus rose so quickly in the ranks of the Third Reich.”

  Mihai took Tsura’s elbow and squeezed. He must have sensed that Tsura didn’t share the woman’s opinion that rising in the Third Reich was any kind of blessing, least of all a blessing from God. But Elena just kept talking, oblivious to Tsura and Mihai. Elena must have been one of those people who could prattle on to a wooden post, or maybe she was simply starved for adult company after being cooped up in an apartment all day with four young children.

  “My family is so happy to have me back,” Elena continued. “My parents are getting older, you understand, and they like to know their grandchildren. And my sister-in-law Cristina—now that girl is as fully Romanian as they come, she’ll talk your ear off about how she’s supposedly a descendant of Michael the Brave!” Elena rolled her eyes. “But don’t believe a word of it. She lives with us also, I’m sure you’ll meet her soon. She works as a nurse.” Elena pursed her lips and made a disapproving face. “She’s too young and pretty to be wasting her life working, I tell her that, but does she listen to me? No.”

  Tsura was confused. “So she’s married to… your brother?”

  Elena’s eyes dropped to look at her hands. “Oh yes, my brother, her husband, he died last year at the Battle of Odessa. He was in the Romanian Fourth division, very honorable.”

  All Tsura’s other feelings about Elena’s husband were dashed under a wave of empathy. She reached out and grabbed the blond woman’s hand. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “My own brother was wounded very badly at that battle. I’m so, so sorry.”

  Elena’s eyes locked with hers and she knew the woman accepted her sympathy in more than a cursory way. Elena squeezed her hand back. “Thank you.” She smiled at Tsura, a genuine smile, then her eyes flicked toward the children. “Dieter,” she said, her voice sharp but tinged with affection. “Stop pulling your sister’s braid!”

  Tsura smiled over at the two oldest children who were red-faced and looking like they were about to scratch each other’s eyes out. It made her want to laugh. Gagii liked to pretend children were these angelic, abstract beings. The Roma knew children could be just as sneaky, conniving and hardscrabble as adults. It was how they ran some of their most successful cons. Send a barefoot, large-eyed child begging and they’d always comeback with three times the coin. And they could be mean scrappers in a fight.

  Tsura glanced back at Elena, a complex mix of feelings in her gut. She could handle Elena-the-mother-of-four far better than Elena-the-wife-of-a-Nazi. “How old are they?”

  “Dieter’s six. Then there’s Irmgard who’s five. Brigitte you’ve already met,” Elena laughed and pointed at each child. “is two. And this one,” she nodded toward the baby in her arms who she’d settled from over her shoulder into her lap, “Gheorghe, is just seven months.”

  “I’m six and three quarters,” Dieter interrupted.

  Tsura fought to hide her smile. “Well that’s nearly seven,” she said. Dieter beamed at her.

  “You’re newly married, is that right?” Elena asked. The baby began to fuss again and suck on his fist, then whine louder. Elena sighed, then hefted him back up.

  “Still hungry?” She unselfconsciously unbuttoned the front of her dress and began nursing the whining baby at the opposite breast from earlier, not bothering with the shawl this time. Tsura guessed everyone was too busy with their own conversations or distractions to bother caring about a nursing woman in the corner. Immediately the baby quieted. Still, it took Tsura a moment to avert her gaze. Not because she was shocked at the sight. No, she grew up with women nursing openly back in the caravan.

  It was just the picture Elena presented. This woman with her beautiful children, the baby at her breast… it made Tsura’s stomach clench as if she could feel the empty space where her womb had once been. “Yes,” Tsura finally forced herself to smile even though she felt like anything but. She took Mihai’s arm. “We’re newlyweds.”

  Mihai looked down sharply at her touch, but didn’t pull away. Then he went back to reading his newspaper and Tsura let go.

  “We all wondered when Domnul Popescu would take a wife.” Elena leaned close. “Every apartment block loves its own gossip, you understand. And your husband here was so young and handsome in a city full of women since so many of our boys went off to war. But he never brought a single woman home. But now he has married you,” Elena smiled and nudged Tsura’s shoulder, “and we are all scandalously interested about how you two met and fell in love.”

  Tsura told Elena the fake story of meeting Mihai at the wedding in Fălticeni while Dieter and Irmgard ran the toy trains over the tops of the women’s feet. Brigitte promptly fell asleep on one of the pillows, clutching her dolly. Elena asked all kinds of questions about Tsura’s wedding—what her dress was like, what kind of food was served, how good was the band. The children stayed mostly quiet, but by the time Tsura finished telling Elena about the dancing, a tug of war had developed between Dieter and Irmgard. Irmgard wanted the train Dieter had been playing with, and he didn’t want to give it up. Soon their shrieks were echoing around the small basement and the people from other apartments were glaring. The basement was full but there were few other children, and none as young as Elena’s. Little Brigitte began stirring. If Irmgard and Dieter didn’t stop, they’d have a grumpy toddler on their hands in a few moments as well.

  “Do you want to see a card trick?” Tsura broke in, looking between the two older children. They both paused and glanced at her. Without waiting for a reply, Tsura undid the string from around the deck of cards Elena had pulled from her bag earlier and began expertly shuffling them. She flexed the cards and made a bridge with her thumbs, the cards springing between her hands in an arc. The children watched in fascination.

  “I’ll show you a magic trick, but you must be very, very quiet, or else the magic won’t work.”

  Dieter nodded solemnly, and, mimicking him, Irmgard nodded too. Tsura shuffled a few more times, then held the deck out to Dieter, since he was oldest. Irmgard made a small outraged noise, but Tsura assured her they both would get a turn.

  “Cut the deck, anywhere you please,” Tsura told the boy. He did, and Tsura lifted the top half of the deck. Tsura took a brief peek at the card face showing on the bottom of the top half as she lifted it. Jack of Clubs. She repeated it internally several times to make sure she remembered it.

  “Take the card and memorize it.”

  Dieter peeled off the top card of the bottom half, careful to keep Tsura from seeing it, and stared at it hard for several long moments. “Picture the card in your mind’s eye,” Tsura said. “Concentrate very hard.”

  “Now place it back on the deck,” Tsura instructed. He put it back. “Cut the deck again.”

  Dieter did, and Tsura put the bottom half on the top, then she flipped over the cards and fanned them out. She looked briefly over all the cards until she came to the Jack of Clubs. Then she pl
ucked out the card to the left of it and held it up to Dieter. “This is your card.”

  His small mouth dropped open, and Irmgard started clapping with glee. “How did you know?” Dieter asked.

  “Magic,” Tsura answered with a wink.

  Dieter crossed his arms over his chest. “There’s no such thing as magic.”

  “My turn, my turn,” Irmgard said. Tsura shuffled the cards again and repeated the process. Dieter’s eyes were on her like a hawk the whole time. She was even more careful in her quick peek at the card at the bottom of the half deck she raised once Irmgard cut it. Again, both children were amazed when she picked out the correct card.

  Even Elena was watching with curiosity clear in her face.

  “What’s the trick? Tell me now,” Dieter demanded. “I know there’s no such thing as magic.” He declared it with all the certainty of an almost-seven-year-old who is positive he knows everything there is to know about how the world works.

  “All right, all right,” Tsura held up her hands. “You caught me. It is just a trick. I’ll do it two more times. See if you can figure it out on your own. If not, then I’ll tell you.”

  Dieter scrunched up his face watching as she shuffled and repeated the trick. He stared at the cards in her hands, and after she picked out the right card again, he declared, “You arrange the cards when you shuffle the deck so you know where all the cards are.”

  “No, try again.” She repeated the trick.

  “You can read our minds!” Irmgard guessed.

  “Nope,” Tsura said. She did it three more times, and finally Dieter admitted with frustration that he was stumped.

  “All right, come close and I’ll show you how it’s done.” Both Dieter and Irmgard crowded so close they were almost in her lap. She told them the trick.

  “You mean all you have to do is look at that card?” Dieter asked, pointing at the bottom card of the raised half deck.

  “Yep, that’s it.”

  Dieter seemed disappointed, as if the trick should have involved a lot more than a quick peek at an exposed card.

  “Here, now you try,” Tsura said, handing him the deck. “Then you can do the trick on all your friends and they will think you are a magician.”

  This perked the little boy up considerably, and he began shuffling the cards.

  “You are good with children,” Elena smiled at her.

  Tsura looked up and shrugged. She noticed Mihai’s cool gray eyes were on her as well. She hurriedly looked back at the children. “I spent a lot of time taking care of my baby cousins when I was younger.” They hadn’t been her cousins by blood, but it was what they called each other anyway. Luca was gone by that point, and Tsura had liked playing with the smaller children, being needed by them.

  Elena smiled slyly and nodded over at Mihai. “And maybe you will have your own soon now that you are married.”

  Tsura didn’t expect the pang that ripped at her chest. She thought she’d inured herself to the pain of not being able to have children. Then there were times like this where out of nowhere it would hit her fresh. Tsura just shrugged noncommittally and carefully hid her true face.

  Elena suddenly grabbed her hands. “You should visit sometime. Or we could go to the market. God knows it would be good practice helping herd children!”

  Tsura smiled in spite of herself. In spite of everything, in spite of the fact that Elena was married to a Nazi even, Tsura was shocked to realize she’d enjoyed her company and enjoyed being around the children. “I’d like that.”

  Lord, maybe she was the one starved for company. She’d even thought for a few moments that Mihai wasn’t such a bad man either when she was cleaning up the potted plant with him earlier. What was the world coming to when she was spending all her time with Nazi enablers and Nazi spouses and Nazi offspring?

  Then the little baby gurgled and smiled in his sleep on Elena’s shoulder. Elena kissed his soft forehead and again all Tsura could see in front of her was mother and child. “It would be good to get to know the markets around here,” Tsura said. “I’m really a terrible a cook though.”

  Elena laughed. “I was apprenticed to be a seamstress before I met Klaus. I was a horrible seamstress but I am an excellent cook. I guess it all worked out since I have so many mouths to feed!”

  Still disturbed by her opposing reactions to Elena, Tsura forced herself to respond normally. “I have the opposite problem. I can sew clothes just fine and fry potatoes well enough, but my sarmale always comes out undercooked and I burn the mămăligă.”

  Elena waved a hand. “That settles it then. You must come over and I’ll teach you my cooking tricks.”

  Put on a smile, Tsura, she instructed herself. She managed one. “Sounds lovely.” It would be good to get out of the apartment without having to venture into the streets since she didn’t have identification yet. Visiting another apartment within the building was ideal. And mingling with a spouse from Mihai’s work would only strengthen her cover. She broadened her smile. She hadn’t had to wear her second face since the week of her wedding a month ago, but she could dust it off well enough.

  Movement from the far end of the room caught her eye. Voices were raised in the corner by the radio. Mihai stood and went to investigate, coming back only a few minutes later. “They’ve called off the air raid warnings for the night,” he said, though she could guess as much from the crowd that was already gathering at the stairs.

  “Would it be too much to ask for help with Brigitte on the way back up?” Elena asked, gesturing tiredly at Brigitte who was gently snoring on the quilt, one arm around dolly, the other with her thumb in her mouth. Mihai moved in front of Tsura. “I’ll take her.”

  He scooped up the small girl from the ground. She shifted groggily in his arms, but didn’t wake. Tsura stared for a moment. It was the second time in a single night she had an incongruous picture of Mihai set before her, this time with the tiny girl in his hulking arms. It was very… sweet. Not a word she ever thought she’d attach to him. She turned away and silently packed up the blankets and toys for Elena, since Elena was holding the baby.

  Elena nuzzled Gheorghe’s head where he settled at her shoulder. Then she looked at Tsura. “Come over tomorrow afternoon and I’ll give you your first cooking lesson.”

  Tsura smiled widely back. Maybe she could practice her German with Elena. If she was truly to wear the face of the enemy, she should learn the voice as well. At least enough to mimic it occasionally. “Sounds lovely. I can’t wait.”

  Tsura was worried the loud noise of everyone’s footsteps echoing in the stairwell would wake the sleeping children, but both Gheorghe and Brigitte slept the whole way. Mihai carried the sleeping girl in his arms all the way to her crib. Then he joined Tsura back in their apartment.

  They went through their normal nightly routine. Since they lived in the one room apartment, the only privacy was in the bathroom. Mihai took his night shirt in with him and closed the door.

  Tsura waited to walk to her dresser until she heard the solid snick of the lock put in place. Then she hurried and put on her thin knee-length nightgown and hung her dress on a hook in the wardrobe. She’d begun the month in a more modest ankle-length nightgown but the heat had quickly won over modesty and she’d switched to her shorter one. Both of which had been bought by Mihai, which was awkward all on its own. Her third day here, he’d come home with three bags full of women’s clothing, everything from a new heavy winter coat all the way to brand-new unmentionables that had made her blush. He’d given only the curt explanation that he’d told the woman at the shop he needed a woman’s entire wardrobe and hadn’t looked in the bags.

  Tsura hurried over and turned off all the lights, then knocked three times on the bathroom door and skittered to the bed and jumped under the sheet. She drew the sheet up to her chin. She didn’t know why she hurried. Mihai always waited a full five minutes after she knocked before emerging from the bathroom to make his way to the long, skinny couch where he slep
t each night.

  She wondered sometimes if his wide-shouldered frame even fit on the couch. She’d never been daring enough to tiptoe over in the middle of the night to look. Sometimes he’d set up a pallet on the floor instead. She kept trying to insist he sleep on the bed and she’d take the couch. He always silently refused. The one time she’d tried to ignore him and sleep on the couch anyway, he’d simply picked her up bodily and put her back in the bed. That had been disturbing in a way she couldn’t even name, so at the time, she’d simply acquiesced, though it was rarely in her nature to give up without a fight.

  He came out of the bathroom after several minutes, as expected. There was the familiar rustle of sheets as he got himself situated on the couch. She lay still for long minutes. She listened to Mihai’s breathing in the otherwise quiet apartment, reading the patterns that one comes to know when living with someone so intimately.

  Mihai was still awake. What was he thinking about, lying there on the couch not six feet from her? Tsura’s head was tumbling with the events of the evening. Her burned letter to Andrei. Missing him. The broken pot. Liking and simultaneously disliking Elena. The image of Mihai holding a sleeping child. The memory of him carrying Tsura herself to bed that one time. Listening to him breathe. Lying here now alone but not alone. She wondered about the wide city out there and the hundreds of thousands of other people trying to fall asleep tonight. Had bombs actually fallen? They wouldn’t know until the morning’s paper.

  “Mihai?”

  “Yes?”

  She felt foolish. She didn’t know why she had said his name, what question she had meant to ask. “Good night,” she said hurriedly to cover her mistake.

  There was a moment of silence, then his low gravelly voice whispered into the quiet, “Good night, Tsura.”

  The words seemed to rumble around inside her head long after the syllables were spoken.

  Chapter 9