Tsura: A World War II Romance

Tsura woke half an hour later, on the bed in their apartment.

  She sat up, disoriented and confused as to where she was. A moment later, she remembered everything. The alleyway. The old man being beaten. Mihai’s arms around her neck. Outrage flamed to fury as she got to her feet. Mihai sat calmly at the dining room table, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. He looked up at her, placid as ever.

  Words sputtered and died on her lips. What was there to say? He’d knocked her out and dragged her back to their apartment. There was no point in argument when he was willing to resort to such brutish action. And that man, the man they’d left behind… Tsura turned away, unable to stand the sight of Mihai.

  She went to the dresser for her nightgown, then into the bathroom to change. The floor was cool and she looked down. Her feet were bare. No shoes. Mihai must have removed them when he brought her in. Her socks as well. All while she was unconscious. She flung her skirt and blouse to the floor after slamming the bathroom door shut. She yanked her nightgown over her head, washed her face with quick, angry swipes and brushed her teeth in the same manner. Then, flinging open the door, she left her clothes where they lay and went back to bed, pulling the sheets up high overhead. Childish rebellions, when a man could lie bloody and perhaps dying on the cold streets tonight. Shame washed over her.

  She sat up in bed, pulling the sheet tight. “What if you went back now?” she asked. “The policemen will be gone. Just to make sure he’s not still there, lying in the road, injured?”

  For a brief second, she thought she saw Mihai waver. She should have known better, though, because the next instant, he looked back at his paper. “No,” he said. “The matter’s done. I’m sure he made it back home by now.”

  Impotent rage burned anew. “How can you—” she stopped herself. There was no point. There was no point at all when it came to Mihai Popescu.

  She lay back down and closed her eyes but didn’t sleep. Mihai went through his own nightly routine and the lights shut off. She hated listening to his breathing in the dark. At least sleep didn’t come easily to him either. They took turns now sleeping on the bed, one week on the bed, one on the couch. She was glad it was his week on the couch.

  She woke early the next morning but stayed in bed pretending sleep until Mihai left for work. Then she returned to where the man had been beaten. She asked around at the shops if they knew anything about it. She tried to play it off casually, saying she’d noticed a disturbance as she passed by last night and had simply been curious.

  People averted their eyes. Finally, an elderly man at the bakery counter whispered to her when they were the only ones in the shop, “We found him there early this morning when we came to stoke the ovens. The body was already cold.” His eyes held sympathy and Tsura bought a loaf of bread and offered a heartfelt thanks even as inside she wept. Never on the outside though.

  Tsura returned home, heated pots and pots of water on the stove, then took a long bath, scrubbing herself until her skin was pink. She did not cry. She decided several things.

  First, Mihai wasn’t her brother or her friend. Second, whatever emotions she might have projected onto Mihai—compassion, kindness, mercy—were merely that: projections, of no more substance than the cinema reel’s light on a wall. Reflections of her own sentimentality. Mihai had obviously practiced making himself stone for long enough that he’d become the statue he pretended. Except that no, her earlier comparison to stone no longer fit. Even stone was too soft. The man she lived with was steel. Unbending, unbreakable. Whatever bit of humanity he may have had once had burned away in the smelting process.

  Everything would be better once Andrei came. They could set him up with an apartment in the city. He’d find a good job. The war would be over soon and they could start the lives they always dreamed of.

  In the meantime, she was bound to Mihai. She might hate the man but she had obligations to him. He had helped her. Saved her, even. He was trying to save her brother. If she left when Andrei came, a wife suddenly showing up and then immediately abandoning Mihai might bring suspicion on him. Stelian had said it today: keeping up appearances for the Germans was more important than ever. But when this war was done, whether that was in five months or fifteen, she would part ways with Mihai Popescu and never have anything to do with him again.