Tsura: A World War II Romance

  * * * * *

  The chill of that October morning had followed Tsura home and winter took up early residence in their apartment. She didn’t ask Mihai what he was reading or translating. She avoided touching him, even the briefest brush of shoulders as they passed in the kitchen. She kept the radio on loud whenever he was home, and as much as she could, she avoided looking directly at him.

  But as much as she wanted it to be the arrangement she’d imagined in the beginning—two strangers who merely happened to share a living space—she couldn’t ignore him completely. He was too large, for one. His aftershave scented the bathroom for hours after he left in the morning. His broad-shouldered shirts still crowded the laundry basket. His heavy breathing that was just short of snoring seemed to echo off the walls at night.

  She scooped out a large helping of mămăligă into two bowls and then dropped his hard on the table. She sat down and began to eat. It was two days until Christmas, and she was saving the roll of hard salami she’d splurged on at the market until then. Prices for food had inflated crazily over the past couple of months. All the food grown in Romania was being shipped out of Romania to feed the German war effort, and worse yet, the Germans had stopped paying for it. Everyone was furious and even the propaganda controlled papers couldn’t lie about shortages any more. They hadn’t started rationing yet—the poor simply went hungry. Tsura knew Mihai was wealthy and they could afford it, but she hated the idea of buying more for themselves when others were hungry, so she made the grocery budget stretch.

  More often than not, they ate corn porridge for dinner, sometimes with a dash of cheese or sour cream or, on the very rare occasion, with a little bit of meat. Mihai made no comment, no matter if she served the same thing for five days in a row. She wondered if he even tasted it. Did steel have taste buds?

  She tried to finish her food quickly. She didn’t relish sitting at the table with Mihai. Her days were busier now that she had taken Cristina up on her offer and spent four afternoons a week volunteering at the hospital. The short-staffed nurses were glad to let her empty and sterilize bed pans, change soiled bedding, mop the floors, and pass out meals. Tsura was glad for the busying work and was fairly inured to the indecencies of the bedpans since she, Andrei and the Weinberg’s had shared a chamber pot in the basement.

  On those days she didn’t get home until seven and didn’t eat with Mihai at all. Other days, like today, she spent with Elena and the kids, going to the market together or getting more cooking lessons. Her cooking was improving. For example, tonight’s mămăligă wasn’t burned.

  If Mihai minded her changed attitude toward him as the weeks, then months passed— cooler than even the distance she’d put between them when she’d first moved in—he said nothing. Nor did he apologize. And now Tsura had enough other people to talk to during the day that she didn’t mind the silence at night. In the evenings she worked on making as many IDs as she could and then fell into bed exhausted.

  Tsura hated living this way. But whenever she looked at Mihai’s face, she’d remember the old man lying broken on the ground, begging for help. The man who’d died because they hadn’t dared to save him. And any words that might have been on the edge of her tongue were swallowed back down. Mihai continued on in the same manner as before, like a man long accustomed to the silent chill of winter.

  Tsura shivered and swallowed the last bite of food, then stood and went to wash her bowl in the sink. As she went, she accidently brushed Mihai’s shoulder and he hissed as if in pain. Frowning, Tsura looked at him. Her frown deepened when blood began seeping through the sleeve of his dress shirt just above his bicep.

  He went back to eating as if nothing was wrong.

  “Mihai,” she said, taking a step toward him, “you’re bleeding!”

  “What?” he looked up, then followed her eyes to his arm. He cursed under his breath and stood as well.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I hit my arm on a cabinet at work. It’s nothing,” he said dismissively.

  “Don’t be stupid,” she snapped. “You’re bleeding through your shirt. Come to the bathroom, I’ll clean it and get you a bandage—”

  But Mihai’s sudden grip on her forearm stopped her from heading to the bathroom. “It’s fine,” he ground out through clenched teeth. In pain from the wound, or because he was embarrassed at showing any weakness? “I can take care of it.”

  He strode to the bathroom without another word and closed the door solidly behind him. Tsura heard the sink turn on. She put a hand to her forehead and rubbed it tiredly.