Tsura: A World War II Romance

The silence spread thick between the three figures in the back yard. Mihai stood like iron beside Tsura. She looked to him. He would do something. Surely. He was a large man. Then her gaze flicked to the one holding the gun on her. He wasn’t small. Besides, everything she knew of Mihai—quiet, cold, intellectual Mihai—made her think he’d never been in a fight in his life, no matter his intimidating size. Getting into a fight would require fury or passion. From all she’d seen of him in the six years she’d known him, he never felt either.

  Tsura focused in on the soldier holding the gun. Her spine stiffened. She wouldn’t lay down meekly on the earth to die. If they could just get the gun away from the soldier—

  Suddenly Mihai’s heavy arm clamped around her shoulders and he drew her into his warm body. What in the devil’s—

  “This is Alexandra,” Mihai said in his normal gruff voice, “my fiancée.”

  Tsura stifled her gasp of surprise. His… fiancée? She immediately pasted a serene smile on her face even as she tried to adjust her head to the ploy. She could see the sense in it. She had flung herself into Mihai’s arms when she’d seen him, after all. Alexandra was a good name too. One of the most popular in the country. Perfectly nondescript.

  The other man lowered his gun slightly, but didn’t put it away all together. “Fiancée? What is she doing outside at this time of night?”

  “Bathroom,” Tsura said quickly, her voice slightly shrill. She nodded toward the privy at the back of the yard. “I was awake and it’s such a warm night, I couldn’t help stopping to look for a bit at the stars. Mihai always calls me such a dreamer,” she snaked her arm around Mihai’s waist and looked affectionately up into his face.

  He was stiff under her arms, but he schooled his features into a pleasant enough profile. Well, maybe not pleasant, but he at least made an attempt to soften his usually scowling mouth. He was so broad, her hand barely reached the other side of his waist. Completely the opposite of what holding Andrei felt like. Andrei. She felt her eyes widen. Oh Lord. Please let him stay where he was in the shed. Not come out and try to play hero.

  “Alexandra,” Mihai continued, nodding his head at the other man, “this is Bogdan, my neighbor. He’s on furlough. Came across each other at the train station, both going south. Now, friend,” he turned his dark gaze on Bogdan, “I’ll thank you to put away your gun.”

  Bogdan still eyed Tsura critically, then looked at Mihai. “We were on the train together for ten hours from Chișinău and you never once mention you have a fiancée?”

  Tsura’s eyes jumped to Mihai’s face. Chișinău? That was in Transnistria, where the camps were. Why had Mihai been there? Had he learned anything about her brother? Mihai might work for the Nazis but Tsura had to believe he loved her brother, at least as much as a man like Mihai was able. After the seaside rescue, his parents had been so grateful, they’d offered to take Luca home with them and raise him as a gagii, and give him the best education so he would not face a future of poverty in the caravan. Likely they didn’t realize the great insult of the offer, and Tsura and Luca’s father managed to overlook it as well. For his own reasons and to the dismay of the community, he granted the request. Luca went to live with Mihai’s family.

  Luca and Mihai’d grown up together and stayed close all throughout their University years. In spite of everything, and his current work, Mihai wouldn’t abandon her brother… Would he?

  Mihai squeezed her arm and she dropped her focus back to Bogdan. Later, she’d find out later.

  There was something about Mihai’s tense stance pressed up against her side that told her he and Bogdan might be neighbors, but they weren’t friends. So, even though Bogdan had lowered the gun, she and Andrei weren’t safe yet.

  Mihai shrugged. “Your stories were so interesting,” he said with such a flat voice, Tsura couldn’t tell if he was trying to be sarcastic or not. “And as you grouched on the train, I’m a man of few words.”

  Bogdan’s expression loosened and he slid the gun back into his belt. “My mother didn’t write about any fiancée staying with Domnul Popescu.” Tsura remembered Domnul Popescu warning them about the village gossip who lived next door, one of the reasons they stayed in the basement at all times.

  “She only arrived a couple of days ago,” Mihai lied smoothly. “She was staying near Fălticeni before. Taking care of family.”

  Tsura kept her face relaxed and happy. She’d played many parts in front of gagii before. Pretend to be mysterious. Smile to make them think you know something they do not, her older cousin Mirela had always told her. That way they will give you money to tell their fortunes but also be afraid of you.

  Why do we want them to be afraid of us? Tsura, only seven at the time, had asked. It hadn’t seemed like a good thing, to want to make people afraid.

  It keeps us safe, Mirela answered. They will drive us out of their towns, nothing can stop that, but they will not steal from us or kill us if they believe we can lay curses on them. We must be chameleons. Always have many faces, and never let them see your true one.

  Hiding her true face had never been as important as it was now.

  “It’s so lovely to meet you, Bogdan,” Tsura slid her arm out from around Mihai’s waist to hold it out to the soldier. She made her voice enthusiastic. “I haven’t had the opportunity to meet many of Mihai’s friends yet. I was so excited to come here where he spent all his summers as a child. As you know, our Mihai never uses ten words when one will do,” she laughed, “so spending time with his grandfather has been wonderful. He even has pictures of Mihai when he was a little boy! He was so cute. These cheeks of his.” She reached up and pinched one of Mihai’s now angular cheeks. His look told her he was not amused, but he did allow one corner of his mouth to tilt upwards. Mihai’s version of a smile, and probably all for Bogdan’s benefit.

  Bogdan reluctantly took her hand and then kissed both of her cheeks. Tsura’s back tensed at the contact, smelling his foul cigarette breath, but she kept her features smooth. When he pulled back, his eyes were suspicious. He didn’t completely believe them yet. Never safe, never safe, never safe. She’d been a fool to forget, even for a moment, that fundamental truth of life.

  “After the difficult journey, I haven’t done much more than sleep,” Tsura prattled on, then laughed, “which is probably why I’m so awake in the middle of the night. But Domnul Popescu did mention your mother and her lovely garden. I look forward to seeing it. Come now, Mihai,” she looked up at the big man. “It’s after midnight and you must be so tired, let’s get you inside—”

  “You’re right,” Bogdan interrupted. “We have traveled such a long way and we’re hungry and thirsty. I’d welcome your hospitality.”

  And with that, he pushed past Tsura and went into Domnul Popescu’s house. Tsura’s mouth dropped open as she looked wide-eyed at Mihai. A vein in his forehead jumped, but then he put his hand at the small of her back and thrust her inside.

  “Of course,” Mihai said, loud enough so Bogdan would hear. “Alexandra would love to fix us something.”

  Tsura’s back went rigid again, but with one last wild glance toward the woodshed where Andrei was still hidden, she allowed herself to be hustled inside.

  It took all of her self-control to make her voice steady. “I’d be glad to. Your grandfather still has some țuică he made last year, darling, and I can fry up some potatoes in no time at all.”

  In spite of trying not to, she couldn’t help thinking of the Weinbergs sleeping directly under their feet, or of Andrei cowering outside the door. She prayed fervently. Let them all stay in place, no one move.

  She gave a bright smile and poured each of the men a glass of țuică. The scent of fermented plums filled the kitchen, not quite covering the sour smell of Bogdan’s unwashed, smoky odor. “Mihai says you’re a soldier. Were you at the battle of Stalingrad?”

  Bogdan’s suspicious gaze never left her. What was he seeing? Her skin was a shade darker than most Romanians, but it could be explained away
by saying she spent time out under the sun. She wasn’t as dark as most Roma, probably because her grandmother had been a gagica. She thanked God for that Romanian peasant grandmother now.

  Tsura’s hair was dark and slightly wavy, but she’d cut it so it was a little past her shoulders, half held out of her face by clips like any other Romanian woman. Her nose was a tad larger than typical beauty standards allowed, she knew, and then there were her eyes. They were a light, almost translucent amber. Tiger’s eyes, Luca called them. Wicked gypsy eyes, the children at gagii school said when they made fun of her after she came to live with Luca. They marked her as strange, different. Bogdan would probably not guess she was Roma, but would he think she was Jewish?

  “No, I’m stationed at Transnistria,” Bogdan continued, “protecting Romanians against that disease on our country, the Jews.”

  Was Bogdan trying to get a reaction out of her? “Oh, how nice,” Tsura made herself say. She smiled sweetly before turning to the stove to prepare the potatoes.

  “We are very inventive in our methods of dealing with them,” Bogdan continued. “General Antonescu wants to get rid of them all by shipping them to Russia, but the Germans stationed there don’t want them and keep sending them back over the Bug river. I don’t know why we don’t install gas chambers like they do at the camps in Germany. The Germans might be overbearing bastards, but at least they know how to take care of their Jews. If you ask me we had the right idea in Iași. Wish we could do the same thing here in Bacău.”

  Tsura’s hand stilled for a moment from peeling potatoes. There had been rumors of a terrible pogrom in Iași, but little more information than that. “Oh?”

  Bogdan laughed, an ugly choking sound. “I was working with the German Einsatzgruppen as we cleaned out Bucovina, so I knew just what to do when we got the call from Antonescu to clear Iași. After we took care of the ones in the city, we loaded the rest on a train. They thought they were safe,” Bogdan laughed again, even slapping his knee. “That we were shipping them somewhere else. But all we did was send the train back and forth,” he made a motion with his fingers of a train bouncing back and forth between stations.

  “And the heat in the cars took care of the rest of them for us! Thousands and thousands of them. When some fools finally gave them food and water at one of the stations where they stopped, the ones that were left clawed at each other like animals to get it.” He shook his head like someone might do after telling a humorous anecdote. “They all show their true nature in the end. It’s the same in Transnistria, but we get to treat them like the dogs they are there with no one to stop us.”

  Tsura glanced sideways at the heavy cast iron frying skillet full of congealed fat that was always kept on the stove. Two seconds and she could be swinging it into Bogdan’s smarmy face. She’d probably take him by surprise. Before he could get that gun of his out again. She blinked hard to swallow down the impulse and continued peeling potatoes. Biting her lip, she gripped the potato she held so hard her knuckles turned white.

  Luca was in Transnistria. She hadn’t wanted to believe the horror stories. She’d told herself it was simply like a far away prison, and yes, her brother would have a hard time of it, but he would survive. Of course he would survive. Yet here was this filthy dog gloating about hurting other human beings with no more remorse than if they were cockroaches he squashed underneath his boot. Worse, he seemed to take pleasure in it.

  Tsura kept her back turned away from him, unsure if she could school her features correctly. Yes, she’d learned to be a consummate chameleon, but even she had her limits. She turned to the icebox and pulled out several thin chops of pork. It was a small thing, but maybe it would help convince Bogdan she wasn’t Jewish. She hated that. She wanted to scream at him that she was now engaged to a Jewish man and she was going to convert as soon as she could.

  But no—she forced her breathing to stay even—she had to live long enough to convert and she had to protect the man outside that she was going to marry. So when the fat in the skillet had turned to liquid, she laid out the pork in the oil. They immediately began to sizzle. Then she began to slice up the potatoes she’d peeled, glad to have her hands busy. If she was cutting potatoes, she could not claw Bogdan’s eyes out.

  Soon the delicious smell of pork filled the room as she sliced more potatoes into long thin rectangles. When the pork was done, she pulled it out with a fork, one each onto three plates, and set the first batch of potatoes cooking in the grease.

  A quick glance over her shoulder showed Mihai sitting at the small kitchen table, his țuică untouched in front of him. He watched Bogdan continue talking about the camps with his trademark impassive, unreadable expression on his face. If the Roma excelled in wearing many faces, Mihai wore only one, as if God had carved him from marble long ago, but unlike the rest of humanity, had forgotten to add the spark of life. Tsura turned back to the stove and tuned Bogdan’s voice out by singing along silently in her head to one of the folk songs she and Luca had loved to play together.

  Luca never looked more like his true self than when he had a fiddle in his hands. He had secured a makeshift strap on the old battered case of his violin, and he took it with him everywhere. His university friends called him the crazy singing gypsy, but most said it with affection. And Tsura had been glad to be the crazy gypsy’s sister.

  When he played and she sang they were the best at being double-faced, knowing they looked like happy fool gypsies from the outside while at the same time they were speaking a language that only they two understood. A secret language sewn into the music itself that the gagii could never hold in their hands or contain within their walls. One that connected them to the earth underneath their feet and the past centuries of wanderers who’d first come from foreign lands.

  And then Luca and Tsura laughed even louder to themselves because of these great secret things going on while everyone else smiled and clapped along to the crazy gypsies’ music. Luca pretended to be a gagiu well enough the rest of the time, but never when he was playing music and Tsura liked him best that way.

  And what was happening to him now? He’d have no violin to play. If he somehow lost his prosthetic leg or it was stolen from him, he’d be an invalid. In spite of her best efforts to distract herself, Bogdan’s voice was filtering through the music she so desperately sang in her head. She heard him talk about the long marches they subjected the deportees to, how they shot any of the ones who lagged behind. Was Luca already dead? Her heart clenched in her chest like a stone. No, it couldn’t be true. She’d know if he was dead. Viața mea, he called her. My life. Sufletul meu. My soul. She’d know if her soul was gone from this world. She’d feel the line connecting them snap, feel the life pouring out of her like blood. Wouldn’t she?

  “You see, they don’t dig privies up there,” Bogdan was still talking. “So the Jews just shit themselves where they sit—”

  “The food’s ready,” Tsura cut him off. She pulled the potatoes off the stove and used a fork to flip them onto plates. She took a breath to steady herself before turning around and setting down a plate for each of them on the table, then sitting beside Mihai. She needed the table between her and Bogdan. She forced herself to meet his gaze and smile as if she didn’t think he deserved to be stabbed through the eyes with the largest kitchen knife available and then drowned in the nearby pond with a boulder around his neck just to make sure the job was finished.

  “I hope you enjoy,” she said sweetly.

  Bogdan began to eat and Tsura forced herself to get the thin portion of pork and a few potatoes down, though her stomach was roiling. How long had they been in here? Was Andrei still waiting in the shed outside? She prayed he didn’t do anything stupid.

  “So now tell me about yourself,” Bogdan said, his mouth full of potatoes. His eyes narrowed as he watched her. “Where did you grow up? How did you and this old man meet?” He cuffed Mihai hard on the shoulder. It was a seemingly good natured move, but Tsura felt the menace behind it.

/>   Mihai hadn’t said a word during Bogdan’s monologue about the horrors of Transnistria, and watching him now, Tsura had little clue what was going on in his head. Not that she ever did. The placid, cold facial expression he had on now was much the same as he always wore, even back in his and Luca’s university days.

  “Alexandra grew up near Fălticeni,” Mihai said, his voice loud in the quiet room. Tsura blinked. Devil, she’d been silent too long.

  “In the city?” Bogdan questioned.

  “No, about thirty kilometers southeast of it,” Tsura answered. That area was all farmland and while some lies sold better in specifics, locational lies were always best in generalities. “My father is a peasant farmer near there. I grew up playing in the corn and sunflower fields. Tati also has a small vineyard.” Tsura closed her eyes and ran her tongue over her lips. “Mmmm, it was the best wine. After this war, perhaps I’ll taste it once again. And darling,” she turned to Mihai and dropped a kiss on his cheek, “why don’t you tell the story of how we met? I love it best when you tell it.”

  Mihai blinked a few times, as if shocked by the contact, but then he began to talk. Tsura collected the empty plates and took them to the sink. She tried to still her trembling hand. She thought she was putting on a good face, but she was exhausted and wanted Bogdan gone. She wanted the safety of walls and a locked door between them, even if it was only the illusion of safety. Ironic that she, a Roma, would now find comfort in walls.

  She left the dishes in the sink and grabbed the bottle of țuică. “More?” she asked Bogdan, hoping he would say no. But he nodded and so she poured. She’d come this far, she didn’t want to look suspicious by shooing him too quickly out now.

  “I was on holiday with university friends,” Mihai said, “heading toward my family house in Piatra Neamț. On the way, we came through to visit Grandfather. He invited us to a friend’s wedding.” Again, that one edge of his mouth curved up slightly. “Free feasting and wine. We were no fools, so we said yes. And there she was.” He looked at Tsura as she sat back down at the table with them.

  “Alexandra wore a pink dress and was laughing. She’s lovely when she laughs. I couldn’t take my eyes off her all night.” His eyes stayed on Tsura while he told the fake story and for a moment she thought she saw a crack in the marble. Not exactly a flash of humanity, but... something. Did he see Luca when he looked at her? By all accounts, Mihai loved him like a brother.

  “As everyone knows,” Mihai inclined his head and looked back at Bogdan, “I’ve always been far too serious. So I asked the beautiful laughing girl to dance.”

  He looked so sincere as he lied, for a second Tsura was taken off guard. Had he always lied so easily and so well? She put it from her mind and smiled affectionately. “And I did not dance with another boy the rest of the night, only Mihai. My feet ached by dawn when he escorted me home, but I didn’t care.”

  “Never did make it to Piatra Neamț,” Mihai continued. “My friends went on without me. I stayed near Fălticeni to court Alexandra.”

  “He begged me to marry him but we knew a war was coming,” Tsura took over. “My mother had died the year before and my father needed me to take care of my younger sisters and brother while he worked the fields. We knew Mihai would have to go to help his father in Ploiești, so we decided to wait until after the war to get married.” She smiled. “But now my father has remarried, so his new wife’s taken over caring for the children.”

  Tsura reached out and laid her hand over Mihai’s, feeling a strange sense of betrayal even as she did it. Her true fiancé was sitting outside among the shadowed stacks of wood probably scared and wondering what on earth was happening inside. Still, she forced herself to lean down and place a kiss on Mihai’s knuckles.

  “And I decided I was done waiting to be with my Mihai, so I came to stay with his grandfather until he could come take me to Bucharest.” The better the show now, the more likely she’d never be in this position again.

  Bogdan nodded and downed the rest of his țuică in a long swallow. Finally he relaxed in his chair. The air of suspicion was gone. Tsura thought he finally believed them. It was all she could do not to audibly sigh with relief.

  “What is all this noise?” Grandfather’s voice echoed from the living room. “I swear, if you are getting into the țuică again, Li—”

  Grandfather froze mid-sentence as he came into the kitchen, horror etched on his face when he saw Tsura sitting at a table with Bogdan.

  “Grandfather,” Mihai vaulted out of his chair. He hurried to the older man and hugged him to block him from Bogdan’s view. “I was just telling Bogdan here how Alexandra and I met and how happy I am now that I can finally be with my fiancée.”

  Grandfather nodded and by the time Mihai pulled back, he had schooled his features better into that of a jovial easiness. “So good to see you, boy. Didn’t expect you back tonight. You took an old man by surprise!”

  But when Tsura glanced at Bogdan, the suspicion was back on his face, stronger than ever. Go to the devil!

  “Speaking of,” Bogdan said, standing as well, “when is the happy event taking place?”

  “Oh, we still want to wait until after the war,” Tsura smiled up at Mihai. She took her place by his side and tried to reclaim some of the lightness from the moments before his grandfather had come into the room.

  Bogdan looked her body up and down. “So you’ll move to Bucharest with him without being married? How convenient.” His voice was heavy with unkind innuendo, sexual in the best case scenario, suspicious of her ethnicity in the worst.

  There was a moment of shocked silence after his statement, whether from the rudeness or from fear. Maybe both. All that could be heard was the loud, alternating ticks of the kitchen and living room clocks, slightly out of sync.

  “Well, I will not stand for it,” Domnul Popescu said suddenly, shattering the quiet. He slammed his hand on the kitchen table. “I know young people think you can do things differently these days, but it isn’t Christian! No, you have been engaged long enough. You will not leave Bacău together without being married. I’ll arrange it with the priest. By the end of the week,” his voice gentled as he took Tsura’s cheek in his palm, “you will be my granddaughter in truth.”

  Tsura blinked at him. Domnul Popescu had always been a kind man. She swallowed. Of course. He had to do this, to say this. The farce was more important than ever. If Bogdan suspected Domnul Popescu was housing Jews, he could alert the police. From everything she’d heard from Domnul Popescu about their neighbor’s three sons who had been Iron Guardists and everything she’d heard from Bogdan’s own mouth over the past hour, she knew he was well connected enough to have the Popescu’s house torn apart if he wanted. Then all of them would be imprisoned, if not sent to the camps, Domnul Popescu and Mihai included. Domnul Popescu had protected her for the last year and she could only do the same now.

  She pasted on a huge, toothy smile to cover the acid eating through her stomach. “Yes, Mihai, that sounds wonderful!” She turned to Mihai and grasped his hands. “We’ve waited long enough. You know my brother went off to fight and never came home.” She didn’t have to work to put emotion in her voice. “This war has brought so many uncertainties. We should take hold of what happiness we have while we can.”

  If Mihai was off balance by his grandfather’s sudden pronouncement and her quick acquiescence, he didn’t show it. He simply pulled her into his arms as if she weighed nothing at all, which perhaps to him, she didn’t. He swung her around in a circle, her feet off the ground.

  “This makes me so happy.” Mihai set her back on the ground and kissed her chastely on the lips. She felt her eyes widen, but forced her body not to tense up in front of Bogdan. She only just fought the impulse to swipe at her mouth. Oh God. What was she doing? Had she really just promised to marry two men in one night? But this was only pretend. It was the false face. Andrei had her true self.

  Mihai pulled back and turned to Bogdan, arm around her shoul
ders. Domnul Popescu stood off to the side, smiling, but he wasn’t as good as Tsura as hiding his emotion. She could see the vein straining in his forehead.

  Bogdan’s eyes were still narrowed as he smiled a half smirk. “Congratulations. How sweet that love can still blossom in a time of war.”

  She felt Mihai’s arm muscles strain beside her, but he kept the smile on his face. Even though Bogdan’s words had been outwardly cordial, Mihai too must have sensed the veiled threat. At the same time, Bogdan couldn’t come out and make bold-faced accusations. Not without proof. Mihai’s grandfather might be just another villager, a retired shoemaker, but Mihai’s father was an influential oil baron in Ploiești. They were all dancing around each other as if on a chessboard. A precious balance of power that could tip one way or the other with even the slightest wrong move.

  “I’m sure my mother will want to meet you,” Bogdan said, standing up from the table. “You must come over tomorrow for dinner.”

  “I look forward to the pleasure,” Tsura said. Mihai’s arm was still heavy on her shoulder, angling her slightly behind himself, away from Bogdan. Tsura wasn’t sure if it was intentional or not, but she was glad for his solid body between them.

  They walked Bogdan to the front door.

  “Can’t wait to meet your mother tomorrow,” Tsura said cheerfully. “From everything I’ve heard of her garden, maybe she’d be willing to donate some flowers for the wedding arrangements.”

  Bogdan eyed her for one last moment without a response, then turned and walked out the door. As soon as it shut, Tsura ran to Domnul Popescu’s bedroom and watched through the curtains out his window to see Bogdan’s house. As soon as the disgusting man disappeared inside his front door, she ran like a shot through the kitchen toward the back exit. She opened it quickly and whispered to Andrei, “Hurry, in the house now.”

  Andrei jumped out from behind a stack of wood and in a few steps was inside the house. Tsura quickly shut the door behind him. She gasped in relief and sagged back against the door.

  “How could you two be so careless?” Mihai’s voice was whispered, but the hissing bite of it was as sharp as a whip. “You risk my grandfather’s life and for what? A late night tryst? Tell me, was it worth it?”

  “Mihai,” his grandfather’s voice was sharp. “Apologize.”

  Tsura felt her face flood with heat and shame. A glance at Andrei showed he was staring at the floor. She glared at Mihai who stood with his thick arms crossed across his chest, gray eyes narrowed on Andrei in accusation and then flipping to her with as much censure.

  Yes, she felt horrible for having disobeyed Domnul Popescu’s rules and it leading to such a disastrous end. She should never have let Andrei take her outside. Her greed for the sky and wind and to be alone with Andrei had made her drunk to consequences and now they were all in danger.

  But how dare Mihai stand here, as if he was the righteous one, and shame them? Him, a Nazi collaborator! She took Andrei’s hand in hers and stood with her shoulders squared, staring back at Mihai defiantly.

  She and Andrei were safe for the moment, that was all that mattered. Suddenly she didn’t care about Mihai at all. She turned and clutched Andrei to her.

  “I was so worried, Andrei,” she whispered, lifting Andrei’s face and kissing him. This was no quick chaste kiss. She didn’t care that Domnul Popescu or anyone else was watching. There were so many larger things to fear now, she wouldn’t lose a moment of connection with the one she loved.

  “Who was that man?” Andrei asked, finally pulling back from her.

  Domnul Popescu sat down heavily in one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “A bad man,” he said, sounding exhausted, and not just because he’d been woken in the middle of the night.

  “He was Iron Guard,” Mihai said, jaw taut, “and then when they were dissolved, he joined the army.”

  “And he’s one of the worst of them,” Domnul Popescu added. “Even before the deportations, he led midnight raids against the Jews, murdering them in their beds. And other rumors of the violence he did to their women…” Domnul Popescu trailed off, his eyes troubled.

  “How did you escape his suspicion?” Andrei’s forehead furrowed in worry.

  Mihai paced the small kitchen area. “I don’t think we did.”

  “What happens now?” Tsura asked in a small voice, still clutching both of Andrei’s hands. “I only have a few days to get away. We’ll have to think of a story. Is there somewhere else I can go to hide? ”

  Domnul Popescu shook his head. “Not around here. Among those that I know who are sympathetic, there’s no place to put you. What about your father, Mihai?”

  Mihai ran a hand through his hair, the only sign that he was agitated. “He would refuse. His refinery depends on German clientele too much to risk harboring undesirables.”

  Tsura tried and failed not to flinch at the word. Undesirables.

  “I have some friends in Bucharest I trust,” Mihai continued, “but there’s little space in the city. And it would look strange if she suddenly disappeared. Bogdan could still pull together a village mob to raid the house, if not the police themselves.”

  Tsura swallowed, sweat breaking out on her forehead. The food she’d eaten earlier felt like acid in her stomach. She took a breath, trying to calm her nausea. She felt thirteen years old again. Never safe, never safe, never safe. She sat down and put her head between her knees, biting her lip hard against the frightened tears gathering in her eyes. She hated it, hated herself for being so weak.

  Mihai stopped pacing and stood before her. “I made a vow to your brother to protect you. There is only one thing to do.”

  “What?” she looked up at him.

  His face was as hard as ever as he answered. “This week, here in the village, we must get married.”

  Chapter 3