Tsura: A World War II Romance

Hours and hours later, Tsura sat at a wide table in the outdoor tent that had been set up in the village square, feeling too full. After the three course meal that had started with a bowl of sour-brothed ciorbă and ended with an overgenerous helping of sarmale and pork steak, followed by a decadent dessert of tort de biscuiţi, she was sure she wouldn’t need to eat again for three days. She couldn’t remember the last time she had seen so much food. Dinners in the Popescu basement had been lean, since it would’ve looked strange if Domnul Popescu was buying too much food at the market when he supposedly lived by himself. She’d fit as much of the food in this afternoon as she could without making herself sick. An old Roma compulsion. No matter how miserable you were, never pass up a meal.

  Tsura sipped from her glass of wine and looked out on the outdoor pavilion. It was the first moment she’d had alone in hours. All throughout the procession after the church and then the seemingly unending courses, she’d had to smile and make pleasantries with strangers all day long. All the while, listening over and over to the phrase: casă de piatră! House of stone. It was the most common phrase of well-wishing said to a bride and groom. None of them knew that to a Roma, and this Roma in particular, that phrase was double cringe-worthy. The thought of walls, especially stone ones, after her long confinement in the basement only made her shudder. The metaphorical meaning was little better—she certainly didn’t intend on having a strong or long-lasting marriage to Mihai Popescu.

  She looked out on the crowd. The band began playing again after a short break and the dancing area filled back up with people. The central village square had been taken over by the wedding party where a huge tent had been erected. All afternoon, the women busied themselves at the tables set up all along the edges of the tent, preparing food. The men slaughtered one of Grandfather Popescu’s pigs just outside the tent. It seemed like every person from the entire village and even those from the surrounding villages who barely knew the Popescu’s had shown up. Electric lights were strung around the tent, another extravagance. In fact, looking out at this wedding celebration, you’d never know there was a war on at all.

  The women were dressed mostly in peasant garb, puffy linen shirts and skirts, with ornately knit red aprons draped down the front and back. Scarves covered their hair, some red, others a faded brown. The men wore loose linen pants and dark vests over their white shirts. A few here and there wore suits and stylish dresses, clearly indicating they were from the city. But everyone’s skin glistened with sweat from the warm evening air and the large amounts of wine, beer, and țuică they’d been drinking all afternoon.

  Tsura herself had drunk a fair amount of wine. Whether at a wedding or a funeral, one thing was the same—you drank. As soon as she’d walked from the church to the cheers from the entire village she’d known there was no undoing it. There was no unweaving the fate that had been spun and then knotted around her neck. Nothing to do except try to step quicker next time, praying her luck would turn and let her be slippery enough to escape the noose before it cinched too tight.

  And in the meantime, in accordance with the proper ludicrousness of the situation, Tsura grinned widely. Better always to laugh instead of cry. Besides, it was a great joke after all. Tricking all these gagii into having such a celebration for a Roma. Grandfather Besnik would have laughed and laughed and laughed. Jokes at the expense of the gagii were the best kind, after all.

  She let the music seep into her blood, making her tap her foot. The fiddle was quite horribly out of tune and the singer’s voice broke whenever he aimed for a high note that was too ambitious for him. This was what you got when you hired gagii musicians, she snorted. But still, at least it was music. She was greedy for any she could get.

  “Give me your shoe!” Radu, a university friend of both Mihai and her brother, demanded with a roguish wink. His light brown hair flopped over his forehead as he said this. He never slicked it back as was the style. He was the only one besides Mihai’s family who knew her true identity. He’d taken the train up from Bucharest after Mihai called him earlier in the week. Radu had often been around the apartment while she’d been growing up, when she’d come to live with Luca at thirteen. Radu’s favorite pastimes were telling jokes and tweaking her braids.

  She tensed up even as she said, “Oh no,” with great dramatics. The time had come. She leaned down and pulled off one of her cream-colored wedding slippers. She took quick breaths in and out to try to calm her racing heart. A couple of Mihai’s other childhood friends from the village were with Radu, but Radu made sure they didn’t get too close. Bogdan, thankfully, wasn’t among them. Radu and Mihai would have only chosen men they could trust for this. She handed her shoe to one of the other men beside Radu.

  She tried to prepare herself but was still startled when Radu picked her up in his arms and ran with her out of the dancing area. Tsura laughed nervously as she bounced in his arms through the lighted space of the tent square. But then he carried her into the dark night and her stomach began to cramp. No, no, no.

  Radu was gentle as he hoisted her up into a hay wagon. That didn’t stop her heart from racing what felt like a thousand beats per minute. Radu jumped up beside her and the other two got up front to drive. The wagon took off, the horse hooves thudding on the dirt road. Tsura sat rigidly against the wooden sideboards, eyes searching the road. That was the thing about darkness. So much could hide in it.

  “Ahhh,” Radu said, laying back on the hay with his arms behind his head. “A clear, warm summer night. Perfect for kidnapping, if I do say so.”

  She took several steady breaths in and out. Radu would keep her safe. There were two other men besides him. And she wasn’t a little girl any more either. She let out another deep breath and finally let her body relax. She’d always felt far more at ease with Radu than Mihai. Radu never failed to have a joke ready for her and he teased her like she was his own sister. She was perfectly safe.

  The hay cart drove for about twenty minutes, deep into the city where the roads turned from dirt to cobblestones. They passed leisurely by the ornate downtown buildings, the streets illuminated by gas-lit street lamps. Radu kept her entertained, telling her story after story about his antics in the city and the many love affairs he got tangled in. Some of his stories were obviously embellished, which made her relax and smile even more.

  “Then there was Florina,” Radu said. “She usually only had affairs with the most powerful men in Bucharest, but she made an exception for poor Radu. The mixture of me looking so smart in my policeman’s uniform plus these blue eyes…the darling girl was overcome.” He raised one eyebrow devilishly by the light of the lamp attached to the back of the wagon to show off the blue eyes, which Tsura had to admit, were fairly admirable. “It’s all in the eyes, you know,” he said. “Women can forgive a little paunch or a nervous tic as long as you have beautiful eyes to mesmerize them with.”

  Tsura rolled her own eyes. “As if you have ever had a paunch or a nervous tic.” Radu had never lacked for female attention. Back when her brother had been in college with him, Radu had always had one girl or another on his arm. But rarely the same one for more than a week. It didn’t sound like much had changed in the intervening years.

  Radu arched his eyebrow higher. “Why Mrs. Popescu, are you flirting with me on your own wedding night?”

  She smacked him in the arm.

  Radu smirked.

  “What?” she asked, propping her elbow on her knee.

  “Nothing, just thinking of what all our friends in Bucharest will say when Mihai comes home with a wife!” He laughed. “The ever stoic Mihai Popescu.” He straightened his face into a bored-looking expression, attempting to imitate Mihai, she guessed, but the mischievous sparkle in his eyes made the impression fail.

  He grinned again, not able to hold the face longer than a few seconds. “Impervious Mihai, falling in love!” He lowered his voice and leaned in so that only she could hear. “Supposedly, anyway.”

  Then he leaned back and settled against
the back of the wagon. “I think it will be good for him,” he breathed out and turned his face to the stars, letting his arms hang lazily over the sides. “He hangs around those German stiffs all day. That can’t be good for a man’s constitution.”

  Tsura glanced at the front of the wagon. The other two ‘kidnappers’ driving the team of horses were joking back and forth raucously, not paying attention to them at all. Not knowing if she’d ever have another time like this, she moved beside Radu and leaned in.

  “Doesn’t it ever bother you?” she whispered. “That Mihai works for the Nazis? Just yesterday I heard him talking about his job.” She shuddered, remembering the words he’d yelled at his father. “Like he was proud of it.”

  Radu must have been surprised by her question, but he only raised his eyebrows in response. Then shrugged. “I make it a point to never judge a man by his politics or his job. Look at me. I’m a Bucharest police officer. Surely you know we don’t have a reputation for being the politest bunch. And so corrupt, most can be bought off for less than a fistful of lei.”

  “Even you?”

  Radu winked and smiled. “If the situation is right, I’m not opposed to accepting a small donation. Only if it’s in support of the honorable police who protect the fair populace of our beloved capital city.”

  “But Mihai’s work is different,” Tsura insisted, unwilling to be put off by his joking. “He works for them. I can’t understand it. And after Luca was taken…” Tsura stopped speaking, her jaw tensing so tight she thought she might crack a tooth.

  “Mihai isn’t like other men,” Radu said, more gently. “He’s a quiet one. Even me, who’s known him all these years, barely understands what goes on in that brain of his. Maybe he thinks of his job only as far as the technicalities. He likes fiddling with languages and doing translating. The Germans need translators. It could be as simple as that.”

  It was similar to what Luca had said when she’d asked him about Mihai’s job. Tsura shook her head vehemently. “No!” she whispered. “Right is right and wrong is wrong. To ignore the moral implications—”

  At this Radu threw back his head and laughed. “Oh little Tsura,” he drew her close, an arm thrown affectionately around her shoulders. “You are such an innocent. We live in the modern world now. Morality belonged to our ancestors, don’t you know that by now?”

  Tsura pulled away from him and went back to sitting against the other end of the wagon. The smell of hay and horses was so familiar. An intense longing for the caravan swept over her. She blinked. Where had that thought come from? She thought she’d given up that desire long ago. Given up the girl she had once been. It was just that the rules of right and wrong were so clear there. Laws and traditions shaped their lives. The gagii, especially the ones who attended university with her brother, despised such things and called it freedom.

  But then, she’d yearned for so long to go back to the place where the world made sense, to reverse the years to the time before. When she’d just been a girl who traveled with her people and believed implicitly that she’d always be sheltered and protected by those who loved her.

  And then, when that girl died on the road only to be reborn in a gagii hospital, she became someone else, a pretend gagica, an outside-in girl, forced to permanently wear the false face. Cut your hair, little Tsura. Speak Romanian, don’t let a Romani word touch your tongue. Wear skirts that touch your knees instead of your ankles. She’d obeyed all of Luca’s commands. He did it with good intentions, she knew. He didn’t want her to face the difficulties transitioning into the gagii world that he had when he’d first come into it.

  He didn’t understand, couldn’t understand then, what he would intimately know later in his own life when he returned from battle missing a leg and part of his soul. She had been shattered that night on the dusty road when she was thirteen. Like a cracked egg, what had been broken couldn’t be put back together again. She wasn’t sure if she would’ve been able to get the pieces back even if she’d returned to the caravan. Probably not. But she wasn’t given the option of going back to find out.

  In addition to the twelve broken bones and a shattered pelvis, the attack she’d suffered that night had also collapsed her uterus. The gagii doctors removed it to save her life. They said she was lucky to be alive. Lucky too that she hadn’t been raped in addition to being beaten. Lucky. They didn’t realize that a Roma woman who could never be a mother was more burden than she was worth. Her father had said he loved her, kissed her forehead, and then sent her away forever.

  Years later, even when Tsura’d become accustomed to her second life, she still missed the first. Luca had only laughed at her whenever she mentioned it.

  “Go back to squalor and being driven out of every place we ever stopped the caravan? Never staying in one place longer than a month or two, and that only if we were lucky?” Luca shook his head, fire in his eyes. “We had no goals back then, we couldn’t afford them. The future held nothing except more of the same, wandering and being mistreated for years on end. We couldn’t better ourselves or the lives of our children. Father was right to send me to get educated among the gagii.”

  “But Luca,” she’d said, “the caravan was home. We were made whole because we were surrounded with our own kind. God bound us together and only together was our spirit made strong.”

  “Tsurica,” he laughed, shaking his head, “didn’t you read that Sartre book I gave you? Hasn’t it cured you of believing in God yet?”

  Tsura’d been taking French for two years at that point, and what little she could read of the book Luca carried around with him everywhere, she hadn’t enjoyed. “It’s such a sad book.”

  Luca laughed harder. “Of course it is, that’s why I love it! It makes me want to dance and make music.”

  At this, it was Tsura’s turn to laugh. “Everything makes you want to dance and make music.”

  Luca considered this for a moment. “True.” And he’d grabbed her up off the couch and swung her around in an impromptu dance in their tiny apartment.

  She was only broken out of her thoughts when the wagon stopped. They were back in the village. Radu was snoring gently beside her on the hay. One of the boys who’d been driving kicked Radu as he climbed down from the wagon.

  “Falling asleep on duty?” the other man laughed. “Now I see how you get through your night shifts.”

  Radu roused quickly. “I was merely relaxing my eyes. What, a person can’t even blink too long without being accused of falling asleep?”

  The other man guffawed, but then was off into the night to see if their terms had been negotiated for Tsura’s ‘release.’ Tsura moved closer to Radu, making sure he didn’t fall asleep again. There were no lights on in the village apart from the tent where the celebrations were held, but that was several blocks away.

  Fifteen minutes later Mihai’s friend came back and told her terms had been met.

  “How much was she worth?” Radu asked.

  “Two cases of beer and four bottles of țuică.”

  Radu nodded appreciatively. “A girl of value. Our Mihai does not skimp, does he?”

  The crowd hooted with approval when Radu and his friend carried Tsura back into the main tent area. She had survived the darkness. The rush of relief wasn’t as great as she’d been expecting. The activity and noise was bracing after the quiet of the night ride. Then she shook her head.

  At least this meant the day was that much closer to being done. She could see Andrei. Her chest burned at the thought. See him and then leave him again when they left for Bucharest in another day’s time.

  Mihai hurried over and returned her shoe, hugging her close since they were in front of so many spectators. He smelled of expensive aftershave. Nothing like Andrei. She stiffened in his arms.

  “Are you all right?” he whispered in her ear.

  “Fine,” Tsura bit out. She was tired and a little lightheaded from the wine she’d drunk all evening. And she did not want her new husband touching h
er.

  It was almost midnight by now, but the party showed little signs of stopping any time soon. Tsura knew it was customary for the dancing to go on all the way until dawn. Then the party guests would collapse on whatever bed, cot or floor that was available, sleep until noon, only to wake and start the preparation of food and partying all over again for the second day. Tsura sagged at the thought.

  “Dance with me?” Mihai held out his hand.

  Tsura stared at him. She supposed it would look odd if she refused to dance with her own husband. Tsura forced herself to take his hand and again she was startled by the warm, heavy weight of it. His grip was firm. She had to tip her head backwards in order to see his face when they stood close. His gray eyes were intense as he watched her. What was he thinking? What had he thought about the entire day? How could she have been acquainted with someone off and on for six years and still feel like he was a stranger?

  She went through the steps of the folk dance, glad she was only connected to Mihai by the hand as he danced around her. His eyes stayed on her the entire time. They weren’t cold now. They were… something else. Too intense. That at least hadn’t changed. She looked away. Her back relaxed only once the song changed and she was able to lose herself in the crowd dancing in a large circle.

  A chunk of the crowd broke off to form an inner circle inside the large one. The band played a frantic ear-blasting tune and Tsura found herself caught up in the spirit of it in spite of her tiredness. She held the hands of a young peasant woman to her left and a middle aged man to her right who was so drunk it was a miracle he was managing to stay upright, much less dance the fast-footed dance. Around and around they went, the crowd stomping and shouting a loud ‘huh!’ on the downbeats. The beat seemed to resonate from the floor up through her sternum. Tsura stomped her feet and let her head fall back, the momentum of the circle carrying her feet without having to look where she was going. Luca, she prayed, wherever you are this night, if you are truly my soul, then feel the beat of this music and let it make your heart light. Stay alive, for me.

  Tsura pulled away from the dancing several songs later. She leaned against one of the tent poles and took in a deep fresh breath of air for the first time in what felt like an hour. She couldn’t see Mihai in the crush of bodies. Good. Those eyes of his. They didn’t make her uncomfortable, exactly. It just felt like he was observing her down to the most minute detail sometimes, and judging what he saw. But he never gave away even the slightest hint of what his evaluations or thoughts about her were.

  She gave her head a quick shake. It didn’t matter what he thought about her. She didn’t like him, but she would be civil. That was enough. They would only need to stay just a little while longer, then they could go back to the house and she could see Andrei, then sleep. She stretched her tired neck. This day would finally be over.

  “Give me your shoe,” whispered a low voice from behind her.

  She jerked away from the tent pole she’d been leaning against and spun around. Bogdan and a couple of his friends crowded in the darkness outside the tent’s light. Their eyes were red and glassy. Obviously drunk.

  Tsura took several steps back into the light. “You’re too late.” She stood tall. She wasn’t going to cower from a bully like Bogdan “I’ve already been kidnapped and returned.”

  But Bogdan didn’t seem deterred. “You haven’t paid my price.” His voice was low. This wasn’t a harmless wedding prank.

  “Mih—” she managed only a quick shriek before a dirty hand clamped over her mouth from behind her. One of his friends must have circled around her when she was focused on Bogdan. Then she was spun and dragged into the darkness outside the tent.

  Chapter 6