Bogdan’s thugs picked her up, one underneath each of her arms while Bogdan grabbed her legs. The man behind her did double-duty, carrying her while keeping his hand mashed over her mouth. Tsura wrenched her body as they began to run with her. No! She had to get away. She bit down hard on the man’s fingers covering her mouth. When he released his muzzling grip with a curse, she screamed as loud as she could. But the music from the band and shouting crowd drowned out her voice. Not again, this couldn’t be happening to her again.
“Jew bitch!” Bogdan slapped her hard, stunning her into silence for a few moments. “I know you’re a liar!” By the time she recovered her wits and opened her mouth wide to scream again, he had roughly stuffed a dirty handkerchief into her mouth. The man she’d bitten took position at her legs as Bogdan helped hold her upper body. Then they were running again.
She kept yelling and screaming anyway, even though her cries were muffled. No one would hear her. No one would come. She was transported back seven years to when she had been thirteen. There had been three of them then too.
She struggled like a wild animal to get away, scratching, kicking to try to dislodge their meaty arms, elbowing them anywhere she could. But she couldn’t get away. Not a child anymore, but still they were stronger. She screamed into the cloth. The three men dragged her into a house where all the lights were off. Devil, devil, devil. They’d gotten her out of the open where someone from the party might have seen or heard her.
The man who’d been holding her underneath the armpits shifted his hold, banding a thick arm underneath her breasts. He laughed when this brought on a fresh set of screams into the dirty, sweat-salted rag in her mouth. She turned her face away in disgust from the stench of his sour beer-and-meat breath.
No. This would not happen. Oh God, no. She felt the panicked tears biting at her eyes, but she refused to cry. No, she would escape. She would find a way out.
A dim lamp was lit, revealing a damp, untidy basement at the bottom of the stairs. There was old, discarded furniture, some broken. Crates of jarred fruits and vegetables. Tsura’s eyes darted around wildly for anything she might get her hands on to use as a weapon if she could only twist out of their grasp. One of the broken chairs legs could be a make-shift stake, but it was across the room.
Not to mention that every time she’d seen Bogdan this week, he’d never been without the gun slung in the holster at the back of his waist. What was a chair leg against a gun? She didn’t care. If she could just get a chance, she’d go for the broken furniture. But no matter how hard she tried to wrench her arms free, their bruising grip was unyielding.
They dragged her over to a low work table, and slammed her down on it, grinding her cheek into the wood. Bogdan leaned over and spit on her face. His breath was foul and she shrieked into the cloth in her mouth.
“Costel here,” he gestured with a chin nod at one of the other men, “took a little trip to Fălticeni and he couldn’t find any peasant farmers with a daughter named Alexandra, as I had suspected. So, little Jew bitch, I’ll educate you on another point. Do you know where the custom of bride stealing comes from?” Bogdan punctuated his question by ripping the back of her gown, sending all the beautiful pearl buttons plinking to the floor. Tsura hissed out in terror and fury.
“The Lord of the manner would steal the brides so he could fuck the virgins first. It was his right as lord of the land. And we are the lords now. We are the Iron Guard, and we fight for righteousness as the bringers of death!” He reached around and crushed one of her breasts in his hand. She screamed against the rag in pain and rage.
Tsura tried to wrench backward, but Bogdan’s men held her arms down on both sides. Bogdan leaned over her, probably to spit on her again. She reared back, slamming the back of her head into his face.
He howled and dropped his elbow on her neck, pinning her to the table. Splinters from the rough wood of the table’s surface dug into the side of her face. “I’m going to rip you stem to stern, do you understand, you filthy whore!” He gathered up the rest of her skirts roughly to her waist, ripping more fabric as he went. She tried to jerk away or kick him, but his two friends locked her legs and held her shoulders down.
Tsura closed her eyes, still struggling with all her might. But she knew she wouldn’t be able to get away. This was really going to happen. The already shattered pieces of her would be ground to dust this time. Please God, strike me dead where I stand. Or better yet, strike Bogdan dead and send him to the fieriest pit of hell.
But suddenly there were other voices in the room, shouting.
Tsura twisted her neck enough to see that the door at the top of the stairs had been thrown open. Mihai and several of his friends charged down the stairs, including Radu. “Get your hands off my wife!” Mihai’s eyes were alight with fury.
“Stop right there!” Bogdan pulled the small black hand-gun from the back of his belt and pointed it straight at Mihai’s chest. But then Radu and one of the other men with Mihai also pulled out weapons. Two guns against one.
“Let go of her!” Mihai roared. He looked like a barely leashed animal. He was a large man, she’d always registered that in a kind of absent way because he always wore suits and was so often silent. But now his wedding jacket was off, showcasing shoulders that reminded her of the hulking gorillas she’d seen once at the zoo. His fists were clenched and his normally detached facial features had twisted into a brutal mask as if he were ready for blood sport. The two men holding Tsura down released her and she stumbled backwards, clutching her torn gown around her.
But Bogdan grabbed her arm in a painful grip and swung her around until she was placed in front of him as a shield. He held his gun to her temple. “You’re no better than her, you Jew lover,” he glared at Mihai. “In Transnistria we know what to do with Jew bitches. We treat them like the dogs that they are and put them down as often as we like.”
“She’s not Jewish,” Mihai ground out through gritted teeth, the corded muscles on his neck stretched taut as if he was only just keeping himself from launching himself forward.
Bogdan didn’t seem to hear, or maybe was too drunk to concentrate on more than one thing at a time. “You forget the glories of the Iron Guard! We are an eternal brotherhood. We may have been disbanded, but in our hearts we’ll always be legionnaires.” The words poured out like the memorized rhetoric they probably were. “Soon we will rise again. We already took down a king! You think we are not strong enough to fight you? We are commissioned by the archangel Michael himself to purify our fatherland by ridding ourselves of these parasites on all that is good and true and Romanian and we—”
A shot rang out in the room and for a terrified second Tsura was sure it had been Bogdan’s gun, that she’d been shot but didn’t feel it because her soul was slipping from her body.
But then Bogdan howled behind her. His gun clattered to the floor and bounced away several feet. She ripped away from him and dove toward the gun. She landed hard on her side but still managed to close her hands around the cold metal of the handle. She fumbled her fingers in the way she thought you were supposed to hold a gun and then swung to aim it at Bogdan. He was still screaming and now Tsura saw why. His upper right arm was covered in blood. He was the one who’d been shot. A quick glance over at the stairs and she saw that Radu was re-cocking his gun. Radu must have been the one who’d done the shooting.
She looked back at Bogdan just in time to see him hurl himself at Mihai in a rage. Mihai ducked out of the way and then turned back, slamming into Bogdan from the side and forcing him to his knees. Then he easily pinned Bogdan to the ground and stepped on his blood-stained arm, grinding the wound into the dirt floor. Bogdan screamed, high pitched like a woman.
Tsura stood up again and she strode toward where Bogdan lay, keeping her gun on him the whole time. She’d never held a gun before, much less shot one, but she imagined she had the basic mechanics of it. It felt good to have such a weapon in her shaking hands after all her power had been stripped from her only moments
before. Mihai kept his foot on Bogdan’s arm.
Bogdan’s thugs stood with their arms up in fearful surrender as Radu and the second man holding a gun kept their weapons trained on them.
“Did he…?” Mihai swallowed, and he furrowed his eyebrows and squeezed his eyes shut as if in pain. “Were we too late?”
She shook her head rapidly, the thought of what had almost happened making her so queasy she was sure she would throw up right there. She took a deep steadying breath to keep it back and then whispered, “No.” She took a deep breath, only now realizing she’d been panting. Breathing so shallowly she felt lightheaded. “You came in time. How did you know where I was?”
The tightness in Mihai’s face softened, but only slightly. He opened his eyes. “I didn’t see you dancing. I went looking for you. When I didn’t see Bogdan either, I prayed I was wrong. I’d been watching him all night. The one time I looked away…”
His expression went hard as marble when he looked back down at Bogdan squirming under foot. “Give me the gun, Alexandra.” His voice was now perfectly modulated and cold as the arctic.
Hand trembling, Tsura handed it over to him. She didn’t know what he meant to do with it, and at the moment, she didn’t care. Part of her wanted him to put a bullet in Bogdan’s head. She was surprised and disturbed at the viciousness of the thought. She was glad the moment the gun was gone from her fingers.
Mihai took the gun and spun it around so that he was holding the butt outward. His arm was mid-swing when other voices started shouting.
“What’s going on here?”
“Oh my God!”
A woman screamed and suddenly the small stairway was crowded with people from the wedding. They must have heard the gun shot.
“Let go of my son! What have you done to him?” Bogdan’s mother shrieked.
Mihai turned to face the loud crowd. “Quiet,” he roared, his voice breaking through the din. When they quieted, he pulled his foot off Bogdan’s arm. Bogdan scrambled away, wiping furiously at the tears on his cheek.
“I caught this man trying to rape my wife!” Mihai shouted. “Look what he’s done to her.” He pointed to Tsura. Her gaping gown, the bruises blooming on her face and her split lip offered damning testimony. “He pulled a gun on us, and my friend Radu, who is a highly regarded police officer from Bucharest, delivered a non-lethal gunshot to get the gun away from him.”
“She’s a filthy Jew!” Bogdan sputtered, hobbling to his feet. “I only did what any true son of Romania would! She lied about where she came from. She’s a Jew criminal, probably a Communist, and the Popescus were hiding her!”
Several murmurs went through the crowd at his pronouncement and eyes narrowed as they looked at Tsura. She shouldn’t have been shocked that these people who had kissed her cheek with such warm congratulations only hours earlier could turn on her so quickly, but she found she still had the capacity for surprise.
Tsura didn’t want to be on display. She wanted to hide away, to tuck herself underneath a heap of blankets beneath a starlit sky with no one around for a hundred miles except for Luca and Andrei. Luca would sing to her and Andrei would whisper his imprudent dreams of the future and then she would sleep for a week until a better dawn arrived.
Instead, she forced her thoughts to the appropriate face to don in this moment. Shocked innocent victim, who had no idea of the brutalities of life. That was the one.
She let her bottom lip start to quiver in shock and horror. “A Jew?” she sputtered, as if the word was filthy. Then she turned into Mihai’s chest and tried to make her body appear small. She began to sob, letting her shoulders shake pathetically. She made sure her gown still covered her modestly but that the audience could still clearly see how it had been violently ripped.
“She is no Jew,” Mihai said, wrapping an arm firmly around her shoulders and drawing her into his chest protectively. “Bogdan is making up stories to justify attacking my wife. It’s she who is the true daughter of Romania, and if I had arrived only minutes later, he would have defiled her.”
Tsura continued to cry and clutch at Mihai’s shirt as if she were a feeble little flower. All the while, she peeked through her hair to watch what was happening. Mihai’s father stepped forward. “My company provides oil to the Fuehrer himself. You cannot think for even a moment that I would allow my son to help a Jew, much less marry one!”
“But I traveled to Fălticeni,” spoke up on of Bogdan’s men who moments before had just been holding Tsura to the table. Costel, she presumed. “No one had ever heard of her.”
“She’s from southeast of Fălticeni, you idiot,” Mihai said scornfully. “There are hundreds of kilometers of peasant farms there. Her father only has a small farm and he couldn’t get away during harvest for the wedding.”
“She’s a Jew bitch!” Bogdan screamed, his face pale with blood loss and fury. Tsura let out another round of loud sobs and pressed into Mihai.
Mihai shook his head, his jaw tight. “There is no proof of such an outrageous claim. Only the testimony of an idiot who barely passed geography, who asked a few strangers in Fălticeni if they knew of a particular peasant girl among thousands—and one with the most common name at that! If he had truly asked far and wide enough, he should have found ten Alexandras! But none of this is the point. Why am I even debasing myself continuing to argue? I have been to Alexandra’s home myself. Are you calling me a liar? Me, who has translated between the office of the ambassador and General Antonescu himself?” He coldly stared down the crowd. “My wife is the one who has been attacked tonight. This man is the culprit and now is a coward trying to escape blame with false accusations.”
Bogdan opened his mouth, but then closed it again. Finally he waved his good arm in Tsura’s direction. “Just look at her! She looks like a Jew!”
More people in the crowd did look closer at Tsura, but the rest of them were shaking their heads in disgust at Bogdan. To attack a bride on her wedding day was the lowest of crimes. Besides that, many of them knew Bogdan personally. His family may have had wealth and position in the village, but even after a week there, Tsura could tell that few actually liked the man.
Mihai’s father spoke up again, his face red. “Enough! My daughter-in-law has been abused and slandered. I demand the full extent of the law be brought down upon this man!”
“I leave this matter for the police and my father to resolve,” Mihai said, picking up his wedding jacket from the stairs and laying it around Tsura’s shoulders. “I must see to my bride.” He put his arm around her and led her through the group of people. The crowd parted before them. Bogdan shouted incoherent curses behind them, but several of the village men held him by the shoulders now. A few words she could make out though: “This isn’t over! This isn’t over, you hear me, Jew bitch!”
Tsura’s body shook like a leaf in winter and this time it wasn’t for show. She’d held herself together while she’d worn the face for the crowd, but now that she could be herself again, she felt too many things at once.
She was mute as Mihai helped her up the stairs. It was Bogdan’s parent’s house that the men had taken her to, she realized now that all the lights were on. It suddenly clicked how Mihai had known where to find her. She recognized the ornate lace runner on the table she had dined at only a few days ago. She shuddered and Mihai squeezed her shoulder. “You’re safe now,” he whispered.
No, she was not safe. It was a lie fools told themselves, one she’d allowed herself to believe again, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. She tried to nod anyway, but couldn’t seem to get her body to obey her commands. They walked across the crowded yard. Everyone from the wedding celebrations had migrated over to find out what had happened. Apparently the whispers had already passed through the crowd, because the women watched in sympathy and murmured how outraged they were as Tsura passed.
Soon they were through the yard and passed through the front door of the Popescu’s house. Several people tried to follow them inside, but
Mihai’s mother sternly ushered them back out and then stood at the door as a formidable sentry. Diana must have come home ahead of them, knowing what they would need. No one else would cross the threshold tonight.
Mihai led Tsura to his room. He sat her down on the bed and then went to secure the thick curtains shut. She pulled her knees to her chest numbly with her back straight as a rod, staring unseeing at the wall. She had been “lucky” again. But she would never allow herself to believe she was safe. Never again. Luca had taught her some street-fighting tips, like using her head to bash Bogdan’s face, but it hadn’t mattered. The men had still easily overpowered her. Even though she was a grown woman and not a child, she hadn’t been able to protect herself. A long shudder rippled from her shoulders down to her toes.
And worse, if Mihai had not been able to convince them she wasn’t Jewish, the crowd might have approved of what Bogdan had done to her. Or at least turned their faces away and quietly agreed that she had deserved it. Maybe she was lucky. How many thousands of other women had suffered without being saved at the last moment?
Tsura wrapped her arms tight across her knees, curling into herself. But then there were other arms around her.
“Oh my yakira,” Andrei whispered in horror, his arms circling her tighter.
Tsura looked up in surprise. Mihai must have gone to the closet and called down the ladder for Andrei. And explained something of what had happened, though she hadn’t heard in those moments of numbness. But now Andrei was here and whispering how sorry he was and how they would be together and no one would hurt her again. She glanced up and saw Mihai nearing the door.
“We’ll leave in the morning.” Mihai’s voice, which had roared in fury only a quarter of an hour ago, was once again so quiet it didn’t seem to belong to the same man. “The crowd was with us tonight, but if tomorrow they decide they believe Bogdan or ask for your papers, they could still mob us. We’ll head out of the city before anyone wakes, at first light.”
His gaze flicked to Andrei, then back to her. She just stared at him for a moment, again with too many feelings to sort out. Before she could make sense of any one emotion, he was speaking again. “Lock the door behind me and put a chair under the knob.”
Andrei nodded, letting go of Tsura only long enough to go to the door and follow Mihai’s instructions to lock the door and put the chair in place. Then Mihai was gone.
Andrei sat back and Tsura gave up trying to sort through the mix of what she was feeling. She simply clung to Andrei’s neck and sobbed—this time for real—into his shoulder.
“Shh, my gypsy princess,” he whispered into her ear. “You are safe now.”
After letting her cry for almost half an hour, he pulled back from her and helped peel away her ripped gown. He kissed her shoulders tenderly, but made no other move, which Tsura was immensely glad for. She imagined some day she would want again to be touched like that, but not tonight. Not with the imprint of Bogdan’s fingers still on her arms, her breast.
“What do you need me to do, yakira?” Andrei whispered, kissing with the gentlest touch the parts of her face that were bruised. “I will do anything for you.”
“Just hold me,” Tsura whispered, lying down in the bed and feeling so tired that even keeping her eyelids open another moment seemed impossible. “Hold me close all night.”
The last thing she felt before she finally drifted into the warm haze of sleep was him climbing into bed, his body warm and solid behind her.