FIVE

Six of us took the train north through late-afternoon light toward Sighişoara. Father O’Rourke stayed behind in the Sibiu orphanage. Fortuna had planned one stop in a small town along the way.

“Mr. Trent, you like Copşa Mica,” he said. “It is for you we see it.”

I did not turn to look at him, but kept my gaze on the demolished villages we were passing. “More orphanages?” I said.

“No, no. I mean, yes … there is orphanage in Copşa Mica, but we don’t go there. It is small town … six thousand peoples. But it is reason you come to our country, yes?”

I did turn to stare. “Industry?”

Fortuna laughed. “Ah, yes … Copşa Mica is most industrious. Like so many of our towns. And this one so close to Sighişoara, where Comrade Ceauşescu’s Dark Advisor was born.”

“Dark Advisor,” I snapped. “What the hell are you saying? That Ceauşescu’s advisor was Vlad Ţepeş?” The guide did not answer.

Sighişoara is a perfectly preserved medieval town where even the presence of the few autos on the narrow, cobble-stoned streets seems an anachronism. The hills surrounding Sighişoara are studded with tumble-down towers and keeps, none of them as cinematic as the half-dozen intact castles in Transylvania which advertise themselves as Dracula’s castle for impressionable travelers with hard currency. But the old house on Piaţa Muzeului had truly been Vlad Dracula’s birthplace and home from 1431 to 1435. The last time I had seen it, many years earlier, the upstairs had been a restaurant and the basement a wine cellar.

Fortuna stretched and went off in search of something to eat. Dr. Aimslea had overheard the conversation and dropped into the seat next to me. “Do you believe that man?” he whispered. “Now he’s ready to tell you ghost stories about Dracula. Christ!”

I nodded and looked out at the mountains and valleys sliding by in gray monotone. There was a wildness here that I had not seen elsewhere in the world, and I have traveled in more nations than there are in the U.N. The mountainside, deep ravines, and trees seemed malformed, gnarled, like something struggling to escape from an Hieronymus Bosch painting.

“I wish it were Dracula we had to deal with here,” continued the good doctor. “Think of it, Trent … if our contingent announced that Vlad the Impaler were alive and preying on people in Transylvania, well … hell … there’d be ten thousand reporters up here. Satellite trucks parked in Sibiu’s town square to bounce back InstaCam reports to every Channel 7 and Channel 4 hometown news market in America. One monster biting a few dozen people, and the world would be galvanized with interest … but as it is, tens of thousands of men and women dead, hundreds of thousands of children warehoused and facing … goddammit.”

I nodded without turning. “The banality of evil,” I whispered.

“What?”

“The banality of evil.” I turned and smiled grimly at the physician. “Dracula would be a story. The plight of hundreds of thousands of victims of political madness, bureaucracy, stupidity … this is just an … inconvenience.”

*   *   *

We arrived at Copşa Mica just before nightfall, and I realized at once why it was “my” town. Wexler, Aimslea, and Paxley stayed on the train for the half-hour layover; only Carl Berry and I had business there. Fortuna led the way.

The village—it was too small to call a town—lay in a broad valley between old mountains. There was snow on the hillsides, but the snow was black. The icicles which hung from the dark eaves of the buildings were black. Underfoot, the slush along the unpaved roads was a gray and black mixture, and over everything hung a visible pall of black air, as if a million microscopic moths were fluttering in the dying light. Men and women in black coats and shawls moved past us, dragging their heavy carts or leading children by the hand, and the faces of these people were soot black. As we approached the center of the village, I realized that the three of us were wading through a layer of ash and soot at least three inches deep. I have seen active volcanoes in South America and elsewhere, and the ash and midnight skies were the same.

“It is a … how do you say it … auto-tire plant,” said Radu Fortuna, gesturing toward the black industrial complex that filled the end of the valley like some grounded dragon. “It makes black powder for rubber products … works twenty-four hours a day. Sky is always like this…” He gestured proudly toward the black haze that settled down on everything.

Carl Berry was coughing. “Good Lord, how can people live in this?”

“They not live long,” said Fortuna. “Most old peoples, like you and me, they have lead poisoning. Little children have … what is word? Always coughing?”

“Asthma,” said Berry.

“Yes, little childrens have ashthma. Babies born with hearts which are … how do you say, badformed?”

“Malformed,” said Berry.

I stopped a hundred yards from the black fences and black walls of the plant. The village behind us was a sketch of blacks against grays. Even the lamplight did not truly penetrate the soot-blackened windows. “Why is this ‘my town,’ Fortuna?” I said.

He held his hand out toward the factory. The lines in his palm were already black with soot, the cuff of his white shirt a dark gray. “Ceauşescu gone now. Factory no longer have to turn out rubber things for East Germany, Poland, U.S.S.R.… you want? Make things your company want? No … how do you say … no environmental impactment states, no regulations against making things the way you want, throwing away things where you want. So, you want?”

I stood there in the black snow for a long moment and might have stood there longer if the train had not shrieked its two-minute warning. “Perhaps,” I said. “Just perhaps.”

We trudged back through ash.