Ana had not been to church for years.
‘If there is a God – and I mean if’ Radu used to say, ‘then I hope I meet him in Heaven, so I can tell him what I think of him for leaving us all in this pile of crap.’
‘I’m surprised you don’t become a believer simply as a revolutionary gesture,’ Doina said drily, though she too was an atheist. ‘After all, the fact that the Cobbler hates churches is a good reason to love them.’
‘Oh, the churches I can love,’ Radu said, ‘it’s just the Gods I can’t stand.’
‘No,’ murmured Ana, ‘it’s they who can’t bear us. The Gods are just …’
‘Oh yes, how come?’ jeered Radu.
‘Hundreds of years ago – no, thousands – they took one look at this patch of land, and the people in it, and decided to do a test. They – by the way, I didn’t know you were a partheist, Radu! – gave the Romanians a couple of truly terrible leaders to see if they’d do anything about it, but they didn’t, of course. They just bowed their heads and got on with it. So the Gods decided that’s what we deserve, and so here we are! That’s why they’re just. Our vice is acquiescence – not a very pleasant one – and that’s why they plague us.’
‘The Gods or the leaders?’
‘Both.’
Now Ana had taken to haunting churches, sitting for hours in Creţulescu especially, hiding herself in one of the high, carved seats. She walked there briskly today, pulling her woollen hat low over her ears and forehead, snapping her mouth tight against the bitter air. As she reached the end of Strada 13 decembrie, she was aware of a sudden flurry of people, and a man in a long black overcoat stepped in front of her.
‘Wait – wait here now,’ he shouted rudely, putting out an arm.
All around Ana people had stopped dead in their tracks, frozen as if by an invisible Medusa, eyes wandering to avoid contact with anyone or anything, or else cast down, as if the pavement might offer a clue to this mystery. A walkie-talkie crackled at the Securitate man’s belt; Ana cringed away from him, flattening herself against the wall. All around her people did the same; some turned quickly, and walked in the opposite direction.
An old red Dacia had stalled in the Calea Victoriei, suddenly cleared of all other vehicles. Panic increasing, the driver tried it again and again – white-faced and staring downwards as the starter motor screamed – and militiamen converged on his battered car, yelling imprecations. In a few seconds the young man was hustled away – silently and offering no resistance – as his car was pushed speedily on to the narrow pavement.
Ana knew what was coming. She had witnessed these hysterical preparations before, when the Presidential cavalcade was due to sweep its way across town, to the Party Headquarters. She looked only from the corner of her eye as she had learnt to do, as the four black limousines, windows curtained, drove by at speed. A dead-ness unfolded behind them in the empty street, a moment of stasis before people started to come to life once more.
As the sound of the cars died away, and the man in the black overcoat turned on his heel and marched in the same direction, Ana unfroze – then paused in nervous disbelief. For, although she could not be sure, she thought she heard, from just behind her, a faint sound. A hiss, like the quick escaping of gas. Yet a human noise.
Quickly, she glanced over her shoulder, hardly daring to look. People were moving, going about their business, scurrying in different directions: a middle-aged woman linking arms with an old man, a couple of young women, dressed in close-fitting woollen coats with fur collars, two young men wearing jeans and thin anoraks, despite the intense cold, a bearded man with a briefcase and a dark trilby – each of them carrying the small, optimistic shopping bag. In a few moments everyone had dispersed, and Ana too went on her way, the hairs on her neck still prickling at the extraordinary thought that someone had dared to make the faintest noise of derision, when the cavalcade had gone.
She walked slowly now. It was her habitual gait. Grief imposes deliberation: the consciousness that each footstep on the ground jars every bone, that movement and pain are indivisible. In the seven months (nearly) since she had said goodbye to Ion, Ana had, in truth, become accustomed to the accoutrements of her sorrow; the baggage that would, she knew, weigh her down forever. The obstruction in her chest was the worst – heavy, almost choking at times, so that sometimes her heart palpitated with the strain. And it pressed downwards on the emptiness in her stomach, making her sick and dizzy. One day it occurred to her that this sickness was like a surfeit: just as they used to dream of eating so much chocolate that they might feel ill, so now she fancied she might vomit from too much feeling. Then, most horrible of all, she could admit almost to loathing that which she loved, and yearned for: the missing object, the vacancy, the perpetual pain which answered, she remembered, to the name ‘Ion*. Were it possible she would be drunk, day and night, just to fog the clarity of a vision on which all actions – past, present and future – were etched in white, as on the vase of blood-red glass her mother gave her, years ago.
She reached Cretulescu, but was not ready to go in. Often she put off the moment, savouring it in anticipation as a solace and a torment. In the window of the bookshop on the corner, Nicolae Ceauşescu’s Collected Works were displayed in regular curving rows: dozens of them – works on ideology, on economic development, on dialectics, on Romanian history, on cadre politics, and four volumes of his Selected Speeches, all bearing, on the jacket, the portrait of a dark-haired, youthful man, smiling benignly. Next to them were volumes on chemistry and metallurgy by Elena Ceauşescu, which made Ana smile grimly despite herself. ‘Not bad for a cobbler with a small vocabulary, and his ignorant peasant wife,’ she said to herself – feeling such anger, suddenly, that she wanted to smash the window and jump inside, scattering these objects which so diminished the term ‘book’.
But what was the point?
Daily our speech is debased, through listening; our language is debased, through silence; our thoughts are debased, through fear; even our loves are debased, through the hope that this alone might transcend the reality of what we are, and the perpetual disappointment when it is not so. And so what does it matter if lies are packaged up and sold as books, taking the same shape as Tolstoy, Flaubert, Dickens, Creanga? It’s merely the outward form of our inner degradation … What does it matter? What does any of it matter?
She turned slowly, and walked down the steps towards the small, red-brick church.
It was dark inside. Bars of pale, grey light fell across the tiny dome, and the dim glow from yellow tallow candles haloed the shrine to the dead near the door. A woman pushed past Ana, not rudely, but absentmindedly, intent on her purpose, and carried a loaf of bread to the table of alms near the screen. Then she knelt to kiss one of the icons, her mouth moving in prayer. Nearby a teenage boy, with a pale, spotty face, was sitting in one of the carved seats, resting his elbows high each side, his head drooping on his folded hands – angular and hunched like a blue Picasso. As people came and sat down there was a faint rattle of plastic from each shrouded, woven cushion, and a similar muffled squeaking from the dusty plastic which protected table, lectern and the central area of floor. It was the only sound.
Ana lit a candle, then sat down for a while, letting her eyes rove over the blackened, painted ceiling, wishing she could reduce her thoughts to a similar darkness, all detail lost in shadow. How did people pray? She watched the women come and go, kneeling or bending, or standing on tiptoe to kiss the holy images, and saw their eyes moist, their lips reciting soundlessly, their hands moving on the handles of their shopping bags, as though on beads. Mouth dry as usual, Ana leaned forward, as though by that movement she could approach these others more fortunate and learn. And yet she knew an abyss lay between them, and leaning over it made her dizzy. They have not done what I have done. They would not do what I have done … And yet, how do I know? Everything has happened before; everything has been suffered before, by people who thought their sufferings unique.
At last she rose, and stood before her favourite icon, on the pillar on the right. The beaten silver cover was deeply etched and indented; the elaborate crown of the Madonna rose and spread like the rays of the sun, dwarfing the face on painted wood beneath, whose eyes gazed sadly outwards towards the door. But the child, his painted face tiny within its glittering surround, looked straight at Ana, his eyes moving as she moved, his gaze unavoidable.
She knew what they knew, the mother and child, and felt their premonition of future pain lick along her veins, as the small red light flickered before the icon. She knew that the birthday celebration in the stable was but a rehearsal for sacrifice, the gifts of the Magi transformed, by the cruellest, most sublime miracle, into the instruments of the passion. And in her knowledge, today, Ana felt suddenly beyond the reproach she had sensed before in the images of perfect mother-love all about her. Why should it be said always, that God gave up his son to the world, she thought, for the redemption of sins? Why do we not say that Mary gave up her child, Mary stood by as they pricked him on his cross, Mary knew that all this had been prefigured by her, even willed: fed into him with her milk? The real sacrifice, the pain and the love was hers – all hers.
Ana took out a rose she had stolen from a display in the hotel restaurant. It was made expertly of pink silk, so that in this dim light it looked like the real thing. Raising herself slightly she kissed it, and tucked it where the silver formed the Virgin’s headdress. Then she stared for a long time into the child’s painted eyes, at close quarters, vaguely wondering what she could buy him for Christmas, what she could afford, what other women would buy for their children. Cars, games, bricks, alphabets, motorbikes … But what about you, Cale? You had no money like me …
The three women welcome Ana like a sister. Suspicious at first, then elated by their warmth, she soon realizes it has nothing to do with her; bored and frustrated, they crave news, any news, from the world outside – that’s all. Within hours the cell returns to its normal state of quibbling and bickering over the smallest things – a blanket, hairs on the floor, a precious stub of cigarette – and Ana is assimilated. She quickly realizes that for those in prison, real curiosity about a newcomer, and the whole ‘other’ existence she represents, is slight. What matters is the day-to-day reality of this world, and the rules invented to survive it.
‘Take a piece of advice from me, never tell anyone what you’re in for – they’ll use it against you,’ says Cale.
‘Haven’t you got any cigarettes hidden? Look, if you share some of your food with me, I’ll see you all right. And you want paper? I can fix it …,’ says Luminiţa.
‘At least once a day, Ana, try to rise above all this. Try to think some thought that lifts you up. Do you pray?’ Rodika’s face is almost comical in its earnestness. Ana shakes her head. ‘Oh, that’s a pity. Well … think of other things then. Anything to overcome all this, this … banality. Yes?’ Ana nods.
A good word to choose – banal. It’s very strange that from the outside our suffering would seem tragic, Doina, wherever you are. I’m sure you’re in a cell like this, hot at night, reeking with sweat, urine and faeces, breathing the breath of other women whose crimes – if crimes they are – you don’t know. And by now – knowing you, Doina! – you’re probably joining in the quarrels over food, the bitter recriminations about who spilt slops and failed to clean up, the laughter over a particular guard whose breath smells, yet who fancies the young ones like Luminiţa, even though they call her fat old cow’ to her face. And the hatred of Pincers – but you might not know that one, not if you’re in the other wing. She’s the meanest of them all. So, sharing these things, you know how foolish it all is, in its base monotony, its crassness, even the pathos of distant wailing in the darkness – silenced, not by authority, but by the impatient cries of those whose own cries have been stifled, and so have no time for pity.
Sometimes I’ve noticed a guard’s eye pressed to the peephole, and, glancing round the narrow cell, I’ve seen us through her eyes: grey-clad sticks lying on narrow grey beds between grey stained walls, dirty spiky heads like mangy parrots. And poor Rodika trying to kneel and pray, crossing herself again and again, as Cale deliberately farts near her head and shouts, ‘O my Fuck, why the fuck hast thou fucking well fucked me?’, pressing her hands together and rolling her eyes, while Luminiţa falls on her bed and cackles. And yes, it is banal, Doina, I’m sure you agree. Wherever they have taken you.
Ana has been in the cell for one week when she learns that Doina is alive (she feared the worst) and is indeed in the other wing. The message comes along the pipes, the secret prison network of communications – intense echoing taps and whispers that transmitted the hopes and loves of hundreds of individuals. Or messages are scribbled on tiny scraps of paper, weighted with spit, and hung from the window on pieces of unravelled wool from the blankets, knotted together. If one of these is seen, dangling outside the window, it is pulled in and eagerly read, and that message passed from cell to cell until it reaches its destination. Such messages range from the serious (’Tell Doina Kessler that Ana Popescu is alive and strong and sends love’) to the childish (’Watch out for Potato Face – she always spits in the stew’), and take up hours of the non-time that is prison time.
Time begins to preoccupy Ana as never before. Outside, the constant cycle of foraging for food, cleaning the apartment, washing their clothes, caring for Ion, working, cooking, had so eaten up the hours that there was never time to think. Here time does not so much stop as become denser, more intense, so that all before-time is repeated in imagination, relaxed almost to the point of absurdity, like slowed balletic movements in a film. Life becomes a perpetual exercise in recapitulation – like a plot that has suddenly stopped developing, a story marking time. It isn’t that Ana constantly re-examines her own motives, or relives the moment when she said goodbye to Ion, or flagellates herself for her terrible impulsive error in joining Doina. I forgive myself the lot, she says to herself now. It is rather that she can now turn an X–ray on herself and see all those events as part of a deeper pattern, a process of learning which awes her. Because everything that happens in prison is so trivial, yet elevated – because of the timelessness, the plotlessness of their days – into the significant, so Ana sees everything before this time as contributing to it, her mother’s death directly connected to Cale’s profanities as well as Rodika’s prayers.
It is as if existence was a series of accidents, herself powerless to prevent them, let alone to instigate anything, until the moment she sent Ion away. After that … she knows it is possible to take control, to embrace the random and the interconnected alike, in order to understand. And if the truth lies, not in the tears dripping from the tin birds on a churchyard cross, not in Rodika’s brave pieties, but in those ugly words that come from Cale the thief and whore (Luminiţa gave the game away) and in the devious manipulations of the wily young gypsy – then so be it. Truth it is – to be welcomed like the news of her father’s death, which proved courage, not abandonment, and in that was preferable to life.
Very quickly Ana finds herself in the role of protector; Cale and Luminiţa loathe Rodika, and inevitably the serious, bespectacled woman – some ten years older than Ana – turns to the newcomer for protection.
‘It’s been terrible,’ she whispers, as the other two play cards, quarrelling noisily over the slivers of wood they use for chips, ‘like being locked up with a pair of wild beasts. But I suppose we’re all creatures of God … Anyway, I was so relieved when you came – you know, someone … like me …’
Cale hears, and lets out her braying, mocking laugh. ‘Oh, someone like me,’ she repeats in a mincing voice, ‘someone educated and clean and nice, from a good home – an honest little God-fearing teacher, just like me!’
‘I’m not a teacher/Ana says quietly.
‘What do you do then?’ asks Luminiţa, sullenly.
Ana tells them she’d been a secretary, without specifying where, then adds, ‘But don’t worry, I know how to get my hands dirty. I was a cleaner, once, at a library in Bucharest. That was before they made me a librarian.’
‘Ha – how’d you get to make a move like that?’ scoffs Cale. ‘It’s about as likely as me being the Virgin Mary.’
‘Well, you see, the old man who was the chief, he gave me special training,’ says Ana, barely able to suppress her grin.
‘Oh yeah?’ jeers Cale, scratching under her left armpit.
‘Yes, I had to go in each day and bend over his desk with my nose in the books. While he was doing it to me I learnt such a lot! And if he couldn’t get it up, I had to kneel down in front of him on a couple of thick books – just like in front of the priest – with my mouth wide open to receive all his knowledge. And after a couple of years of that I was ready to be a proper librarian, girls – so wasn’t I lucky?’
There is a short silence. Appalled, Rodika stares at Ana without speaking. Cale and Luminiţa throw back their heads in helpless laughter, rocking back and forth and slapping their knees.
‘Now we can be real mates,’ giggles Cale at last. ‘Now I know you went to the same college as I did!’
‘Me, I did all that training when I was twelve,’ laughs Luminiţa, ‘only it was my uncle taught me. And when Dad caught us at it it was me he kicked out, not that old bugger, ‘cos Uncle Nic had this great deal going getting blue jeans in from Austria, and Dad took a big cut. Mum, she was too pissed to notice half the time …’
‘May God forgive them,’ says Rodika.
‘Him! I swear it was him taught Uncle Nic all his tricks,’ crows Luminiţa. ‘I mean, they say he made us all, don’t they?’
‘Yeah, and in his own bloody image,’ jeers Cale, ‘so it was really him Ana was kneeling in front of, and he was all the guys I’ve ever fucked. Lousy they were too.’
Silently Rodika turns and lies on her bed with her face to the wall.
‘She can’t stand the truth,’ laughs Cale.
‘Leave her alone,’ Ana says.
‘I thought you were one of us.’
‘I’m here, aren’t I? So I reckon that makes us all equal. But if she wants to believe in God, then that’s up to her – it’s none of your business, Cale. Anyway, if you actually know what “truth” is, then yours was a better college than mine!’
The big brassy woman grunts, as if to concede the point. But the gypsy is looking at Rodika’s back with undisguised contempt. ‘Fancy getting done for Bibles!’ she says, biting her nail and scowling ferociously as if someone had offered her a personal insult.
Making them all start, Rodika sits up quickly. ‘It wasn’t just Bibles!’ she shouts. ‘It was hundreds and hundreds of books about the word of God as well, and we had meetings and we sang and prayed – and it was wonderful. We were all together … we had faith together …’ Her eyes are shining now. Ana is moved, and sits down beside her, taking her calloused hand.
Cale lets out a short laugh. ‘Yeah, but who tipped them off, then? One of you wasn’t being so “together”, I reckon – one of you had more faith in Securitate.’
When Rodika says nothing, she and Luminiţa return to their card game. Luminiţa says pointedly, ‘If there’s one thing I hate more than the God-botherers, it’s snooty, stupid cows who think they’re too good for this country, and try to get out, while it’s good enough for us lot to stay in the shit!’
Ana stares, amazed, for she has told them nothing. But Luminiţa knows everything: her mind slips in and out of the cells, hearing things, getting round the guards, even Pincers.
Ana still sits beside the other woman, and for a while both watch the two heads bent over the cards – one large and fair, the other dark, both lank and dirty – as they dip and nod with swift suspicious movements, like birds. There is a rank smell in the cell; it’s hot and Cale is sweating freely, wiping her grubby hand over her forehead every few minutes. Ana’s own head itches uncontrollably; she suspects lice.
‘Well, now you know my story,’ whispers Rodika, ‘but I don’t know yours. Is what she said true?’
Ana is unwilling to confide in this odd, almost comical little woman, imprisoned for peddling God in a state which accepts the peddling of Kent and Johnny Walker. Yet the moon face, with its frizz of grey-brown hair, is turned towards her with such a gentle look of questioning that Ana feels guilty: they are in this cell together, like beasts in a cage, and it can only be civilized by trust, she thinks.
‘Oh, it’s not a very long story,’ she sighs. ‘I tried to escape, that’s all. And I wish to God I hadn’t. It was a mistake – an impulse. And it all went wrong – we were betrayed, by …’ She glances across at Luminiţa, and stops.
‘It happens all the time,’ says Rodika, soothingly.
‘Yes, but …’ Ana hesitates, then, needing to talk, tells Rodika about Ion, in a low voice. When she has finished she waits, expecting condemnation. But Rodika strokes her hand.
‘God understands,’ she whispers, ‘he knows you acted out of love. He’ll protect you both.’
Tears fill Ana’s eyes, and she grips Rodika’s hand tightly to prevent herself from crying out. Cale and Luminiţa have been eavesdropping; now Luminiţa looks up and shrugs … ‘You sent your kid away? There’s no big deal about that. I had one when I was fifteen. Left it on the orphanage steps.’
‘Didn’t you ever go back to see him?’ Rodika asks.
The girl shrugs. ‘Course not! No point, was there? And it was a girl – poor little bastard.’
‘Do you have any children, Cale?’
The prostitute glares at Rodika. ‘Mind your own fucking business,’ she snaps, flushing scarlet.
In control of herself now, Ana says gently, ‘Look, we all have to live together, so why can’t we trust each other? I mean, we haven’t got much choice …’
‘If I could choose I wouldn’t be in a cell with a holy cow like her!’ Cale snaps, jerking her thumb at Rodika.
‘Exactly,’ Ana replies in a calm voice, ‘so since there’s no choice, and since we’re all women, why not try to be friends? Rodika only asked if you had any children because she’s …’
‘Don’t talk about my children?’
‘Oh, so you have got some then?’ says Luminiţa, curious now. ‘When I asked you, weeks ago, you said you hadn’t!’
The big woman sits in silence, her shoulders hunched, her red fists clenched. Ana notices a scar on her arm, and another small one on her neck, running down from the ear. Cale screws up her face grotesquely, for a few seconds, like someone with a stomach pain, to avoid crying out. Then she swings round towards them, almost falling off the box she sits on.
‘All right then!’ she shouts. ‘If you really want to know … I had two – once. Mircea, he was the first, and a right little fighter he was! Don’t know who his father was, so don’t ask me. Could have been anyone. Anyway, it was great for a while, just him and me, and then I met this bloke, Stefan, and everything started to go bad. Christ, he was a villain, but of course, I didn’t know it at first. You don’t, do you? I was crazy about him, I don’t mind telling you. Stupid fucking fool! Anyway, it wasn’t long before he started knocking me about, but it didn’t bother me, I mean, I was used to it. But then I got pregnant and he got really mad, and then one day he was hitting Mircea, and the kid was screaming, and I lost my temper and went for him.’ She spread out her stubby fingers. ‘Had nails like yours then, Luminiţa – nearly took one of his eyes out. Anyway, he was kicking me in the stomach, and I was out here then… huge! The kid was born early, another boy, and it was mental, you know? Not surprising, really. So he’s in some place, some home, that one – Constantin, I called him, and he was ever so pretty, except for his eyes … Stefan took him away, I don’t know where, some special place …’
Her voice tails off. Luminiţa is examining her long, hard, curved nails; Rodika keeps her hand cupped over Ana’s, both now engrossed in Cale’s story. The silence yawns. Feeling she has to say something, Ana begins, ‘I’m sorry – please don’t feel you have to …’
But Cale runs her hand across her shiny forehead, smearing more grime, and continues in a dead, determined voice. ‘Oh, that’s not the end of it. You said you wanted to know, so you’d better stick it out. Stefan got worse after that…’
‘Why did you stay with him?’ Rodika exclaims.
The big woman shrugs. ‘Dunno, really. You do, that’s all. You wouldn’t know … And he could still turn me on, that’s the trouble. He kept me at it, and took all the money I earned, but when he said he loved me I just melted, you know? And he did say it – sometimes. You need to hear it, you know? It’s nice … Should have known better, stupid cunt that I am! Anyway, when I got pregnant again he said I had to get rid of it, and my God, that was terrible. Stefan found out where to go … This filthy man, and I swear he didn’t wash his hands, and I was bleeding like a pig. God, I was ill! Thought I was going to die, and Mircea kept crying “Mama, Mama, please get better” – he was that frightened. I was never right again after that; it did for me – handy in a way – no more kids for Cale! But I couldn’t work for ages – Stefan got real mad. That’s when I started the thieving; that was his game.’
Ana hears Rodika mutter a prayer under her breath.
‘You should have stuck a knife in that bastard,’ says Luminiţa, involved despite herself.
‘I wish I had! Jesus, I wish I had. Then I’d have still had … still had …’ – she gulps air like someone going under – ‘I think it was the tuica – he was always drunk – but Stefan started to go really crazy after that. I was really scared of him, and so was Mircea. He was five now, Mircea, and he had lovely dark hair. And you should have seen his eyelashes! Clever too … But Stefan, he started to take it out on the kid, find fault with him all the time, you know? And he’d clout him for the least thing – I tried to stop him, but then he’d do me over. He was savage, that bloke, he’d do anything. Anyway, one day I went out’ – her voice became very flat, and she spoke more slowly than ever – ‘and when I came back … when I came back … and opened the door … Mircea was lying on the floor, and he was really still. His face was bruised, and there was blood … And I screamed at Stefan to get some water, but he’d already tried, and anyway it was too late. He told me he’d only hit him once, and the kid had fallen over and knocked his head, but he was lying! He’d beaten the shit out of him, I know he had! And he looked so little lying there, with all his lovely hair matted, and his eyes closed, and me, I just wanted to die. I passed out, I just remember screaming and screaming, and he slapped me once, and then – nothing. I couldn’t have helped Mircea, anyway. He was dead right enough, but they couldn’t pin it on Stefan. He stuck to his story about the kid hitting his head, and anyway, nobody cared very much. Who gives a fuck about a whore’s bastard, eh? The day after he was buried Stefan fucked off and left, and I was glad. I think I’d have killed him, if he’d stayed. I still dream about hearing his bones crunch under a lorry, and I’m driving it, and when he cries out and asks me to stop I just laugh and take the wheels over that face of his. He was good-looking you know, but not as good-looking as my Mircea would have been …’
Cale’s lips are white but there are no tears in her eyes, when she looks directly at Rodika. ‘And that God of yours,’ she cries, ‘where was he when my Mircea was beaten up? Why didn’t he look after a poor little kid who never hurt anyone?’
‘I can’t answer that, Cale,’ says Rodika, gripping Ana’s hand.
‘I bet you can’t!’ said the woman, triumphantly. ‘And I bet, for all your talk of heaven and all that crap, you can’t think of a single reason why I shouldn’t want that man’s soul to rot in hell forever! Can you?’
‘Christ died for the forgiveness of sins …’
‘Oh, come on, Rodika!’ says Ana, drawing her hand away impatiently.
‘I’m sorry,’ Rodika says humbly, ‘but I just have to cling on to what I believe. I never tried to explain evil away – it’s the biggest mystery, and I’m not clever enough to understand it. But all I know, Cale, is that your Mircea is with Jesus Christ now, among the blessed saints. I know it!’
It is only then the tears came, breaking from the woman in great, racking sobs as she hits the rickety table with her fist, making the cards jump and scatter. ‘I don’t want him to be with your fucking Jesus Christ, I want him to be with me! I want him to be with me! God knows, I was a lousy mother, but I loved him, 1 did, and I’d have got better … I want him back …’
Ana can bear it no longer. She jumps up, and stands by Cale, cradling her shuddering head and shoulders, stroking the lank blonde hair, dark at the roots, while Luminiţa, embarrassed, bends to pick up the cards, and Rodika buries her head in her hands.
‘Shhh, shhh, I know, I know,’ croons Ana, again and again, rocking her all the time, and thinking of Ion.
‘You don’t fucking well know,’ says the muffled voice, after a while.
‘I do, Cale,’ says Ana, still rocking, the big tough woman nestling into her stomach like a child, the rank sweaty smell of her rising, her tears and dribble soaking Ana’s threadbare prison dress.
Ana is solemn with horror and pity. But an unexpected joy is there too, revealed within that squalor: she knows she is blessed after all, simply because her child is alive.