‘national saints’ by the Orthodox church, the newspapers were printed in green ink. The ceremony was attended by official delegations from all over fascist Europe-Hitler Youth from Germany, Spanish Falangists, Italians, even a group of Japanese. As the coffins were lowered into a mausoleum, German war planes flew overhead and dropped funeral wreaths-one of them hit a legionnaire on the head and knocked him out cold. Then the Legion marched for hours, singing their anthems, while, in the streets, people wept with passion.”
He paused, and Serebin realized that he had actually seen it.
“Yes,” Musa said. “I was there.”
Serebin could see him in the crowd, old, invisible.
“I had to do something.”
After a moment, Serebin said, “Will Roumania be occupied? Like France?”
“We are occupied, sir. The Germans began to arrive in October, even before the king ran away. Just twenty or so, at first, in residence at the Athenee Palace, their boots lining the hall at night, set out to be cleaned and polished. Then more, and more. ‘The German Military Mission to Roumania,’ a euphemism taken from the language of diplomacy. A few thousand of them, now, housed in barracks, and they keep coming. But it will never be an official occupation, we’ve signed up as allies. The only question that remains is, who will govern here? The Legion? Or Marshal Antonescu? It’s Hitler’s choice, we await his pleasure.”
“Will there be, resistance?”
Musa smiled, a sad smile, and shook his head very slowly. “No,” he said softly. “Not here.”
Serebin didn’t want to go, but sensed it was time to leave. Gheorghe Musa would do for them whatever he could, but what that might turn out to be was for others to decide.
“Perhaps you will tell me something,” Musa said.
Serebin waited.
“What precisely interests you, at this moment?”
Serebin hesitated. Hard to know, right now. Of course, as events unfold…That was the established line and Serebin knew it was correct-the question had to be deflected. But then, for a reason he couldn’t name, he said, “Natural resources.”
“Oil and wheat.”
“Yes.”
Musa stood and walked to the bookshelves on the other side of the room, peering at a long row of red cardboard binders with handwritten labels on their spines. “If I have to leave here,” he said, “I suppose I will lose the library. It’s not the kind of thing you can take to, to-wherever it might be.”
He turned to a floor lamp, tugged on the chain again and again until the light went on, then went back to the binders. “One thing about governments,” he said, “think of them what you will, but they do write reports.” He ran his finger along the row. “For example, wheat and rye production in the province of Wallachia in 1908. Read that one? Bet you haven’t. There’s a drought in the final chapter, it will keep you up all night. Certainly kept us up. Or, let’s see, Ethnic Census of Transylvania — the date gives that one away, 1918, after they chased the Hungarians out. Or maybe you’d like… Petroleum Production and Transport: Report of the General Staff. The date being, uh, 1922.” He slid the binder out, brought it over to Serebin, and handed it to him.
Serebin turned the pages. The text in Roumanian he couldn’t read, but he found a map, with boundaries in dotted lines, and underlined names. Astra Romano. Unirea Speranitza. Dacia Romana. Redeventa Xenia. Standard Petrol Block. Romana Americana. Steaua Romana. Concordia Vega.
“The oil fields,” Musa explained. “With the names of the concessions.”
“What is it?”
“A study of our vulnerabilities, undertaken by the General Staff of the army. After the British raid of 1916, we had to look at what happened, what had been done to us, and what might happen in the future. For the British, of course, the destruction was a great success, a triumph. But for us it was a national humiliation, the more so because we did it to ourselves, we were forced to do it, and we had to ask, will this happen every time we go to war? Can we stop it? It’s our oil, after all. It’s owned by foreigners, but they must pay us for it, and it belongs to us.”
Serebin read further; long columns of numbers, percentages, paragraphs of explanation, a map of the Danube, from Giurgiu in Roumania all the way up to Germany.
“That’s the transport route,” Musa said.
Serebin leafed through the pages until he came to the end, then offered the report to Musa.
“Oh, you might as well take that along,” Musa said. “It’s no use to me anymore.”
It snowed again, that night.
Serebin had the concierge book them a ten o’clock table at Capsa, the city’s most popular restaurant, famous for its Gypsy orchestra. The hotel doorman helped them into a taxi and told the driver where they were going. Halfway there, two blocks from the Lipscani house, they said they had to stop for a few minutes and asked the driver to wait. Then they walked, hunched over, fighting the bitter wind that blew down from the mountains. Serebin carried the report in a briefcase that Marie-Galante had sent him out to buy earlier that afternoon.
“Cold,” Marie-Galante said.
Serebin agreed.
“Talk to me,” she said. “We’re lovers, going out for the evening.”
“What will you have?”
“Udder in wine.” A Roumanian specialty.
“Will you? Really?”
“God no.”
“There’s nobody around,” Serebin said. The city seemed deserted, white snow on empty streets.
“Talk anyhow,” she said.
He talked.
In the lane that led to the Lipscani house, the young officer was shivering in a doorway.
“Our guardian-how does he know to be here?”
“I make a telephone call. To a number that is never answered.”
They entered the Lipscani house and rode up in the moaning elevator. Marie-Galante took the briefcase from him, checked one last time to make sure the report was in there, then placed it by the desk.
They left, heading back toward the waiting taxi. From the darkness, a man in an overcoat came toward them on the other side of the street; head down, hands in pockets, bent against the wind-driven snow. As he hurried past, Serebin saw that it was Marrano.
Back in bed, thank heaven. The long, heavy meal eaten, and no work till morning. It had been a loud Gypsy orchestra, with copious Gypsies-Serebin couldn’t count them because they never stopped moving; leaping about the stage in their baggy pants and high boots, a whirl of fiendish grinning and shouting, singing and dancing, and savage, implacable strumming. Can you play “Shut Up and Sit Still,” traditional ballad of the Serebin clan? Nothing worse than nightclub Gypsies when you weren’t in the mood, and Serebin wasn’t, he was dog tired, period.
Marie-Galante yawned and settled herself on her pillow. “Thank God that’s over,” she said.
“What happens now?”
“Marrano is off to Istanbul. On Lares, the Roumanian airline-may the gods protect him. Polanyi will be pleased, or maybe not, one never knows. Maybe he’s had a copy for years, or the information is too old, or it was all wrong to begin with. Still, it can’t stay here, and we can’t afford to get caught with it. But the important thing is that Musa trusted you.”
“I guess.”
“Oh, he did. It’s in your nature.”
“What is?”
“Honor, good faith. You are who you are, ours, man without a country, soldier of the world.”
“All that?”
“Well, he saw something.”
“He didn’t care, love, he would’ve given that thing to a gorilla.”
“Maybe. But it happened, didn’t it, and it could be important.”
“Or not.”
“Or not.”
