Romanian Stories

One need not be a Chamber—to be Haunted—
One need not be a House—
The Brain has Corridors—surpassing
Material Place—
—Emily Dickinson

He made reservations for us to have dinner with Nodi and Margareta at an elegant but understated restaurant in Bucharest. I had arrived in Romania during an uncommonly warm spell in the middle of March, but the weather soon turned cold, and that evening the ground was covered with a fluffy layer of snow. I remember arriving in darkness, the snow on the sidewalks illuminated by intermittent streetlamps. Of the restaurant I remember lace curtains in the windows, soft yellow lighting, a quiet, gently rising and falling din of conversation, and candles dripping wax over sturdy glass candleholders. All this seemed natural, effortless, efficient, an atmosphere arranged without concern, striving, or strain. Nodi was speaking excitedly in Romanian for the better part of the evening. Stefan translated but somehow the translation seemed synchronous, as Nodi’s face expressed his emotions and willed me to understand his meaning while Stefan translated quickly and spoke nearly perfect English. At one point Nodi hit his stride and charmed me with his fanciful observations.

“I have the impression you are somehow magical. I have three reasons for saying this. First, your watch has the smallest face and hands I have ever seen. I don’t know how you can read the time. But the real mystery is how it was made! Was it fabricated by tiny elves working with minuscule tools in a miniature workshop? How did you come into possession of such a marvel?

“Second, your amber ring that glows so wonderfully in the candlelight. It seems a stone from this region, and yet I sense the ring was created especially for you. The amber seems to overflow its gleaming gold setting, as if it were becoming liquid. As if time were running backward, the resin flowing upward, back into the body of an ancient tree in a long-forgotten forest.

“And the fact that you are here, at this moment, having dinner with us in Bucharest. Another great mystery! How is it that you came by yourself—not on a tour or with a university? You merely decided to visit, and now we are sitting here, the four of us, eating dinner like on any other night. You are speaking English and I am speaking Romanian, but there seems to be no distance. How can this be?”

After dinner we went to Stefan’s place for drinks. It was a modest apartment on an upper floor of a plain building in an unremarkable part of the city, but there was something grand about the living room, large and almost square with high ceilings. Stefan had moved in recently with only a few pieces of furniture. A large, upholstered armchair, a side table, a traditional floor lamp with a yellowed linen shade, two upholstered side chairs without arms, a very large antique wardrobe in the corner, and a bookshelf, waist high but very wide. He brought a fourth chair in from the kitchen and set up a bottle of cognac and four tumblers on the bookshelf. After we had settled in with our drinks, I recounted a strange dream for our general amusement.

“In the autumn of a dull, dark, and soundless year when my work and personal responsibilities weighed heavily on my psyche, I had been sleeping restlessly on the second floor of a townhouse on the outskirts of a college town in eastern Pennsylvania when, in the last dark hour before dawn, a strange woman appeared in the threshold of my bedroom.” (I had begun to write the dream as a story and had worked on the opening for some time.)

“As I remember her rigid posture, long, dark hair, antique dress, and despondent expression, she seems more like a painting than a person or ghost. However, at the time she seemed real. I believed someone was in the doorway.

Shocked by the apparition, I awoke and found myself lying in the same room—the scene of my dream—facing the doorway in which the woman had appeared. Because the room was so dark, I couldn’t tell if she was still there. Turning my head toward the window and discerning some faint violet light through the shades, I realized that if I waited until my eyes had adjusted, I would be able to see in the dark. I lay almost perfectly still, barely breathing, as if she could hear me, waiting with my eyes fixed on the doorway. Slowly, slowly, after what seemed like many minutes had passed, I was able to confirm that the doorway was empty, though I also half believed the woman had wandered off in the interval. Still frightened but also utterly fatigued from a long stretch of strenuous work, I remained in my bed and tried to reason with myself and focus on my breathing so I could fall asleep again before dawn.

“I felt safe and calm before too long, but as soon as I had passed a certain threshold of consciousness, from wakefulness to sleep, the dark-haired woman abruptly reappeared. She stood in the doorway exactly as before. However, this time she appeared even more alive, more distraught, and more intent, as if she was trying to communicate something to me.

“I awoke in an utter panic, this time convinced that she had been there, existed just beyond the edge of consciousness. Again I was too frightened to move. I felt almost paralyzed. But now the room was dimly lit, and I could soon see the threshold was empty. I made my way to the restroom, turned on the tap, and splashed cool water on my face. After drying my face and hands, I let the water run until it was very cold and drank half a glass. I examined my face in the mirror. What had I seen?

“The next day I met a Romanian Fulbright scholar, Stefan here, for lunch at the graduate student union. (This is all a true story, you understand.) I immediately noticed that he looked very, very tired, with dark rings under his eyes. I asked him if he had been out drinking with the water polo team again. He chuckled but explained that he had worked late into the night, reading a book for a lecture he had just delivered. He said that I might find the book interesting, a novella about an undead woman. Intrigued by the coincidence, I asked, with a sense of urgency, at what time he had been reading the novel, to which he replied that he had read it all night. ‘You read it all night?’ I echoed, trying to process the information. ‘I had read it before,’ he said, ‘but many years ago, so I had to read it again to prepare my lecture. I didn’t think it would take so long. It’s by a well-known Romanian scholar—’”

Just as I began to say the author’s name, Nodi jumped up from his chair with tremendous energy and shouted, “Domnnisoara Christina!” I smiled and nodded enthusiastically.

“Miss Christina visited Christine while I was reading Eliade’s Miss Christina,” Stefan added, finishing the story for me.

Then Nodi jumped up and down, making a loud cracking sound with the hard soles of his shoes on the wooden floor, apparently forgetting it was late in the evening, and there was an apartment below. In the light of the old floor lamp, he waved his arms frantically and said, still speaking very loudly, in English: “I knew this! I knew this! When you began! I saw her. I saw her before you said Eliade.” He pointed a finger at me in an almost accusatory fashion and said, “I saw Domnnisoara Christina when you first said ‘a woman in the doorway’!”

—

The following weekend the four of us drove into the mountains to visit Brașov, a small, medieval city in the Carpathians. Stefan had previously explained to me that it had been settled by Germanic peoples in the twelfth century and had remained almost untouched by modern conflict. On the car trip he told me that Nodi was born and raised in Brașov and had been a leader of a labor strike in the years leading up to the revolution. He also said that Nodi had been a dissident writer. He spoke in hushed tones, leaving much implied but unsaid.

When we arrived in Brașov, Nodi clarified that most of the buildings in the historic part of the city were actually built in the sixteenth century. I was amazed by the contiguous streets and houses, feeling as if I had traveled back in time. The houses were all very much alike, with walled courtyards whose function was unclear to me. They seemed a place for horses, and yet the robust wooden doors were barely tall enough to accommodate a man of average height. These doors were utterly fascinating, constructed of broad and thick wooden boards assembled vertically and fitted into identically proportioned openings, rounded at their tops in the form of perfect semicircles. Each door displayed a small family insignia in iron or bronze, and Stefan pointed out, with some pride, the circular dragon symbols on some of the doors. These indicated a family affiliation with the Order of the Drakon and elicited, for thrill seekers, Prince Vlad Dracul, whose name Bram Stoker borrowed for his infamous monster. To me the dragon symbols looked alchemical.

One of the most prominent historic structures we saw in Brașov was a large commercial building commissioned by the widow of a former mayor. Nodi pointed it out and told us that the widow built and dedicated it as a mercantile center in gratitude when her daughter returned from the grave after a premature burial. She was awakened by grave robbers, he explained, trying to sever her finger to steal a ring with a large gemstone, but they ran off in terror when the corpse came to life. As we walked on, I imagined the moment when the daughter realized she had been buried. I thought how terror would have preceded relief. How had she found her way home in the middle of the night, I wondered, and did she ever recover from the trauma of being buried alive?

I know such stories are common enough. Perhaps not so many were prematurely buried, but up until the late nineteenth century, people who fell into comas were often considered dead. We’ll never know how many were buried and how many survived, but the incidents were common enough to give rise to urban legends. For a moment I was intrigued by the coincidence of the widow’s daughter and my strange dream. Had the dream catalyzed my relationship with Stefan? He brought me to Bucharest, in a sense, and then to Brașov. Did this tale somehow close a loop? I didn’t believe my ghost and the mayor’s daughter were connected in a supernatural sense, but I did come to believe the dream had something to do with being buried alive, suffocating.
On the road home from Brașov, we stopped at a late-nineteenth-century palace. Built for King Carol I, it was one of the most beautiful structures I had ever seen. The first floor had delicate neoclassical elements in off-white stone; the second floor looked Tudor, with red-brown wooden beams set in plaster and elaborately carved window frames; the roof, covered in small slate tiles, was multifaceted and almost mesmerizing as I tried to trace how it all fit together. Most striking, however, were the various peaked towers. They reminded me of German castles I had seen in photos. A storybook fantasy.

If I was looking for an escape, an adventure, what better place than the Carpathians? Realizing that its architecture was Renaissance revival, I understood that it was built as a fantasy, but here in this remote setting, the illusion was complete. Stefan said it was considered one of the most beautiful palaces in Europe and I had no doubt.

The interior was closed to the public that day, a Sunday or a Monday, and so we wandered along the garden paths, exploring the extensive formal gardens. I hadn’t communicated very much with Margareta during the weekend because she was shy about her English, but now we chatted as well as we could and laughed as Stefan and Nodi stood on low garden walls, imitating the postures of snowcapped neoclassical statues. The day was gray and I was fatigued from poor sleep and the long walk in the cold, so I was relieved when Stefan said we should turn back. As we walked, however, I felt a little melancholy, haunted by Brașov’s “portals to the past” or, perhaps, just sad to leave the Carpathians. Noting my mood, Nodi asked if I was feeling ill.

I explained to him and Margareta, through Stefan translating, that I was completely entranced with Romania. Not only the historical towns and fairytale palaces. I had even become fond of the dirty, dysfunctional city and smoke-filled cafés that had bothered me so much when I first arrived. I said Romania had a kind of vital energy I had rarely experienced, as if the country—not only the people, the forests, and the fields, but the old wooden wagons, cobblestone streets, and even the Soviet-era apartment buildings—all were working in concert toward renewal. I sensed the energy of a hope never hoped for by a traumatized nation.

I said I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay...but I couldn’t possibly leave my son. I missed him so much even now. My voice cracked and I stopped speaking abruptly. In the next minute I was horrified that the idea of staying had even crossed my mind.

As we walked back to the car, Nodi told me a story. Rather than trying to cheer me up with a frivolous tale, he told a story to match my mood. As I recall, it wasn’t his original but a common tale or myth. “This story is about Father Time and his daughter Death...when she was a girl,” he began.

“Walking home from school one day, Death saw a very small, very young bird lying motionless and apparently lifeless on the side of the road. Heartbroken by the sight, she lifted the little creature gently and carried it in the palm of her hand to the base of an old oak tree. She laid the tiny bird among its large, visible roots, covered it ever so carefully with dried leaves and wildflowers, knelt beside the grave, and said an earnest, heartfelt prayer. The next day, on the way to school, she stopped by the tree and saw the little bird singing cheerfully in one of the lower branches.

“Walking home from school the next day, however, she saw the small bird lying motionless on the side of the road, just as before. Heartbroken again, she lifted the creature gently and carried it in the palm of her hand to the base of the old oak tree. Once again she laid the tiny bird among its large roots, covered it ever so carefully with dried leaves and wildflowers, knelt beside the grave, and said an earnest, heartfelt prayer. The next day, on the way to school, she stopped by the tree and saw the little bird singing cheerfully in one of the lower branches.

“That evening Father Time addressed her sternly. ‘I know what you have been doing on the way home from school. I know your heart is breaking, but you are no longer a child. You are a young woman, and it is time for you to take your place. Do not revive the little bird tomorrow. You must take your place in the world. You must begin to live.’”

As we started the short drive back to Bucharest, Nodi chatted with Stefan in Romanian, Margareta fell asleep in the back seat, and I was left alone to reflect. I thought of my towheaded five-year-old. I felt as though my heart was in a vise, and a large stone was lodged in my throat. Had I actually considered staying in Romania? How could I even think of it? Perhaps I was just imagining an alternative future, like an alternative universe, and even this overwhelmed me with guilt. Or perhaps I had considered it for a moment and then rationalized that I was just fantasizing. Still, I was overcome by guilt and even a kind of terror at the thought of leaving my son behind. At the thought of the thought.

I couldn’t sleep at all that night, thinking about my son and Stefan’s daughter. He barely talked about her in the U.S. or during my visit. Neither of us talked about our children, no doubt for similar reasons. Now I felt deeply ashamed for not considering the difficulties for his family if he immigrated to the U.S. When we first discussed marriage, I rationalized that he would be able to bring his daughter over, and that would outweigh the pain (for both) of leaving her behind for a time. I even suggested that his ex-wife would be able to immigrate at some point, though I couldn’t be sure.

As a child of immigrants, I believed in the ultimate good of life in America. I also knew enough about life in Romania under Ceaușescu and the pervasive corruption of the current government to think Stefan would want to leave. But this assumption was undoubtedly my American arrogance, or perhaps the blindness of an immigrant child effectively born in exile. Later I realized that Stefan was profoundly attached to home.

—

We visited Nodi and Margareta at their apartment a few days before I left Romania. Stefan had mentioned, at dinner in the restaurant, that they lived in a stately building in one of the oldest and grandest residential parts of the city. Now assimilated to the soot-covered buildings in the central district, I was shocked by the new environs. The weather was warm again, the grass a bright yellow-green fed by melting snow, and the trees on either side of the wide boulevard were just starting to bud, eliciting a recent memory of sunlight streaming through dense, lace curtains, and more distant memories of sunny French landscapes with that particular quality of light that indicates an ocean behind waves of tall grass. The large, elegant homes, however, seemed Italian. Large and rectangular, in a horizontal plane, with flat or very shallow roofs and large, bold, neoclassical facades in muted shades of ivory, fawn, pale yellow, and terra cotta. I remember one terra-cotta-painted house with a white colonnade topped with white arches and tall, curved windows on the second floor. The neighborhood was conspicuously clean and quiet, somehow both misplaced and complete unto itself.

We walked up a grand staircase to a second-floor apartment that was quite dark, partly shaded by heavy curtains. I recall a generous entrance and living room with an adjacent dining area large enough to accommodate a substantial, formal table. The floor plan was modern in comparison to the building, but the heavy antique moldings of the doors and windows had been retained.

On the right-hand side of the living room was a bookshelf with many copies of a few books. On the left, Stefan pointed out, a shrine to the previous owner. This was a small table or desk covered with an elaborate tapestry, framed photos, a few books, a variety of small objects, and a large, red votive candle with a flickering flame. As our hosts prepared dinner, Stefan explained that the apartment had belonged to a famous Romanian science-fiction writer and that Nodi had been appointed to keep it as a museum. The living arrangement was not permanent because Nodi couldn’t pay the taxes, which were in arrears, but his benefactor had died just before the revolution, and the government had not yet repossessed the property.

Just before dinner I gave Margareta a stylish beaded necklace I had brought from the U.S. I had arrived with two silk scarves and three necklaces as gifts, not intended for anyone in particular but expecting to make acquaintances. After meeting her I chose an elegant black choker. As I helped her fasten the clasp, however, I saw that the necklace was too large for her, even on the smallest link. She was a beautiful and delicate creature as well as a dedicated physician, and she was genuinely appreciative of the gift, though it wasn’t quite right.

Nodi was head chef and took great pleasure in hosting. We started in the living room with open-face sandwiches and a bottle of chilled vodka I had brought, and by the time dinner was served, we were deep in lively conversation. I had no more than half a glass of wine with dinner but still I felt transported. The simple meal of pasta with homemade tomato sauce seemed like a grand, celebratory banquet. That night Nodi shared their plans to emigrate to America. Doctors were being recruited and Margareta would apply as soon as she had improved her English enough to pass a language test.

After dinner we relaxed in the sitting room with tea, and Nodi took from the bookshelf and presented to me a first edition of a surrealist novel in his inherited collection. The novel was written by one of his patron’s friends, and Nodi explained that he chose this volume because it was written in French, since he had no books in English. He also gave me some gifts to send to a friend in the U.S., a prominent Romanian radio commentator.

I had written a very short story for the occasion, and though I was reluctant to take center stage again, I asked Nodi and Margareta if I could read it to them, since Stefan was here to translate. They were happy to oblige, and I proceeded slowly, pausing after every few sentences, partly for effect but also for Stefan, whose translation skills never ceased to amaze me.

“I came to consciousness assuming that I must be dreaming. ‘What kind of bed is this, so narrow, and constructed so that I can barely move my arms and legs,’ I wondered. ‘And what kind of room, so dark I can’t see the walls, though I can clearly see the moon and stars?’ I raised myself up on my elbows, and as my eyes slowly adjusted to the light, I came to realize I was reclining in a silk-lined coffin in an open grave. I didn’t panic, however, because at the same moment I realized that I was dreaming a lucid dream, and I interpreted it as a test of intelligence and will.

“I saw the grave was too deep for me to reach the ground above and pull myself up, evenif I were able to balance on the heavy, open lid of the coffin. Reaching out my right hand, I was able to discern that the earth was soft and moist, and now I could also see many tree roots, some looping back on themselves. I would dig out steps for my feet and ascend, holding onto the roots with my hands.

“As I began to dig, I heard the comforting sound of the owl outside my bedroom window. But then I heard what sounded like human voices in the distance. Were these voices also outside of my window? This seemed unusual and for a moment I wondered if it were possible that I had actually been buried alive. I controlled a sudden sense of panic by working slowly and deliberately to create a few footholds. My arms had become thin and frail but I felt strong.

“Grasping the exposed roots and planting my toes, I discovered that I could get a foothold with very little support from below, as though I were rock climbing. When I was finally able to peer above ground, I was too weak to lift myself up but, seeing a pale-violet light on the horizon, realized it was almost dawn and this energized me. Resting a little to regain my strength, I noticed dew on the grass, shimmering with the faint light of the rising sun shining at an acute angle. I could feel the grass wet beneath my hands and was suddenly overcome by thirst. Driven almost wholly by an image of drinking cool water, I dug my fingers into the grass and dirt and, with a final great effort, pulled myself out of the pit.

“Now the clouds had covered the moon, and I stumbled blindly across a wet, open field. I reached a small grove of old oak trees and then suddenly found myself on the front porch of a small townhouse. The door opened before me, and I walked up the staircase, along a short corridor, and into a bedroom on the left where, to my astonishment, I found myself fast asleep.”

—

When I first arrived in Bucharest, I explained to Stefan that I was very upset that he hadn’t maintained a regular correspondence with me since he had left the U.S. in the summer. He almost never responded to my emails. He called me on my birthday in September and at that time told me that he didn’t have a phone in his new apartment because of a long waiting period and that the only computer lab at his university was always crowded with students by the time he arrived to teach. He called me on one other occasion to thank me for sending him a book of Blake reproductions for his birthday, but I didn’t hear from him at all over the winter break. I’m not sure how we arranged my visit in the spring, though I vaguely remember sending details to someone else’s email account. One of his senior colleagues with a home computer perhaps.

As I prepared to leave Romania, I reiterated that I wanted to hear from him regularly. We were engaged and he was a man of letters, after all. He could write. I would also write. He promised me earnestly that he would do everything in his power to stay in contact. He would bribe or threaten students in the computer lab to give him access, he vowed. He would steal a computer if necessary.

I don’t remember our goodbye, and I don’t remember being particularly distraught. Perhaps I’ve suppressed it or perhaps, as soon as I was out of his sphere, as soon as I passed through security, I was anxious to see my son and overwhelmed with guilt for being away for nearly a month. I wasn’t quite happy when I landed in the U.S., but I was relieved to return to my
life.

I sent short emails almost every day, assuming Stefan would access them from time to time, and I sent a letter the second week, but I didn’t hear from him within the first month of my return. By the end of the second month of silence, I was dumbfounded. I had seen the computer lab at the university. Surely he could wake up early once every few weeks to get to the lab or even wait his turn during a busy time. Bring a book to read. I became angry, anxious, and then very depressed. I wasn’t concerned for his safety, given the history. I simply didn’t know how to process the bizarre silence.

By the beginning of the summer, I understood that Stefan would not visit and that I might never see him again. Still, I couldn’t fathom how he could just cut me off with no reason. After the first month I sent several long, angry emails. Perhaps he had been preoccupied with the beginning of the semester and then angry at me for berating him. Perhaps he was afraid to respond, or perhaps he was too proud to apologize. Perhaps he had starting dating someone else. I could think of any number of reasons, but for all my anxious, obsessive ruminating, I couldn’t comprehend how or why the relationship had collapsed.

A fortune teller once told me I had a Victorian mind. He didn’t mean it as a compliment. I think I had the mind of a Victorian novel. Part of me expected Stefan to change everything about his life for me. It wasn’t unthinkable but I should have known, also from Victorian novels, that grandiose romances don’t always end well.

A former professor and advisor of mine knew that I was very close to Stefan when he was in the U.S. He met Stefan on a number of occasions and was very gracious, but he was genuinely surprised when I told him that we were planning to get married. A little over a year later, when I told him that Stefan had ghosted me, he said, “You should be with someone worthy of you.” I’m not sure what he meant. Was he culturally prejudiced or did he see something that I had missed? Perhaps he perceived that Stefan wasn’t real, in a sense. He wasn’t really there. Perhaps Stefan wasn’t really in the U.S., and I wasn’t really in Romania. We both played a part in a Ruritanian romance, and we both knew it was a kind of fiction. Perhaps we were both imposters. A part of me would still like to imagine that he was also heartbroken when our fantasy world fell apart, but I will never know how many were buried alive and how many survived.