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Authors: Haya Leah Molnar

BOOK: Under a Red Sky
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“What kind of a loaded question is Comrade Popescu asking you about the USSR?” he booms into the thick air of our bedroom. “You tell her you have no idea what Mother Russia has to do with any of this. And don't call it Mother Russia,” Tata says, waving his finger at me. “It's absolutely unfair of her to ask you anything about Russia without first teaching you the proper, approved CURRICULUM.” Tata utters this word as if it were the most important thing in the universe, as if it weighed a ton. “You ask Comrade Popescu to define her relationship with the Soviet
Union and watch her squirm when she gets into trouble with the almighty Party!”
Tata stops for a moment and looks at Mama, who's sitting in bed propped against her pillows, knitting a sweater. “Is Eva's teacher crazy to ask a bunch of first graders such a politically charged question, Stefi?” Mama doesn't say anything, but her ball of yarn rolls off the bed, its red string of wool looking much like one of the borderlines drawn on Comrade Popescu's map of Romania. “Am I right, Stefi, or not?”
Mama looks up and sighs. “You're right, Gyuri, but I think you're overreacting. I don't believe that Comrade Popescu is trying to trap the kids into anything. I think she just wants to see what they come up with, that's all.”
But Tata goes on as if he never even heard her. “Well, we shouldn't allow Eva to elaborate on such subjects. They're way over her head. It's too risky, Stefi. Do you have any idea what the consequences will be if Eva's innocent answer gets her in trouble?”
“It's not over my head,” I blurt out, “and I don't think it's risky because—” Tata's cold stare stops me in midsentence.
My mother sighs. “Eva's not going to say the wrong thing, Gyuri. She's smarter than that.”
Tata glares at my mother. I wish I had never told them about this assignment. I don't want to contradict Tata, but now I'm really scared because I can't go back to school and face Comrade Popescu with a bunch of questions instead of answers. What does he mean that all of this is “over my head”? I know very well that Romanians have no choice but to follow whatever the USSR dictates, even if
those policies change from one day to the next. Does Tata think I'm stupid or something? I believe the Romanian history Comrade Popescu is teaching us shows that we've survived many tyrants. I think that maybe the USSR is just another tyrant like the rest of them, but I'm not going to tell anyone, because I'm afraid this is a dangerous thought, the kind that Mama warned me would get us all into trouble if I spoke it out loud. But I don't believe for a second that Comrade Popescu would punish me for thinking it.
Tata is so beside himself, he's pacing up and down on the terrace. I excuse myself, saying that I'm going to get a slice of bread and jam from the kitchen, but instead I run to my grandparents' bedroom. Grandpa Yosef is snoring in bed, and Grandma Iulia's side is empty. She must be in the kitchen. I start to tiptoe backward toward the door, but Grandpa Yosef's voice stops me.
“Eva, is that you?” he asks with his eyes half open.
“Yes.”
“What's the matter?” How does Grandpa always know when something is wrong?
“Nothing,” I lie, and then immediately blurt out my predicament about the school assignment. “Tata says Comrade Popescu's wrong to be asking us loaded questions about our relationship with the Soviet Union. He says it's over my head, but it's not, and I don't know what to do. I've got to have an answer by tomorrow, Grandpa, or I'll get in trouble for sure.” My words tumble out as Grandpa sits up, his eyes wide open now.
“That's easy.” Grandpa chuckles. “Tell your teacher a Romanian is a person who's born in this country. That covers just about all of us. You can't go wrong with that answer. As far as the Soviet Union is concerned, tell her you're looking forward to learning all
about it when you have the honor of becoming a Pioneer. She's the teacher.” Grandpa winks at me. “You let her do the hard work and point the way, and that's that.”
I run back into our room and tell my parents what Grandpa Yosef just advised, and they both look at me with blank faces. “That's a good answer,” Tata finally concedes, and Mama's shoulders relax as she continues to knit.
ON HIS FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL,
Andrei doesn't say much. I don't blame him, since it's already November and he's missed the beginning of classes and doesn't know anyone. Comrade Popescu assigns him a seat in the row next to mine, directly to my right. When he finally opens his mouth to answer one of her questions, everyone snickers because of his provincial accent. Andrei brushes his hair off his forehead with the rough knuckles of his hand, but he doesn't respond. Comrade Popescu warns us that the next student who laughs at Andrei will be detained after school.
“Our comrades from the provinces are more Romanian than any of you,” she says with great passion in her voice. “Peasants are the true proletariat, the backbone of this country. They put food on your table and you'd better be thankful. I dare you to make fun of Andrei's accent again.” She surveys all of us with her razor eyes, caressing her ruler. Suddenly, there is complete silence in the class. Still, Andrei is speechless for the rest of the week.
After school we walk home together, because Andrei's family has moved upstairs from us on the attic floor right next to Sabina's
room! I don't know what his parents do for a living, but it's clear that they are poor since they can only afford to live in servants' quarters. They have two tiny bedrooms, one for his parents and the other for Andrei. They all share the bathroom in the hall with Sabina. Andrei is lucky because he has his own room, but I wouldn't want to live up on the third floor, where the ceiling is so low his father has to slouch to avoid hitting his head. The heat is stifling up there.
 
WHILE WE WALK HOME from school, we don't talk to each other, except to say goodbye. When we finally get home, Andrei bolts up the stairs two at a time, his heavy-laced ankle boots making thud noises. I am curious about what it's like to live in the country with cows that moo and chickens that cluck and lay eggs just like mine did, but it's difficult to ask Andrei about any of these things, since he clearly doesn't want to open his mouth. Then one evening after supper our phone rings and Aunt Puica answers it.
“It's Andrei's mother,” she whispers. “She wants to know if it would be all right for him to do his homework with you.” She turns before I've had a chance to answer and speaks loudly into the receiver. “Yes, of course, Mrs. Ionescu, tell Andrei to come down. Eva will be happy to help him with math.”
I can't believe Aunt Puica just did that! I wish Mama were home because she would have asked me how I felt about it before saying yes. But it's no use arguing with Aunt Puica.
Andrei seems as nervous about us getting together as I am, and it is clear that this was not his idea either. He really is stuck in math since he's missed two months of school. Instead of just giving him the answers to the assignment, I teach him how to do the calculations. He works very hard on each problem, and finally we compare
answers. Andrei's smart. He gets nine out of ten right, without peeking. After that, Andrei begins to talk to me in his funny provincial accent, and I smile but I make sure not to laugh. I notice his eyes are very blue. His hair is coarse and the color of wheat.
“Back home”—Andrei speaks slowly, struggling to pronounce each word the way we do in Bucharest—“we used to go to church every Sunday, but we haven't done that since we've arrived here. I really miss it. Where do you go?”
“We don't,” I confide.
“You don't go to church? What are you, a kike?”
“I don't know what a ‘kike' is,” I tell him, but I'm sure that it's a bad word. I once saw Tata get red in the face after seeing a man spit on the ground and call another man a “kike.”
Andrei just stares at me as if I'm the one who moved to Bucharest from the provinces, but he doesn't offer an explanation.
“I've never been to a church, but I once saw a baby boy baptized in the monastery yard up in the country where my mother and I spent the summer,” I tell him, trying to prove that I'm not completely ignorant. “The priest wore a giant silver cross and a tall black hat. He looked like a chimney sweep with a beard.” I giggle, but Andrei isn't laughing, so I continue quickly. “He held the baby by his feet and dunked him in well water. The baby started wailing and turned really red. The priest couldn't chant the prayers because the baby was so slippery, he almost wiggled out of his arms.”
Andrei finally laughs, and I am relieved. “Yeah, I've been to a few baptisms, they're all the same,” he says, pausing. “Is it true that they don't approve of religion in Bucharest? My parents told me that I shouldn't talk about our Lord Jesus Christ in school. They say the Party is much stricter about this in the capital. We never
had a problem with it back home.” Andrei lowers his eyes and fidgets with the pencil between his fingers. “Please don't tell anybody.”
“Oh, don't worry, I won't say a word,” I reassure him. “I know how to keep a secret. Besides, I don't even know who Jesus Christ is. My father doesn't believe in God, and Mama doesn't talk about religion.”
“What does your father believe in, then?”
“I don't know.” I shrug. “Nothing, I suppose. I think he believes in science and math. What's a kike?” I ask again.
“What do you guys do at Christmastime?”
“You mean, in winter?”
“Of course, that's when Christmas happens.” Andrei looks confused.
“Well, Grandpa Yosef always gets a beautiful pine tree. I love the way the house smells when he brings it in. Mama and I make decorations for it. We put cotton balls on a string to make it look like snow, and we wrap colorful paper chains around the tree. Last year, my cousin Mimi gave me three beautiful glass balls, a red, a blue, and a gold. We hung them on the branches. Grandpa gets dressed up in his Santa Claus outfit and pretends that he's traveling all the way from the North Pole. Then we clip candles onto the branches, that's my favorite part, but we have to be very careful and watch the flames so that the tree won't catch fire. That's it. We blow out the candles and go to bed.”
“You don't go to church or exchange presents?” Andrei asks.
“No. The Christmas tree is our present.”
Andrei's face shows that he doesn't quite understand this. I can tell he's worried that I might give him away by telling the kids in school that his family is religious, but of course I won't, since I
promised. Andrei missed the class when Comrade Popescu taught us that all religion is just superstition for ignorant, uneducated people. I suspect Tata agrees with this view despite the fact that he hates the Party. I don't want to offend Andrei, and I remember Mama's warning not to tell other children what I overhear at home, so I don't share these thoughts with him.
“IF GOD IS ALL-POWERFUL,”
my father says, his eyes twinkling with delight, “could He create a mountain that is so big that even He could not move it?” I look at Tata, not knowing how to answer, but just from the twist of his smile I know that this is a trick question.
My father believes in scientific proof. “If you can't see it, hear it, touch it, or smell it, it's probably only your imagination,” he tells me. “Thank God, the Party doesn't preach religion on top of their propaganda.”
“What does propaganda mean?” I ask.
“Never mind. Never utter that word again.”
Tata looks ridiculously serious as he says this, and it makes me nervous, so I start to giggle.
“You hear me, Eva?”
 
THE MOST CONSTANT sound in my life is made by the swinging pendulum of the mantel clock that my father keeps on top of the Biedermeier chest of drawers in our bedroom. Tick tock, tick tock.
I am so used to it that, for the most part, I don't notice it. Tata found the clock upon his return home from a Russian labor camp. It was one of a handful of other objects that once belonged to his parents. He was thirty-one years old at the time, having spent the previous eight years in various lagers, concentration camps: four years in Nazi work camps, and then four more years after the war as a prisoner of war in the Russian gulag. I've only been told the historical facts, not the personal details.
 
TATA IS HOME this Sunday, having just completed a film shoot on location. He is taking advantage of his rare free time by cleaning out the two drawers that Mama has allocated to him in the Biedermeier chest. Under a bunch of folded socks is a tin box filled with old papers and photographs. I am not allowed to touch any of my father's belongings, but I watch as he fishes out a dog-eared postcard and reads it in silence. I ask him what it says since I don't read or speak Hungarian. His face hardens before he answers, “It says goodbye.”
“Who says goodbye?”
“My mother. Your other grandmother.” He points to a faded signature beneath a few carefully scripted lines in black ink.
“Why?” I have a feeling I shouldn't be asking this, but I can't help it.
“My mother knew it was unlikely that we would ever see each other again.” Tata's voice is barely audible.
I don't know what to say. Tata looks at me, as if suddenly remembering that I am here. “Someone must have found this postcard on the train station platform and placed it in our mailbox,” he tries to explain. “See, it doesn't even have a stamp,” he says, pointing
to the spot where the stamp is clearly missing. “This postcard waited in our mailbox for four years, Eva, from April 1945, when my parents were deported to Auschwitz, until late in 1949, when I came home from Russia.” Tata looks up at me. “A small miracle,” he says, forcing a smile.
“How come you are so sure that they died in Auschwitz?” I'm pushing my luck. “Maybe they're still alive somewhere and you don't know it.”
“Don't be ridiculous, Eva,” Tata says, his smile fading. “I know. Believe me, I know.” I notice that the muscles on his forearms are twitching.
“Have you searched for them?” I am relentless.
“Look,” Tata answers, raising his voice slightly, “I'm one hundred percent sure.” The tone of his voice lets me know that this conversation has ended. “Why don't you run along and play in the yard?” he says, turning back to his tin box. “They're dead. Believe me.” His voice trails off as I skip out of the room. “Dead.”
 
IN THE AFTERNOON I tell my mother about Tata's postcard and she gets upset. “Why in the world did he ever show you that?” she asks. “Promise me never, ever to ask your father about the war or about what happened to his parents in Auschwitz. It depresses him, and you must respect that.”
“But why, Mama? Grandpa Yosef and Grandma Iulia talk about the war all the time,” I point out.
“My parents weren't deported to a concentration camp in cattle cars like your father's parents. None of us were murdered, thank God,” she adds, looking at me helplessly. “Promise me you won't bother Tata about any of this anymore. Promise?”
“Okay, I promise, only if you tell me about Tata and the war.”
“I know almost nothing,” my mother answers, “because he doesn't like to talk about it, but he did take me to see the house in Cluj, where he used to live before the war.”
“What was it like, Mama, was it beautiful?”
“It was empty,” she says, clearing her throat. “The walls had turned yellow beneath the torn blue wallpaper. Your father pointed to where the dining room table had stood. It was the only polished patch of oak flooring in the room. He showed me where the crystal chandelier had bounced rainbows off the ceiling. A giant hole with a tangle of disconnected electrical wires gaped at us, like a decaying tooth. It was getting dark, but we were too exhausted to move. We dropped to the floor and fell asleep in each other's arms. When we awoke, the house was pitch black. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. The sound of a clock beckoned through the empty house. Your father rose to his feet and searched for the clock through the thick darkness.” Mama's voice trails off as she gazes across the room at the clock on our Biedermeier chest. “We never figured out who wound it.”
 
THAT EVENING I ask my parents if I can sleep on the terrace. The wide-open space of the sky above feels so good in contrast to my narrow bed behind the bookcase. There is a slight breeze, and the sky is filled with stars. I fall asleep quickly and dream a dream so clear, it doesn't feel like a dream at all.
The night turns to day as my father's mother, Grandmother Hermina, visits me. I recognize her the moment she appears, even though we've never met. She is young, beautiful, and vibrantly alive. I am aware that she died before I was born, but her presence is quite real. Grandmother Hermina knows instantly who I am, just as I know
her. She takes my presence in and murmurs, “Your father is all right.” She repeats this to herself more definitively, “Your father is all right.” Her words penetrate the space between us until they light up my consciousness so deeply that I wake up.
What does Grandma Hermina mean by “Your father is all right”? Tata is not all right. He's always worried about something or other. He's not nice to me, and none of that is all right by me. I try to think through my dream logically, but it doesn't make sense. Yet in my heart I know that what Grandma Hermina has just told me is as true and as real as the stars that hang in the night sky above me.
This dream stays with me until a few days later I ask Grandpa Yosef about it, and he thinks for a while before answering.
“Dreams always reveal a hidden truth. The problem is not with the dream but with the interpretation.”
“What do you mean, the interpretation?”
“Just that—what the dream means.”
“But, Grandpa, I don't understand what Tata's mother meant when she said ‘Your father is all right,' because I don't think he is.”
“Aha, now I see.” Grandpa smiles. “Try looking at it from your Grandmother Hermina's point of view.”
“How can I? It's my dream!”
“Of course it's your dream, but since your grandmother visited you and spoke to you, she obviously has her own mind, so why not consider what she's saying?”
“I don't understand what you're talking about, Grandpa.”
“Try to see it through her eyes, if only for a moment. Before she died, did she think that her son was all right? If you were a mother, Eva, and now I know I'm asking you to really use your imagination
because you are far too young even to think about being a mother, but let's just suppose you are much older and you have a son who is somewhere in a concentration camp where millions of people are dying.” Grandpa stops abruptly and looks at me before continuing. “And you don't know if your son is still alive. What would your dying wish be?”
My words spill out. “I'd want him to live!”
“Precisely.” Grandpa takes in a deep breath.
“Grandpa, I know what Grandma Hermina was trying to tell me. She saw me sleeping and she realized that Tata is alive, that he's all right!”
Grandpa Yosef nods. “Your grandma Hermina probably never rested until she visited you.”
“But, Grandpa, why didn't she just visit Tata?”
Suddenly, the creases around Grandpa's eyes are deeper than I've ever noticed. “God is merciful and wise. He gave your grandmother Hermina a gift that would not tear her apart. She had suffered enough while she was alive.”
“It was only a dream, Grandpa.”
“Dreams are as real as life, Eva, because they contain seeds of the truth. Just like you can't see the seeds from a plant because they're buried in the ground, you can't always see the meaning of dreams right away. But just as surely as a plant grows, the truth of dreams eventually emerges. Most dreams are hidden in plain sight, waiting for us until we are ready to discover their meaning and heed their message.”
While Grandpa tries to explain these things to me, I wonder—how could a dead person come and visit her sleeping granddaugh
ter
?
I agonize over this, but I do not question Grandpa Yosef further, since he clearly believes in miracles. And even I know that miracles are events you do not question.
 
I PROMISED MY MOTHER not to bring up Tata's parents to him again, but I can look at our clock ticking away on top of the chest to my heart's content. Grandpa Emile's thin pencil markings keeping track of the dates on which he wound the clock can still be found etched on its back panel. How could things survive yet people, who are irreplaceable, perish?
The clock is the first thing my father looks at when he gets home from a film shoot. He goes through the ritual of winding it every thirteen days. He begins by opening the back panel and slipping his hand into the small space that houses the mechanism and the brass pendulum. It is only during these moments, when Tata is barely aware of my presence, that I feel him connect to a past that has included a family other than my mother and me. His fingers search for the metal key stored in the clock's base. He inserts the key in place and starts to wind, holding his breath and counting each turn of his wrist in his head.
One
…
two
…
three
…
four
… five. Exhale. He is careful not to overwind. When he is finished, Tata secures the clock's crown, making sure that none of the brass fittings on the ebony surface are loose. Finally, he shuts the door to the inner mechanism as if he has just left another realm; then he dusts the clock before returning it to its central place on top of our chest. For a moment, he listens to the back-and-forth movement of the pendulum while gazing at the three brass cherubs playing a lyre on the clock's front panel. He completes his
ritual by checking to see that the clock's hands are synchronized with those of his Russian-issue wristwatch. Then he turns around and is back in our little room as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. In the two weeks that follow, the clock resumes its ever-present background sound of our daily life.

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