CHAPTER FOUR
It took no more than a week for Vivienne’s intentions to unravel and before long I suspected that her generosity cloaked something else. It was not that she was a lousy host. On the contrary, she possessed the rather fussy hospitality of a five-star luxury resort. In fact, in some ways I still felt overly spoiled, as in my old life. And because I had moved to New York to cure my mellow lifestyle, I was upset to find how reluctant I was to leave her little bed and breakfast in the mornings. She was, as I imagined then, the Queen of Housekeeping. And in this pink snippet of home life, there were never any shortages of pastries, nor of any home-made breads, and carrot juice, and pumpkin seeds, and all kinds of almond things. She was obsessed with nutrition. Her refrigerator, notably, was the paradise of every hypochondriac. It was clean, and colourful, and healthy; and every time I'd open it, I could hear an angel choir.
And yet, there was a disproportionate, intrusive generosity in Vivienne. Something I realised when, despite my horrified protests, at night I'd find my prettily folded panties – washed, scented, and waiting with an antiseptic halo on the bed. Obviously, all this pampering made her indiscretions impossible to confront. As for any mistake on my part, it was the perfect outlet for her petty little temper. Like a pot of goulash was her temper, and she always served it hot. Still, perhaps I could have been more careful. In three days, as if guided by an evil domestic spirit, I had blown up her microwave, flooded her shower, and spoiled her century-old dining table with five cute fleecy polka dots (cotton balls in acetone). She screamed a lot that night. I think she had been holding it in since the microwave incident, which she’d managed with extraordinary tact. At the sight of the mess, after a pregnant pause in which her forehead vein pulsed with a green acid like a winding, palpable Nile –frowning, eye brow raise, a pout, then frowning again– she’d dropped her shopping on the floor and cheerily exclaimed: “Well, I love what you’ve done with the place!” Later, some grumbling and slamming upstairs. There was a sense of an impending transformation, like one of those empresses about to turn into a sea creature. And I was sure she’d burst at dinner, but she’d held it well together with a red-faced, painful-looking smile.
What however could have been the start of an unlikely friendship ceased when she began to comment on my father. They were ambiguous comments, veiled in humour and social niceties, but it was clear that she did not like him at all and was even pleased with his fate. She was certainly an intelligent, sophisticated woman. She found it especially ironic that I was reading Crime and Punishment at the time, something stressed with an ear-splitting, theatrical laugh which reminded me of the Evil Queen in Snow White. Tact however prevailed, and I decided –for my own sake– to avoid certain topics, accept her treacherous comments, clean her bathroom, and walk her senile pooch in the murderous cold of a New York winter morning. First, I saw her as my maid. Then I saw her as my master.
And so, it had been that morning. I had woken up at seven, and took Daisy for a walk around the neighbourhood. Daisy was a small flock of white curls with freakishly small eyes and a terrible toothy mouth who judged me up and down with a sort of class superiority. I liked her sometimes, but mostly she annoyed me. She was governed by an impossible will, with insufferable human traits. She had made this clear that morning when, despite my strongest efforts, the animal refused to move. And concerned as I was that some sensitive neighbour might report me to the animal police, I abandoned the battle and sat down on the nearest bench.
There, for the first time in a week, I considered the marvel of that victorious morning, and it wasn’t much in an ocean of crap, but it was something, and I knew I’d done the right thing in moving to New York.
Rain had washed the city overnight, and everything was blurred, dipped in a Tudorian pallor. Over the road, some of the brown houses had started blinking to life, resembling giant ovens with their warm yellow windows. And out front, right behind a row of minivans, a catwalk of trash cans lined the sidewalk. At the corners of this tableau stood two old wooden poles –some ten meters apart– connected by low-hanging cables, like brushstrokes over a bad canvas. A few houses had red and brown aluminium awnings. Some beamed fresh with clean brickwork, others were weather-beaten, flushed to pink and white. Brown bricks, grey plastic, new metallic balconies and black trimmings throughout. And the whiteness in the rainy air, and the cawing of a nearby crow, permeated the perspective with a 16th century horror.
After a few moments, a fat Hitler in a pink fluffy robe emerged from one of houses. He was wearing only dark blue shorts with long white ruffled socks and held a gigantic black trash bag which he struggled to get down the stairs. What was it with these people and garbage? I thought he resembled something of a discontinued Santa Claus. Then he screamed revoltingly whilst dangling a cigarette with his mouth: “Nancy! I told you a hundred times hun'! Put a fuckin’ trash bag in the bin before throwin’ out the fuckin’ leftovers!” No answer. Smashing the lid, he bobbed his head in a sort of premeditated vengeance, sucked one more puff and went back inside.
A muted mechanical roar started in the distance, coming in waves of traffic hums and rumbling train tracks, like a behemoth rising, tossing and turning in its snooze before finally awakening to its unstoppable force. And with it, the wind carried the smell of mud, sweetened with a citrusy aroma from a nearby cleaning truck. Dismally, a couple of little clockwork figurines had started scurrying left and right, eyes in the ground and brisk determined steps. Black suit, green pants, laptop bags, and dark parkas. The perspective carried a toiling energy that took me back to Romania, only with better clothes and fewer hunchbacks.
Several joyless observations later, I telephoned my brother George, then my brother Alex. Silence on both fronts. I had tried ringing my mother a few times during the week, yet the calls would not go through. Panic squeezed into my thoughts. Two weeks it had been since I had last spoken to my mother and, by now, she’d want to hear from me. She had vehemently insisted that I call her after I’d arrived, alluding to some matter of mysterious significance. I did not understand why she could not tell me in person, but she made it sound so awfully secretive that I eventually complied with aggravation. What was it, I wondered. What more could it possibly have been? Did she have cancer? Trouble loves company. If she did, could she not have openly told me? Why all this theatricality? A green car passed, then a red one and a blue one, then more which I stopped noticing, leaving the tally to Daisy. With much hesitation, I thought of calling the last person I wanted to speak to.
Bobby Popescu was my father’s “right-hand” man, as he called himself, a sort of second-hand consiglieri who had made a career in flattery. After many mishaps as a judge in the Romanian High Court of Justice, he was removed from the role and lived for six months on a couch. Around this time my father found him. Later, my mother and I learned with repugnance that he was a freemason. He was the kind of man who addressed normal people with superlatives like “Your Excellency” and thought a good jacket was a symbol of status. I treated him with tolerant disgust. The line began to ring and then stopped.
‘Hello?’ I probed the connection. He had the infuriating habit of answering the phone and saying nothing, as if always hiding from someone.
‘Hello – yes – Cici? Is that you?’ he asked in a squeaky forced warmth. Cici is what my family and close friends call me and those, of course, unable to assess a proper distance.
‘Yes, it’s me.'
He spoke excitingly, rather quickly, with a series of worthless questions which I quickly subdued: ‘Listen, do you have any news?’
‘About your father?’ he squeaked.
‘Yes.’
He paused. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I – I do.’ A longer pause.
‘Well?!’
‘They’re asking for five hundred thousand.’
‘You spoke to them? When?!’
‘Couple days ago. One of them called. Said his name was Django.’
I instantly thought a five hundred thousand ransom was excruciatingly ridiculous, even for Romanians. And this was not your regular kidnap. I had expected all the chaos to be worth much, much more.’
‘You can't be serious with that money!’ I said softly, but infuriated.
“Yes, I know, I know – it's a lot of money – a lot of money indeed – but we'll figure something out – we'll figure something out.”
The media, the scrutiny, the shame! What for?! Then again, if the ransom was bigger, it would be harder to obtain. My father's life could be in danger.
“And where in God's name will I find that sort of cash?”
“Beats me.” He hesitated, then continued: “Look, I know you're under a lot of pressure, Cici. Just remember we’re in this together.” He sounded like a bad motivational speaker. “Maybe you could – I don't know – find a job or something?” Then he added in a different voice: “Like everyone else.”
I said in my head some things I wanted to say to him.
“And your mother, she wants to speak to you – Seems worried, you know?”
I continued to say nothing.
Finally, he asked: “Is there anything else I can help you with?” I told him no, and hung up, and by now my heart was beating wildly.
It all came back.
It happened on a Sunday morning, just as we were having brunch.
We were seated at the dining table, with the curtains drawn out wide so that the sun flooded the room in a yellow, opalescent light. Father had started one of his speeches on “Character!” and “Resistance to Adversity!” as we peeled our eggs in a sulk. And just when Mother stretched her hand out for a peach and the espressor hissed its final steam, right before the crostini popped out of the toaster and drenched the room in buttery nostalgia, three knocks pounded on the door.
Minutes later, when we didn’t answer, the living room window exploded. Through the breach, entered a chocolate Michelin man –sledgehammer in hand with a rope around the shoulder– and waddling behind him, three more specimens alike. They were wearing Versace tracksuits. They had thin legs and a spherical upper body. Their features reminded me of mud. No chins with a lumpy nose, droopy lips, and a Hungarian moustache. Father had stood up and seemed to know one of them, because he was trying calmly, with a pacifying hand gesture, to talk him out of escalation. Mother remained poised. She was blinking like an automatic shutter; ready, from the looks of it, to bury her face in her celery juice. She started screaming instead. It was as if her scream was a starting gun, because what followed can only be described as a sort of wild pig chase.
Broken vases. Broken china. Mother shrieking like a hawk. Crash! Smash! “I’ll show you, you little prick!” Never had I seen my father run so fast. The air was flaming with panic. Two of them took our phones, hurling them across the room. Then they overthrew some furniture. Ragged breath and nowhere to run. “Move, child – wheezing, gasping – I have no business with you. More gasping. Come here you little animal! Django, get him from the side!” To the right of the table, to the left of the table. Father escaping on the porch, then in again through the kitchen door. "Stop! Please, STOP!" My own voice, barely audible amidst the uproar. And Mother with the comical distorted aspect of a theater tragedy mask. Then doors slamming. Loud banging. Two of the goblins had chased my father upstairs, leaving the others behind to perpetuate the ruin. One of them, my brothers tried to wrestle. The other smashed everything in his way. My brain and heart rang like a church bell. Then a Waterford centrepiece, thrown up like a soccer ball. And Mother grasping her face with pointy red nails, eyes popped out like ping-pong balls. Screaming so falsetto, that to look at it all –crystal flying, sun shining, goblins and drama, and screaming and all– was to have, no doubt, the King’s lodge at the Opera.
“Excuse me?”
I looked up, startled. A wholesome-looking midget, sugar-pink lips and nose red like a reindeer.
“Excuse me?” she repeated, as if I hadn’t heard.
“Yes?”
“You have to pick up after your dog”, she chirped in a very American, very obnoxiously tuneful intonation. She tilted her head at the healthful dump near Daisy. For reasons unknown, I apologised –America has this effect– then awkwardly complied.
“No, you can’t throw it in theeere. There’s a special waste bin, over there.” She pointed to the end of the street.
“Right”, I said with a smile, putting the thing in my pocket. “Just moved here.”
Skeptical, she scanned me up and down with a bright green snoopy stare. But by the time she’d parted her mouth and a constipated “Wh–” came out, luckily her phone rang. “Yes, Liz,” she answered decisively. “Yes, it’s done. No. NO. Tell them to wait for Marcus to look at the figures. I want that deck flawless before it goes out.” Then, moving her phone to her cheek, she told me full of premonition: “You have a good day now.”
I watched her as she drifted off. She was speaking in an alien corporate language and gesturing like a wild bird. Then her puffer jacket blurred out in a hover, and a few blinks later, she was gone.
The time, I was surprised to see, read 07:30. Vivienne would still be home. As I wanted to avoid her, but also out of that self-indulgent urge to paddle a bit longer through my personal tragedy, I sat back on the bench, deep again into the corridors of memory.
I remembered our sitting room. After the Waterford had hit the floor and Mother finished screaming, it descended in a war zone. Broken chairs and toppled sofas, and everywhere, hortensia explosions. Books were scattered on the floor, picture frames and giltwood paintings. And a dusting of crystal, settling like frost upon the carpet, which gave it all a persecution ambiance –dark, chilly, gritty– like the Nazi burnings in the 1930s.
With nothing left to ruin, the thugs had joined their comrades upstairs, where my father was barricaded in a bathroom. Two of them were trying to break through. The other two shoved us in the master bedroom. A big, ivory room –spherical furniture and over-wrought walls– like a spy crib from a nineties movie. My brothers huddled in a corner, whispering some plan. Minutes later, they attacked. A flapping baby seal movement –flimsy arms and awkward bouncing– which left them ruffled, sobbing, cheeks swollen like walruses. Mother, I hardly recognised. She was sitting in a creamy Barcelona chair, rocking back and forth, doubtless in shock. The sun was shining through the arched French doors, flooding her face in an airy mint sheen. And in her peaceful suffering, with the glowing dust around her and her saintly Renaissance pose, she looked like a revered Madonna.
Then, one of the men peered in. With darting eyes, he looked at one of our guards, then at us. “Good door,” he said. “Won’t break.”
The sumo topknot guard answered him in a guttural Romani language. They seemed to disagree on something, then one of them grumbled:
“Give us the key to the door, Mrs.” When she didn’t react, he walked towards her, snapping his fingers. “Hello, lady, look at me.”
“Curse,” my mother whispered.
“Curse?” He pretended to spit. “He! No curse. Your husband is a shitty opportunist, that’s your curse. What he say? We gypsies, we don’t deserve a nice big house like this, eh? We sleep under the moon, howl in the night.” His comrades started howling like wolves, snorting as they laughed. “Give me the key.” Silence. A nose wrinkle. A lowering menacing stare. “Look, lady, we don’t hurt women. But don’t push it. The key,” he ordered, sticking out a chunky palm.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Why?” he mocked, turning over some drawers. “I told you why. Us, gypsies, we don’t take betrayals well. We had a deal. But he took me for fool. No problem. We see who is fool now. The KEY, NOW.”
“I don’t have it!”, she snapped.
“Falcon! Jedi!” He motioned towards the guards, who rushed downstairs. “I helped your husband long ago, you know that? Mm?’– lumbering around the room, scouring through drawers – “Of course you don’t. He don’t want anyone to know this little empire of his was built on gypsy money. I said, Adam, you go, do your business – Jedi! What is taking so long?! – But don’t forget Django, okay? And what he do? He forget. Is okay”, he said, putting his palm up. “We remind him. – So, what’s it gonna be?”, he said, grabbing a pint of gasoline which the thugs had brought back.
A long silence. Like a fist hitting it at regular intervals, my heart was pounding metronomically. My mother sat petrified. My brothers started pleading again, a wounded creature weakness in their gestures.
“Ok”, he said coolly, then opened my mother’s closet, and stepped inside and started tossing out her clothes. “We gypsies, we not like you,” he was shouting as flying furs and cashmere coats fell onto the creamy carpet. Bottega Veneta. Vicuña. Kiton. “We don’t mess with politics. We make money for our family, not for world.” A satin pair of green Manolos, crystals sewn onto the strap. “You ever hear a gypsy losing fortune? I don’t think so. We God-fearing people. We don’t stretch more than our blanket.” Pink cashmere. Orange silks. “Power? Glory? That’s for people like your husband. Greedy, hungry. Devil’s work.” Blue Aquazzura. Silver Jimmy Choos. “But people say gypsies are bad! Untrustworthy!” A white Dolce & Gabanna cape. “I never ask for any favour. I ask for a beautiful home for my family. And what I get? A catastrophe! I say, Adam, brother, what happen? He say, accident. Accident, but give me my money. And what he does? He disappear. It’s ok.”
The stench of gasoline suffused the room.
“No, please stop,” my mother had started whimpering, like out of a sleep. Striking a match, we watched the flame flicker and prance at the end of the stick. “This is so you never forget Django,” he said meaningfully. Then, with a decisive motion, he tossed the match over the clothes. Fire erupted, hungry and wild, devouring the pile with crackling ferocity. Terrible screaming. What had started as a progressive disaster was now taking a very different turn. Death came to mind. The room filled with light and heat, shadows springing like snakes against the walls, blackening them. My mother’s screams were growing into beastly howls, hands together touchingly, as she begged the man to “Stop! My children!” Crowding together and covering our mouths, we tried, against their baricade, to escape the room. The key!”, the man shouted for the eleventh time. “There!” She pointed to a small porcelain vase on a vertical console. “The second one!” The man sprang forward, snatching it, then nodded towards his comrade who fetched a fire extinguisher from the hall, and after three dramatically effective minutes, swiftly quenched the flames.
Then six heavy footsteps and a door burst open with a kick. My father was slumped –panting– on the marbled floor. He had made a bid for freedom through the narrow window. Sloped diagonally across his face were his yellow-tinted specks, and his hair, all damp, was tangled in a furious black mess. He looked as I had never seen him in my life. I was holding my mother who was wailing: “My home! My home!”, when the thug who’d burned her clothes stepped in front of him and whacked him in the face with a grunt, ruffling him again as Father un-slouched himself and looked at my mother and me for a long touching second; and I couldn’t understand where the rattling noises came from, until I looked behind and saw the Sumo guy had locked my brothers in a storage closet. Then, two of them grabbed his arms, dragging him out with such force that his feet barely touched the ground. Like a strong wind blowing through the house, they swooshed him up and carried him to the Range Rover outside, and behind them, chaos swirled once more –ashes, and crystals, and jewels, and furs– with all the power and the misery of money.
“Are you going to kill him?!” I shouted in the doorway.
“You watch too many movies, little girl!” One of them said, sticking his head in the window. “We not killers! We salesmen!”