“Listen, Radu,” she said through her bruised lips, still shaped as beautifully as he recalled, “you have to get rid of that card, my son. I beg you!”
He could not believe he was hearing her sweet voice again. A smile tugged at his foaming mouth while he was shivering on the ground under the tree, still clutching the card. The fact that he was so well out of sight behind the huge tree made it virtually impossible for anyone to find him in the midst of his apparent seizure.
“Mama, I can sell this card for lots of food! Don’t you see? Look, it is a special card, you see?” he smiled and held the card up to her, but her face fell at the sight of it. Her features aged rapidly and her hair grew grey, falling out in front of his eyes as she started moaning, crying, reaching to him with old woman’s hands. Her fingers grew sharp at the ends from her nails growing and she screamed in agony. Radu started to panic, his eyes filled with tears at disappointing his mother and making her a monster. He blamed himself for it. Now there was an abundance of dread where he had had hope. Still he could not open his eyes, for the incomplete vision that had to play itself out before his mind would be released. Weeping bitterly, grasping the unholy card that disconcerted his beloved mother so, he watched her change from an old woman into a younger lady. This lady did not have his mother’s face, nor did she wear her clothing. She had similar dark tresses just past her shoulders, large dark eyes much like his mother’s and just as small, but she was clearly someone else.
“Who are you?” he asked in a quivering voice that sounded like the desperate bleat of a lamb just before slaughter. The woman just stood there, seemingly oblivious to his presence. There was a tattoo on her arm on what looked like an arrow pointing upward and in her hand she held a peculiar object, almost like a shiny stone. It was polished, terracotta in color and when she held it out in the light he could see the tiny thin lines running across it.
“Is that a tiger’s eye?” Radu asked, wiping his eyes, but the woman did not reply. “Is that a tiger’s eye?” he asked louder, almost shouting. “It looks like a tiger’s eye that got the wrong color,” he noted out loud to sound smart for her, but his voice fell in echoes that did not reach the woman with the pretty face.
Radu felt his eyes unwillingly fall shut. There was nothing but darkness and silence for a second. His mother and the lady had vanished, but he could hear a woman’s voice creep from far away, closer to him so that finally he could hear what she was yelling.
“Help! Somebody! What is the number for emergency in this country, for Christ’s sake?” she was almost screaming at the top of her lungs. Radu could not open his eyes properly as the spasms took him, distorting his innocent young face into awful expressions of agony.
“He is having an epileptic fit, goddammit!” the blond student cried out to her friend who was on her cell phone, trying to get connected to the authorities. The two twenty year old girls spoke like tourists, he noted through his trauma.
I think they are Australians, he said to himself while his mind hid him from the intense convulsions of his body’s seizure.
“Oh crikey, he is going to bite his fucking tongue off! Jules! Jules, come help me keep his mouth open!”
And that was the last Radu heard or saw through the slits of his aching eyes. It was the last perception he suffered in the park while the clouds churned above him and he was unsure if they were another vision, a harbinger of a tempest to come, or simply the cooling of the day.
When he woke from his dreamless oblivion, he could hear so many voices surrounding him. Men and woman, all speculating on his condition and his identity. A strong smell permeated through the place, a hideous clinical smell that made Radu feel like his throat was swelling up to engulf his tongue. He coughed; his body desperate to expel the wicked visions and esoteric curse that had seeped into him. Nothing came out. Only his air grunted through his windpipe and chafed his voice so that he felt as if he had swallowed razors.
Radu’s small body was promptly caught in the arms of two women, nurses, and he could hear their hearts beating as they pressed him tightly between them to help him compose himself before inducing another seizure. They did not speak Romanian; neither did any of the visitors and other staff they encountered. Radu frowned. His mother had taught him to read, so he knew that his language was nowhere to be seen, not on the pamphlets, or clipboards or any of the plaques on the walls of the corridor that he could see from his bed.
“Er spricht Englisch,” he heard one of them say about him.
“Oh, hel-lo. Do you speak… English?” the plump nurse tried, but she was very unsure, basically choking on her words.
“Yeh, my motha taught me,” Radu said in a heavy Romanian accent. The two nurses nodded at one another, delighted that they could now somehow communicate with the strange young boy, brought in by the tourists who had since left him in their care.
“That is gut,” the other one replied. “Your name is?”
“Radu. Radu Costita,” he nodded.
“Gut, gut,” they smiled. “You have been sleeping for long time, Schatz. Almost four Tag-tag… days,” the less eloquent of the two reported. Her English was not as well developed as her colleague’s. She was a country girl and preferred to speak German, solely for comfort, but she would never admit it.
“Where am I?” he asked.
“In Weimar,” the other answered, as she wrapped the cuff around his upper arm to check his blood pressure. She could hear that the boy had difficulty speaking, so she tried to tell him as much as she could without forcing him to have to ask. “You were brought to the clinic by your mother’s step-sister and her husband. And they offered to help you get back home again as soon as you are well again. But for now you can stay a while so that doctor can see if he can give you some medicine, so we can stop those terrible seizures, ja?” She was very friendly and Radu had to admit that he did enjoy being fed and served while lying in a warm bed, but his mother had no step-sister or any other family for that matter.
The fact that he was in a strange country without any credentials, brought here by someone who lied about their relation to him made him feel a little worried. He was very young, but he was no fool. After three years on the streets he had learned quite a bit about human nature by now and when someone said they were someone else, it usually meant trouble.
He dosed off blissfully, enjoying his first experience of a warm, soft bed in years.
When young Radu woke, it was evening already. It was amazing how time flew since he had stolen the German lady’s bag. It was uncanny. He remembered at once where he was and again came the whole affair of his rescuers, resurfacing in his speculation. But he thought to find out from the friendly nurse who worked the morning shift. For now, however, he was clever enough to not rock the boat until he knew a little more. It scared him that he was not in Romania anymore.
From inside his heart he could hear his mother’s voice of warning. Then it hit him.
The card! Where is the card? his inner voice prompted urgently. It was his only leverage, but he dared not ask for it, lest they find out he had something this precious — and stolen no less. He was sure the woman he robbed would have reported the items in her purse by now and the authorities would be looking for it in Cluj and the rest of Romania, probably.
Radu surreptitiously looked around for his clothing.