“A pack of Marlboro’s,” she whispered as she slid it into the sweater’s fold, “for your health.”
Chapter 13 — Radu’s New Home
“Where are we going, Frau Heller?” Radu asked from the backseat of the Heller’s’ Volvo as they travelled through the streets of Dresden.
“We are going home, Radu. Your new home,” she smiled without looking back at him from the passenger seat where she fixed her make-up in the vanity mirror. Her husband was driving, keeping quiet with a stern eye on the road. Heinz was not happy at all. He had no idea what was going on with his wife these past few weeks and he was certainly not ready to play daddy for another ten years. But out of respect towards Greta he elected to rather stay out of everything instead of speaking his disgruntled mind.
Radu, a wily judge of facial expressions, could tell that his new father was not at all impressed with his presence.
“Why can I not stay in my own country?” Radu asked, his eyes fixed on the stern and sullen big man behind the wheel. He could see Heinz perk up at his question, as if he too wished to hear the answer.
“Because in your country you were abandoned to the streets, darling. And if you stay on the streets you will keep committing crimes to survive and that will just have you ending up dead or in prison. Now, is that what you want?” she asked in her usual tactful tone.
Her husband cleared his throat and blinked his eyes a few times, again eager to know the response. Radu read his face carefully, but played along to ascertain Heinz’ position in the whole thing.
“At least I was free,” the boy answered and saw how Heinz nodded almost imperceptibly. That was when he knew that he had an ally in the Heller home, someone who condoned his absence from it and would welcome his disappearance.
“Do not be so ungrateful, Radu. I have allowed you to keep your own name and you are now living in luxury. You will never be hungry again, think of that!” she said, but her smile had faded at the thought of the young boy’s free spirited insistence. All the more she did not want her husband to hear the child say things like that, lest he step in with his support of giving up Radu to the authorities, as he had wanted to from the start.
“I am grateful, Frau Heller,” Radu smiled to please her rising temper.
“And please refrain from calling me Frau Heller. I am your mother now,” she objected.
“But you are not my mother,” the boy retorted rebelliously, his voice rising slightly in volume by the mention of the word reserved only for his own mother.
“Watch your tone,” the big man thundered, finally saying something. His voice was deep and angry, abrupt in its reprimand.
“It’s alright, Heinz. Remember, he is not used to a family,” she said with her hand on her husband’s arm as they stopped at a traffic light.
“I had a family,” Radu said. “But my father vanished and my mother is dead. I know all about families and I don’t like it. If I cannot have my real parents, I don’t want any.”
“How dare you?” Heinz roared, turning in his seat to scare the life out of the brat with his cold eyes staring from the driver’s seat. Radu recoiled.
“Heinz-Karl!” Greta barked. “You will only scare him off even more. Now both of you, settle down. We just don’t know one another yet, Radu. You’ll see how much fun it is to stay with us.”
She turned to face him over the back rest of the seat.
“I travel to many great places all over the world!” she smiled, sounding as excited as she could to impress him. “You can go everywhere with me!”
“Are you going back to Romania, then?” the boy asked her nonchalantly and it infuriated her that he was so persistent in his mindset, but the philanthropist in her refused to be drawn into an emotional showdown.
“Maybe later in the year,” she sighed, acting bored. With her people skills she was well aware that this would not only satisfy the boy that he would see his country again, but he would also stop insisting — at least for now. If he knew she was powerful in the political world, he would soon come to realize that she was an authority figure and not some good hearted pushover. He would come to see her as a reasonable, accommodating mother who still held the scepter in her household…and everywhere else.
Radu was quiet now, as Greta had predicted. Her phone rang just a few blocks from their home and when Greta looked at the screen, a previously unprecedented look of annoyed worry crossed her face again. Heinz pretended not to see it. Cunningly he looked in the rearview mirror with a frown, as he had been doing to supposedly keep an eye on Radu. But in actual fact the stern man was stealing glances to his wife, even though he knew he would not be able to see the identification of the caller.
“Ja,” she said simply, trying to maintain her usual kindness while asserting her power to the caller. Heinz was not an idiot. Every time she took this tone, he knew she was speaking to a person he was not supposed to know about. Little did he know that the smart young boy in the car held the same habits as he, to pay attention to detail, to absorb certain tones and mannerisms in a voice that would betray the intention of the speaker. Radu did not understand German, but he understood emotion and body language and that was universal.
She was very uneasy, not because of the person on the other side of the line, but because she did not wish to share a secret. It was clear as day to both her companions in the car. Greta could not converse now and she could not explain the caller to her husband, so she had to distance herself from their prying ears. Faking a sneeze, the sly Greta dropped her phone, letting it fall between her feet where she pressed the button to switch it off as she picked it up.
“Ah, Scheiße!” she exclaimed with a perfectly executed annoyance which fooled no-one.
“What does that mean?” Radu asked.
“Nothing,” Heinz answered rapidly, not wanting the boy to distract his wife from her ruse so that he could see how far she was willing to push the deceit. They pulled up to the towering white iron gate that guarded the driveway up to the great manor. A security guard emerged from the shelter of the enormous pine trees to check the car as per Greta’s instructions on all vehicles entering the premises.
Young Radu pressed his cheek hard against the window and looked up at the massive dark trees that lined the garden outside the fence. He had never been here before, but they evoked in him the feeling that he somehow knew this, as if it were a memory. It always fascinated him, these memories he had of things that had never happened. His mother used to shrug it off as a previous life or something he just did not recall dreaming of. But Radu remembered specific things of these places, even the scents and temperatures. The timber giants bent forward over the vehicle as the voices of the adults and their strange tongue melted into the background while his ears only heard the whisper of the forest. Creaking, their branches reached out to him as if they beckoned him home, but his home was not a garden full of trees. It was the streets of Cluj, the parks of the city and the quaint little shops on the sidewalks. Was it not?
He may have been mistaken; he was not sure, but he could have sworn that he could see a great clearing through the trees where a group of long haired maidens were dancing. They wore skirts like his mother used to wear and even their hair flew like hers, but he could not understand them. They sang out loud, their eyes rolling in ecstatic worship to the trees that surrounded them while their slender marble hands, adorned with silver coins, spoke a language of gesture. It was sublime and Radu could not peel his eyes from them, even when the car started moving.