His daughter was silent. There was no rebuttal forthcoming, for no rebuttal existed.
"And for me," he continued, "it will mean a return to the university."
"Yes ... your work." Magda seemed to be in a sort of daze.
"My work was my first thought, yes. But now that I am fit again, I don't see why I should not be made chancellor."
Magda glanced up sharply. "You never wanted to be in administration before."
She was right. He never had. But things were different now.
"That was before. This is now. And if I help rid Romania of the fascists ruining it, don't you think I should deserve some sort of recognition?"
"You will also have set Molasar loose upon the world," Glenn said, breaking his prolonged silence. "That may earn you a kind of recognition you don't want."
Cuza felt his jaw muscles bunch in anger. Why didn't this outsider just go away? "He's already loose! I'll merely be channeling his power. There must be a way we can come to some sort of an ... arrangement with him. We can learn so much from a being such as Molasar, and he can offer so much. Who knows what other supposedly 'incurable' diseases he can remedy? We will owe him an enormous debt for ridding us of Nazism. I would consider it a moral obligation to find some way of coming to terms with him."
"Terms?" Glenn said. "What kind of terms are you prepared to offer him?"
"Something can be arranged."
"What, specifically?"
"I don't know—we can offer him the Nazis who started this war and who run the death camps. That's a good start."
"And after they're gone? Who next? Remember, Molasar will go on and on. You will have to provide sustenance forever. Who next?"
"I will not be interrogated like this!" Cuza shouted as his temper frayed to the breaking point. "Something will be worked out! If an entire nation can accommodate itself to Adolf Hitler, surely we can find a way to coexist with Molasar!"
"There can be no coexistence with monsters," Glenn said, "be they Nazis or Nosferatu. Excuse me."
He turned and strode away. Magda stood still and quiet, staring after him. And Cuza in turn stared at his daughter, knowing that although she had not run after the stranger in body, she had done so in spirit. He had lost his daughter.
The realization should have hurt, should have cut him to the bone and made him bleed. Yet he felt no pain or sense of loss. Only anger. He felt two steps removed from all emotions except rage at the man who had taken his daughter away from him.
Why didn't he hurt?
After watching Glenn until he had rounded the corner of the inn, Magda turned back to her father. She studied his angry face, trying to understand what was going on inside him, trying to sort out her own confused feelings.
Papa had been cured, and that was wonderful. But at what price? He had changed so—not just in body, but in mind, in personality even. There was a note of arrogance in his voice she had never heard before. And his defensiveness about Molasar was totally out of character. It was as if Papa had been fragmented and then put back together with fine wire ... but with some of the pieces missing.
"And you?" Papa asked. "Are you going to walk away from me, too?"
Magda studied him before answering. He was almost a stranger. "Of course not," she said, hoping her voice did not show how much she ached to be with Glenn right now. "But..."
" 'But' what?" His voice cut her like a whip.
"Have you really thought about what dealing with a creature like Molasar means?"
The contortions of Papa's newly mobilized face as he replied shocked her. His lips writhed as he grimaced with fury.
"So! Your lover has managed to turn you against your own father and against your own people, has he?" His words struck like blows. He barked a harsh, bitter laugh. "How easily you are swayed, my child! A pair of blue eyes, some muscles, and you're ready to turn your back on your people as they are about to be slaughtered!"
Magda swayed on her feet as if buffeted by a gale. This could not be Papa talking! He had never been cruel to her or to anyone, and yet now he was utterly vicious! But she refused to let him see how much he had just hurt her.
"My only concern was for you," she said through tight lips that would have quivered had she allowed them to. "You don't know that you can trust Molasar!"
"And you don't know that I can't! You've never spoken with him, never heard him out, never seen the look in his eyes when he talks of the Germans who have invaded his keep and his country."
"I've felt his touch," Magda said, shivering despite the sunlight. "Twice. There was nothing there to convince me that he could care a bit for the Jews—or for any living thing."
"I've felt his touch, too," Papa said, raising his arms and walking in a quick circle around the empty wheelchair. "See for yourself what that touch has done for me! As for Molasar saving our people, I have no delusions. He doesn't care about Jews in other lands; only in his own. Only Romanian Jews. The key word is Romanian! He was a nobleman in this land, and he still considers it his land. Call it nationalism or patriotism or whatever—it doesn't matter. The fact is that he wants all Germans off what he calls 'Wallachian soil' and he intends to do something about it. Our people will benefit. And I intend to do anything I can to help him!"
The words rang true. Magda couldn't help but admit that. They were logical, plausible. And it could be a noble thing Papa was doing. Right now he could run off and save himself and her; instead, he was committing himself to return to the keep to try to save more than two lives. He was risking his own life for a greater goal. Maybe it was the right thing to do. Magda so wanted to believe that.
But she could not. The numbing cold of Molasar's touch had left her with a permanent rime of mistrust. And there was something else, too: the look in Papa's eyes as he spoke to her now. A wild look. Tainted...
"I only want you safe." It was all she could say.
"And I want you safe," he told her.
She noted a softening in his eyes and in his voice. He was more like his old self for a moment.
"I also want you to stay away from that Glenn," he said. "He's no good for you."
Magda looked away, downward to the floor of the pass. She would never agree to give up Glenn. "He's the best thing that ever happened to me."
"Is that so?"
She sensed the hardness creeping back into Papa's tone.
"Yes." Her voice sank to a whisper. "He's made me see that I've never really known the meaning of living until now."
"How touching! How melodramatic!" Papa said, his voice dripping scorn. "But he's not a Jew!"
Magda had been expecting this. "I don't care!" she said, facing him. And somehow she knew that Papa no longer cared either—it was just another objection to fling at her. "He's a good man. And if and when we get out of here, I'll stay with him, if he'll have me!"
"We'll see about that!" There was menace in his expression. "But for now I can see that we have no more to discuss!" He threw himself into the wheelchair.
"Papa?"
"Push me back to the keep!"
Anger flared in Magda. "Push yourself back!" She regretted her words immediately. She had never spoken to her father that way in her entire life. What was worse: Papa did not seem to notice. Either that, or he had noticed and did not care enough to react.