Trouble in Transylvania Read online

  “Do you take them?”

  “Me!” He seemed surprised. “Oh, no. Not yet. Dr. Pustulescu, he took them. He was eighty-nine.”

  There was a knock on the door. It was Bree. “Are you all right in there?”

  Clutching my pamphlets and the schedule of treatments, I stood up and shook Dr. Gabor’s hand. Margit had vanished again.

  “Rheumatoid arthritis,” I told Bree, in my best elderly widow voice.

  Around five o’clock Nadia and Eva rolled up in Nadia’s Dacia. Jack and I were sitting on a bench in front of the Arcata Spa Hotel, enjoying the sparkling pine-scented air and the late afternoon sun on the lake. We had already made several acquaintances: a woman who had a cousin in Miami, her daughter, who taught English at an elementary school, and a small boy with whom we shared a bar of Hungarian chocolate. I hadn’t seen anything of Bree since my recent widowhood, but Gladys was to be intermittently glimpsed around the perimeter of the lake with her dogs. There were now seven, each blacker and larger than the next.

  The Dacia halted with a shudder and Eva and Nadia got out, both carrying greasy chunks of metal. Nadia was covered in oil and had a happy, satisfied smile on her round face while Eva, usually so neat, looked as if Nadia had driven over her a couple of times. She had streaks of grease across one cheek and in her blond hair.

  “Did you fix it?” Jack asked.

  In English Nadia crowed, “It’s simple problem, easy solved.” She held up a blackened little metal tube. “I get sister husband to find this one for us.”

  Eva said, “My car is ruined, it’s completely ruined. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She just unscrewed and took apart everything. She was going to leave these parts on the side of the road. I don’t know what they are, but I know they were in the engine. They must be there for a reason.”

  “No, no, Eva,” Nadia said, unruffled. “It is this, this part that is problem. It is nothing! I fix plenty cars. You got to in Romania. Now I go in my office, call sister husband, he finds new one.” She remembered our other problem. “Gladys okay? No more police come today?”

  “I’ve been to see Dr. Gabor,” I said. “He thought it would be a good idea for me to take some treatments. I start tomorrow. He’s quite the Magyar patriot, isn’t he?”

  “You take the treatments, good!” said Nadia. “You stay here. C’est bon, very good. Then we take some sightseeing trips in the afternoons. To Bicaz Gorge. Sighişoara to see birthplace Dracula. Only ten dollars, hard currency, per day.”

  She vanished with the metal tube into her office, in high good humor.

  Eva decided to leave too. She went off muttering, “How are we going to get back to Budapest? I can’t just leave my car in Transylvania. The Romanians will vandalize it.”

  I’d been wondering when we would see the Snapps. The next thing I knew Archie was taking a photo of me and Jack.

  “Surprise!”

  “Surprise,” Jack said, with a cautious glance at me, as if to say, He looks familiar but…

  “Jack, you remember Archie, from the Gellért.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “During the attack of the Gypsy violinists.”

  “Jack, that’s right! The Australian!” Archie said enthusiastically, sitting down beside us with his Nikon, tape recorder and steno pad. “Great to see you again, Jack. I’m the editor of The Washtenaw Weekly Gleaner, back in Michigan. I’d love to interview you about Oz—isn’t that what you folks call it? And Cassandra—I never got a chance to tape you on the train…”

  “I hope that’s not why you got me to Arcata,” I said.

  Archie looked briefly troubled. “No, it’s this Pustulescu mess. Of course it was some kind of accident; he was probably a heart attack waiting to happen, but what bad luck for Gladys to pull the trigger, so to speak, him being the Drug Czar of the spa and all. He’s the inventor of this longevity stuff called Ionvital, you know. Gladys swears by her shots, but I’ll reserve judgment. It’s the way you live that keeps you young—like you Cassandra, always on the move, that’s the ticket. But I’ll tell you one thing, I’m sure not tempted to try the galvanic bath now. And we’re going to stick by Gladys, make sure nothing happens. I’ve got a few connections in Bucharest, got to know the consul there and of course our lawyer Eugen, they can help set things straight. If worst comes to worst, I’ll get in touch with a wire service, make sure the news gets out.”

  Archie Snapp reminded me of someone’s kid brother, of the boy at school who wasn’t as smart or as talented as his older siblings, and so made up for it by being overly eager and agreeable. His brown-gold eyes were like polished agates under his thinning but still shiny shock of brown hair. You looked at him and thought: Norman Rockwell, 1932. Today, in the warm afternoon, he wasn’t wearing his soft felt hat, but he had on a handknit sweater-vest over a white long-sleeved shirt with cufflinks. I hadn’t seen cufflinks since my Irish grandfather died in 1956.

  Cathy Snapp had seen us and came quickly over, pulling Emma by the hand. Her dark blond hair hid most of her face, which had developed a bad case of acne, probably due to all the French fries at the restaurant. Her sweatshirt pictured a haggard Dostoyevsky. Emma wore jeans and a sweatshirt too—I hadn’t known that Mozart sweatshirts came that small. As usual Emma was silent, and carrying her violin case close to her heart. She didn’t appear to recognize me, but with Emma it was hard to tell.

  “I’ve been looking for Bree,” said Cathy. “We were supposed to play cards.”

  “She’s around,” said Jack. I looked at her suspiciously.

  “It’s a good thing I gave her your phone number, isn’t it, Cassandra?” Cathy asked. “With everything going on.”

  “I hope I can help. I don’t think Gladys is in big trouble.”

  “But did Dad tell you about the other stuff, about Zsoska? That’s how we wound up to Arcata in the first place.”

  “Zsoska?”

  “Kit-Kat, Emma is looking tired to me,” Archie broke in. “And so do you.” He turned to me and Jack. “We went for an excursion on the bus today to a wonderful little village where they make pottery and sell it. I love folk art and crafts! Anyway, Kit-Kat, I think you’d both better lie down for a little nap before dinner.”

  “A nap! But Dad…”

  “You can read to Emma. Don’t let her practice.”

  “Dad!” But she was still of an age and nature to be obedient, though resentful, and she turned in a huff, pulling Emma after her.

  As soon as the girls had left us, Archie said to me, “You know, Cassandra, what say we do our interview right here and right now? I know my readers would love to hear about your life. The life of someone who’s never settled down. From Kalamazoo to Timbuktu. And you’re not a spring chicken anymore, how do you do it?”

  He turned his tape recorder on and looked at me, boyishly expectant.

  Jack howled with laughter.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Who is Zsoska, and what does she have to do with Gladys and Pustulescu?”

  “Zsoska doesn’t have anything to do with Gladys,” Archie said. “She works here in Arcata.”

  “So?”

  Archie paused. The merest hint of worry darkened his agate eyes. “She’s also Emma’s birth mother.”

  “Here? In Arcata?”

  “She just works here. She lives in a small village called Lupea. We’re hoping to visit it on one of our bus trips.”

  “But how did you track this Zsoska down?”

  “Well, first we went to Tîrgu Mureş. That’s the city where Lynn and I adopted Emma in the first place. We didn’t get her from an orphanage, but from a hospital. They still had all the records. Apparently the mother had moved back to her parents’ home in Lupea.”

  Archie looked at his tape recorder. Like most journalists he was more comfortable asking questions than answering them. “We’re going to introduce ourselves pretty soon. We’ll figure something out… make everybody happy… Emma will start talking, you’ll see, it’ll be fine… But what
I’m really interested in, Cassandra—or can I call you Cass?—is whether or not you make a living as a translator. Is it lucrative? And if you translate from Spanish to English, why are you in Eastern Europe, on your way to China? Is travel just a way of life for you? Are you running away from something? Or are you just interested in geography and culture? Do you still feel American?”

  “She’s traveling to forget,” Jack said with a solemn look. “She’s a widow.”

  Damn that Bree! Why had she told Jack what I’d said to Dr. Gabor? Now I’d never live it down.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Archie, and there was a sincerity in his face that made me even more embarrassed.

  “Well, he wasn’t a very nice man,” I said, with a vicious look at Jack. “We often thought of divorcing before his… fatal accident. Now about this Zsoska…” I was imagining a baby-faced girl who’d made a mistake a few years ago, one of the bath attendants perhaps, a slight, dark girl with big eyes and bangs. “You’ll have to be careful how you tell her, don’t you think? It might be a terrible shock.”

  “Perhaps you could help us, Cass,” he said. “Or you,” he included Jack.

  “Do you need a translator?” I asked. “Eva could help. Or Nadia. What language does she speak?”

  “It’s not just the language problem,” Archie said nervously. “Truth to tell, we hadn’t quite thought through some of this. I’m afraid the Kit-Kat is a little upset…”

  “Get to the point, man,” said Jack. “Where does she work here? Do you have a plan to try to talk with her?”

  “Well, I thought, at one of the meals, one of the dinners, I might… She’s usually there at dinner. She’s one of the waitresses.”

  “Well,” I said, looking at my watch. “I guess we’ll all have the chance to meet her soon.”

  Dinner was better attended than lunch, but only slightly. Frau Sophie occupied her usual place and had been joined at the next table by the elderly Dutch couple, the Vanderbergs, who immediately ordered and drank several small glasses of gin. The Snapps had a table to themselves next to Gladys and Bree. Eva, Jack and I made up the fifth table in the huge dining hall. We were all close enough to talk.

  The slender male waiter was there again, scrupulously attending to the needs of the Vanderbergs and Frau Sophie. He carried the usual napkin over one arm and moved swiftly on the balls of his feet. I hoped they tipped him well.

  “Grüss Gott!” Frau Sophie called over to us and pointed at her dish. “Grauslich!”

  “She always says that,” said Bree. “Do you really think she likes it?”

  “It means disgusting or horrible in German,” Cathy explained.

  “Well, excuse me,” said Bree and turned away pointedly.

  Bree was tarted up tonight in a leather vest over a torn Marlene Dietrich tee-shirt, and multiple chains and bracelets, while Cathy had exchanged Dostoyevsky for Willa Cather, albeit Willa with a small, experimental rip over her left brow. I suspected that Bree, having had no one her age to talk to, had turned to Cathy and now regretted it, especially since older and more interesting women had appeared. But I felt sorry for Cathy, suffering from adolescent skin eruptions, and now obviously hurt and unsure whether to act miffed or indifferent, or to redouble her efforts to please.

  “I just meant…” said Cathy.

  “Different cultures, different foods,” said Gladys. “They are a little heavy on the meat side of things though. You wouldn’t think, for such a poor country, they’d have so much pork. They could grow a nice crop of soybeans here. Tofu would be much more nutritious.”

  Suddenly the swinging doors to the kitchen burst open and a big tigress of a woman stormed forth, plates in hand. In her early twenties, she was tall and strapping, with wide shoulders and aggressive hips. She had a mane of black hair frosted so that it looked striped with gold. With her high cheekbones, aquiline nose and contemptuous full lips, she wouldn’t have been out of place in a French restaurant in Manhattan, where her impoliteness would have been admired as hauteur. She clanked the plates down in front of the Snapps. Cathy glared at her, and Emma stared wordlessly at the omelette and fries on the table. “Thank you, Zsoska,” murmured Archie. “Köszönöm.”

  She came over to our table and Eva spoke to her in Hungarian, perhaps asking for a menu. Zsoska shrugged and pointed at the other diners. All of them, except Emma and Bree, were eating pork chops. Bree was eating bread and cheese and Emma had her omelette.

  Eva ordered a pork chop; Jack and I went for the omelette.

  “Zsoska,” I could hear Archie call in a friendly voice. “Could you come over here a minute…?”

  Zsoska ignored him and went banging back into the kitchen. She was as ferociously regal as a Tartar princess, and if she acted like this when she thought the Snapps were hotel guests, what was she going to be like when she found out they had adopted her daughter?

  Chapter Eight

  I WOKE EARLY the next morning from a deep sleep. The sun shimmered across the hills and valleys below, a long, unbroken stretch of light and dark green. I went downstairs to the bar, brought up a cup of coffee and settled down to read the material that Dr. Gabor had given me on the discovery and use of Ionvital.

  The first pamphlet, IONVITAL: THE ANSWER TO AGING?, told me that the discovery of this miracle drug had been made in the early fifties, when Dr. Ion Pustulescu realized that a common anesthetic used in dentistry, that is to say Novocain, or in the world pharmacopoeia “procaine,” had other uses. Injected intramuscularly, the procaine solution, now known as Ionvital, had a “vitaminic-type effect” (this term was not defined) on the organism. Acting on the central nervous system and, as a result, on the activity of the entire body, the drug was capable of great regenerative powers. Diseases and processes connected with aging were all positively affected. These included degenerative rheumatism, arteriosclerosis, angina pectoris, arthritis, gastric ulcers, neuralgia and Parkinson’s disease. Improvement was also achieved with Alzheimer’s disease, senile dementia and multiple sclerosis.

  Many years of administering Ionvital had shown that patients who took regular treatments suffered less from depression, improved their memories, and increased their physical and intellectual capacities. Hearing was improved, as well as the sense of smell. The skin’s elasticity and general appearance improved, the hair began to grow again, and brittleness in the bones was reduced while muscular strength increased. Wounds, burns and fractures healed more rapidly.

  In the late fifties Dr. Pustulescu established a clinic outside of Bucharest, but eventually the treatment spread to other hotels and spas around the country. In spite of the great success of Ionvital in Romania, the treatment was subject to mixed reviews in the worldwide scientific community. Although Dr. Pustulescu traveled to conferences to present his findings, some journals were not impressed. In stuffy old England, for instance, it was impossible to make headway against the entrenched medical hierarchy represented by the British Medical Journal. But the Daily Mail published a series of illustrated reports on the medical successes of Dr. Pustulescu’s clinic. An unnamed Nobel Prize winner, when asked about the drug’s regenerative effects, was quoted as saying, “Anything’s possible.” And the secretary of a major German pharmaceutical company who visited the clinic several times exclaimed “Donnerwetter!” or “Thunderation!”

  The rest of the brochure consisted of testimonials and excerpts from patients’ letters. A typical one read:

  Dear Dr. Pustulescu,

  Last October I celebrated my ninety-fourth birthday. I am in perfect health after sixteen nonstop years of treatment with Ionvital. My eyesight is still good, my hair is still abundant and black, and I walk perfectly straight. I do kung-fu every morning and have written a novel a year since beginning treatment. In my youth I was sickly and unable to hold down a job for long. Ionvital has restored to me my faith in humanity. Thank you for your years of unselfish work dedicated to helping the debilitated, the senile and the victims of old age. The world is very lu
cky to have you.

  The pamphlet ended with these stirring words:

  There used to be an old Romanian saying: “Old age is a fatal process and nothing can be done about it.”

  Today, no one can say that. Ionvital has made the difference.

  The second brochure, GERIATRIC CURES IN ROMANIA, also printed by rotogravure on thin slippery stock, gave a few more pseudo-scientific reasons for the curative powers of Ionvital: “Ionvital balances the neurovegetative discordance as well as glandular troubles provoked by old age; it is especially recommended in generalized distortions (the general phenomena of aging).”

  There were photos of various clinics in Romania, mostly in and around Bucharest, where you could undertake the cure. I could hardly recognize the photo of the Arcata Spa Hotel, which must have been taken shortly after the place was constructed, twenty years before. The brochure rhapsodized about the setting and climate here in Arcata:

  The natural surroundings in which the clinic is set as well as its comfort create a general atmosphere of relaxation, high mood and relief. Thanks to the stability of the weather, the action of the natural factors on the body is slightly exciting, favouring a rapid adjustment.

  There was also a color photograph of Dr. Pustulescu in this brochure, and I scrutinized it closely. He was in a white lab coat, sitting behind an impressive desk. Although his lower face was sagging, his hair was still dark and his posture was alert and erect. It was impossible to guess his age in the photo or to know when it was taken. He could have been sixty or eighty or even, if he’d been taking his own medicine long enough, over a hundred.

  It was eight-thirty and time for my first treatment. I still hadn’t decided whether to go for the Ionvital injections or not. Was it better to become a “victim of old age,” a passenger on a steadily moving train to the final destination? Or to turn into a living mummy with black hair and eyes that had seen too much? To see your entire generation wither and die around you while you became an ossified curiosity, kept alive by Ionvital shots? It sounded more lonely than anything. On the other hand, an extra twenty or thirty years were tempting, if only because the alternative was so final, and sometimes felt so close.