House of the Lost (41 page)

The memory of his father did not leave him. His father’s words from all those years ago – the words written by the Englishman Thomas de Quincey – were vividly in his mind.

‘There is no such thing as ultimate forgetting: traces once impressed upon the memory are indestructible.’

He would not forget his father ever, and if he had known how to go about finding him, he would have done so, despite what the bank manager said. But as things stood, he had not so much as the smallest clue.

But during a summer vacation visit to Wilma, who still kept the house going, a clue did come his way. It was Mikhail Ionescu, now nearing the end of his own schooling, who provided it. Mikhail had been reading about the Securitate’s methods and found Matthew a sympathetic listener.

‘It’s forbidden reading, of course,’ he said rather defiantly. ‘I know that. But who cares?’

‘You’ll care if they find out and haul you off to some wretched prison,’ said Matthew, smiling at Mikhail’s earnestness, wanting to draw him in this mood, but knowing his expression would change too swiftly to be captured.

‘Like Pitesti Gaol?’ said Mikhail. ‘The house of the lost. Well, one of them, at any rate.’

The house of the lost. The words plucked at the deeply buried memories of Matthew’s childhood.

‘Pitesti’s where they used to practise what was called reeducation,’ Mikhail was saying, ‘they did it in Jilava as well.’

‘What’s re-education?’

‘A form of brainwashing. Haven’t you ever heard of it? Come down from your Magyar ivory tower, Matthew, and live in the real world.’

‘What is it?’

‘Its eventual aim was to alter personalities to the point of absolute obedience. They made prisoners denounce personal beliefs, renounce their deepest loyalties and loves. Or maybe persuade them they’d committed some horrific crime so that everyone hated them. If anyone was particularly devout, they’d be forced to blaspheme religious symbols.’

‘That’s grotesque,’ said Matthew, horrified.

‘I know it is,’ said Mikhail. ‘It’s supposed to have been stopped years ago before you and I were born – in fact way back in the 1950s – but there’s a belief that it still goes on here and there.’

After Mikhail had gone, Matthew found his father’s old atlas and looked for Pitesti. It did not look too bad a journey, but even if he went there to search for his father, he could not think how he would get inside. You could not just present yourself at the gates and ask to see a prisoner. If you had money or influence you might be let in, but Matthew had neither. He was not sure he had the courage, either; it would take a lot of nerve to demand admittance to a State prison, and he did not think he was a very courageous person. In any case, Pitesti was one of a great many gaols.

But maybe one day he would have courage, influence and money in abundance and he could travel to all the places where his father might be. Or maybe one day the world would change – something would happen to change it – and the lost prisoners in the forgotten prisons could be set free.

Mara did not exactly count the days until she would be free, but she did mark the years. She was twelve, fourteen, fifteen . . . the years wheeled by, each one the same as the one before or the one that came next. A good, quiet student, the nuns said, pleased, and when Sister Teresa made her twice or thrice yearly visit, told her how well things had worked out. Would Mara be allowed home soon? Surely, when she was seventeen and her studies finished, she could be regarded as grown-up? They had heard, with sadness, that Mara’s grandmother had died the previous year and they had offered up a Mass for her soul, but the brother was still living in the family house.

Sister Teresa thought once Mara was seventeen, she might be allowed home. Mikhail was living in the cottage on his own which was not absolutely ideal, but he seemed to manage well enough, despite his youth. Neighbours kept an eye on him and helped with shopping and so on. He would soon be thinking about what to do when he left school, of course. Going out into the world.

‘Yes, of course he will,’ said Mara, and, taking her courage in both hands, she asked about Zoia.

‘As far as I know she left the district shortly after you came here,’ said Sister Teresa. ‘The Black House is empty and boarded up. Doubtless a few legends will grow up round it, but I should think Zoia would still have her spies around. She’d want to assure herself that the bargain we made has been kept. If you came home, what would you do?’

Mara did not really know. She had seen nothing of the world beyond her small childhood village and this convent, so she had no comparisons to make, no idea of what might be possible or attainable. All she really wanted was to live in the cottage once more. She was deeply sad that her grandmother had died, but Mikhail would be there. If she and Mikhail could live in that beloved cottage, the two of them together again, she would have everything in the world she wanted. But she understood people had to have money in order to live, and money had to be earned by working. So she said she had wondered about teaching. Might she teach at the school where once she had been a pupil? She had worked hard at her studies, and the sisters here thought she had done well.

Sister Teresa thought this might be possible. She would ask Reverend Mother about it. Teachers needed proper qualifications, but they were difficult to acquire in Romania nowadays. Still, it might be possible for Mara to be trained in their own classrooms in the Founder House school.

Lying in the narrow bed in the dormitory, Mara was gradually aware of a new fear – a fear churned up by the suggestion that Zoia would still be watching her. Was it possible that Zoia might still exact a warped revenge? That she might take an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth. Mara had been the cause of Zoia losing Annaleise – and in some way Mara still did not fully understand, Zoia had loved Annaleise as if they had been husband and wife. Supposing Zoia decided to take from Mara the one thing Mara loved best in the world? Supposing she tried to take Mikhail? The more Mara thought about this, the likelier it seemed, and the more she became convinced she would have to be very clever about protecting him.

Zoia would admit that ending the Black House’s reign had been unexpectedly easy. Sister Teresa had been partly responsible for that of course, taking the children away and sending them to England. The arrangement had been a quid pro quo, Zoia knew that. What Sister Teresa had really been saying was, Let me take Mara Ionescu and I’ll deal with the children for you. But at the time it had suited Zoia to agree to the bargain, even though it had cheated her of her revenge.

But that could wait. Planning Mara’s punishment was something to cling to during the long lonely nights – the nights without Annaleise.

And so the snivelling children went off to England, and everyone working in the Black House was paid off and sent back to wherever they lived. Zoia did not enquire into that. She was not in the business of giving charity to anyone, especially when she might shortly need charity herself. The Black House was suddenly empty of people, and most of its furniture removed so that Zoia’s footsteps echoed eerily when she walked through the high-ceilinged rooms. As far as she had been able to make out, the house and land had been sold to some nameless department within the Party and would probably be torn down.

The Politburo man, Gheorghe Pauker came to help her close the place down and deal with the final formalities, and on the last night Zoia cooked supper for the two of them. Afterwards they sat at the big scrubbed table in the main kitchen, with the dirty dishes stacked in the sink. Zoia had not much minded cooking because they both had to eat, but she did not see why she should wash up as well. Pauker had found the small stock of wine, and had already downed one bottle while they ate. Now he was making inroads on a second.

He told her Ceau
escu was no longer as popular as he had been, at least not in his own country.

‘It’s the debt,’ he said slurrily. ‘Romania’s massively in debt. Billions of dollars to Western banks for all that industrialization in the 1970s.’ He tapped the side of his nose in a knowing gesture. ‘It was bound to catch up with him in the end,’ he said.

‘With Ceau
escu, d’you mean?’

‘Yes. He’s det— determined to pay it back though, an’ thass honourable of him. You have to ’dmit it’s honourable.’

‘Yes. How will he pay it?’ Zoia did not care if Ceau
escu paid off Romania’s debt honourably or was thrown into a debtors’ prison and left to rot, but the habit of gleaning information, however small, persisted.

‘Tighten the country’s belt,’ said Pauker. ‘Tha’s his plan. Starve the people. There’ll be more food rationing before we’re all much older, see if there isn’t. You’ll all be fighting each other for a loaf of bread. Cuts in electricity supplies as well, I shouldn’t wonder. Sad, I call it.’ He reached for the wine again and Zoia silently pushed the bottle nearer. ‘The rest of the world doesn’t much like Ceau
escu
or
his wife. Not s’posed to say that.’ He laid a finger on his lips, in an exaggerated gesture of silence.

‘I didn’t know that – about the rest of the world not liking Ceau
escu.’

‘’s true. Other countries don’ like his policies or what’s happening to the people here. Television cameras get sneaked in, you know, and things get shown to other countries. England. America.’