In the Red (2 page)

O
nce upon a time something happened. Had it not happened, it would not be told. At the end of the winding trail, at the foot of the high green mountains, three shepherds tended their flocks. One of them was Ungurean, the other Vrancean, and the last Moldavian. The Moldavian was the handsomest and richest of the three. The other two were jealous that he had the finest flocks with the softest, whitest wool; the biggest, most beautiful dog, bigger than the sheep, even, with shining, alert eyes; and the finest, most beautiful horse, all black with a white star on his forehead, who was more finely muscled and could gallop faster than any steed of the royalty. The Ungurean and the Vrancean plotted in their rotted hearts to kill the Moldavian and split his possessions among themselves.

They thought about it for many days. Then, one cold, clear night, they met in the darkness and they agreed to stalk the Moldavian every evening while the sun died on the horizon. They would hide in the trees and wait for the big guard dog to leave the man's side. When the man was finally alone, they would take him from behind and slit his throat. They did not know that in the bushes behind them was a tiny lamb who heard what they had decided, and this lamb was the Moldavian's favorite. The lamb's name was Miori
Å£
a. She was the smallest of all the lambs, with the softest, whitest wool, a little black snout, and big orange eyes.

For three days, the Vrancean and the Ungurean hid in the trees with their blades ready to cut the Moldavian when the sky darkened, but the big fierce dog did not leave the man's side. For all three of these days, the lamb bleated sadly until her voice cracked and almost broke. On the third day, her master came to her and said, What is the matter, little Miori
Å£
a? Are you sick? Is the grass bitter? Don't be scared of wolves; the hound will keep them off.

No, master, the little lamb said, it's much worse than that. Don't let your big brave dog leave your side when the sun sets. Every night when it gets dark, the Ungurean and the Vrancean mean to murder you. They wait for the hound to leave so they can strike.

Sweet lamb Miori
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a, the dog must leave my side sometime, and if what you say is true, then my days are over. Tell the two of them to let my bones lie here on this hill and let my blood soak into this earth to feed this grass, so that I'll always be here with my flock. And if anyone should ask after me, don't say I am dead. Tell them…a beautiful story.

The next night, one of the sheep got lost as it was getting dark. The dog left the man's side to go look for the sheep. The Moldavian sat on a rock and did not move. He watched the sun dissolve into the beautiful green hills. He waited as the Ungurean and the Vrancean came up behind him. They put their hands over his face and cut his throat and he died very quickly and almost without pain. After that, the killers took the possessions of the murdered man—but the horse and the dog ran away, for they would serve no one but their master. The lamb Miori
Å£
a ran away also, and when she left the flock, the whole lot of sheep was taken by a plague that rotted their hides and poisoned their meat. The disease spread through the flocks of both men, and they wound up with nothing. They were too ashamed to go back to the village for having lost their wealth, so they died of hunger up in the mountains.

The lamb Miori
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a had many adventures on the way home, to the Moldavian's native village. She went to the house where the shepherd had been born, to his old mother with a yellow scarf over her gray hair and a rough wool girdle. The mother recognized the little lamb's bright orange eyes and said, Miori
Å£
a, why have you left my son's flock?

Dear Mama, your son's flock was dispersed to the four winds.

Has something bad happened to my boy?

No, dear Mama. A beautiful pale princess with fiery hair like the setting sun passed through the hills in her royal carriage and saw your beautiful son, slim as a willow leaf; and his dear face, fair as the moon; and his curly hair, black as a crow's feather; and his bright eyes, blue as a summer day. She fell in love with him at once and took him as her bridegroom, to go back to her kingdom, where they would reign together. They were married that very night. The mountain was their priest, the birds were the fiddlers, and the sun and the moon came down to hold your dear son's bridal crown. The stars were the torches, and a bright one fell from the sky that night to bless their union.

Oh, dear Miori
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a, the mother said with tears in her eyes, my son has been blessed, and I saw his star fall that night. I hope he will come again one day to show me his splendor and the children not of this earth that the princess will bear him.

Perhaps he will, dear Mama, but he will be very busy with affairs of the state, and he lives so far away.

The mother accepted Miori
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a's answer and took in the little lamb. They lived a quiet life together. Every night the mother would sit and hope her son's royal carriage would come rolling into the village. She watched the bright orange sunset, thinking of the fiery hair of the beautiful princess, waiting for stars to fall.

A
ndrei didn't waste any time. After he told Irina the story, he stole a kiss from her. She had just released her seat belt and let it snake itself open across her; she was about to say thank you and good-bye when he leaned swiftly across the car. The shock of his tongue in her mouth made her raise both hands as if she had the flickering notion that she would push him away. Instead she braced herself as if for a crash, one palm pressed against the coolness of the windowpane.

It was her first kiss. He had her cornered. He must have known it would be a fortunate gamble. Clearly the newness of the experience had its charm, given how Irina's back arched to meet Andrei's hand when he reached for her breast. It was a disaster. Irina had been trying to believe that she was an intelligent, rational person, and now this. How much would it have cost her to turn her face away? How much did it cost her not to?

A
ndrei had two associates, Dragos Popescu and Vasilii Grigoriev. Dragos was stocky and bald but not too bad to look at. He had a brutal charm. Every week he brought around a different girl, always a quiet girl with a soft, hazy look from the drugs he gave her. That was part of his attraction, certainly, his generosity with substances that made girls forget. Irina could tell that Vasilii disapproved of these sorts of relations. He never acknowledged the girls in any way, never let his limpid eyes pause on them. He did not mind Irina; she earned from him a vaguely benevolent indifference. He spoke so little that it was not obvious what he was doing with Andrei and Dragos in the first place. When the two of them conferred in Romanian he was just as lost as Irina was, yet they treated him with a hushed respect. He never brought any girls around. He had long, pretty hands like a pianist. He had been in the Soviet Army.

Irina liked the sound of Romanian. It sounded like an offspring of Italian and Russian. If she closed her eyes and let her mind drift while Andrei and Dragos talked, she could perhaps summon something familiar about the language's melody, like a song she'd heard long ago, the lyrics forgotten. But Dragos didn't like her listening. Once he turned to her midconversation with Andrei; it took her a few seconds to realize that the Romanian that was coming out of him was suddenly aimed at her. The tone was hectoring. She couldn't tell what he wanted. She put her palms up and shrugged to indicate that she didn't understand, that she surrendered. He eyeballed her across the table. “So, none of what I said—nothing of it means anything to you?”

“None of it.”

“So explain this to me, how you are a Romanian who does not understand Romanian.”

“I never said I was Romanian.”

Andrei glanced between Irina and Dragos, who remained unconvinced. Vasilii took a slow sip of his vodka and said quietly, “Leave the girl alone. Get another drink.”

There was nothing further to say on the subject after that. She would often feel Dragos looking at her, evaluating how one could possibly be and not be a thing at the same time. There was something satisfying about the tingle of his mistrust, about being an unresolved issue to a man of consequence in the world.

For now it was back to the business at hand, and the business switched to English. Dragos started to tell a story. Irina watched his red, wry face as he spoke with rollicking amusement. He was getting loud enough that Irina worried that the barkeep would overhear, would associate her with this boisterous man who liked to tell stories to his friends in public places about sad, fat girls who sucked him off in his car though he knew he would never see them again. “I do not know why she offered,” he said. “I gave no sign that I liked her.”

“That's because you are such a prize,” Andrei said. “She was making a last-ditch effort to acquire you.”

“Ah, she probably thought I would give her more pills, the poor thing.”

They both laughed while Vasilii looked on in neutral silence. Dragos took a swig of his vodka. “I should have said no,” he sighed, “but—I didn't.”

“Since when do you give a shit about
should?
” Andrei quipped.

Dragos looked straight at Irina as he said, “You can't say no to a young one, even if she is fat. Even when they are fat, the young ones are taut. And that is why we like them so much, isn't it, Andrei?”

“Long live the smooth skin and the taut flesh. I will drink to that.”

“The firmness is nice, but it is not what is most lovely about young ones,” Vasilii said quietly, his voice stopping Andrei in the midst of raising his glass.

Vasilii stirred the ice in his drink. He watched the cubes jostle as they rang gently against the glass.

“Well?” Andrei said.

“What?”

“Won't you tell us what is most lovely, then?”

Vasilii took his time summoning his answer, tapping his stirrer against the rim of his glass and putting it down on the table. “What is so lovely about them is that they will take the shape of whatever container you choose to put them in, like water.”

“Grigoriev, you poet, what the hell does this mean?” Dragos laughed.

“It means a woman who has been around, who may have pushed people out of herself, who may have realized that the world does not end when there is no man in the house, that a woman with lines on her face and hip bones that have been creaked apart by growing life will not go breathless with the need to give you what you want. The young ones are so good, my prosaic friend, because they will say: Do you like me in this dress? Would you think me prettier blonde? Shall I put bags of silicone in my tits? Shall I be your toy? Would this please you? There is no limit to how much they will cut themselves to please you. You should be grateful, Popescu, to all their papas for not loving them.”

This observation amounted to possibly the most words Irina had ever heard Vasilii string together in one utterance, more words than she'd heard come out of him in an entire week. For all she knew, Andrei and Dragos had never heard so much at once out of him either. They did look suitably surprised.

“Vasilii,” Andrei said, “this is what Dragos's cocksucking stories make you think of?”

Vasilii did not answer. Instead, all three of them looked at Irina, like animals on the hunt who had caught a promising scent on the wind. The predatory looks should have put her off. Should have disgusted her, even. In some recessed place, they might have. But what she felt at that moment was intensely alive, as if their collective gaze was what was warming her blood rather than her tiny, careful sips of vodka.

Were they expecting her to say something? She could not speak. Anything she might have said would have sounded laughably foolish anyway. She watched the three men raise their glasses with a solemnity that she could not read either as joking or genuine. The clink of their toast sounded harsh and jarring. After, they gazed dreamily into what was left of their drinks.

A
ndrei owned several factories back in Romania that manufactured Western luxury goods. Handbags, clothes, watches—things with logos and signature designs. He also owned other factories not too far away from his legitimate factories that manufactured the counterfeits of those same things, the knockoffs people wear when they want to pretend that they, too, have money. The copies were assembled from the original patterns swiped from or sold by the factories that made the genuine article, with less care and cheaper materials. More importantly, they lacked the serial number that guaranteed the realness of the item in question. Sometimes that number was the only difference between real and fake.

The workers lived in dorms on the premises. There were cafeterias and general stores, entire towns and economies assembled so that they never had to leave the company compound. The workers sent money they earned back home to their families. Families they saw on holiday once, maybe twice a year. Irina used to ask herself, Does Andrei exploit these people? Or is he giving them a chance at a less abject life? Sometimes she would think of them asleep in their gray concrete block buildings while she drifted off on the twin extra-long mattress in her own dorm at night. Except at the hour she was falling asleep they were probably already at work the next morning, right at that moment, in the breaking daylight halfway across the world.

The whole province was famous for these factories. On clear days, distant mountains could be seen cutting up the horizon. The workers were paid the kind of low wages Westerners cannot comprehend as acceptable to any person. Where they are, it is enough to live on. Of course, many of the goods they sewed together fell off the back of the truck. There was a brisk trade between factories: a crate of handbags for a rack of coats. Watches for wallets. Shoes for suitcases. In the whole province, everyone wore what everyone made: items that cost as much as the average Westerner's monthly mortgage payment, worn by people who didn't make enough in a day to buy the Westerner's morning coffee.

This was the sort of thing that Andrei found hilarious, the poor bastards playing dress-up with our bullshit status symbols, with only the dimmest understanding of what they had on their backs. Maybe a little bit of pride, because they saw these things on imported television shows, the American English dubbed over. Irina asked him once if it bothered him that they stole, if he'd ever thought of taking measures against it. He shrugged. “As far as I know, the managers do punish them when they catch them. But sometimes they don't catch them if they get an envelope full of money. Like I give a shit—you know, it is a marginal cost. It does not cut into my profits. We just make their wages lower accordingly.”

“You mean if they didn't steal, you would pay them more?”

He thought about it for a second. “No, probably not.”

“Andrei?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think these people—do you think they can be happy?”

He laughed then, with uproarious delight. Even when his laughter was unkind he was beautiful in his mirth. Thrilling like the glinting flash of a knife blade you hadn't known was there.

“Darling,” he said, “I love it so much that you can ask such a question. But darling, I cannot possibly care whether these fucking peasants whose shithead children threw rocks at me and called me thief because I have dark Gypsy skin—I cannot bring myself to give a shit whether they are happy. They sweat money for those who are stronger and more clever than they are—that is what they do and what they have always done.”

He understood the world so neatly. He had a kind of gift, a kind of elemental affinity with the way things are. He simply accepted and played along. And Irina, his little woman, Irina was the one left to brood and wonder whether her parents were somewhere in his factories. Her first parents, the ones whose image had been erased.