The Rising: Antichrist is Born / Before They Were Left Behind Read online

  Democracy and technology may have revolutionized Romania, but Marilena considered herself a throwback. She and Sorin were the only couple she knew who still owned a television receiver that did not hang from the wall. That happened to be another subject on which she and her husband agreed. “It’s a tool,” Sorin said, “not an object of worship. And it is the enemy of scholarship.”

  Their boxy old set made colleagues chuckle. “You know,” Sorin’s department vice-chair, Baduna Marius, informed them one night, “the world has come a long way since your flat-screen.”

  Marilena had settled back to enjoy the spectacle as Sorin warmed to the topic. The vice-chair—a tall, dashing blond—kept insisting he was only joking, but once Sorin sank his teeth into an argument, his passion would not allow him to let it go until he had spent himself. He would gesture, rise, sit, run his hand through his hair. His fair skin would flush, his aging freckles darken. There had been times, Marilena had to admit, when she provoked him just to see him roll into action.

  Ah, Sorin. Such a mind. Such enthusiasm for scholarship. Did she love him? In her own way. Certainly not romantically. No, never. And she was persuaded he had never seen her in that light either. How could he? He had taken advantage of her youthful devotion to satisfy his urges, yes, but as she matured perhaps he respected her enough to quit expecting acquiescence. Young and inexperienced, she had to have been clumsy. Surely she had never given him cause to see her as sexually appealing. She didn’t feel that way, didn’t see him that way, and could not pretend. In the end, she could not blame him for seeking physical—what? not love—satisfaction elsewhere.

  They didn’t clash over it, didn’t argue, didn’t blame, didn’t seem to worry about it. It was something they never discussed. The quaint idea of the marriage bed simply disappeared from their lives. She didn’t miss it. Not really. She still cared for Sorin in a sisterly way. He was a dear friend, an admired mind. She worried after him, took care of him when he fell ill, as he did for her. They were familiar enough with each other, living in such close proximity, that they touched occasionally as friends might. If she amused him, he seemed not averse to briefly embracing her. When her parents died he even cupped her face in his hands and kissed her forehead.

  As unconventional a marriage as it was in modern Romania, there was no rancor, no acrimony. Sure, they got on each other’s nerves. But she knew passionate couples with a passel of kids, husbands and wives unafraid of actual public displays of affection, who were also known to live their lives at decibel levels high enough to attract the attention of the police. She could be grateful, she guessed, that she and Sorin largely got along.

  So if there was anything to Viviana Ivinisova’s speculation that Marilena’s name aptly described her—the bitter part, the emptiness, the loneliness—the hole in her heart had nothing to do with Sorin, except that if she wanted to fill it, her husband was the logical vehicle.

  The maternal instinct had ambushed her most incongruously one afternoon as she rode the bus home from the university. For days she had surprised herself by finally noticing the children who cavorted at the playground in the park near their apartment. Strange, she thought, that she had been only vaguely aware of them for years, and now she found herself watching with interest until she disembarked and headed across the street to her building.

  Marilena found herself particularly taken with a young girl, probably five or six years old. Nothing was unique about the child, except that she had caught Marilena’s eye, and the woman enjoyed her smile and her manner for the few moments she saw her each day.

  Then came the day of the miracle. Marilena didn’t know what else to call it. As she got off the bus the little girl deftly launched herself over the wrought-iron fence that separated the children from the busy street. “Oh, child!” Marilena called out, as the girl dashed past her and raced in front of the bus, which had not yet begun to move.

  The little girl was chasing something. A ball? An animal? She looked neither right nor left. Marilena caught the bus driver’s eye. He shook his head, waiting with his foot obviously on the brake as Marilena followed the child into the street.

  Seemingly from out of nowhere a black sedan crossed the double yellow line and passed several cars, sending others sliding to the curb. It was heading directly for the little girl! Marilena froze, screaming, but the girl never looked up. She knelt in the street, reaching for a kitten that bolted away at the last instant.

  There was no way the car could miss the child. Marilena grimaced and clamped her eyes shut, waiting for the screech of tires and the killing thud. But it never came. She forced herself to peek and saw the car appear to pass right through the child and slide into the only parking spot left in front of her building.

  Marilena expected the driver to leap from the car and check on the girl, but no one emerged. Several pedestrians rushed the car, Marilena following once she was sure the little girl was safely back in the park. People huddled around the car, peering into it, brows knitted. It was empty. A man laid his palm on the hood. “It’s cold,” he said. “Wasn’t this the car?”

  The others, Marilena included, assured him it was. The man felt the tires. “Cold,” he said.

  To a woman of letters, this was more than strange. Marilena dared not even tell Sorin. A driverless car dematerialized as it bore down on a child? He would have laughed in her face.

  That night she and Sorin sat reading at their respective desks. Both were crafting new curricula for the next term and occasionally tried ideas out on each other. Their courses were as far afield from marriage, home life, family, and children as they could be, and yet in the middle of casual conversation about required reading lists, Marilena was suddenly overcome.

  She felt a longing so deep and severe that she could describe it—only to herself, of course—as physical pain. She would not have been in the least surprised had Sorin asked what was troubling her. How she was able to camouflage it and continue the conversation confounded her to this very night on the bus. It had been as if her very existence depended upon being held, loved, cherished, and—if possible—being allowed the inestimable privilege of holding, loving, and cherishing another.

  Marilena had looked at Sorin in a new way, albeit only briefly. Was this an epiphany? Did she love him, want him, long for him? No. Simply no. Here was a man who, despite his prodigious intellect, held no appeal to her in any other way. He sat there late in the evening, hunched over his desk, reading, writing, thinking, discussing, still dressed in the suit and tie he had taught in all day. His only concession had been to slip off his shoes and suit jacket and loosen his tie. Years before she had given up urging him to change his clothes after work.

  And his feet stank. Well, that was petty, she knew. She had her foibles and idiosyncrasies too, not the least her utter lack of interest in feminizing herself. So what was this, this visceral bombardment she could not ward off? In a flash Marilena knew, though she was certain it had never crossed her mind before. She needed, desperately wanted, a child.

  It wasn’t that they had never discussed having children. Sorin had established early in their relationship that he wanted no more children and hoped that was not an issue with her. She had assured him she felt no such inclination and couldn’t imagine herself a mother, let alone imagine a willingness to give up the time in her precious pursuit of knowledge. End of discussion.

  Her late mother had raised the question more than once, of course. But Marilena had been so adamant in her refusal to discuss it that Sorin had actually stepped out of character and offended his mother-in-law by scolding her. “If you don’t mind my saying so,” he said, “and I’m sure that you do, your daughter has made herself quite plain about this, and thus it is no longer any of your business.”

  Marilena had on one hand felt embarrassed for her mother, while on the other she appreciated her husband’s defense.

  So with her mother long in the grave and her marriage long since having become a construct of intellectual conve
nience, what was she to do with this new emotion? It had been all she could do to muster the restraint to keep from blurting out, “Sorin, would you reconsider giving me a child?” Marilena told herself she had ingested too much mămăligă, the mush she made from cornmeal that even Sorin admitted was her specialty. Too much of it had caused discomforting dreams before, but never while she was awake.

  Sorin had asked her something, or had he made a suggestion about her new syllabus? “I’m sorry,” she said. “Would you care for some ţuică?” He had raised a brow, as if wondering what that possibly had to do with whatever it was they were discussing.

  The plum brandy sped to her bloodstream with enough force to effect some equilibrium. Marilena was able to keep her impulses in check and not say anything that might alarm Sorin. If she knew anything about their evolving relationship, it was that her husband fled real, personal interaction—and what could be more personal than this?

  Marilena had been relieved in the days following her epiphany when her urge seemed to have waned. But it would sneak up on her again at the most absurd moments. She might be tidying the apartment, doing the dishes with Sorin, or simply reading. Most disconcerting was that, without fail, every time the need for a child to love and to love her emerged, it was magnified exponentially from the time before. Marilena had devised schemes to fight it off. She developed an inner dialogue, “self-talk” her psychology faculty friends would have called it. She called herself names, told herself she was being selfish, childish, unrealistic. She asked herself who she thought she was and told herself to be practical.

  Generally these tactics worked, at least temporarily. When Marilena really thought it through, somehow extracting herself from the emotion of it, she realized there was not room in her life, certainly not in Sorin’s, and absolutely not in their apartment, for a child—especially a newborn. Impossible.

  For weeks, months even, Marilena had become more and more inclined to stand her ground against the emotion. She believed she had learned to detect nature about to attack, and she would begin her self-talk immediately. “Don’t start,” she would tell herself. “This is just not going to happen.”

  It was not long, however, until a baby was on her mind every waking moment. Oh, it was not as if she had found ways to make it make sense. Rather she came to resign herself to the fact that this torment might forever be with her. Was there some other option, some avenue that might satisfy this instinct? Should she support an orphan, send money to a children’s cause?

  Marilena had never been one to buy into easy diagnoses of depression. She had always been able to chase a low mood by immersing herself more deeply into her reading and studying and teaching. Colleagues admonished her for equating clinical depression with the blues, rightly intimating that someone of her intellect should know better.

  She had become depressed and she knew it. She would not seek counsel or treatment. Nothing could fix this. The need for a child had become part of her being, and the knowledge of its impossibility left her in despair.

  Ironically, it had been that very paradox that had spurred her interest in a new pursuit. She had seen the ads in academic journals and even one of the many local papers: “Seeking something beyond yourself? Come and be astonished.” She had seen posters around the faculty offices with the same message but had paid them no more heed than had her colleagues.

  Marilena would have described herself as a humanist. She had not closed the door on the possibility of a supreme being, so agnostic perhaps fit her better than atheist. Finding the answers to life within oneself had always resonated most with her.

  Marilena had also long been self-reliant, eager to do things on her own, not inclined—like so many of her female friends—to need a partner in every new endeavor. Sure, it was sometimes more enjoyable when Sorin or another colleague joined her at an exhibit or lecture, but she was not averse to going by herself.

  Her intrigue at the ad for the Tuesday evening meetings at the library had been borne out of a desperate need to distract herself from what she could only assume was something she had always believed was a myth: her ticking biological clock. Motherhood had been such a foreign concept to her that it was not something she had even entertained until this longing attacked.

  Somehow she could not imagine satisfying her curiosity about these meetings alone, so she had asked Sorin to go with her. He motioned with his fingers for the paper and read the ad aloud. “Oh, Marilena, really,” he said, and she cringed. He tossed it back to her.

  Early in their marriage she had given up more easily, intimidated. But that had passed. “I would really like you to go with me,” she said.

  “But why? Can’t you imagine what this is? ‘Something beyond yourself,’ honestly.”

  “What? What do you think it is, Sorin?”

  “If not religion, then spiritualism, two sides of the same silly coin.”

  “Have you never entertained the idea that there might be something beyond our minds?”

  He pressed his lips together. “No, and neither have you. Now spare me this nonsense.”

  And she had—for a time. But resentment grew. She fell silent at home, answered him in monosyllables. He could not have missed the cues, but clearly he didn’t seem to care. Perhaps, she told herself, if they were a conventional couple he would feel the heat. But given that they had evolved into colleagues who simply shared the same chambers, why should he care if she seemed upset?

  Usually they took turns doing for each other. One would cook for both. The next night vice versa. So it was when she took to ignoring him completely, cooking only one meal, packing only one lunch, cleaning only her messes, that he finally took notice. “You’re not yourself,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  She felt petty saying nothing and implying that if he didn’t know she wasn’t about to tell him. That was so juvenile, so typical. She had considered herself above such tactics. But they had worked. Finally he said, “Marilena, you’re not pleasant to be around. Does one of us need to move out?”

  Leave it to Sorin to cut to the heart of the matter. Marilena had been surprised at her own revulsion for that idea. For whatever they had become to each other, she couldn’t imagine life without him. She didn’t want to leave, and she certainly didn’t want him to.

  “Perhaps,” she said, surprising herself. It was only a maneuver, but she desperately hoped he would not act on it. And if he did, what form would it take? He wouldn’t be leaving the apartment he had owned since his first wife evicted him from their home years before. Would he turn Marilena out?

  To her relief, he’d let the matter drop, only raising it again several days later when she wore him down with her toxic indifference.

  “Marilena, are you about to leave me?”

  “Mentally or physically?”

  “Don’t play games, dear. We both know you have long ago emotionally deserted. What is it you want?”

  “You know.”

  “I don’t!” And it was clear from his look that he really didn’t. She had let too much time pass from the original request. “Tell me!”

  “I want you to go with me to see what these Tuesday evening sessions are about.”

  He stood. “That’s all? For that you have put on this charade for weeks? Tell me that is not all you are upset about.”

  “That’s it.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  She couldn’t argue. It was such a small thing. And yet it was also such a simple request. Why could he not cater to her just this once, step outside his conventions?

  Then he had been quiet, clearly angry. Occasionally he would appear prepared to continue the argument, then wave it off and turn back to his work. Finally, apparently unable to concentrate, he’d said, “Heaven help us if you ever find something legitimate to be upset over.”

  “If this is so trivial, Sorin, the remedy is trivial too. Don’t disparage my feelings. I want you to go to a one-hour meeting some Tuesday evening. Is that so much to ask?”

/>   “That’s not the issue,” he said. “It’s the transparent nature of the meeting. It will offend my every sensibility and, I hope, yours.”

  “Maybe it will. Of course, you’re right. But humor me. I don’t want to go alone.”

  “So if I accompany you once, you promise to return to civility?”

  “Twice.”

  “Twice? What if you are repulsed after the first meeting?”

  “Then you’re free.”

  “Twice. If I go twice—”

  “That’s all I ask.”

  Ray had been invited to Bobby Stark’s house Friday for dinner and overnight. He would ride with Bobby and his parents to the Saturday soccer game.

  Ray couldn’t wait. He watched the big clock on the classroom wall all day, especially after he and Bobby had plotted during lunch and recess what all they would do that evening. “Mom’s fixin’ a big meal, and we can play laser hockey, video games, watch movies, whatever.”

  Bobby dressed like a rich kid, so Ray could only assume his house would be cool. He wasn’t disappointed. It was no palace, nothing like Ray himself would own one day when he was a pro athlete or a pilot, but it was sure something compared to his house.

  Bobby had two younger sisters who wanted to be involved in everything, but any time Ray showed them attention, they blushed and giggled and ran off squealing. Bobby just hollered at them and told on them until his mother made them leave the boys alone.

  At dinner Mr. Stark asked Ray if he wanted to say the blessing.

  “The what?”

  “The blessing, son. Say grace. You’re a Christian, aren’t you? Go to church?”

  “’Course. Every Sunday. You mean pray?”