The Keep by F. Paul Wilson
He’d had some rough moments leaving the keep. He could not let anyone know he could walk, so he’d imitated his former infirmities as he wheeled himself toward the gate. The sentries had looked at him curiously as he rolled by, but they did not stop him—he had always been free to visit his daughter. Fortunately, neither of the officers had been in the courtyard as he had passed through.
And now, with the Germans behind and an unobstructed causeway ahead, Professor Theodor Cuza spun the wheels of his chair as fast as he could. He had to show Magda. She had to see what Molasar had done for him.
The wheelchair bounced off the end of the causeway with a jolt that almost tipped him headfirst out of it, but he kept rolling. It was rougher going in the dirt but he didn’t mind. It gave him a chance to stretch his muscles, which felt unnaturally strong despite their years of disuse. He rolled by the front door of the inn, then turned left around its south side. There was only one first floor window there, opening into the dining alcove. He stopped after he passed that and wheeled up close to the stucco wall. He was out of sight here—no one from the inn or the keep could see him, and he simply had to do it once more.
He faced the wall and locked the brakes on his chair. A push against the armrests and there he was: standing on his own two feet, supported by no one and nothing. Alone. Standing. By himself. He was a man again. He could look other men straight in the eyes instead of ever up at them. No more a child’s-eye view of existence from down there, where he was always treated as a child. Now he was up here…a man again!
“Papa!”
He turned to see Magda at the corner of the building, gaping at him.
“Lovely morning, isn’t it?” he said and opened his arms to her. After a heartbeat’s hesitation, she rushed into them.
“Oh, Papa!” she said in a voice that was muffled by the folds of his jacket as he crushed her against him. “You can stand!”
“I can do more than that.” He stepped away from her and began to walk around the wheelchair, steadying himself at first with a hand atop the backrest, then releasing it as he realized he didn’t need it. His legs felt strong, even stronger than they had felt earlier this morning. He could walk! He felt as if he could run, dance. On impulse, he bent, turned, and spun around in a poor imitation of a step in the Gypsy abulea, almost falling over in the process. But he kept his balance and ended up at Magda’s side, laughing at her astonished expression.
“Papa, what’s happened? It’s a miracle!”
Still gasping from laughter and exertion, he grasped her hands. “Yes, a miracle. A miracle in the truest sense of the word.”
“But how—”
“Molasar did it. He cured me. I’m free of scleroderma—completely free of it! It’s as if I never had it!”
He looked at Magda and saw how her face shone with happiness for him, how her eyes blinked to hold back tears of joy. She was truly sharing this moment with him. And as he looked more closely, he sensed that she was somehow different. He sensed another, deeper joy in her that he had never seen before. He felt he should probe for its source but could not be bothered with that now. He felt too good, too alive!
A movement caught the corner of his eye and he looked up. Magda followed his glance. Her eyes danced when she saw who it was.
“Glenn, look! Isn’t it wonderful? My father has been cured!”
The red-haired man with the strange olive skin said nothing as he stood by the corner of the inn. His pale blue eyes bored into Cuza’s own, making him feel as if his very soul were being examined. Magda kept talking excitedly, rushing over to Glenn and pulling him forward by the arm. She seemed almost drunk with happiness.
“It’s a miracle! A true miracle! Now we’ll be able to get away from here before—”
“What price have you paid?” Glenn said in a low voice that cut through Magda’s chatter.
Cuza stiffened and tried to hold Glenn’s gaze. He found he could not. There was no happiness for him in the cold blue eyes. Only sadness and disappointment.
“I’ve paid no price. Molasar did it for a fellow countryman.”
“Nothing is free. Ever.”
“Well, he did ask me to perform a few services for him, to help make arrangements for him after he leaves the keep since he cannot move about in the day.”
“What, specifically?”
Cuza was becoming annoyed with this type of interrogation. Glenn had no right to an answer and he was determined not to give him one.
“He didn’t say.”
“Odd, isn’t it, to receive payment for a service you’ve not yet rendered, nor even agreed to render? You don’t even know what will be required of you and yet you have already accepted payment.”
“This is not payment,” Cuza said with renewed confidence. “This merely enables me to help him. We’ve made no bargain for there is no need of one. Our bond is the common cause we share—the elimination of Germans from Romanian soil and the elimination of Hitler and Nazism from the world!”
Glenn’s eyes widened and Cuza almost laughed at the expression on his face.
“He promised you that?”
“It was not a promise! Molasar was incensed when I told him of Kaempffer’s plans for a death camp at Ploiesti. And when he learned that there was a man in Germany named Hitler who was behind it all, he vowed to destroy him as soon as he was strong enough to leave the keep. There was no need of a deal or a bargain or payment—we have a common cause!”
He must have been shouting because he noticed that Magda took a step away from him as he finished, a concerned look on her face. She clutched Glenn’s arm and leaned against him. Cuza felt himself go cold. He tried to keep his voice calm as he spoke.
“And what have you been doing with yourself since we parted yesterday morning, child?”
“Oh, I—I’ve been with Glenn most of the time.”
She needed to say no more. He knew. Yes, she had been with Glenn.
Cuza looked at his daughter, clinging to the stranger with a wanton familiarity, her head bare, her hair blowing in the wind. She had been with Glenn. It angered him. Out of his sight less than two days and she had given herself to this heathen. He would put a stop to that! But not now. Soon. Too many other important matters at hand. As soon as he and Molasar had finished their business in Berlin, he would see to it that this Glenn character with the accusing eyes was taken care of too.
…Taken care of…? He didn’t even know what he meant by that. He wondered at the scope of his hostility toward Glenn.
“But don’t you see what this means?” Magda was saying, obviously trying to soothe him. “We can leave, Papa! We can escape down into the pass and get away from here. You don’t have to go back to the keep again! And Glenn will help us, won’t you, Glenn?”
“Of course. But I think you’d better ask your father first if he wants to leave.”
Damn him! Cuza thought as Magda turned wondering eyes on him. Thinks he knows everything!
“Papa…?” she began, but the look on his face must have told her what the answer would be.
“I must go back,” he told her. “Not for myself. I don’t matter anymore. It’s for our people. Our culture. For the world. Tonight he will be strong enough to put an end to Kaempffer and the rest of the Germans here. After that, I must perform a few simple tasks for him and we can walk away from here without worrying about hiding from search parties. And after Molasar kills Hitler—!”
“Can he really do that?” Magda asked, her expression questioning the enormity of the possibility he was describing.
“I asked myself that very question. And then I thought about how he has so terrified these Germans until they are ready to shoot at each other, and has eluded them in that tiny keep for a week and a half, killing them at will.” He held up his hands bare to the wind and watched with a renewed sense of awe as the fingers flexed and extended easily, painlessly. “And after what he has done for me, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is very little he cannot do.??
“Can you trust him?” Magda asked;
Cuza stared at her. This Glenn had apparently tainted her with his suspicious nature. He was no good for her.
“Can I afford not to?” he said after a pause. “My child, don’t you see that this will mean a return to normalcy for us all? Our friends the Gypsies will no longer be hunted down, sterilized, and put to work as slaves. We Jews will not be driven from our homes and our jobs, our property will no longer be confiscated, and we will no longer face the certain extinction of our race. How can I do anything else but trust Molasar?”
His daughter was silent. No rebuttal was 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 was not a cruel man, 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.
“It was foolish of me to wheel myself over this morning,” he said as if she had not spoken at all. “But I could not wait around for you to come and get me. I must be more careful. I want no suspicions raised about the true state of my health. I want no extra watch on me. So get behind me and push.”
Magda did so, reluctantly and resentfully. For once, she was glad to leave him at the gate and walk back alone.
Matei Stephanescu was angry. Rage burned in his chest like a glowing coal. He did not know why. He sat tense and rigid in the front room of his tiny house at the southern end of the village, a cup of tea and a loaf of bread on the table before him. He thought of many things. And his rage grew steadily hotter.
He thought of Alexandru and his sons and how it wasn’t right that they should get to work at the keep all their lives and earn gold while he had to chase a herd of goats up and down the pass until they grew big enough to sell or barter for his needs. He had never envied Alexandru before, but this morning it seemed that Alexandru and his sons were at the core of all his ills.
Matei thought about his own sons. He needed them here. He was forty-seven and already gray in the hair and knobby in the joints. But where were his sons? They had deserted him—gone to Bucharest two years ago to seek their fortunes, leaving their father and mother alone. They had not cared enough for their father to stay near him and help as he grew older. He hadn’t heard from either of them since they’d left. If he instead of Alexandru had had the work at the keep, Matei was sure his own sons would now be at his side, and perhaps Alexandru’s would have run off to Bucharest.
It was a rotten world and getting rottener. Even his own wife did not care enough about him to get out of bed for him this morning. Ioan had always been anxious to see that he got off with a good breakfast. But this morning was different. She wasn’t sick. She had merely told him, “Go fix it yourself!” And so he had fixed his own tea, which now sat cold and untasted before him. He picked up the knife that lay next to the teacup and cut a thick slice of bread. But after his first bite he spit it out.