Nazi Gold

Chapter 21 — Local Flavor

Professor Petra Kulich and her small group arrived at the International Airport of Cluj-Napoca, Romania on a quiet sunny afternoon. One by one they sauntered from the large doors to breathe in the capital of Transylvania. It was beautiful. Petra’s previously procured minibus was already parked off the main parking lot where the driver said he would wait.

“Welcome to Cluj! Welcome, welcome! I am Stefan Antonescu, your guide,” the friendly driver exclaimed. He was dressed in casual beige pants and sandals, with a loose black T-shirt with countless of braided bracelets on both wrists. Nina was amused by his cheerful manner. Stefan was about forty five years old with oily black hair taken back in a braid that reached down between his shoulder blades. In his right ear she saw two small golden earrings as he introduced himself and shook everyone’s hands.

“Lovely to meet you, Stefan,” Petra smiled. “It is so good to be back in Cluj. I was here once before a few years ago when we vacationed here. I was astounded by the architecture of St. Michael’s Church.”

“Is that the picture you showed me, Professor?” Igor asked, as he helped Nina load her bag into the back of the minibus.

“Yes, the one with the statue of Matthias Corvinus. Do you know him, Nina?” she asked.

Sam just felt like a fish out of water. He tucked his hands into his pockets and looked around at the mundane goings-on of the airport.

“No, I’m afraid not,” Nina shook her head.

“Oh he was a wonderful monarch who promoted arts and sciences and embraced the Renaissance movement from Italy. Such a down to earth king from the 15th Century who chose to ignore the social statuses of people and chose them according to their talents and abilities. How cool is that?” she winked.

“I remember you are booked at Escala Villa in Crisan Street, correct, Professor?” Stefan asked.

“Yes, we will be staying there for a few days while we go out to the forest. Let me just make sure — you are going to take us in there, right?” Petra asked.

“Yes, madam.”

“In where?” Sam asked, finally finding something that struck his interest.

“Baciu. It is a village near the forest. We are going to see if we can find Petr Costita and talk to him about the stuff in the trunk,” Petra explained. “Did you manage to obtain all the memory cards you would need for this excursion? If not, you should do that today in the city.”

“No, no. I have everything. I went shopping for all my gear back in Prague,” he smiled and nodded as they got into the vehicle.

The afternoon sun was bright and unchallenged by clouds, leaving the majestic city of Cluj to bask in its warmth and display its ancient beauty at its best. While Petra had seen it before and Igor did not care much for architecture, Sam and Nina marveled at every other building the vehicle passed while driving through the town center. The cathedrals and churches towered in antique authority over the other more modern buildings, silently conveying the local events in history through their spires and Gothic prowess.

“Oh my god, this is such a beautiful city. It reminds me of Edinburgh, Sam. Aren’t you just a little homesick?” Nina cooed as her eyes ached to look all the way up the towers from the confinement of the vehicle.

“I miss my cat,” Sam answered dryly.

To his surprise, Igor chuckled at his reply, especially when Nina gave Sam one of her looks. The two men looked at each other, laughing. Nina turned to face the window again, hoping her own smirk would not reflect in the window and give away her own amusement.

“Look! Look, everyone! There is the statue of Matthias Corvinus on his horse!” Petra exclaimed like an excited child as they drove past Unirii Square.

It was very special. The massive bronze statue stood sentinel on top of a bridge-like structure built in a castle motif in stone, accompanied by four other bronze figures, dressed in what a layman would construe as knight’s armor, two on each side of the of the monarch’s horse. Nina and Petra were in awe by the size of the monument, dwarfing tourists and pedestrians into minute figures.

“Stefan, we don’t have to wear long skirts and stuff, hey?” Petra asked the flamboyant driver who was munching on a piece of beef jerky.

He laughed heartily.

“I don’t think they will mistake you for Romani women, Professor. You are too…fair to be a Gypsy,” he replied. “Baciu is a village like every other. There would hardly be a caravan of horse carts and vardos with old women reading your palm!”

“I’m just making sure. People in more remote areas are normally still traditional and easily offended,” Petra explained.

“Professor, you have been living in First World countries too long, where people are offended when there is nothing to be offended by. It makes me sick, I tell you. Here, well, with my people in particular, we don’t care if they call us Gypsy, or if women wear pants,” Stefan smiled.

“I guess your family have adapted more to the modern ways and abandoned some of the more rigid rules, then. But why?” Igor asked as they turned onto the circle at Strada Emil Racoviță, close to their destination.

“We Roma have adapted to other cultures merely to survive. In the Second World War especially, our people were literally hunted and killed in masses to rid Eastern Europe of the filthy Gypsy blood. They used to refer to us as vermin,” the Romanian guide explained.

“It is true, unfortunately,” Nina nodded to the others. “My thesis on the culling of Indo-Aryan cultures by the Nazis has led me to that especially appalling piece of German history.”

“The only way most of our bloodlines could survive was to disappear. You know when someone wants to kill you because of your looks, you had better look like someone else,” he said with a shrug, looking at them in the rear view mirror.

“That is absolutely true,” Igor chipped in while he stared out at the passing houses, “and very wise.” He looked at Sam, but Sam did not notice. Nina noticed and it bothered her for some reason. Hopefully it was just Igor’s jealousy of Sam, but something told her that there was more to the threatening look, especially after she had seen the more forceful side of Petra Kulich’s assistant.

They stopped in front of the Villa Escala. Stefan helped them unload and then promised to pick them up the next morning for their first trip to Baciu to see if they could locate Costita.

In the morning he showed up just after breakfast, exactly two minutes before the time Professor Kulich agreed to.

“You have to give him that. The man is punctual,” Sam said. He meant nothing by it, but Nina’s guilt once more insinuated that it was aimed at her for almost getting him killed at the hospital by being tardy. She looked at Sam and he returned her leer with a smile.

How can he smile? Is that some sick way to torment me?, she thought with a frown.

“What is wrong, Dr Gould?” Igor asked her. “Do you want me to knock his teeth out?”

Nina stared at Igor with a disgusted expression.

“I am joking,” he laughed. “You are going to have to relax, my dear. This place where we are going, Hoia Baciu, is not a place for a clouded mind, least of all one of fear.” Those last few words were said with a deliberate interposition to remind her of her recent confession on the plane. “You cannot be angry or afraid here, Nina.”

His warning made her flesh crawl. His words were in conjunction with Sam’s theory of the origins and use of the Black Tarot and now, being in the heart of the dark territory where the deck was allegedly hidden, she felt an awful apprehension grip her.

They all prepared for a tiring day of searching, having no idea what would happen once they found Petr Costita, if they found him, fearing the consequent problems which may arise should he refuse to entrust the deck to the representative of the rightful owner’s.

On the E81 they drove for approximately 13 kilometers from Cluj to the commune of Baciu. Nina felt awfully silly when she saw the town and realized that not all places draped in superstition and old ways were caught in the Middle Ages. From the road where they entered Baciu the houses and stacked apartment buildings crowded along the grids of streets that ran from the edge of the low hills through the basin of the landscape. It reminded Nina of small mining towns in the United States and England, with modest houses built in simple squares. The houses were all of a similar color and the apartment buildings protruded from flat grass terrain in high slabs painted in pastels.

The streets were filled with cars and bicycles, and shops welcomed their patrons caught in the ordinary activities of the day. There was no sign as to the age of the settlement, no visible monuments or noticeable buildings, but the place was a far cry from her imagined forest village circled by Gypsy carts with stray dogs barking at witches in gilded coin head cloths. No fires with old men around them, no swarthy maidens in long skirts dancing with flowing black hair. As if Stefan knew what she was thinking, he peeked in the rear view mirror at Nina and said, “No Gypsy curses yet, hey, Dr Gould?”

The occupants of the minibus laughed while Nina just shook her head with a goofy smile and looked out the window.

A short time later they stopped at a house on the edge of town, a dilapidated little home with a yard full of rubble, begging for a rat infestation. There was an old rusted chassis and several broken appliances lying around, some stacked on a rusted iron table. Above it hanged what looked like wind chimes, suspended from a thin tree branch. Instead of reeds or mirrors the ornament sported torn pictures and chicken bones at the end of the fishing lines that held it. Nina felt uneasy at the strange combination of things held together to swing in the breeze.

“This is the home of Mihail the Eye,” Stefan announced. “If anyone in Baciu knows the whereabouts of the person you are looking for, it is Mihail.”

“…the Eye…” Sam frowned in repetition. The guide nodded nonchalantly and smiled, as if the name was not sending a tingle up the ass of any Scot who hears it for the first time.

“Yah, he sees.” With that Stefan got out of the vehicle and the rest reluctantly followed suit.

“I swear to Christ, if an old man with pearly eyes opens this door, I’m walking to the nearest bar,” Sam said under his breath, drawing a nervous giggle from his companions. Nina rested her hand on his back, “Don’t worry, Sam, I’ll protect you…darling.”

He gave her a narrow eyed look and sighed, “I will never live that down, will I? You just love that one, right?”

“Aye, blossom,” Nina teased as they rounded the back of the house into the back yard.

Again their expectations were crushed as Stefan called out to Mihail, a mechanic no older than Igor, who stood bent over the engine of an old Chrysler Valiant. The two embraced and chatted in quick raps of Romanian before Stefan put his hand around Mihail’s shoulder and turned him to face his foreign visitors.

“These are the fine people I told you about, brother. Petra, Nina, Igor and Sam. They came all the way here to find someone who has something of theirs,” Stefan said.

“Of mine,” Petra interrupted firmly, but politely.

“Ah!” Mihail exclaimed. “Did you come to claim it in person?”

“Yes, I did. It is the only way to get things done, I think — personally,” she replied. Petra was by no means as docile as she had led on. Her tall, lean frame looked quite imposing to the Romani men, but they liked her courage.

“Let me just wash the grease off my hands and we can sit down a bit,” Mihail said. He called his wife to pour his guests some Pálinka and before they could greet the exhausted young woman she had once more disappeared into the house.

“Excuse my wife. We just had a new baby and she is tired. Also,” he said as he poured the brandy, “She hates people.”

He laughed out loud, a loud, vulgar laugh that insisted they all join in. Stefan winked reassuringly at Kulich and her associates. When the drinks were poured, they all followed Mihail’s example.

“Noroc!” he yelled as he held his glass up high, at the full extension of his arm.

“Noroc!” they all cried in unison, Sam and Igor doing so with enthusiasm while the women still tried to memorize the word for future reference.