Nazi Gold

Chapter 30 — Playing with Fire

The night before Greta’s arrival in Cluj, Stefan had invited Sam, Petra and Nina to spend the night with him and his kin. He was related to an astounding amount of people, they thought, but that was the purpose of calling it a commune where a phrase like ‘extended family’ came well into play. The van drove into a small street that formed a horseshoe curve, populated by several tiny houses stacked next to each other. Horse carts stood here and there, the horses away to their sheds for the night. Nina narrowed her weary eyes to study the intricate design of the decorative wagons where a lot of couples lived next to the houses of their family.

“What are those, Stefan?” she asked, pointing at the wagons.

“Vardos, Nina. Burtons and Brushes over there. Actually, about five or six types of wagons are from different eras and countries all similar to these you see here. They are like caravans, nomadic homes from our traditional culture, but a lot of us stay in modern day caravans, as you can see,” he reported from the green light of the dashboard, pointing to the other horse-drawn caravans on the other side of the bend of the bumpy road.

“You will be sleeping in one of those tonight,” he smiled, eager to share his culture with the foreign scholars he had befriended.

“Cool!” Nina said and Sam smiled, imagining her cussing in such a small space. She hated little boxes with locked doors, so he looked forward to see how long her enthusiasm would last.

“You also, Professor, unless you wish to claim a bed in my cousin’s house. He has four bedrooms, but the children can share for tonight…”

“No, please, Stefan,” Petra smiled dryly. She placed her hand reassuringly on his forearm. “I will sleep in a vardo as well. What about you, Sam? If you don’t have a cab of your own you are welcome to share mine,” she teased. Nina chuckled as Petra winked at her.

“I think I’ll crash on someone’s couch, rather. I intend to get properly blootered before bedtime, so one of those wagons and their ladders would be a problem. I’m bound to pan my head in,” Sam said.

“Watch it with the bevvy, Sam. Just now you are up on the table again, doing your Highland dancing,” Nina warned. He touched her fingers with his where her hand was pressing on the seat.

“He does that?” Petra asked, truly amused. “Over the crossed swords and all?”

“Aye. But this time I will avoid wearing the kilt when I fall off the tables,” he admitted sheepishly, recalling an especially embarrassing incident at the Highland Games a good while back.

“Without the kilt?” Petra lamented. “Pity. I imagined Sam would have quite the piping ability.”

Stefan and Nina were in stitches, while Sam sank his chin and shook his head with a shy grin at the professor’s playful advances. The houses looked a bit dilapidated. Rusted vehicle frames and old appliances piled up behind some of the walls and fences and the tall, swaying trees played host to more of the peculiar wind chimes full of an array of trinkets.

In the bare patch of ground opposite the houses, the inside of the horseshoe, a pillar of blazing fire reached angrily for the night sky. Around it several lawn chairs and stools were put out, some occupied by residents already.

“This is where we come together on special occasions,” Stefan smiled proudly. “We tell stories and sing around the bonfire. We have some really good musicians.”

“I love the atmosphere,” Petra remarked. “It has a certain old world welcome to it.”

“Creeps me the fuck out,” Sam mentioned through barely moving lips. Nina slapped his arm again.

“It is charming. And this party is in our honor,” Nina corrected him.

“Aye, that is what cannibals always say to their guests,” he replied casually.

After the introductions and settling around the fire, most of the locals were very warm to the foreigners, however eyeing them with a hint of concern. Stefan told them that Petra, Sam and Nina had lost a colleague in the Baciu forest, to which most responded with little more than a nod of sympathy for the loss of the visitors’ friend. The others they just scoffed and shook their heads, some spitting to the side to show their cursing of the place and its appetite for the living.

Among them was a very old man whose face and hands were so ravaged by age that he had the likeness of a mummy. They took him for the patriarch of the group, because the children brought him a blanket for his knees while the woman served him hand and foot. His deep sunken beady black eyes were hardly visible under his boney forehead and colorful bandana. Under a crooked nose his lips had vanished through the years, leaving his mouth little more than a wet gash. He pointed a twisted finger in the air and everyone went quiet at once.

“Many years ago when I was a boy, I remember a shepherd walked into that forest with his flock of sheep and never came out again. Two hundred animals and their minder they just…” he gestured with both hands, “…pooffff…disappeared, never to be found again,” the old Gypsy told them. His English was adequate but the visitors had to listen carefully because of his heavy pronunciation.

“Maybe he came out somewhere in Australia,” Sam remarked out of turn without thinking. Nina fought back an irresistible giggle and Petra looked down at her shoes to hide her own amusement. They congregation of Romani did not find it nearly as funny, but they tolerated the annoying wise guy with the dark eyes.

“What pictures did you get on that?” the same old man asked Sam pointing curiously at his camera.

“Just some of the trees of the forest. We recorded some footage while we were…” Sam searched for the least absurd wording he could present, “…at the clearing.”

Nina swallowed hard when the people all nodded and murmured as if they knew what had happened.

“You were there tonight?” the old man asked casually, as if it was normal to walk into time loops around there.

“Y-yes,” Nina replied.

He nodded at the pretty small woman who sat against the annoying camera man. She looked spooked by the whole thing, as most foreigners with strange experiences did.

“That is just the way the forest is,” he said softly, however small a reassurance that was to Nina.

“We were there to look for the last place Petr Costita walked before he died,” Petra said suddenly in her deep crystal clear voice. It stunned everyone to abrupt silence for a moment and then suddenly a choir of disapproving shouting emanated from the group, not to mention a lot of spitting. Older members of the community frowned in disgust and the children shuddered with fear in their eyes at the mention of his name.

“Great going, Professor,” Sam whispered. But Petra looked unperturbed in her impatience for all the delays she had been subjected to since she arrived at Hoia Baciu. She was not here for a holiday, but to track down something her brother died for. On top of that her failure to do so in the forest earlier only made her more reckless in her pursuit and perhaps downright insulting to the Romani people. For some reason she felt compelled to push hard without fear of the consequence, as if time was running out.

Mihail and his wife showed up with two bottles of moonshine, proposing a toast. At the sight of the wicked liquor they had partaken of at Mihail’s house, the three friends gagged. They reluctantly cheered in response to the clairvoyant and his wife, while the bitter taste of Petr Costita’s name still lingered around the fire.

“Why were you looking for the demon’s footprints?”, an old woman, almost as old as the chief, asked Petra.

Stefan took the liberty of explaining to them why Petra and her friends were looking for the place Costita died. Although the visitors did not understand a word he said, they could see the reaction of the family implying that they understood the professor’s urge.

Mihail’s wife looked riddled by pain — or was it sorrow? She sat down next to Nina and forced a smile as greeting.

“Hello,” Nina smiled at her healer. She leaned over to the woman as soon as two fiddlers began to play in melody and harmony, a sweet song with a cheery rhythm in the background that turned the gathering into a magical night of merriment. “You cured me, it seems,” Nina told the woman, but, realizing that she could probably not understand her, the historian pulled up her sleeve to show the woman that the wound was better.

With a gasp the Romani woman stopped Nina from revealing the scar. With both hands she grabbed Nina’s arm and pulled her sleeve back down, shaking her head. Her eyes were rife with warning and she said something in Romanian that sounded in tone as if she was going to explain later. Lightly tapping Nina’s arm and nodding, she made it clear that she will talk later and Nina accepted that.

The old man was looking at the footage Sam was showing him of the forest at night where he and Nina were trapped earlier. He looked at Sam with astonishment, and then followed amusement at the wonder of the strangeness. Petra was engrossed in conversation with one of the young men who could speak excellent English. He had studied in England for a year and he was fascinated with the Czech woman who knew so much of cultures and religions. She found out that he knew a lot about the hoards the Nazis had hidden in Germany and the Czech Republic during the war and he knew very well about the excavations she had previously referred to in their conversation.

“You should not say Petr’s name here, Professor,” he told her once they had warmed up to each other. He spoke under his breath, so that the others would not know that he was discussing the wretch who came to their family by marriage to one of the chief’s daughters.

“Why? Nobody wants to tell me why I cannot get information on the heirloom left to my family that was stolen by the damn Nazi society in Prague and then by this man. What the hell is going on?” she ranted in a hard whisper that barely rose above the notes of the fiddles.

“Listen, the man was evil. He was a warlock, for lack of a better word, Professor,” he told her. “Gypsies, as you call us, are very superstitious because we know secret things are true. Living here, growing up here, I can tell you these things are real and any man or woman who practices sorcery of any kind is not welcome here,” he explained.

“What about the Black Tarot?”, she asked.

“Those were his,” he said, and then added, “well, after he stole it from your brother’s care, of course. But he brought it here and with him followed misery and death, even his own.” The young man paused and looked around to his elders, then turned to see if anyone could see him talking of hidden things. “Professor, what do you want with the evil cards?”

His straight question was sobering, but she deemed him worthy of an explanation, hoping that he could look beyond his family restraints and help her find the cards.

“My brother was killed because someone wanted to corrupt the world’s very existence. I wish to destroy them once and for all…but…”she sighed with much burden in her face, “…that will not end the deck. The woman who had Petr killed — she has a few of the cards and can still wreak havoc with it. I have no idea where to find her.”

“You don’t have to, Professor,” he said nonchalantly, “she will be here soon.”

Petra sat up in her seat, but his hand rested on her arm as a signal to relax.

“How do you know this?” she asked. Her eyes were wide under the pounding of her heart. Finally it felt as if she was getting somewhere with her search.

“The cards Petr discarded that day, the ones that German woman did not get her hands on — they are safe,” he said, and took a drink of Mihail’s concoction as if it was common spring water. Petra winced with him, but kept prying still.

“You are not going to tell me where they are, are you?” she sighed in cynicism and sat back in her chair.

“Why not?’ he asked, sparking life into the Petra’s demeanor.

“Obviously these cards are extremely valuable. Most people would sell them to the highest paying tyrants on the face of the earth,” she replied.

“That would be the most foolish thing to do, don’t you think?” he asked. “Think about it, Professor Kulich. Would you, if you were at all wise, sell this devilish weapon to anyone who would think of altering the fate of the entire world for power, thus putting your very existence and your own life’s path at risk?”

Professor Kulich did think about it. She took quite a long time to anticipate the outcome of such an action in her head, like contemplating the moves of a chess game. It dawned upon her that the young man was correct. No one with even an ounce of wisdom, anyone who was not blind to the guile of money, would think of selling the Black Tarot. Evil men would not think twice about the consequences, nor would they care about the fate of others in their pursuit of power.

“I see. Does that mean you will help me find them?” she dared to ask.

“I do not see why not,” he smiled as he took another ruinous chug of the vile firewater, “I helped your brother, after all.”

Petra felt like a truck slammed headlong into her chest. She frowned at him, confounded at his revelation.

“You are the one who told my brother where they were?” she asked as quietly as she could. He nodded, but she was thinking that perhaps he was just putting up an act.

“My brother’s name?” she asked quietly.

“Dr. Miroslav Kulich of Plzeň, a renowned curator,” he replied charismatically, reveling in her shock. “That man was a huge inspiration to my curiosity, Professor. When I was a little boy he came here on some sabbatical, but I think he was actually looking for the secrets to Hoia Baciu. I met him when I tried to sell him a radio device I made with wire hangers and electrical cords I found in the back of King Iulian’s yard,” he pointed at the old man who was talking to Sam by the fire.

“You met him here?” she said with no real direction.

“Yes, so naturally, when I found Petr’s cards in the crawl space under his house’s floor, I contacted Dr. Kulich immediately to take them out of this place. I was afraid they would wake up whatever devils lived in the forest. Now, of course, I believe in science and leave the paranormal to the tourists,” he told Petra with a chuckle.

She stared at him with a blank expression, but behind her eyes her brain was working on hyper drive to process all the information she had been given. The thin young man grunted from the sting of the last drops in his glass, while she was still nursing the full glass of wine they poured her over an hour ago.

“You said you found the cards under his floor boards?” she asked suddenly. “How did you know to look there?”

“I did not,” he smiled. “I was ransacking his house when I heard others coming, so I escaped through the trapdoor in his kitchen and hid under the floor.” Petra loved how these men spoke of crimes and taboos as if it was a way of life. But it was a way of life everywhere, she reckoned, only the Roma people had no reservations about human nature and thus addressed such things outright. It was quite refreshing.

“And the deck was there?” she urged him to continue.

“The deck was everywhere, Professor!” he replied in exhilaration at the oddity of his discovery that day, relieved that he could finally tell someone about it. Her puzzled expression compelled the young man to carry on eagerly. He lurched over to her and whispered, “The cards were strewn everywhere, just as he threw them before he fell to the Nazi dogs. Professor, they say he threw the cards through a portal he almost disappeared through, right? That son of a bitch knew more than he led on, because that crack in the time-space continuum he ran to — it led to his house!”

“Teleportation,” she marveled. He simply nodded with great satisfaction that she grasped his otherwise ludicrous theory.

He sat back again in his chair while he relished her reaction — stunned to silence. Then Petra looked at him once more; and she cracked a smile he did not expect. It was as if he had just lifted a terrific burden from her shoulders and he could see the relief in her face. Her young ally returned her smile. In her thoughts she came to the conclusion that the young man had been the one laying out the cards, a mildly disturbing thought.

But at the same time she knew that he had probably manipulated several spreads to facilitate the events that brought them all here. The déjà vus they suffered continuously in their own countries and the fact that he sounded so sure that Petr’s killer was on her way there told her that he was secretly using the tarot to foretell what he wanted to happen. His comprehension of the workings of Hoia Baciu was frighteningly accurate and it terrified her to be in the presence of such a man. But still she could not get enough of his company and vowed to get to know him intimately.

She cocked her head slightly and asked, “What is your name?”