The cart was rickety, the horses thin and mangy looking. Marcus sat high on the seat next to Emil, watching the scenery roll by. It was beautiful country, but it did not make him feel uplifted. He felt under siege, as though eyes were watching him.
And he jumped when, from behind the trees to the right of them, an old woman peaked out, with long gray hair and dark socketed eyes. She smiled leeringly at him. Marcus felt childlike terror.
"Muma Padur. Some say she was the basis of the witch in Hansel and Gretel."
"Please! I don't want to know."
It took about an hour and a half for them to reach the train station. A stark little cinderblock building next to some lonely looking train tracks.
Emil gave him two bills. "They will not know you at this station. This will get you a one way ticket."
"I will pay you back," Marcus stammered. This man had to be as poor as all the others in the village. Money for a train ticket had to be a big deal.
"Don't worry. I know I am doing a good deed for my village. No offense, but I feel you do portend bad luck. You are an apparition. I am going to make you vanish."
Marcus looked at him with his mouth hung open, feeling stung. But he then turned and went into the building.
At the counter he merely said the name of his destination, "Baia Mare." The attendant, his hooded eyes trained on something over Marcus's shoulder, slid him a ticket. Marcus, feeling dejected and tired, went to sit on a metal bench and wait.
The station began to fill with people, to get more and more crowded. When at last a train pulled in, every person rose up as one.
"Baia Mare?" He asked a woman in a shawl. She grunted an affirmative.
The train was more modern than he thought it would be. The seats were plush, if a little worn. Marcus sat in the corner. As crowded as the car was, no one chose to sit in the vacant seat next to Marcus.
Screw it, he thought. I won't have to deal with the insults much longer. I'm going home. Where at least people know me.
The train ride seemed to last for hours, but he didn't know for sure: his watch had died at some point, its hands frozen at 2:35. They went through tunnels and curved around mountains. At one point the lights flickered out for a minute, but no one made any notice.
He must have fallen asleep at some point, because he woke up to find the train stopped and everyone standing up and gathering their belongings.
He walked out of the station into the unknown city. It looked like plenty of other cities he'd been to. It had high rises and paved courtyards. Fountains and sleek modern churches. It was only when you really looked that you saw the cracks in the pavement, and the weeds overgrowing the common gardens. It gave the city a strange feeling of abandonment, even though it teemed with people.
Marcus had no plan, exactly. All he needed was to talk to some official person. Someone who knew English. Someone who, when they saw his face, would know who he was. He prayed to himself that he had been declared missing, and that it was a major news story.
He wandered around until he found a simple white building with a peaked roof. There was a street sign pointing to it with an arrow that said, Politia. A couple of men wearing police uniforms were walking out.
He approached the front desk. A middle-aged woman was manning the phone, with long brown hair pulled back from a high forehead. When she looked up at Marcus she smiled kindly, but with no trace of recognition.
"Hello," he said, "I need someone who speaks English. I am a citizen of the United States. I am Marcus O'Reilly. I am American."
The woman smiled uncertainly, held up her palm for a moment, and went through the doorway behind her. He stood there, listening to the murmur of an unseen television. There was a framed poster on the wall over the desk: a view of the countryside. It looked exactly like the place he had just come from. He leaned closer. Was that the house? The poster was old and faded, the frame cheap gold-toned plastic...
Soon the receptionist returned with a man. He had a thin face with hollow cheeks and black mustache. He wore a beret with a crest on it.
"Hello," the man said. "You are an English speaker? What can I do for you?"
"Yes," said Marcus, trying to think how to word his predicament. "There has been, well...a mistake that has happened."
"A mistake?"
"Yes, you see," he laughed, "I'm not supposed to be here. I need to return to the United States. Immediately. I need to make a long distance phone call. I need to be wired money, arrangements need to be made..."
"Who are you?"
"I am Marcus O'Reilly. You may know of me. I am a filmmaker. If you don't know of me, you may know of my films. Red River Weeps. Dreams of Dying. The Lost City...."
Listing the names of his own movies, he remembered scenes, faces and vistas. A beautiful actress's trembling smile and darting eyes. Men in period costume, racing on horseback across grassy plains. A dead girl, lying pale in blue moonlight.
But he could hear no dialogue. Funny, he'd spent a lifetime on his craft. These films were once his babies. Now they were strangers. No matter how much of his soul he had put into his art, none of it came out the right way. Nothing that he ever tried to say was ever truly expressed. Why couldn't he say what he needed to say?
He looked down for a moment at the peeling linoleum floor, thinking of all of this.
"May I see your identification, please?"
Marcus patted his thigh where his wallet was usually nestled in his pocket, and shrugged.
"Well, I woke up here in my night clothes. So I don't have my wallet. It's at home, next to my bed. But listen—it all will become clear. There are people looking for me. I am supposed to accept an award. Today, actually. I am supposed to be at an awards ceremony in New York. Check the media! The American news networks. Make some calls. I am a missing man."
"But sir, everyone must carry identification. You cannot get on a plane with no identification. You have no passport to cross borders."
Marcus felt a heat surge through his body. A beating in his chest. War drums. He was under siege. "Listen! Get me a telephone. A telephone! It is all I ask. Get me an American consulate! It's all so simple. Why are you making this complicated?"
"You have provided no identification, sir. I will have to hold you here, I am afraid."
"Bullshit! I am tired of this! How can you not know who I am! How an you not fulfill my simple request!"
"Sir, please lower your voice."
"I won't!"
Two policemen appeared from nowhere to grip his arms.
"What is this?! This is an outrage! Why won't you just listen to me!" He thrashed his arms, trying to get loose. He kicked a rickety metal chair so that it went flying. The grips on his arms tightened. They were carrying him away.
They led him through a twisting maze of hallways until they came to a holding cell and locked him in. As the bigger of the men turned the key, Marcus looked him in the eye and tried to appeal to him. "Listen. I'm not crazy. I'm a reasonable man. Just try reading the news from America..."
But the policeman looked at him, not comprehending. It was not pity that shown in his eyes, but a detached, distant interest. A puzzlement.
Which drove Marcus right back into a fury. "I'm in fucking limbo! I'm in no man's land! I'm in purgatory!"
He seemed to have gone temporarily deaf and blind, his vision filled with red. He was thrashing and striking out against something unseen, screaming, "I have an identity!" When his senses came roaring back, he was lightheaded. His shoulder hurt. There was a high electrical humming in his ears.
Looking through the bars he could see down the hallway into the doorway of a waiting area. It was empty except for one old woman in a striped housedress, nodding off over a pile of knitting. There was a television bolted high on the wall, turned to a news station. Although he couldn't understand the language, he watched a montage of different scenes. A crowd of people with signs, protesting a motorcade. A diagram of a satellite in space. An old farmer showing that his well is dry. A ballerina twirling on a stage.
And then: Marcus was shocked to find that he was staring at himself on the screen. Wearing his new tuxedo! Standing at a podium, accepting his award! He looked so well rested and calm. There was brightness to his eyes, and good color in his cheeks. He was saying something. Marcus strained to here, but the newscaster was speaking over him in Romanian.
"Hey! Guard! Look at the TV!"
But the Marcus on the screen finished with a bow and mouthed "thank you." When he turned to exit the stage, Marcus screamed, "Wait!"
But he kept on walking, and when just as he was to approach the wings of the stage, he stopped to take the hand of a tall thin girl in a long spangled dress. The camera trained in close for a minute, though the girl's face was turned away. They looked like father and daughter. Then the scene faded into a commercial for chewing gum.
Marcus stood still and quiet, staring at the screen. Then he glanced up and down the hall, looking to see if someone, anyone, had been a witness. There was none.
A smile pulled at the corners of his lips. Then he slowly, quietly, began to applaud, clapping his hands that stuck threw the bars. Then louder. Then faster.
Leah Erickson has been published most recently in The Saint Ann's Review, The Stickman Review, Menda City Review, The Furnace Review, Forge Journal, The Absent Willow Review, and Prick of The Spindle. I have work upcoming at Membra Disjecta.