The Romanian Read Online Free Page A

The outsider is the German Carol I, a prince of the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen dynasty, who governs Romania with the Teutonic discipline and iron hand of his royal forebears. In 1893, Carol I’s weak nephew and future successor, Ferdinand, marries the stunning Marie, Princess of Edinburgh, the eldest daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh and a granddaughter of Queen Victoria.
    It is charismatic Marie, the queen beginning in 1914, who brings Romania to the attention of the West. During the negotiation of the Treaty of Versailles, she works seductively behind the scenes to acquire Transylvania for Romania and enlarge the country along the lines of its present dimensions. But soon she will be forcibly put on the shelf by her profligate son, Carol II; and under his rule, Romania slips irresistibly toward Fascism and Nazi control. When World War II ends, the country becomes a member of the Communist bloc.
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    A SHUDDER, swallowed by a pit of longing. Is it any wonder that my new obsession comes from an amputated country with a fractured identity, a country that is like an abused child from a broken home? How much of this traumatic history is hidden in his dark, suspicious eyes? All I know is: I have to find out.
    Such thoughts rattle through my mind as I call my editor to report on the assignment. His voice skips only a beat when I announce that the piece I’m going to write for him will be called “The Romanian.”
    â€œWhat happened to the brothel-in-Budapest assignment we paid for?”
    â€œTrust me, this will slay you,” I shoot back with the conviction of an addict. Then I launch into a breathless, rambling monologue. Heterosexual though he may be, my editor is a connoisseur of any form of sexual energy, and I can hear him savor each nugget. But when I try to explain who Romulus is, I’m at a loss for words.
    â€œHe’s a . . .” I don’t say “vampire.” Romulus comes from the land of Dracula, and it would be too much of a cliché to resort to those kinds of metaphors.
    â€œHe’s . . .”
    I falter. Because he’s no one, I suddenly realize, a person with no identity moving illegally and aimlessly from country to country. A vacuum sucking my lost life forward.
    Then who am I?
    I am, it occurs to me as I put down the phone and page obsessively through the books on Romania, a cultural leftover. An old-fashioned, pre-Stonewall homosexual. As recently as six years ago, I still spent white nights in the company of Midtown Manhattan hustlers, ex-cons and junkies, sponging up their speech and vampirizing their emotions to write about. This was, of course, before Manhattan became an entertainment complex for singles of a single class and gay life began turning into just another assimilation story. Now that gay life has grown blander and duller, it seems more and more identical to the world of family values I thought I was escaping. The field of my libido has shrunk; and since writing is desire, my texts have grown shorter. I long for new voices and accents, new worlds to mirror my loneliness and isolation.
    To get back to the new world of Budapest and its offer of pure social disconnection, I’ve taken a job as a technical writer in a financial printing company going digital. It’s the dullest job of my life. Five days a week I spend seven hours in a stifling, windowless room packed to bursting with Indians, Pakistanis and Russians, whose skills have bought them entrance to the United States on temporary visas. The room is white and silent, except for the tic-tac-tic of keyboards, endlessly producing 0’s and 1’s and 0’s and 1’s, for hours, days, weeks, months, without any programmer’s looking up or stopping or speaking, for fear of being sent away from the West and back to poverty.
    I gaze at my own dazed reflection in the poisonous cathode-ray screen, adding a tac to their tic every once in a while, checking expedia.com