By Blood We Live

"He walked up to me and reached out his hand to touch my face, but I stepped back. And anyway, the chains and ropes were caught around a tree trunk, so he could not reach me. It was dark in those woods where the trees grew close together and little sunlight got through. He might have had more power."

"What did you do, when he tried to touch you?"

"I picked up my bucket and went home."

"Did he follow you?"

"Yes, for a while, when he unraveled himself."

"Did you tell anyone about this?"

"Yes, I told my grandmother."

"And what did she do?"

"She beat him."

They were all silent for a moment. Nita recalled watching the crimson welts form on

vechi brbat's bare back as Bunic laid on the thick black leather strap. The blood was not red like Nita's and Bunic's but pale, almost colorless, barely pink-tinged. Vechi brbat took the beating with barely a sound coming from his lips, but his body hunched over even more until he was curled into a ball like a baby. Nita had felt sorry for him.

"How did you feel about that?"

"He had to be taught a lesson, my grandmother said. Otherwise he would cause harm to others."

The man took more notes. Dr. Sauers got up and checked the camera. Nita looked down at the shackles locking her wrists and ankles and thought that she was as much of a prisoner here as

vechi brbat had been in the village. She, too, was kept in a cage. Controlled not by near starvation but through drugs they injected into her daily. She knew how much vechi brbat had longed to break free. She grew to understand him very well.

When Sauers returned to her seat and the man whose name she still did not know had finished his note taking, he turned to Nita and asked if she would like some water, or a juice.

"No. Thank you."

"All right then. Can we continue?"

She knew he did not expect an answer and she gave none. He would continue whether she wanted to or not. That was the nature of being held prisoner.

"I'd like to talk about the last time you visited your village. Back in the summer."

Her mind went to a picture. Like a postcard. An overview of the village, in shades of verdant green, with rich ochre mixed in, and the azure of the sky above. There were people: pretty, tan-skinned Oana and her four rosy-cheeked children and her belly swollen with the fifth. And Radu, her blond-haired, hard-working husband. Little Gheroghe, who played the flute so well, and Ilie who made such beautiful, well-constructed boots with his long, graceful fingers colored nearly black from the Russian cigarettes he liked to smoke. She saw them all as dabs of paint on a canvas, a human still-life, paralyzed in the thickness of time, depicted in her mind as they went about their day, as they had always done, as their children would, unless they left the village as Nita had.

"Tell me about that visit. Why did you go home?"

"My studies were complete for the year. I had gotten a position, serving food and drink in a

taverna in Bucharest, but the owner did not need me for three weeks, until the tourists would come, so I went home to see my grandmother."

"Were you happy to be visiting her and your village?"

"Yes, of course."

"And how did everyone react to you?"

"They were all excited to see me. They wanted to know what it was like in Bucharest, and at the school."

"And what did you tell them?"

"That the city is full of people who dress in all the colors of the world and walk the narrow streets at every hour, and that lamp posts shine warm light at night like stars. I told them that the school gave me knowledge, and I learned about things I had not known existed."

"For example?"

"Mythologies. Legends. The stories of cultures."

The man checked a file report, obviously filled with information about her. "Ah, yes, you were studying cultural anthropology, is that correct?"

"Yes."

He closed the file folder, folded his arms on top of it and stared at her. She did not meet his gaze. "Were there legends, stories and myths in your village?"

"Yes." Suddenly she felt ashamed. Forlorn. How could she not have known what would happen?

"And one was about the

vechi brbat, was it not?"

"Yes," she said, struggling to release the dark memory and keep living in the present.

"Tell me the story of the

vechi brbat."

She sighed heavily, surprised at this new, even heavier weight she felt in her chest, as if her lungs had turned to pumice and the clear, pure air had trouble getting inside her.

Dr. Sauers tapped her fingernails on the table. She did not subscribe to "talk" therapy, as she called it. She believed in drugs. Sedate patients. Give them anti-psychotics. Gradually reduce their medication and see if they improved. If so, they were released. If not, up the meds. Since Nita would never be released, she had no hope in either direction.

"My grandmother told me the story of the