In part two of this episodic psychological thriller, Nicole Jeffords. convinced that healer, Victor Goodlove, who disappeared ten years earlier is buried under her studio, continues her search for him, contacting old patients all over Austin and dis...
We left the next morning, a little anxious because we were told on the outbound flight about weather in Texas and that we would be landing just in time for a major hurricane. Oh no. In the meanwhile I'd received texts from my housekeeper, Ramona, not to worry: she'd laid in enough supplies to last for days. And she wasn't kidding. We arrived to dark skies and a mountain of flashlights, batteries, lighters, plus a fridge stuffed to the gills with water, juice, hard boiled eggs, bread, hot dogs, salami, grapes, melon. The rain began as we unpacked. We went to bed exhausted and woke to wind and the beginning of a typhoon.
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Nicole and George in front of the House of Parliament, Bucharest
But in our minds we were still in Romania where it was hot and sunny, exploring castles and forests and Saxon villages, gazing at Ceausescu's belongings in his private palace, and staring at my mother's painting in Maria Dancius's workroom with its glass cabinets of potions, tinctures and creams.
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Ceausescu's two telephones
The sight of Clara Becker's portrait in my living room made me know I was still vitally connected to my dublura's little house in Brasov, six thousand miles away. I decided to spend the time I was confined by the storm to researching Maria's story, learning what I could online. The hurricane was supposed to hit Houston pretty hard, but we were already feeling the outer bands of it in Austin with slamming rains and heightened winds that made you think your roof would come crashing down any minute. I parked myself on my back porch, which was probably a mistake because the rain pummelled the tin roof like gunshot and the wet black trees outside the windows were uncomfortably close. I saw on Facebook that there were power outages all over Austin, but so far we were okay. I took a deep breath and typed "Maria Danciu" into my browser. Here's what popped up:
Watch an excerpt from the film.
There was a Wikipedia entry that said that Maria Danciu, nee Maria Neagu May 31,1950, daughter of Gheorghe Neagu and Clara Louise Becker was a Romanian film and stage actress whose career, under the name Maria Mocanu, had begun with Loving Sisters, a propagandist film about a dispute over ideological beliefs that led to the disintegration of a small town family. After that there was a list of about seven films, all probably equally propagandistic, that I couldn't access. I wandered around online for a while, hypnotized by the thudding rain and freaked when we lost power and everything went dark. When the lights came on about an hour later, I returned to my ipad and found an entry stating that Maria had married Cornel Danciu in December 1983 (putting an end to her film career?) and another about her father, Gheorghe, connecting him to the well-known Neagu family that had owned Neagu pharmaceuticals. That last item stopped me. I remembered then that Daniel Gottlieb, of Victor Goodlove's lineage, had traveled with his wife and young children from Lviv in the Ukraine to Bucharest to work for a pharmaceutical company. Most likely no connection, but the storm had spooked me and an odd warning bell started ringing in my head.
