by David Dodge
“Piotr isn’t Bulič in disguise, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“That isn’t what I’m thinking. I know Piotr is genuine. But why isn’t it possible to assume that if Dr. Gorza and Djakovo were allowed to get away, the same reasons behind their escape will work for us, whatever they are?”
“It’s possible. It isn’t sensible.”
“It would help if we could believe it.”
“It would be the most dangerous kind of belief, Cora. We’d stop fighting him. We’d begin to disbelieve our own danger. We’d lose the fear that has carried us as far as we’ve gone. You may be right. I don’t believe you are, and unless we’re absolutely certain that you are right – until we’ve solved Bulič, as you said – we’ve got to believe that he intends for us the worst that could happen. I don’t mean something simple like a firing squad.”
We went to sleep with that thought in our minds.
The gutted farmhouse was near a village of some kind, although out of sight of the village minarets. At first dawn, in the early quiet before even birds began to twitter, I heard the distant faint roll of the Red Army March when the loudspeakers began their nineteen-hour blare. I got up, creakily, and built a fire so that the smoke of its kindling would dissipate before full light.
Early as I was, Piotr had already gone with the goats. I brought a pail of water from the well, heated it, made tea and warmed up a piece of mutton. Cora slept on. I didn’t want to disturb her, but I meant to go scouting and didn’t want her to wake up and worry. I wrote spying, back unsoon with charcoal on a piece of bark, propped it up where she couldn’t miss it, and left her my blanket to supplement her own.
The hedgerows made good cover against observation, and it was still not sun-up. By the time the sun rose I was snug in a crow’s nest I had made for myself in the hedgerow we had followed back from the highway. I could see the road for a long stretch in both directions. Because my hedgerow was a particularly old, thick, and high growth, and my crow’s nest up on top, I had a view as well of a good part of the countryside which the intersecting hedges cut into a patchwork of field and meadow. I was in a fine position to see Piotr’s approach when he came, and any signs of the search which I felt sure would soon be developing for a peasant couple with six stolen goats.
Nothing at all came along for several hours. Smoke rose from the chimneys of several farmhouses, and there were signs of early activity around barns and cowsheds. An oxcart loaded with cabbages finally came in sight, crawling up the road, but the man with the ox-goad was shorter than Piotr. The only other visible moving objects were a small band of grazing sheep, until a Security car came by.
It was not travelling as fast as the rokos ordinarily travelled. When it drew abreast of the ox-cart, its driver pulled sharply in front of the oxen to stop the cart while questions were asked and answered. The ox-driver, an old man with white hair, took off his skull-cap and hunched his shoulders while he was questioned, the picture of humble subjection to Authority. He pointed eagerly in the direction from which both he and the rokos had come. The car turned around and went back, fast. When it was gone, the peasant spat after it, then burst into laughter that kept him happy for several minutes. I could see him wag his head and chuckle with enjoyment at his private joke.
A truck went by next, then a couple of farm wagons. After the colorful bustle of market day, the road was relatively deserted. It would have been easy to spot a small herd of goats on it from a distance. I knew, with a mixture of fear and satisfaction, that we had abandoned the goats barely in time when a small scout plane flew over, low, following the line of the road westward.
My fear was partly for Piotr, who had the goats on his hands. But I realized immediately that the evidence of the still-scouting plane meant that he must have got them safely out of sight. I liked to remember that his religion prevented him from killing an animal. Somewhere the goats would be reaping a reward in a field of tall grass, without sticks flailing at their tired rumps.
After the plane passed, there was nothing to watch except the grazing herd of sheep. They cropped their way along the bases of the hedgerows where long grass grew among gnarled roots, beyond the reach of plough or reaper.
Some Party statistician once calculated that nearly ten per cent of all arable land in the Republic was wasted on hedgerows and their flanks of useless, untillable ground. Because of the country’s desperate need for food, all possible threats, bribes, punishments, wheedlings, and propaganda was brought to bear in favor of a farm collectivization program that would make the hedgerows unnecessary. Among the most effective propaganda weapons were teams of young girls, recruited from the youngest and most fanatic Party organizations, who toured the countryside in trucks singing Party songs, preaching the benefits of collectivization wherever they could find an audience and, by their frank display of themselves, holding the unwilling attention even of peasants who were bitterly opposed to the whole program. To most peasant men, a woman above the age of twelve in public was a shapeless, sexless creature in baggy pants, baggy blouse and yashmak, an unapproachable bundle with feet, hands, and eyes, nothing else. The girls of the propaganda teams wore sandals, shorts, and open-necked shirts, with nothing beneath the shirts except themselves and this fact made obvious. They were picked as much for their physical attractions as for their devotion to the Party, and indoctrinated with the idea that they could do no wrong as long as what they did advanced The Cause. The nature of their job, its lack of restraint and freedom from hard work, attracted many girls who, without a Cause which was its own reward and in a different society, would have performed substantially the same job for pay on a side-show barker’s platform or burlesque runway, wearing even sketchier costumes. The girls of the propaganda teams were no different. Many even believed that public exposure of their legs and breasts to gawping peasants was a sacred duty. Others joined in to sing the Party songs because they enjoyed riding around the country and singing more than they did compulsory labor on a road gang or farm.
A truck-load of the singers came along the road while I waited for Piotr. Six or eight girls standing in the bouncy truck body were chanting ‘Brotherhood and Unity’. The truck, an old stake-body with a plume of steam boiling from its radiator, wore the Red Star painted on its engine hood, the Party flag flapping from a fender. The flag was a passport on any road they chose to travel. They could turn off at any farm, disrupt the farm operations to call a meeting, stay as long as they liked, sing, flirt, preach, romp in the hay with the farmhands if they chose, and report dangerous anti-collective attitudes afterwards if the romps did not produce converts. Peasant farmers saw them coming with mixed feelings of uneasy delight and fear. But no peasant ever felt as I did when the truck turned off on the cart-track that led to our hideout.
I bolted out of the hedgerow like a rabbit, on the side away from the cart-track. The hedge hid me from the truck, although I could estimate its speed by the noise it made coming up the bumpy track, the squeaks of the truck body and the grind of its old motor adding a background to the song. I couldn’t outrun them. But I had a head start, and I got within sight of the farmhouse before they did.
Cora sat in the sun by the door. She had taken a bath, or at least washed her hair. She had her head bent, fluffing her hair with her fingers. She heard the singing and looked up as I sprinted into view, still hidden from the truck by the hedge. I waved to her to duck, get out of sight. She had the good sense to disappear behind the farmhouse instead of into it.
I couldn’t make the farmhouse or the cowshed before the truck came round the end of the hedgerow, and I didn’t want to be caught running from them. I had a three-day stubble of beard, the right clothes, plenty of dirt on my face and hands. With luck, if I kept my mouth sullenly shut, I might get by as a burned-out peasant who had sneaked home to see what he could restore of a ruined farm. I would be reported, but I might not be grabbed. It was a chance.
I faced the truck, hangdog, as it bore down on me. The girls were
still singing. The plume of steam from the radiator spattered in my face before the truck squealed to a stop, its fender with the Party flag almost nudging my knee. Piotr put his bearded face out of the window of the driver’s seat and said, “Good-day, comrade. Will you join us in Brotherhood and Unity?”
Cora and I never did identify all the girls by name. There was Karsta, a big, cheerful cow with a baritone voice; Fatma, a dark-skinned beauty; and Sidik, who had slanting, wicked eyes and a way of moving her round hips when she walked that should have been enough in itself to collectivize a country. The other five – there were eight in the team, all told – were Sonjas and Marjas and Turus; all pretty, all dedicated, all behaving as if the deadly gamble in which they were risking themselves was a picnic.
“The rokos couldn’t see through us in a thousand years,” Piotr told me confidently. He had been giving orders like a top sergeant since their arrival, hurrying us into action first and saving explanations for later. Cora had gone into the farmhouse with a couple of the girls to change into the clothes they had brought her. I already wore a pair of grease-stained mechanic’s overalls, with a wrench sagging one hip pocket. Piotr was dressed as I was, except for the wrench.
“First, they will be on watch for the goats. We have no goats. Only lambs.” He chuckled. “Second, they will expect the yashmak and pantaloons. We hide your woman instead in a forest of bare arms and legs and exposed faces. Third, you are no longer a peasant but a mechanic to keep this – this—-” He gestured wordlessly at the truck. “I hope you know more about machinery than I do, gospod. I have been promised that it will break down every seven kilometers, regularly. It has pedals instead of a gearshift, and the power of a canary bird. I never saw anything like it before.”
I had. It was a model-T Ford, older than he was. As a high-school kid I had taken model-Ts apart and put them together with a screwdriver and a pair of pliers.
I said, “I can keep it going if it doesn’t fall apart entirely. Where did you get it?”
“From the Party.”
“And the girls?”
“Also from the Party.”
He smiled.
I said, “I don’t want to ask questions any more than you do, but we ought to know enough so that we won’t say the wrong thing in front of them. If they are from the Party why are they helping two fugitives from the Party?”
“They are from the Party, not for it. We have traitors in our organization. The Party has more traitors in its own. They ask us to join them. In this part of the country we have a majority in the Party as well as in the anti-Party. It is very helpful.”
He smiled again.
“All right. Only one more question. Do the girls know what they are risking?”
“They know there is a certain danger, yes. They are all volunteers. I could have had another dozen.” He added, as an afterthought, “I told them that you had helped Djakovo escape the rokos.”
“We didn’t.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. We need help, but we don’t want to buy it that way.”
“Gospod” – he put his big hand lightly on my shoulder – “you can’t buy our help. We offer it because we believe in certain things. The news which you brought has put new life in all of us. We want to carry on Djakovo’s work. He would have helped you. If a little lie makes it easier for me to help you, what does it matter?”
“The girls should know the truth.”
He shook his head.
“They should know as little of the truth as possible. It’s their protection. Tonight we will take shelter with people who will not even know that we are not what we seem to be. Don’t you see how useless it would be for the rokos to try to beat information about you out of them, or about them out of you?”
I couldn’t argue.
Cora came out of the farmhouse dressed in shorts and shirt that were identical with those worn by the rest of the sorority. She wore sandals like theirs, and the homespun socks I had bought for her hid her bandaged heels. She fitted into the groups without any noticeable mark of distinction except that her arms and legs were whiter than the suntanned skins of the other girls. Above the line of the yashmak she was sunburned, below it pale. They were small points, but Piotr commented on them.
Fatma, the pretty, dark girl, was in charge of the team. She said, “It doesn’t matter. She’s a new convert. We all looked that way when we began. Besides, they never look at our faces.” She opened the neck of Cora’s shirt until Cora blushed bright pink. “There!”
The other girls laughed. Karsta, the big one, boomed, “Look at me!” and swelled her huge bosom. “Down with theyashmak! Away with the haremlik! Equality of sex, equality of opportunity, equality of reward!”
“Equality of chest measurement!” another girl shouted. Even Cora laughed. It was all very gay and frivolous and jolly until we heard, and saw, the scout plane coming back from the west, still low. It wasn’t on a course that would bring it near us, but the laughter died. The girls at least knew what the plane meant.
They gave us names. Gospod and gospodična weren’t used in the Party, only ‘comrade’, and ‘comrade’ wasn’t enough for a roll-call if we had to take one. Cora became Zara, I was Kasper. After that was settled we had a few words together while Piotr put his flock at the job of gathering up everything in sight that might reveal our stop at the ruined farm. He dug a hole to bury it; clothes, blankets, everything. He was not as contemptuous of the rokos’ trailing ability as he was of their intelligence. He made a Slavic crack about what unusual smellers they were, the same kind of a pun that can be made in English. It had all the girls giggling again.
Except Cora. She was upset by their lightheartedness.
“He’s told them nothing, Jess. They haven’t any idea of the chance they’re taking. They think it’s all a lark.”
“He wants it that way.”
“It isn’t fair to them.”
“That’s what I thought. He sold me the idea that ignorance is their best protection.”
“Maybe. But — oh, I don’t like it! When it was just us, you and I, we couldn’t harm anybody but ourselves. Now, with all these – children – helping us, risking themselves without even knowing what it is they are risking or how dangerous we are – I feel like a secret leper! I can’t help it.”
“You couldn’t keep leprosy a secret in those clothes, if you had it.”
She reddened, pulling her shirtfront together. “Don’t joke. It isn’t funny.”
“I know it isn’t. We’ve got to try to make it funny. We’ve got to sing, and laugh, and shout Party slogans, and smile at the rokos when they stop us. It’s going to be a lot harder than skulking along with our faces hidden. You’ll have to ride in the back with the girls while I’m up front with Piotr, so we won’t have much chance to talk again, or pat each other on the back when we need a pat. In a pinch, when – if – things are tough – if it helps to know – I guess we’ve both learned a lot about each other in the last couple of days – things we didn’t see before—”
It was hard for me to get it out.
She looked at me gravely.
“I think it would help if I knew what you’re trying to say, Jess.”
“I’m trying to say that if I have to go down the drain with anyone, for any reason, I’m proud to do it in good company. That isn’t quite what I mean, either, but—-”
“I know what you mean.” She put out her hand to touch mine, for only a second. Her eyes were shiny. “It’s the nicest compliment anybody ever paid me. I’d rather have heard that from you than from anybody I know.”
Piotr called us to interrupt what had become an embarrassing moment. The girls were climbing into the back of the truck. Cora climbed in with them. I wound the crank of the shaky old motor while Piotr jiggled the spark lever. Karsta hit a baritone key, the other girls picked up the chord, and we bumped away to the rousing tune of the ‘Internationale’: Arise, ye prisoners of starvation; arise, ye wretc
hed of the earth.
The truck quit on a steep climb ten miles down the highway, after spluttering for a while. I blocked the wheels and checked the petrol in the tank under the seat. As I had expected, the petrol level was too low for the old-fashioned gravity feed to work going up hill. Piotr had a couple of jerry-cans of petrol in reserve, which got us moving again. He was impressed by the way I had put my finger on the trouble at first guess. Another time, when the motor conked out in mid-rattle without even a splutter, I gave the loose spark coils a kick – after twenty-five years it was still instinctive to try that first – and got the motor started again while we were still rolling. Piotr shook his head in admiring awe. He thought I was a mechanical genius.
We ran into a road-block at the first town. The place was almost a city, with seven or eight minarets, a mill or factory of some kind belching smoke, a railroad station, and an Army post. Conscripts were training in a field behind barbed wire. A squad of soldiers with bayoneted rifles was on hand at the road-block, taking orders from a pair of rokos.
The block had been set up at a bridge where the road crossed a river before entering town. When we got there a peasant with his wife, two small girls, and a farm cart loaded with household furniture was being shaken down.
Rokos never wasted time on formalities. They weren’t looking at papers, only faces. When they wanted to look behind a woman’s veil, they reached for her veil. The peasant’s wife stood silently in the road, her head bowed and her yashmak dangling, afraid to cover her face until she was given permission. Her husband, his mouth set tight to keep back words that would only win him a beating, was unloading the cart, taking piece after piece of furniture off as one of the rokos silently jerked a finger at it, until there was no possible hiding-place in the cart remaining unexposed. The two little girls stood by their mother, looking frightened.