by David Dodge
“We ought to try it, just the same. It’s stupid just to wait.”
“It’s more stupid to charge off and run in circles just to be running. Let’s use our heads.”
We could still discuss rational behavior even when rationality had been done to death all around us. If we hadn’t panicked we might have been sitting there arguing, rationally, when the rokos came to take us.
Danitza brought panic with her. We heard it in the blasting horn of the Rolls-Royce coming across the city.
I don’t know how she got away from them. We never thought to ask. I suppose she was such small game, so unimportant, that Bulič didn’t bother about her during the first clean-up, any more than he bothered to have us picked up quickly. People like us could wait. Everything must have been subordinated to a quick strike at Yoreska and the Ministry, control of the loudspeakers, and the murder of Yoreska’s supporters. However it happened, Danitza escaped.
So did Yoreska, in his own fashion. He had poison in his stainless steel teeth. He bit down hard in the right way and at the right angle before they could smash the teeth out of his mouth. He was too old a hand at the game to have any doubts about the wisdom of the bite, or his chances of making a getaway. Danitza was just foolish enough to think it possible.
Why she came for Cora is another question nobody can answer. A need to share her terror, a need for a friend, possibly even out of gratitude for nylons and pink lipstick. One reason is as good as another. She came.
She was hysterical when we ran down to the street to meet her. Her face was tear-stained and distorted. She babbled,“Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!” and pulled at Cora’s sleeve, trying to get her into the car. When that didn’t work, she jumped out from behind the wheel and tried to pick Cora up by wrapping her arms around her waist, as a small girl tries to pick up a smaller girl who is reluctant to climb into the baby carriage. She was half again as big as Cora, and could have wrestled her into the Rolls-Royce if I hadn’t interfered. I was still rational.
“You can’t get away in this car,” I told her. “It’s known all over the country.”
“We have to go! We have to go!' She was still desperately trying to shove Cora past me where I stood in the way, but she babbled at Cora, not me. “Milo is dead! Bulič is coming for us! Don’t you understand? Bulič will find us unless we hurry! Bulič—”
She went on to say what Bulič would do, still struggling to push Cora into the car.
She had a fertile imagination, Danitza. I could have been wrong in believing that she didn’t have the sense to fearBulič while Yoreska was alive. If I wasn’t wrong, she had dreamed up some bad nightmares very quickly. They were ugly to listen to, nasty things that didn’t belong in any woman’s mind. They made me sick. They must have made Cora sicker. With the pistol shots banging all around in the night, the roko horns honking back and forth with their messages of death, and Danitza’s sobbing, terror-shrill voice reciting that awful list of indecencies that were Bulič in her mind, we panicked. Her terror licked us up as suddenly as a flame. Unreasoning, unthinking, as blindly as frightened animals, we jumped into the car and roared away behind a blast of the horn that would point the way we went as surely as a signpost.
I got some sense back after we passed the city limits. Danitza couldn’t drive without using the horn, even when I pointed out how dangerous it was. Her hands wouldn’t leave the button alone. I made her stop long enough for me to rip wires loose under the hood. We went on less noisily then, for several miles, but there was never the smallest chance that we could get as far as a border, or much chance that we would pass safely through the first town. The Rolls-Royce was too conspicuous.
I was still too panicky to try to reason further with Danitza when she wouldn’t abandon the car. I made her stop a second time, by turning off the ignition when she refused to slow down, and hauled Cora bodily into the road. It eases my conscience to remember that I tried hard to haul Danitza out the same way. She was too strong. She clung to the steering wheel, sobbing, begging Cora to come with her. It was a hard thing to leave her, but I wanted to live. When Cora held back I shoved her so hard away from the car that she fell, then slammed the door, caught her arm, pulled her to her feet and began to drag her with me across a ploughed field into darkness.
That was the way we came upon the goats, and Piotr and his girls, and a barn full of hay where I lay sleepless a fewkilometers from Free Territory, still trying to understand why it was that Cora no longer had to be dragged but followed willingly, and still unable to make up my mind where I should lead her.
I heard the speakers start in Skaro at five o’clock. I must have dozed off after that because later there was early morning light in the loft, and Piotr had disappeared. The girls were still at their end of the hay-mow, all huddled together in a tangle of bare arms and legs like a bunch of puppies, with Cora in the middle of the litter.
She woke instantly when I waded through the hay and leaned across Karsta’s big sprawled body to touch her shoulder. I could see that she had slept a lot better than I had. It made me unreasonably angry that she should have been able to sleep. Before she could ask any questions I said, “I haven’t decided yet. I want to talk to Piotr again, first. And I’ll give you a last chance to change your mind about leaving it up to me.”
“I don’t want a last chance.”
“You know it isn’t fair to shove the whole responsibility off on me, don’t you?”
“I suppose not.”
“Will you answer one question?”
“If I can.”
“Why, honesty, are you making me decide?”
“I gave you several reasons.”
“None of them was sensible.”
“I’m sorry. They’re the best I have.”
I went down the ladder, Still angry, still undecided.
Piotr was in the barnyard, praying. It was a fresh, clear morning, after the rain. The sun had just risen. There was running water from a horse trough for the ritual washing, and a patch of damp earth where he could kneel. Now he stood, bareheaded, bare-armed and barefooted, facing south. Drops of water glinted in his beard. He raised his palms towards Mecca, bowed, knelt, and touched his forehead humbly to the ground, then came up to his feet again and repeated the prostration. He did not speak aloud, but his lips moved as he recited his declaration of faith. He didn’t see me, and it was no longer necessary for me to talk to him.
I went back into the barn, leaving him in privacy with Allah.
I can’t explain exactly what that sight did to me, except to say that while it did not help me understand Cora it convinced me that neither she nor I could ever fit into Piotr’s world. It had nothing to do with religion. I had no particular religion of my own, and I didn’t give a damn if he worshipped devils. He was a good man; a kind man and a good friend. We couldn’t ask for a better one, but I knew we could never adapt to the world he lived in any more than fish can learn to breathe air. We were fish. We had to sink or swim in our own element. There was no question left in my mind.
I waited until he came into the bam, drops of water still gleaming on his beard. His eyes were calm. He smiled, seeing me there.
“Good morning, Kasper. Did you sleep well?”
'I didn’t sleep at all.”
“Have you decided?”
“We go. It’s difficult to explain—”
“Why bother to explain, then? Does she agree?”
He nodded at the loft.
“She will. She left it up to me.”
“But you have thought together?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know your minds and I will not press you further. Although—”
He shook his head. “Inshallah. We should start as soon as possible.”
“We can’t do anything in Skaro until after dark.”
“If we start now the girls and I can be a long way from Skaro by nightfall. Whatever happens, we will be better off. I’ll leave you in a safe place.”
“I’m
sorry. I’m not as thoughtful about you as you are about us, Piotr. I’ll go wake the girls.”
They were already awake; stretching, yawning, pulling straws from each other’s hair, pushing straws down the necks of each other’s shirt. They were as giggly and carefree as ever.
The lighthearted horseplay, in view of what lay ahead of Cora and me, fired up my still smoldering resentment at people who could sleep when I could not. I was pretty nervy that morning. I almost barked at them before I realized that they still didn’t know, and might never know, what we were up against, or how much they had done for us at what risk to themselves. It cooled me down without taking the edge off my nerviness.
I said, “We’re going to Skaro. Piotr says to get moving.”
It meant nothing to them. Skaro was another town, another place to sing and shout Party slogans. All Cora said was, “So early?”
“Piotr wants to cover as much ground as possible after he unloads us.”
“I see.”
That was the end of it. She never asked another question or offered a single reproach. Even when my decision proved to be as bad as it could have been.
We got away from the farm about an hour later, after a good breakfast, served to us by the tight-lipped farmer’s wife, who still disliked us. The farmer waved us off. The two lanky boys raced after the truck as far as the highway, loping along behind us like colts to shout goodbyes and come-back-agains. The girls shouted goodbye and threw teasing kisses until a bend in the road hid us from their two admirers.
They were singing when we drove into Skaro, picking up a tune that boomed from the loudspeakers. There was no road-block at the town gate, but the town was full of soldiers. The few civilians we saw were mostly dressed like Party members, men and women alike in shirts and shorts, or overalls similar to my own. Two peasants with a herd of goats wouldn’t have got fifty yards without being questioned. We, protected by Red Star, Party flag and Party hallelujahs, banged over cobblestones with traffic police clearing a way for us, bumped round the edge of town farthest from the river, up a steep hill which the old truck barely made grinding in low gear, and at last to a little graveyard on the very top of the hill, a pretty, overgrown, neglected plot of ground with a shattered stone wall crumbling around it and cypresses shading the graves.
The grave-markers were all old, all Moslem; elaborately carved and fluted stone with slanting lines of Arabic scriptchiseled in the rock. Most of them were tipped and some had tumbled over, but a few graves showed signs of recent care. I spoke to Piotr about the possibility that other visitors might come to the graveyard while we were there.
He said, “No one would risk publicly wasting time in a graveyard during the working day except a Party member, and Party members are not supposed to believe in things like a prayer for the dead, or flowers on a grave. If anyone comes, you will have to decide for yourself whether to hide or act defiant. But remember that anyone who finds you here will also be wondering whether to hide or act defiant, so measure them accordingly. You can see most of the town from here, and the river. It will help you to spend the day studying the route you intend to follow through town. I don’t know Skaro well myself or I would point a way out for you.”
He sounded almost apologetic.
“Piotr, I wish there were some way to tell you—”
He cut me off, quickly.
“Na, na. Do not try to say it.” He put one hand on my shoulder, the other on Cora’s, and smiled at us. “It is too hard a thing to say. I know what you feel. Say what you can for us when you are free and can speak out. And come back some day, when this—” he waved his arm in a wide sweep “is done with. It can’t last forever.”
“It can’t last forever,” Cora repeated. “Goodbye, Piotr.”
She held out her hand. He took it awkwardly, not sure what to do with female fingers, but when he shook my hand it was with a solid grip and a grin. That was the way we parted, without a word of thanks offered or asked.
The girls all embraced us; first Cora and then me. They still didn’t know what it was all about, or where we intended to go from there. They were as lighthearted as ever. Sidik, the tease, made her hug something for me to remember her by, from knees to neck, and climbed into the truck with a sly backward glance that said, “Try to forget me, if you can.” Karsta almost broke my ribs with a bear hug, and lifted Cora off the ground like a doll. The others were less demonstrative, although warm enough. Piotr herded them into the truck one by one as they finished squeezing us. I wound the crank of the Ford for the last time, the old motor popped to life, steam spurted from the radiator. Piotr waved once as they drove off.
The girls waved as long as they were in sight. We heard them singing afterwards. The song was ‘Brotherhood and Unity’.
Nobody came to the graveyard to disturb us, that last day. We spent most of the time lying side by side in the grass studying the town through a gap in the crumbling graveyard wall. We had no food, but I was screwed up so tight inside with nerves and lack of sleep that I couldn’t have eaten anyway, and I doubt that Cora felt any pangs of hunger.We had water from the night’s rainfall, in pools and puddles among the graves. We got by, although it was a long day.
In other circumstances Skaro would have been a town worth studying for its sheer beauty. It was a medieval fortress guarding the crossing of a swift, clear mountain river in a wooded setting of peculiar charm. Part of the town, a section that must have dated back to the fifteenth or sixteenth century, was built on a low rocky bluff which protruded into the river like a blunt prow, the strong current protecting it on three sides. A thick semi-circular wall had once guarded the fourth side of the bluff, but the town had grown beyond the wall, down the slope of the bluff and up and around our higher nearby hill, with a new circle of wall built to take in the enlargement and the old one torn down to make place for houses which marked where the old wall had stood by their shape and the relative recency of their construction, hundreds of years after their neighbors. From the exact prow of the bluff an extraordinarily graceful stone bridge sprang in a single shallow arch a hundred yards to the far bank of the river. The bridge was centuries old, so old that it had been built before the principle of a flat roadway on a supporting arch developed. The shallow arch was itself the roadway, wide enough for only a single vehicle except in the middle of the arch, where a diamond-shaped enlargement permitted, or had once permitted, a turn-out and passing-point. Now, a heavy steel-mesh gate barred the diagonal of the diamond. Barbed wire festooned the top of the gate and protruded in bristling loops beyond it on either side of the bridge parapets to snare a climber trying to work his way around the gate supports. Armed soldiers guarded the gate on our side. A further guard was posted at the near end of the bridge. At the other end, on the far shore, there was a small, lonely lath-and-tarpaper shack, with a stove pipe protruding from the roof, a bench beside the door and two bored, yawning American Army M.P.s sitting in the shade.
They were too far away for us to see their faces or hear them talk, but nobody could mistake the white leggings, the white belts, the white helmets and the arm brassards. Nor the trimness of their uniforms. Nor the snap and precision of the salutes when a jeep drove up with their relief and took them away. I could spot an American M.P. at a greater distance. Their post was about two hundred and fifty yards from our hilltop, the length of a good golf-drive.
I studied the direct approach for an hour before I said,
“The bridge is out. We wouldn’t stand a chance. How well do you swim?”
“Fairly well. I can stay afloat indefinitely.”
“I’m a pretty strong swimmer. If you run out of gas I’ll help you. What we have to do is get into the river at the right point and ride the current. It shoots out quite a way beyond the bluff before it turns. If we hit it right it will take us half-way across. After that we just keep paddling for the far bank while we float downstream.”
“Getting to the river will be difficult.”
“Did you th
ink it was going to be a lark?”
She turned her head to give me a quick look. I didn’t meet it. I was wound up like a clock spring.
There were two mosques in Skaro; one with a single minaret, one with twin minarets. Only the dome and minarets of the larger mosque were visible to us over its surrounding houses, but the nearer, smaller one stood in an open square facing the bridge, clear of other buildings. Its single minaret was unusually tall; pencil slim and graceful. We could see, and hear, the loudspeaker which hung from its balcony.
We saw something more when the guard was changed simultaneously on the bridge arch, the bridge head and elsewhere. Two soldiers went up into the minaret, two others came down.
“I suppose they’ll have a machine-gun up there, won’t they?” Cora said.
“Probably a searchlight as well. And the same set-up at the other mosque. And the waterfront patrolled. And all the streets blocked.”
“It’s not very encouraging, is it?”
“No.”
I was thinking, Suggest something! Pull your own weight! Come up with an idea instead of lying there waiting for me to work a miracle. I didn't ask for this command!
She went on waiting for me to work a miracle.
It would take no less than a miracle to get us to the river. As far as I could see after four or five hours of concentrated study, Skaro was as tightly guarded as a penitentiary. The guards weren’t always in evidence, but when the watches changed, which they did every few hours, a number of armed soldiers appeared and disappeared from sight. The concentration was particularly strong in an area that extended about twenty-five yards back from the river bank through the whole length of the town, from one extremity of the semicircular wall to the other. People in the streets avoided that zone carefully. We saw no one in civilian clothes enter it except one pair of obvious rokos, and they stopped to present their papers to a soldier who stepped out of a doorway as soon as they approached the quarantined area. The Army ran Skaro, with rifles, barbed wire, searchlights and machine-guns mounted in minarets to command a sweep of the bridge and river bank. Their counterparts in Free Territory were two bored American kids sitting on a bench, yawning because nothing came across the river to break their tedium. The gate on the bridge did not open all day.