Marc stamped his feet on the threshold and came back in.
“How long will it take him?”
“He knows these mountains. He shouldn’t get lost. He’ll get there before night.”
“What did you write in your message?”
“I said we’re here but we can’t go any farther.”
The little girls were playing at piling up the cookies to make castles, laughing when they tumbled down.
“Do you think the others will go by without finding us?”
“We’ll find out soon enough.”
Marc, too, had searched in the boxes of clothes and found what he wanted: a sort of long green raincoat that went down to his feet. He put it on over his fleece jacket, pulled a black beanie onto his head, and put the pistol in his pocket. He went out, took the binoculars from the dashboard, and set off into the woods to find an open spot with a view onto the road below. While he was settling in, several military planes flew overhead. He had no better luck than the previous times trying to determine where they came from.
2
The snow that had fallen during the night made it hard to see the passage clearly. It was not as narrow now, but even to make it across the section they had blasted the day before, it was still a matter of inches.
“I’ll drive,” said Vauthier.
“But you’ve never driven this truck.”
“Don’t you bother about that. Go ahead and guide me.”
Lionel reluctantly agreed. But in the end the truck made it across the landslide without a hitch, even more easily than Vauthier had anticipated.
Two problems remained: there was the time they had lost, and which had to be made up. And there was Alex, still lying on the bunk in the back, slowly recovering. Once he had driven over the tricky section, Vauthier let Lionel in, then went on driving.
“It’s not really such a good idea,” said Lionel. “You don’t have a license for driving trucks.”
Vauthier looked scornfully at his neighbor.
“You are unbelievable! You really think the police are checking licenses around here?”
“No, but still, there is the insurance . . . ”
Lionel was clinging to details to not confront the terrifying reality: they had left all legality behind. As far as the association was concerned, this convoy had gone mad. The vehicles were no longer following each other, but in the middle of a chase on a mountain road; half of the load had been thrown out; they had an injured man; there were weapons within reach; and in one of the trucks was a load of dynamite. There was no possible justification for any of this, not to mention what would happen if they managed to catch up with Marc. And now he didn’t even have anything left to smoke to calm himself down! He’d underestimated his supply of weed because he hadn’t planned on such a long journey. The joints he had smoked the day before had depleted the last of his stock. He was completely disoriented, with no energy to stand up to Vauthier about anything—to stand up to anybody, for that matter. He curled up in the corner of the seat and kept his eyes fixed on the snow that was coming down thicker than ever.
He didn’t realize he had fallen asleep. When Vauthier woke him up, he had no idea of the time.
“Take the wheel. I’ve been driving for three hours.”
Lionel got out, shivering, walked around, and drove on. Beside him, Vauthier fell asleep almost immediately.
The road was monotonous and the thick blanket of snow made it impossible to focus on anything precise. Lionel drove in a half-sleep. He daydreamed, and every thought that came to him was unpleasant. He wondered what he had done to deserve this—he was a man who had always respected procedure, who was known at headquarters for his punctiliousness. It had to be the fault of that bitch Maud. What had gotten into him, to go and get infatuated with her? For two years in Lyon he’d had the same girlfriend; they’d split up when he left on his mission to Africa. If he hadn’t been so stupid, he could have gotten back together with her on his return. But instead, he began to enjoy his freedom. He enjoyed the position of strength that his status as head of mission gave him. Several girls had demonstrated they liked it. It was as if he were getting his revenge on life by charming young women who were fascinated by relief work. And he thought it would be the same thing with Maud. Instead, she had humiliated him, and look where he’d ended up . . .
Here and there on the white carpet of road he caught glimpses of the other truck’s tire tracks. They were getting harder and harder to see in the thick snow, and then they disappeared altogether over long stretches. In the beginning he paid attention, but before long he stopped thinking about it. He even avoided thinking about it. The prospect of catching up with the others was so terrifying that it was better to banish it from his mind altogether.
At one point he thought he saw tracks leading off to the left, and vaguely wondered if it wasn’t the entrance to a side road. Only several minutes later did it occur to him that Marc’s truck might have headed that way. But he didn’t stop. His muddled thoughts were not up to making deductions, and the routine of driving was stronger than anything.
The road had started to go gradually downhill, and was narrower again. Lionel was concentrating all his attention on steering the truck along the difficult, dangerous route. Once again there was a threatening precipice to the right, and the slightest slip could be fatal.
Vauthier was snoring. From time to time when he was jarred by a bump in the road he opened his eyes, then went back to sleep. At one point he let out a long groan and the noise must have woken him up, because he sat up straight and rubbed his face.
“Where are we?”
“Nowhere new. But now we’re going downhill.”
They had lost quite a bit of altitude, and here and there between the clouds they could see a valley coming closer.
“There’s bound to be a checkpoint when we come down off the mountain,” said Vauthier. “Watch out.”
But for the time being they still couldn’t see anything, just the road, deeper and deeper under the snow.
“There are no tire tracks.”
“It’s been a while now.”
Vauthier raised his eyebrows.
“Did the tracks disappear all of a sudden?”
Lionel didn’t dare mention the turnoff he had noticed. And besides, had he really seen it? It was all so muddled. He wondered if he hadn’t dreamt it. What was the point of risking another argument with Vauthier?
“The snow is thicker and thicker,” was all he said.
Vauthier looked preoccupied but didn’t say anything.
They drove for two more hours, and saw nothing but whiteness everywhere, on the ground and in the air, heavy with snowflakes.
Until at last, thanks to a sudden patch of clear sky, in the distance at the entrance to a pine forest they could make out the humped mass of a checkpoint.
“There’s the checkpoint. We’ll find out what time they went through.”
They drove slowly up to the guard posts. Dark figures came out and stood across the road.
When the paramilitaries came over they could see the Croatian coat of arms stitched on their caps.
“Pomoć,” said Lionel, per usual.
He was forcing himself to smile but something inside him rebelled against his own introduction. He was increasingly unsure that he belonged to the humanitarian world. A convoy wrenched apart by hatred, and completely altered by its dangerous load, then this chase that could only end badly: it all made him feel that now the reassuring word pomoć was nothing but a falsehood. But the paramilitaries didn’t seem to notice or care. They calmly checked their documents, and went round the back to inspect the load. They didn’t even seem surprised to find an aid convoy using that mountain road. Their minds were numbed by the cold, and it slowed their gestures. Clearly they wanted to wind up the procedure as quickly as possible, so that they coul
d go nice and easy back to their place by the brazier inside the guard post.
“Ask them when the others went through,” whispered Vauthier.
“I don’t speak their language!”
“Use signs.”
Lionel questioned one of the paramilitaries, but he merely looked at him, not understanding.
“We’ll only get them worried, that’s all.”
“Wait.”
Vauthier got out of the truck and Lionel saw him gesticulating in the middle of a group of paramilitaries over by the guard post. He was rotating his arms round and round, imitating driving a truck, then he drew female curves in the air, no doubt to describe Maud. The soldiers laughed. As he wouldn’t give up, they spoke among themselves and in the end, they shook their heads. Vauthier repeated his gestures but still got the same negative answer. He came back to the truck, looking furious.
“They didn’t see them,” he said, climbing back in the cab.
“That’s impossible!”
“Go ask them yourself.”
The paramilitaries had lowered the rope blocking the road and were waiting for the truck to start up again. But Lionel didn’t move. He could sense Vauthier looking daggers at him.
“You really didn’t notice anything abnormal, with the tire tracks?”
“No.”
His “no” was so faint it could not possibly convince Vauthier. In a toneless voice he added, “There might have been one spot, with a track leading off to the left . . . ”
Alija was proud to be going down the mountain on his horse. He had really taken his mission to heart. It was a real mission, the way he imagined. Which meant that even if he didn’t understand the order, he was prepared to get himself killed to carry that mission out. His father had often talked to him about the war. He had been a soldier under Tito, because for him it was a perfectly natural destiny. The father of his father had also been a soldier. The land on which they lived had been forged with blood. Not recently, either, and the stories the father told his son often contained descriptions of battles he seemed to have taken part in himself, even though they had been fought . . . in the Middle Ages.
They were Muslim, and the religion itself was the result of a combat. Alija’s father was a follower of the history of the Bogomils, a persecuted sect who, when the Ottomans arrived, thought they would seize their chance to escape the vicious cycle of oppression and poverty. And since that time, it had never been a bed of roses.
Alija, with his strong horse and his khaki jacket, felt just like a warrior. The only thing he didn’t have was a weapon. But it was not the weapon that made the warrior, his father had often told him as much. It was danger. And he had all the danger he could hope for.
The mountain itself was rife with danger: cold and snow, landslides, precipices. Alija knew these dangers well. But as he drew nearer to the valley, he knew he would encounter other far less predictable forms of danger. There were armed gangs rampaging through the region; he might stumble on a local conflict; and above all, there was the unpredictability of the checkpoints. If he came upon fellow Bosniaks, everything would be fine. But how would the Croats treat him? And what would he do if, worse luck, he happened upon a checkpoint of Serbian Chetniks?
But for now, the snow blowing into his face, the rolling motion of the strong horse, and above all the military jacket keeping him warm made him feel both invisible and invincible.
The whiteness all around him made it hard to tell exactly, but Alija now got the impression that the light was beginning to fade. He kicked the horse’s sides impatiently, to make it move faster. Finally, after more than three hours, he could see the main road. As far as he knew—but everything could change so quickly in this war—the checkpoint for the mountain was higher up. Which meant he had gone by it without any trouble. Now he had to find the village, Lašva, where the foreigner had told him to go. Alija had told him he knew where it was. A soldier always has to obey orders. He wasn’t lying when he said he knew Lašva. It was a name he’d heard his father say, in his presence. But he’d never been there and he wasn’t altogether sure where it was. He would have to ask the way. Unfortunately, there was no one on the road. With this awful weather, it was unlikely any of the peasants would leave their houses. He was going to have to knock on someone’s door, if he found a house.
And he did find one, set all alone in a bend in the road. He’d already come very far down and the snow at this altitude had turned into a cold, heavy rain, streaming down his parka. Alija dismounted and knocked at the door. No one answered. Yet he could see a column of smoke coming from the chimney. He knocked again and spoke through the door. He didn’t want to give his name, which would indicate his ethnicity. He merely shouted that he was on his way to see his father, and was looking for the village of Lašva.
Several minutes went by. He was soaked, and beginning to lose patience. He was about to get back on his horse when a window cracked open. The face of a very old woman appeared in the space between the wooden shutters.
“Good day to you, grandmother,” he said, forcing a smile. “Can you tell me if I still have far to go to Lašva?”
The old woman’s head shook uncontrollably. Alija wondered if she was in her right mind. He repeated his question more slowly, more loudly. The woman turned to look at him but it seemed as if she still hadn’t seen him. Suddenly he realized she must be blind, and he would have to explain a bit more. He tried to make his voice sound confident, and he understood she must have taken him for an adult. He gave a more detailed explanation.
“I’m thirteen years old, grandmother, and I’m going to see my father there, because my little sisters are sick.”
The old lady blinked her wrinkled eyelids.
“You’re almost there,” she said at last, her voice weak and quavering. “Keep going for two kilometers and turn right. You’ll see Lašva if you walk a little farther. There’s a big barn at the entrance to the village.”
Alija thanked her and continued on his way.
He found the turnoff the old woman had described and went right. Daylight was ebbing and with the low cloud cover it was quickly getting dark. He urged his horse on but it refused to trot, swinging its neck and merely walking a bit faster.
Alija had no light, no way to signal his presence in the night. And he still could not see Lašva.
At one point he thought it might be better to stop and wait for dawn before approaching the checkpoint. But he couldn’t see where to take shelter. He was soaked and it was getting colder. If he had to he would burrow inside a ditch and wait. After all, it was also a soldier’s lot to submit to discomfort and deprivation. He was lost in these thoughts when in the ever-deepening obscurity he saw the dark mass of a building up ahead. It must be the big barn the old woman had mentioned. He kicked the horse’s sides with all his might. Every step of the animal’s hooves in the crepuscular silence thudded with a dull, damp sound. Alija saw the entrance to the village. He thought he could make out the shapes of vehicles parked on the side of the road, but there was no light. The curtain of rain, still falling steadily, obscured the landscape even more.
Suddenly, when he thought he had almost reached the entrance to the village, Alija saw a figure emerge from the shadows and seize the horse’s bit. And then five or six men surrounded him, with a gun pointed at him.
After night fell, Marc came back into the hut. He was gray with cold, his shoes were soaked, and his long coat had offered little protection against the damp, in the end, so as it melted the snow had penetrated his clothing. He went into a corner of the room to dry off and put on fresh clothes.
Maud had spent the day making the house more pleasant. She had brought in gas lamps from the truck; their light accentuated the dirt and disorder. She put away everything that was lying around, washed the floor and the table, and fed the fire in the chimney until the temperature in the room was almost warm. Then sh
e began making a good supper with the food still left in the load. At first the children looked at her, amazed, then began to help out with varying degrees of efficiency. The older girl even entrusted her with her most treasured possession: a little transistor radio on which they managed to get a faraway station playing a steady stream of what sounded like Greek music.
When Marc sat down at the table with them, the little girls, intimidated, did their best to serve the dishes that were bubbling on the stove. Maud even found a bottle of wine that had been hidden away in the truck. She poured Marc a full glass to warm him up.
It was a strange family atmosphere. Initially it had made Maud feel better, when she was still alone with the children. But Marc’s sudden and unexpected arrival made her uncomfortable. While she worked she had been thinking about him, doing it for him, yet once he was there, his presence destroyed her dream and, oddly, took away all her enthusiasm.
He had brought in with him his preoccupied, inscrutable air. The warmth, the music, the little girls’ cheerfulness seemed to have the opposite effect on him from what Maud had hoped. His hard gaze, his tense, almost aggressive expression were proof that he viewed all her efforts as useless, and any comfort as incongruous. His attitude was a brutal reminder of where they were, and of the critical situation they were in. And for Maud to feel a little moment of pride and happiness in transforming this house and restoring a little sweetness and joy into their lives suddenly seemed perfectly laughable, even ridiculous.
They ate in silence because the children, although they did not understand what was going on, could feel the tension, and did not speak. Marc answered Maud’s questions even more laconically than usual, monosyllabically. Did he see anything on the road? No. Did he think Alija had reached his destination? Maybe. What would they do the next day? Dunno.
She soon stopped questioning him, and a heavy silence fell. From time to time the cow in the stable next door stamped her hooves, making the glasses tremble. Once supper was over, Marc got up, took out a cigarette, and put his chair over by the window.
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