by Alan Furst
The car had used up the cobblestone part of Uzhorod and was now on packed dirt. “Gentlemen,” Mierczak said. “We’re going to Hungary, according to the innkeeper. But, I must ask if you have a particular place in mind. Or maybe it’s just ‘Hungary.’ If that’s how it is, I perfectly understand, believe me.”
“Could we go to Michal’an?”
“We could. It’s nice and quiet there, as a rule.”
Morath waited. “But …?”
“But even quieter in Zahony.”
“Zahony, then.”
Mierczak nodded. A few minutes later, he turned a sharp corner onto a farm road and shifted down to second gear. It sounded like he’d swung an iron bar against a bathtub. They bumped along the road for a time, twenty miles an hour, maybe, until they had to slow down and work their way around a horse cart.
“What’s it like there?”
“Zahony?”
“Yes.”
“The usual. Small customs post. A guard, if he’s awake. Not any traffic, to speak of. These days, most people stay where they are.”
“I imagine we can pick up a train there. For Debrecen, I guess, where we can catch the express.”
Pavlo kicked the back of the seat. At first, Morath couldn’t believe he’d done it. He almost turned around and said something, then didn’t.
“I’m sure there’s a train from Zahony,” Mierczak said.
They drove south in the last of the daylight, the afternoon fading away to a long, languid dusk. Staring out the window, Morath had a sudden sense of home, of knowing where he was. The sky was filled with torn cloud, tinted red by the sunset over the Carpathian foothills, empty fields stretched away from the little road, boundary lines marked by groves of birch and poplar. The land turned to wild meadow, where the winter grass hissed and swayed in the evening wind. It was very beautiful, very lost. These blissful, bloodsoaked valleys, he thought.
A tiny village, then another. It was dark now, cloud covered the moon, and spring mist rose from the rivers. Midway through a long, slow curve, they caught sight of the bridge over the Tisza and the Zahony border station. Pavlo shouted, “Stop.” Mierczak stamped on the brake as Pavlo hung over the top of the seat and punched the button that turned off the lights. “The bitch,” he said, his voice ragged with fury. He was breathing hard, Morath could hear him.
In the distance they could see two khaki-colored trucks, river fog drifting through the beams of their lights, and a number of silhouettes, possibly soldiers, moving about. In the car it was very quiet, the idling engine a low rumble, the smell of gasoline strong in the air.
“How can you be sure it was her?” Morath asked.
Pavlo didn’t answer.
“Maybe they are just there,” Mierczak said.
“No,” Pavlo said. For a time, they watched the trucks and the soldiers. “It’s my fault. I knew what to do, I just didn’t do it.”
Morath thought the best thing would be to drive south to Berezhovo, find a rooming house for a day or two, and take a train into Hungary. Or, maybe better, drive west into the Slovakian part of the country-away from Ruthenia, land of too many borders-and then take the train.
“You think they saw our lights?” Mierczak said. He swallowed once, then again.
“Just turn around and get out of here,” Pavlo said.
Mierczak hesitated. He hadn’t done anything wrong, but if he ran away, that changed.
“Now,” Pavlo said.
Reluctantly, Mierczak yanked the gearshift into reverse and got the car turned around. He drove a little way in the darkness, then turned the lights back on. Pavlo watched through the rear window until the border post disappeared around the curve. “They’re staying put,” he said.
“How far is it to Berezhovo?” Morath said. “Maybe the best thing now is to take the train.”
“An hour. A little more at night.”
“I’m not getting on a train,” Pavlo said. “If your papers don’t work, you’re trapped.”
Stay here, then.
“Is there another way across?” Pavlo said.
Mierczak thought it over. “There’s a footbridge, outside the village of Vezlovo. It’s used at night, sometimes.”
“By who?”
“Certain families-for avoiding the import duties. A trade in cigarettes, mostly, or vodka.”
Pavlo stared, couldn’t believe what he’d heard. “So why didn’t you take us there in the first place?”
“We didn’t ask him to do that,” Morath said. Even in the cool night air, Pavlo was sweating. Morath could smell it.
“You have to go through a forest,” Mierczak said.
Morath sighed, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. “At least we can take a look,” he said. Maybe the trucks just happened to be there. He was wearing a sweater, a tweed jacket, and flannels-dressed for a country hotel and a train. Now he was going to have to crawl around in the woods.
They drove for an hour, the moon rose. There were no other cars on the road. The land, field and meadow, was dark, empty. At last they came upon a village-a dozen log houses at the edge of the road, windows lit by oil lamps. A few sheds and barns. The dogs barked at them as they went past. “It’s not far from here,” Mierczak said, squinting as he tried to peer into the night. The car’s headlights gave off a dull amber glow. Just as the countryside turned to forest, Mierczak stopped the car, got out, and walked up the road. A minute later, he returned. He was grinning again. “Believe in miracles,” he said. “I found it.”
They left the car, Morath carrying a satchel, Pavlo with his briefcase, and the three of them started walking. The silence was immense, there was only the wind and the sound of their footsteps on the dirt road.
“It’s right there,” Mierczak said.
Morath stared, then saw a path in the underbrush between two towering beech trees.
“About a kilometer or so,” Mierczak said. “You’ll hear the river.”
Morath opened his wallet and began to count out hundred-koruna notes.
“That’s very generous of you,” Mierczak said.
“Would you agree to wait here?” Morath asked him. “Maybe forty minutes. Just in case.”
Mierczak nodded. “Good luck, gentlemen,” he said, clearly relieved. He hadn’t realized what he was getting himself into-the cash in his pocket proved that he’d been right to be scared. He waved as they walked into the forest, glad to see them go.
Mierczak was right, Morath thought. Almost from the moment they entered the forest they could hear the river, hidden, but not far away. Water dripped from the bare branches of the trees, the earth was soft and spongy underfoot. They walked for what seemed like a long time, then got their first view of the Tisza. About a hundred yards wide and running at spring flood, heavy and gray in the darkness, with plumes of white foam where the water surged around a rock or a snag.
“And where is this bridge?” Pavlo said. This supposed bridge.
Morath nodded his head-just up the path. They walked for another ten minutes, then he saw a dry root at the foot of a tree, sat down, gave Pavlo a cigarette and lit one for himself. Balto, they were called, he’d bought them in Uzhorod.
“Lived in Paris a long time?” Pavlo asked.
“A long time.”
“I can see that.”
Morath smoked his cigarette.
“You seem to forget how life goes, over here.”
“Take it easy,” Morath said. “We’ll be in Hungary soon enough. Find a tavern, have something to eat.”
Pavlo laughed. “You don’t believe the Pole is going to wait for us, do you?”
Morath looked at his watch. “He’s there.”
Pavlo gave Morath a sorrowful look. “Not for long. He’ll be going home to his wife any minute now. And on the way he’ll stop and have a word with the police.”
“Calm down,” Morath said.
“Over here, it’s about one thing, and one thing only. And that is money.”
Morath shr
ugged.
Pavlo stood. “I’ll be right back,” he said.
“What are you doing?”
“A few minutes,” he said, over his shoulder.
Christ! Morath heard him for a minute or so, heading back the way they’d come, then it was quiet. Maybe he’d gone, really gone. Or he was going back to check on Mierczak, which made no sense at all. Well, he must have value to somebody. When Morath was growing up, his mother went to Mass every day. She often told him that all people were good, it was just that some of them had lost their way.
Morath stared up at the tops of the trees. The moon was in and out, a pale slice among the clouds. A long time since he’d been in a forest. This was an old one, probably part of a huge estate. Prince Esterhazy had three hundred thousand acres in Hungary, with eleven thousand people in seventeen villages. Not so unusual, in this part of the world. The nobleman who owned this property no doubt intended his grandchildren to cut the slow-growing hardwood, mostly oak and beech.
It occurred to Morath that, when all was said and done, he hadn’t actually lied to the Czech customs officer. He’d said he was going to look at woodland; well, here he was, looking at it. In the distance, two pops, and, a moment later, a third.
When Pavlo returned, he said only, “Well, we should be getting on our way.” What needed to be done was done, why talk about it. The two of them walked in silence, and, a few minutes later, they saw the bridge. A narrow, rickety old thing, the water sucked into deep eddies around the wooden poles that held it up, the surface maybe ten feet below the walkway. As Morath watched the bridge, it moved. The far end was sharp against the sky-a broken shard of railing thrust out toward the Hungarian side of the river. And, by moonlight, he could just make out the blackened char pattern on the wood, where the part that had been set on fire-or dynamited, or whatever it was-had fallen into the water.
Morath was already so sickened inside at what Pavlo had done that he hardly cared. He’d seen it in the war, a dozen times, maybe more, and it brought always the same words, never spoken aloud. Pointless was the important one, the rest never mattered that much. Pointless, pointless. As though anything in the world might happen as long as somebody, somewhere, could see the point of it. A rather black joke, he’d thought at the time. The columns riding through the smoking villages of Galicia, a cavalry officer saying pointless to himself.
“They’ll have a way to get across,” Pavlo said.
“What?”
“The people who go back and forth across the border at night. Will have a way to do it.”
He was probably right, Morath thought. A boat, another bridge, something. They worked their way toward the bank of the river, were within a few meters of it when they heard the voice. A command. In Russian, or maybe Ukrainian. Morath didn’t speak the language but, even so, the intention was clear and he started to stand up. Pavlo grabbed him by the shoulder and forced him down, into the high reeds along the riverbank. “Don’t do it,” Pavlo whispered.
Again the voice, mock polite, wheedling. We wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Pavlo tapped his lips with his forefinger.
Morath pointed behind them, at the relative safety of the forest. Pavlo thought it over, and nodded. When they started to crawl backward, somebody shot at them. A yellow spark in the woods, a report that flattened out over the water. Then a shout in Russian, followed, rather thoughtfully, by a version in Hungarian, fuck you, stand up being the general idea, followed by a snicker.
Pavlo picked up a stone and threw it at them. At least two guns responded. Then a silence, then the sound of somebody lurching through the underbrush, a crash, an oath, and a raucous bellow that passed for laughter.
Morath never saw where it came from-the briefcase? — but a heavy, steel-colored revolver appeared in Pavlo’s hand and he squeezed off a round in the general direction of the noise.
That wasn’t funny. That was unconscionably rude. Somebody screamed at them, and Morath and Pavlo went flat as a fusillade whizzed over the reeds. Morath made a hand sign, stay still. Pavlo nodded, he agreed. From the darkness, a challenge-come out and fight, you cowards. Followed by shouted dialogue between two, then three voices. All of them drunk, mean, and very angry.
But that was it. Pavlo’s single shot had made an eloquent statement, had altered the social contract: sorry, no free killing tonight. It took a long time, thirty minutes, of yelling, shooting, and what Morath guessed were meant to be intolerable insults. Still, Pavlo and Morath managed to tolerate them, and, when the gang went away, knew enough to wait the requisite fifteen minutes for the final shot, when they sent somebody back to ruin the victory celebration.
4:40 A.M. The light pearl gray. The best moment to see and not to be easily seen. Morath, wet and cold, could hear birds singing on the Hungarian side of the river. He and Pavlo had walked upstream for a half hour, soaked by the heavy mist, looking for a boat or another way across, found nothing, and returned to the bridge.
“Whatever they use, they’ve hidden it,” Pavlo said.
Morath agreed. And this was not the morning for two strangers to walk into an isolated village. The Czech police would be interested in the murder of a Polish taxi driver, the Ukrainian gang more than curious to know who’d been shooting at them the night before. “Can you swim?” Morath said.
Very slowly, Pavlo shook his head.
Morath was a strong swimmer, and this would not be the first time he’d been in a fast river. He’d done it in his teens, with daring friends. Jumped into spring current holding a piece of log, floated downstream until he could fight his way to the far shore. But, this time of year, you had only fifteen minutes. He’d seen that too, during the war, in the Bzura and the Dniester. First an agonized grimace at the cold, next a silly smile, then death.
Morath would take his chances; the problem was what to do with Pavlo. It didn’t matter what he felt-he had to get him across. Strange, though, a lot of folklore on this issue. Endless foxes and roosters and frogs and tigers and priests and rabbis. A river to be crossed-why was it always the cunning one that couldn’t swim?
And there weren’t any logs. Maybe they could break off a piece of the burnt railing, but they’d know that only when they got to the far end of the bridge. Morath decided to abandon his satchel. He was sorry to lose the copy of Bartha, he would find a way to replace it. For the rest, razor and socks and shirt, good-bye. The Ukrainians could have it. As for Pavlo, he unbuckled his belt and looped it through the handle of the briefcase. “Put your passport in your mouth,” Morath said.
“And money?”
“Money dries.”
Flat on his belly, Morath worked his way across the bridge. He could hear the water as it rushed past, ten feet below, could feel it-the damp, chill air that rose from heavy current. He did not look back, Pavlo would either find the nerve to do this or he wouldn’t. Crawling over the weathered planks, he realized that a lot more of it had burned than was evident from the shore. It smelled like old fire, and his lamb’s-wool sweater from a shop on the rue de la Paix-“Not that green, Nicky, this green”-already caked with mud, was now smeared with charcoal.
Long before he reached the end, he stopped. The support poles had burned, part of the way anyhow, leaving black sticks to hold up the bridge. Morath realized he would be going into the river a little earlier than he’d planned. The bridge trembled and swayed each time he moved, so he signaled back to Pavlo to stay where he was and went ahead on his own.
He reached a bad place, hung on, felt himself start to sweat in the cold air. Would it be better to dive in here? No, it was a long way to the other shore. He waited for the bridge to stop wobbling, then curled his fingers around the edge of the next board and slid forward. Waited, reached out, pulled, and slid. Resting his face against the wood, he saw a pair of white egrets flying toward him, just above the water, then heard the beating of their wings as they passed above him.
By the time he reached the end-or as close as he could get to it, beyond a certain po
int the wood was so burned away it wouldn’t hold a cat-he had to take a minute to catch his breath. He motioned for Pavlo to come along. As he waited, he heard voices over the water. He turned, saw two women, black skirts held above their knees, standing in the river shallows and staring at him.
When Pavlo arrived, they studied the far bank-a good forty yards away. In the growing daylight, the water was brown with earth swept down from the mountain streams. Lying next to him, Pavlo was the color of chalk.
“Take off your tie,” Morath said.
Pavlo hesitated, then, reluctantly, pulled the knot apart.
“I’m going into the water, you follow. You hold on to one end of the tie, I’ll swim across and pull you with me. You do the best you can-kick your feet, paddle with your free arm. We’ll manage.”
Pavlo nodded.
Morath looked down at the water, ten feet below him, dark and swirling. The far shore seemed a long distance away, but at least the bank was low.
“Wait a minute,” Pavlo said.
“Yes?”
But there was nothing to say, he just didn’t want to go into the water.
“We’ll be fine,” Morath said. He decided to try for the next pole, something he could hang on to while he coaxed Pavlo to jump in after him. He pulled himself along, felt the planks beneath him quiver, then shift. He swore, heard a beam snap, was turned on his side and dropped. He fought the air, then landed with a shock that knocked him senseless. It wasn’t the icy jolt of the water, he was waiting for that. It was the rock. Smooth and dark, about two feet below the surface. Morath found himself on his hands and knees, no pain yet but he could feel it coming, the river churning around him. Hidden causeway. The oldest trick in the world.
Pavlo came crawling toward him, tie held in his hand, passport clenched in his teeth, steel spectacles askew, and laughing.
They walked to Zahony. Following first the river, then a cart track through the woods that turned into a road. It took all morning but they didn’t care. Pavlo was pleased not to be drowned, and his money wasn’t all that wet-he peeled the bills apart, Austrian, Czech, French, blew gently on the various kings and saints, then put it away in his briefcase.