They had disappeared.
For a moment she asked herself what she had done. Her eyes swelled with tears as she wondered how she could have let herself into such a mess. Then she remembered the automobile, and looked ahead at the other side of the canal. Through the pouring rains she saw on the road a lone automobile parked under a streetlamp.
She looked back at the empty street. The station was but a tiny glimmer in the distance. The steelworks had an eerie pasty glow. She was completely alone.
A flash of light sliced into the darkness and she felt the bridge rumble beneath her. Like a ghost emerging from nowhere, a train, black and sleek and full of dread, tore across the rails directly in front of her. She fell back, assaulted by the noise and wind and rain like bullets shot into her face. The stone towers creaked, and the metal girders groaned. Then, as fast as it had appeared, the train vanished into the consuming night.
She suppressed the tears that wanted to burst free. With a deep breath she began to feel her way along the bridge toward the other side. She now understood the boundary this river marked, the separation she had sensed of its two sides. On her side was the Regime, and a life of complete control. On the other side, where the automobile waited, was freedom.
Her pace quickened. The rain whipped against her harder than ever. She wondered how much time had passed since the telephone call, fearing it was nearly twenty minutes, feeling it was certainly an eternity. But the automobile was still there, her automobile, her freedom. She lowered her head and began to run.
The automobile was a Glas 1958 Goggomobil T-400 Coupe. The small vehicle was in perfect condition, as if it had never been driven before. She expected to find someone waiting with the vehicle for her—Zambullo, a driver, or even the police—but saw no one. She tried the door, which was not locked, and thrust herself in out of the rain.
She sighed, dripping. The heavy cold rain pelted the roof like machine gun fire. She did not know what to do. She looked around, wondering if the driver perhaps had left for a moment, to make a call, or to get a drink in a nearby tavern. She decided to wait, catch her breath, try to wring the water from her soaked clothes. She wiped the drops from her eyes and on the seat beside her placed the rucksack and the egg.
She considered that egg with surprise. She wondered at its meaning. She had kept it, even guarded it against harm as if it were a treasure, as if it were her child. She was certain it was nothing more than a country egg, at worst snatched from a local hennery. Something—the mystery, perhaps—kept her from tossing it in the trash, or dropping it into the river. But she had no idea what to do with it. Perhaps it had no meaning, no purpose beyond turning the perceived threat of the homeless man into the grace of a simple holy figure.
She had no such doubts about the book in her pack. This was her inspiration and her guide, her promise and her hope. This was, she realized with a shiver of fear, her life. In a way, The Book of Zambullo had given birth to her. She had gestated for twenty-odd years, warm and safe, and now she was finally coming out of her shell, emerging into a world she had never known before. The book had offered her hope of something better, and now it offered her some comfort from the unknown. Simply having it beside her gave her the courage to go forward.
The rain continued its assault.
She looked around outside but saw no activity. She leaned over and back, searching around inside the automobile for something, anything, for what she did not know. She glanced out the window and saw a figure wriggle between two buildings across the street. She watched, unmoving. The rain pounded on the automobile. Then in the water sheeting down the window she saw a lamppost wriggle, the street writhe, the two buildings shimmy together as if in some erotic dance. What she had thought was a man must only have been a trick of the rain and shadows and her already eager imagination.
She breathed deeply, steadily, wondering what to do. She knew at the very least she could not remain in the automobile, waiting for something that she did not know and which might never come. The only thing that approached with regular certainty was the twenty-minute deadline. As she dripped away the seconds approaching it, her hopes that someone friendly would come for the automobile faded into a dread that she was not free, that upon the deadline the police would come on their rounds and seize the vehicle and take her into custody.
She saw no one outside. The rain now seemed to slash at the automobile, and she shuddered to think of being exposed again, of trying to walk back to the station. And if the police were about to come on their rounds, and they found her alone scrambling across the bridge, soaked with the same water that now dripped from the seat of this automobile… With each moment it became more obvious that she was alone with her egg and her guidebook and she had no choice but to move.
She placed the two talismans at her feet and slid into the seat beside her. She reached forward and opened the tiny compartment in the dash. A single leaf of paper fell out, startling her. Then she picked it off the floor and examined it in the diffused light of the steelworks.
One side was clearly a piece of Regime propaganda, featuring a stylized drawing of a couple happily turning over to a fatherly official an illegal book which their one child had somehow come to possess. In return for this good deed to the benefit of their society, the official handed the child a lollipop in the shape of the head of General Jakupovic. On the back someone had scribbled a crude map. After only a moment she realized it showed her present location, and her next destination: a large red X some three hundred kilometers to the north.
She looked to her left again, but only the rain moved across her window. She looked to the right and saw huddled in a doorway opening on the steelyards a mass of men smoking cigarettes. She looked at the map again, and then around the automobile. She glanced in the open compartment, then stuck her hand inside. To her surprise, her fingers found a key.
She had no doubt the key would start the automobile. She had no doubt she was alone. No man would come to take her, as she had expected. Everything had been left for her to find her own way. The rain did not abate. The workers slowly filed back inside the factory. The night waited.
The automobile started immediately. Now her heart raced. The last time she had driven an automobile had been in Hammelburg four years earlier, before her transfer to the University of Angstadt and the bloody Bolfsumwälzung. She looked around quickly to see if anyone was approaching at the sound of the engine. She pulled into the empty rain-swept street. She drove a block and turned right, intending to head back in the direction from which she came, back in the direction Barungrad and home must lie. But she had driven only two minutes when she came upon a barrier in the road. She thought she could easily drive through it, and there appeared not to be any guards manning the blockade. But then she spotted the roll of barbed fencing that extended across the road and in either direction on both sides. It was an endless tangled mess of wire that absolutely prohibited any further progress. She was cut off and had nothing to do but continue forward.
When she reached the town again, she turned on an impulse back over the bridge. She drove past Grozny Station, then turned left, again in the direction of Barungrad, hoping these roads were yet open. But again, as she had feared but hoped against, further ahead the road was blocked with wood barricades and impenetrable wire.
She picked up the map and tried to orient herself. It was a map drawn by an unsteady hand, but showing in great detail the roads and landmarks surrounding the town on either side of the canal. But beyond this yawned a vast empty space, like the uncharted regions left blank by medieval cartographers where it was assumed monsters dwelled. Into this infinity a thin shaky line inscribed the route she was to follow.
She began to think she had made it through the worst and, even were it possible, there was no longer any reason to go back. She thought about how strong she had become, and how easy this journey had become, deciding she had only turned back toward her home as a reflex. If the road had not been blocked, she would have returned hom
e, lied down safely in bed, and immediately found her mind wandering back to this point, wondering what lay ahead, what she had missed, and desiring to these unexplored regions. She had become so different a person that she realized she could never go back and be the same.
She drove back over the bridge and turned on the road marked by the map. Her ultimate destination was indicated only with an X, and once again the image of a grand cathedral came to her mind. The cathedral destroyed, bombed and gutted by fire. Stone saints toppled and limbless, accusing her with their stares.
She settled down for the long lonely drive deeper into the storm, growing tired now as the night seemed to wear on, closer to the fighting, further from home than she had ever been. Yet, somehow, she felt as if she was coming ever closer to herself.
* * *
She drove through a forest that, if not for the road, she would have believed had never been seen before by humans. On either side of her she was threatened by monstrous trees with twisted branches and knotted underbrush. They spread round her and hung low over her, confining her into this tiny tunnel which led to a distant brightness. Slowly, as the hole of light grew in size and magnitude, chinks began to appear in the cover of trees, and she glimpsed snatches of cloudless sky like tiny photographs held for her viewing by long trembling limbs. Then at last the trees parted, opening like gates to a promised land, and nothing remained to confine the sky or horizon. Suddenly her stomach dropped, and she felt as if she were falling from a great height into the endless azure.
* * *
She stepped cautiously, fearful of being pulled out into the open seas. The first thing she noticed was the vast low-pitched roar of the glittering sea. The port broke the strip of beach and dipped tentative toes into the water. The sand sparkled in the sun and turned a perfect tan where it was caressed by gentle waves. She had come to the end of the line and, despite her earlier eagerness, she found she could go no further into what was no longer a paradise but suddenly a mysterious void.
The ship sounded its deafening horn twice.
She remained standing, paralyzed, one hand on the automobile so she would not lose her balance and tumble into the water. She watched as her mother ran up the stairs to the deck of the ship, joining other waving passengers. Then slowly the gates to the port began to swing shut directly in front of her, and her heart began to rush with the thought of darting through them into the unknown. But instead of feeling liberated, the freedom that beckoned only froze her. She could do nothing but watch as the gates clanged shut and locked her into the same safe existence she had always known.
The ship cast away and from the back of the deck she saw her father waving at her, his arms swaying in huge arcs through the cool bracing air. She ran forward and gripped the gate with each hand, pressing her head between the bars. It was too late now to join him, and she would never be able to find him.
Slowly the ship cut across the waves toward a sun blinding as it dipped into its watery bed, lighting the sky with fire.
* * *
The automobile bounced hard on the edge of the road, jerking her neck back. Her muscles tensed at the sight of the dark silvery forest rushing past. For a moment her mind struggled to make sense of what seemed a confusing dream. Everything swelled and sparkled through tears, through raindrops.
This could not be the end.
In sudden desperation, she turned the wheel abruptly, sending the automobile jumping back on the road and across both lanes. Just ahead an animal stood still in her path. Frightened and nervous, she swerved back to the right side. This time she did not turn so hard, but the pavement was wet with the torrential rains, and the automobile skidded back onto the shoulder. The front tires hit a deep gouge and the automobile popped up and veered further off the road. Gravel spewed into the air and fell mingled with the rain. Before she could turn the wheel again, the back of the automobile slammed into a tree. The trunk flew off. The automobile spun and the front end hit the same tree. The windshield shattered.
Shards of glass lay in her lap. Rain poured in through the broken windshield. Blood trickled into the corner of her eye. Everything around her seemed still to be spinning. The automobile hissed as if angry at her careless treatment. A thin white smoke began to engulf her. She thought, climb or crawl, she must get out of the automobile. But when she could not move, no matter how hard she tried, she knew it was a dream.
She peered through the smoke into the surrounding blackness, not knowing where she was or what she would do now. Already she could feel the cold creeping greedily around her. She saw the large animal still standing in the road, oblivious to the weather, or to the accident it had just caused. It simply stared at her with shining eyes. Then, as if apologizing, the animal bowed its head. She feared it might attack her, and she tried to move. She could see she was not pinned against the wheel, or crushed against the door, but the dream—or the hand of Death—kept her immobilized.
When she looked back toward the animal, she found it standing directly beside the automobile. Steam from its breath clouded the window. It appeared to be a deer, or moose, or possibly a horse. And in a sudden flash of lightning she saw protruding from the center of its head a single auradescent horn.
Then she lost consciousness.
* * *
The tiniest taps brought her back. For a moment she sat with her eyes still closed, listening to those dreamy little sounds, wondering what they were. Then she felt the cold and the rain on her body, and shivered.
She opened her crusted eyes and looked around. The automobile was damaged completely. The rain had changed to a heavy mist. The animal, or whatever it had been, was nowhere to be seen. After a moment she realized even the unremitting skirmishes of the revolution had paused for the rest of the night. The forest slept without a breath to send the mist floating through the trees, yet she felt it watched.
The timid clicking noises continued. They seemed to be coming erratically from under the seat beside her. Though apparently unhurt, she could not move. She struggled vainly to free her pinned legs, then leaned over as far as she could. There was silence, then two small taps that she could not interpret. She lay against the seat, listening, wondering. She closed her eyes as a feeling of exhaustion blanketed her from the situation. How relaxing, she thought, to slumber with the comfort of these innocent taps.
She listened dreamily until several loud raps on the unbroken passenger window sent her bolt upright, erect with fear. She heard two deep voices, and then more urgent pounding. She stared straight ahead through the shattered windshield. All she saw were monstrous trees with twisted branches and knotted underbrush that hid the demons of her spinning mind.
For a moment her heart despaired at waking alive. Her mind immediately rebelled. Then without any control, she wept.
A light appeared inside the auto, and then shone directly in her face.
“Out of the vehicle,” someone commanded.
She looked beside her but could only see a shape through the glare of the flashlight.
“I can’t move,” she tried to explain between tears.
“What?”
“I can’t move,” she said more loudly. “Please, take that light away from my eyes.”
The man shined the light down where her legs were wedged between the seat and the steering mechanism. In the sharp-edged shadows it appeared as if she were now legless.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” she replied.
He shouted something and several others approached. “Just stay calm and we’ll try to get you out.”
What seemed to her a whole army of men swarmed into the automobile from all sides and began struggling to remove her. She sat silent and rigid, uncomfortable with the feeling of strangers pressed against her body, touching her, maneuvering her as if she were something less than human. They pounded on the automobile, groaned, yanked on her limbs for several minutes. Finally a multitude of arms wrapped around her chest and waist, hands gripped her
thighs and arms, and all at once they pulled mightily, stretching her until she thought she would tear in two. Then out popped her legs.
The men helped her to her feet outside the automobile. On the side of the road sat rumbling a large armored transport vehicle. She sighed with relief as the uniformed men stepped back. The man with the flashlight stepped forward. She could see only his dirty whiskered face, and a small bandage above his right eye.
“What were you doing out here?” he asked.
“Driving,” she replied, feeling a little dazed and complacent.
“Where?”
“I have a map.”
She gestured at the automobile. Alone and unsure of her situation, she wished for the reassurance she believed only the book could give her. But when she stepped toward the wreckage, the man immediately blocked her path. She looked up and noticed several men had brought weapons into view. For the first time she realized these were Regime soldiers and she could possibly be in grave danger.
She held her breath in fear as one soldier began to search the automobile. His hand passed the map out to another soldier, who brought it forward. The lieutenant examined it in the light, paying more attention to the propaganda on the front side. His hands slowly lowered the map, which in turn raised his eyes to stare at her. She realized the paper on which the map had been drawn caused more suspicion than the map itself abated.
From the automobile came a tiny peep. The soldier emerged suddenly and came forward.
“I found something else, Leutnant.”
Into the light he raised his right hand, and in the palm shivered a tiny wet chick.
“What is this?”
“A baby chick, Leutnant.”
The lieutenant turned his stare on the soldier. “Get rid of it, Soldat.”
The soldier turned aside from the company and tossed the chick into a muddy puddle. It shook again and tumbled forward. Then just as it seemed to stand steady, a shot ripped into the night. A splash, and she shut her eyes to the horror.