by Jeff Kamen
In silence, they went through the main sweep of shelters where a few figures sat prodding at embers, tending to steaming pots. They passed a paddock of hard cloth and canes where goats sat folded on their limbs around an empty meal pail, passed rows of timber frames. Then they walked out to the grey shore where in the falling light the sunken heads of rocks stared darkly across the water, a small population grouped there half-drowned and deathly still. Here they found a place to sit, Radjík tossing a few stones into the shallows. ‘Get geese here,’ she said, and Jaala looked out but saw none there, noticing instead the mountains rising beyond the valley, clad in charcoal torrents of vapour, with only the pale caps clearly visible at that hour.
It was then, after a few awkward digressions, that Radjík described how she and her brother had dealt with Sandor’s ashes. It had been about a month before, the pair of them accompanied by Sonja and a few others in the hunter clan. They’d held a short ceremony by a local river, the small gathering watching from the bank as the box was lowered, to drop away in a wash of dust and bubbles. ‘Horrible,’ she said, then fell silent again.
Eventually, she looked up. When she spoke, she described that harrowing winter, and of her sense that all she’d known and cared for had come to an end — suddenly, without any forewarning, and in the worst way imaginable. Unclear in her own mind about much of that time, Jaala probed with a few gentle questions, recalling the way that Nina had drawn from herself much of what had been poisoning her. In response, Radjík spoke more candidly, grateful it seemed, to have someone to unburden herself to at last, and when Jaala asked if she was happy where she was, happier than back at the caves, she admitted that in many ways she was not, was stuck in a cycle that was dragging her down and only down; adding in a different tone, faltering, that she was worried, not just for herself, but for her brother.
When Jaala asked what she meant by that, Radjík said she was aware that Lajos was increasingly concerned by what was happening to her. ‘Don’t know what to do,’ she said huskily. ‘Just seems to get worse. Can’t help it.’
It grew darker. They spoke of many things in that uncertain light, people and memories mostly, but also of honesty and secrecy and the meander of lives in a world of rawness and confusion. A brutal world, they both agreed. One where friends were needed. People to care for, and be cared by.
When at some point they looked towards raised voices, the rudimentary village stood as blotches of light within a haze of smoke. The clouds were low that evening and only a few stars were visible in the overcast.
In rising discomfort, distracted again, Jaala realised she could not put it off any longer. Gathering herself, she said, ‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ and in a few words outlined her plans to move on. She could see Radjík’s face changing as she spoke, and went on hurriedly to explain how her time with the Nassgruben had left her with no option but to search for herself in that distant ancestral land — or at the very worst retrieve some meaning from her life, if only to prop up the remainder of her days.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, knowing there was nothing to be gained in holding back, nor in pretending that she’d come to the camp simply to make amends. And yet as she continued talking, struggling for words at times, there came to her other thoughts ... doubts ... misgivings ... jags of pain ... the image of Radjík on the path that day, a stone’s throw from where she’d first met the father. A figure in patchwork leathers holding a water flask, just idly sauntering along.
Images which were stirring as the presences usually did, the more so when she considered how the girl appeared to need her now, realising that they were as close to family as each of them had in the world.
Doubts and doubts, and it was in a kind of despair that she studied the girl’s small scarred hands, the twists of burnt skin on her neck from where they’d spun around in the fuming air upon leaping together from the bridge ...
And in a series of flickers she felt herself looking up at the huge spears of flame shooting from the vehicle ... the two of them spinning like the flung ends of a bolas and the heat inescapable ... Radjík gripping her by the sleeve and holding on and holding on ... the waterfall rearing like a great glass tower and as they smashed into the water it seeming to smash to pieces over them, thundering, the pair of them flung helplessly apart ...
‘That’s all I’m trying to do,’ she said, coming to an end, ‘Just ... trying to pull together the pieces.’
When she looked up, Radjík was staring distantly towards the settlement fires. Staring without focus. Saying nothing. As if her emptiness was complete.
She searched the girl’s slender face, thin with grief and a patchy diet, the wasted and regretful hours giving a worn and beleaguered look to her skin and eyes. What she might look like upon her eventual return, she could not bear to think of.
Over at the huts, a man carrying sacks over his shoulder turned and called and disappeared. A minute later two young boys went trotting after him. Somewhere in the dark a dog barked and then silence returned.
She sat with her hands in her lap, resisting the urge to chew a nail. A thought had struck her. A tiny fleck rising up in dark storms of possibility. A thought that begged to be listened to, even though the mere glimpsing of it made her feel afraid.
Say it, she thought. Say it or lose it all.
She sighed heavily, looking down. Weighing up the consequences either way. On one side a future where both might live fulfilled, and on the other a future where everything failed, where every subsequent event felt the more like treason.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how to say this, but ...’
Radjík turned, eyeing her ferally.
‘I’m just telling you what I need to do.’
‘So?’
‘And you don’t seem to be doing very well here ...’
‘So? What’s that mean?’
‘So, I was thinking,’ she said, and sighed again.
‘What? Thinkin what? Aint you done enough?’
‘Listen, we could ... we could travel together.’
Radjík made a face.
‘Maybe. If you wanted to.’
‘Eh? What you talkin about?’
‘You know. Both of us, travelling together. It won’t be easy, but we could be back in a year. Perhaps things might feel different then.’
Radjík looked away. She seemed deeply troubled by this. When she faced Jaala again, her eyes were giving back the camplights. Hotly animated. Liquescent. ‘You’re serious?’ she said. ‘You aint jokin, are you?’
‘Of course I’m not joking.’
‘You asked anyone else?’
‘No. Only you.’
‘Anyone know about it?’
‘No. No one.’
‘Promise?’
‘I swear it.’
‘Okay.’
‘Okay.’
Radjík studied her a long moment. Then she picked up a stone and threw it far out into the blackness. ‘Dunno,’ she said. ‘When you thinkin of leavin?’
~O~
There was in many ways more reaction to her planned departure than to her sudden arrival, an appearance which for some had proved greatly challenging, having invested great faith in her as leader only for her to let them down, disappear, become estranged from them. And when people discovered that Radjík was leaving too, it took the hunter’s own stubborn words to convince them she’d not been unduly persuaded. After that, once people saw that Lajos had accepted his sister’s decision, albeit after a few lengthy arguments, their thoughts seemed to move from considering ways of stopping them both to ways of assisting them — to give them the best chance, they said, of safely returning.
Throughout the week that they made their preparations, the pair of them went round the site gathering supplies from those who were willing to help, and spent their spare time with those they were closest to. With public dissent quietening and more people coming forward to support them all the time, a mood of festivity and expectation
blossomed in the camp. One evening a keg was wheeled out. Colourful rags were hung from the frames of the huts. Flatbreads were made. Curds prepared. People gathered together to eat, and the central fire blazed as it had in the old marketplace, a fiddler playing and people up dancing and the sparks racing into the dark like wild electric snow.
Among the hunters there was general agreement that it was better for two of them to go than one, if one had to go at all, and in the end only Pétar continued to make his objections known. It was from him that they’d met the greatest resistance all along, and little he said was without bitterness, even anger. And yet, perhaps through Yvor’s intervention, it was he who proved to be the most generous in ensuring that they were properly equipped. He made sure that the canopy of their cart was properly fitted out and had the wheels and axles tested for endurance. He retired Jaala’s mule and replaced it with one he thought was stronger, better adapted for the road, and had dried foodstuffs and grain put aboard when they’d made some space in the back.
When she went to his tent to thank him, hoping to talk a little, make peace, he handed her a purse of coins. ‘Keep it,’ he said when she protested, and when she tried to hand it back, he told her he’d give it to Radjík instead. ‘You shouldn’t, really,’ she said, kissing his cheek, but the kiss he returned was cold and dry and he would not look at her longer than it took to convey his disappointment. ‘Don’t be like this,’ she said. ‘Are you punishing or helping me?’
He muttered a reply.
‘Pétar? I thought we were friends.’
‘We were.’
‘I thought we always got on.’
‘We did.’
‘You know, you’re breaking something good.’
‘Good?’ he said. ‘Good?’
‘Please,’ she said, and the big man looked up. ‘I don’t want to see you like this. I’ve not done this to upset you. Tell me you understand.’
‘Understand? No.’
‘Well then, that you accept it. Accept that it’s happening.’
He shrugged.
‘Listen to me. You know I care. Give me something to come back to. All I can feel in you is rage. I won’t miss that. Make me miss you.’
‘Miss you,’ he said.
‘Yes. Miss you.’
He drew a hand down his beard and exhaled. ‘How on earth could I make you miss me?’
She looked towards the shelter door. ‘Close it,’ she said quietly.
He regarded her strangely a moment, then went over and secured the door with a loop of hide. They stood in the near dark watching each other.
‘We’ve only got a day left.’
‘I know,’ he said.
‘I don’t want regrets.’
‘Me neither.’
‘Can we still be friends, then?’
‘If you want to be.’
‘I do.’
‘Okay.’
She could smell furs, straw from the paddocks. Outside there was a clang of goatbells. Rough cheery voices going by. She undid her jacket. Slowly, a button at a time. ‘Come here,’ she said.
It was a chill morning when they left, the small crowd profiled darkly against the lake, where tall black reeds stood along the water’s edge. She kissed Pétar and shared some last words with him. Other friends she bid farewell to with hugs and an exchange of messages of luck and hope. Then she climbed up to the box and took her seat. Radjík climbed up beside her and untethered the reins, sending a goodbye nod to her brother and his wife and a wave to others there.
They entered a gap in the valley’s southern slopes as the sun cleared the low and fermenting hills, following the beginnings of the river where Sandor’s ashes had gone. The branch they followed merged eventually with another branch, and then another, the silt-heavy river churning between the rising peaks and the pair of them following it day on day, their eyes set on the horizon, journeying slowly towards the vast grey altar of the sea.
Chapter 64 — Istran Port
On coming out of the mountains they drove down a trail overlooking the rimpled dish of a bay where tides had once overrun the limestone serrations of the coast and on retreating had left pale ashen flats behind, now being farmed by hunched figures they saw in the distance pushing mudhorses. To the west stood the scalped peaks of Italien, where it was said that one of the Stollen exits lay hidden in a dead forest turned to stone. A board nailed to a post pointed the way to the port of Istra and they jolted along to the track it indicated and drove on downhill.
Where the slope came around, a wide torrent ran through the land, upon whose banks stood an assortment of spiky dwellings pieced together from seawrecks and salvaged river flotsam. A few children waved them on as they progressed and fishworkers eyed them from little skiffs as they hauled in the day’s meagre catch. They trundled on in waning light, energised by the sea’s appearance in the evening haze. The words Radjík spoke as she looked upon it were quiet with awe.
The town held a rich tang of salt and tar and smoke. The mortared homesteads stood in narrow and slippery streets where barrowboys and market hags cried their wares before darkness halted trading. They drove through a reeking market where rough men in aprons soiled with blood and sawdust were shouldering their unsold goods and placing them aboard covered wagoncarts much like their own, some stopping to watch them as they passed by. From there they were directed to the brick waterfront.
Coming to a stop in the little dockyard, they asked for the timing of the next crossing and were told it was expected to be in a matter of hours. The ship they’d be boarding was moored fast to the timbers. They eyed it uncertainly. It was close to a century old and looked it. Rebuilt many times from generations of caulked timber, it sat low and dark in the swell and creaked heavily as it moved. Birds walked the stained sails furled beneath the spars, while up and down the ramp ran a tattered crew carrying kegs and crates and sacks.
They asked around but it was the only ship there and the only means of sailing south. They stood quietly among a hail of shouts and curses. Crewmen with clattering trolleys continued to barge past them, collecting goods and setting them down. After an exchange of words, Radjík agreed to move the cart out the way while Jaala went off to negotiate the crossing price.
She queued to speak to some local figures clad in pale caps, one of whom was consulting a chart while the others dealt with the traders and passengers. By the time she’d finished and was walking back again, the sky was darkly streaked, and set against it on the headland she noticed the remains of an oldworld fortification. These battered old hulks of masonry and steel had been worn to shards for the most part and faced seawards smoothly reamed as soapstone, the gaps in the cratered walls hanging warped and elongated like pulled-down eyeholes in a blanket. It resembled some dreadful howling head up there, forced to look upon the tides which might rise again one day and drink it all to nothing in endless salty gulps.
‘How d’you get on?’ Radjík said as she approached.
‘Expensive.’
‘We don’t have to do it.’
‘It’s easier. They say the road’s blocked.’
‘Believe em?’
‘I do. They said we’d have to go a long way around.’
Radjík shrugged.
A bonfire of discarded pallets lit the yardspace away from the ship, where they sheltered and waited. At the end of the harbourmouth huge cressets were being lit in the watchtowers. They watched with interest, eating chopped fishmeat and bread from their hands. Sheets of hammered metal had been slotted into place so as to reflect the fires out to sea, and they watched as the wood was doused with fuel and dragged about. As the flames rose, gulls circling the towers flared and wheeled away again, crying down the ages.
The cressets were burning up the evening mist as they joined the queue of travellers. The vessel was nodding darkly in an atmosphere laced with smoke and the deep vapour rolling in from the black seas they’d shortly be crossing.
‘You sure about this?’ Radjík muttered,
pulling a blanket around her thin shoulders.
‘No choice,’ Jaala replied, and they walked the mule along and stood waiting to be beckoned to from the deck, the crewmen yelling nonstop and the ship’s bells clanging dolorously all the while.
Chapter 65 — Flying South
Two days later he left the glider in a sheltered gulley and set off down the slope towards the field he’d overflown on his search for a landing spot. Behind him the shattered dais of the uplands was suffused with a honeylike glow. Wiping the dirt from his face as he descended, he looked across the smoky elevation towards the outline of a village about a mile distant. He spat dryly.
At the bottom corner of the field there stood a timber barn. He watched the labourers he’d spotted from the air droving towards it as tools and harness and ploughshare were put away and the day’s work drew to an end. He set out to speak to them, but by the time he reached the track, they’d left with a few heads of bony cattle and were well on their way home, drab grey figures in whose wake scrolls of dust were erupting, carrying high in the breeze and dissolving the shape of their going, the shape of the arid land ahead.
He followed them to a rudimentary street, and once upon it, glancing aside at the little stone houses, he asked the villagers for directions to the well, asking at the same time if a man with wings had once passed through. It did not feel like a good start to him: whenever he approached people they reacted with frank stares, either backing off or hurrying away as if to rid themselves of trouble. It was then that he realised he was still wearing his goggles, and with a curse he removed them and went on again, this time finding himself directed ahead with cautious civility.
Within the homesteads he saw families tending to laundry, preparing food. In a doorway an old man with gnarled hands cupped over a stick turned stiffly to watch him come and watch him go. On he went, treading through the muck and loose straw. Hearing squeals, he looked ahead and saw a group of children chasing around with sticks and a hoop. He passed them with a smile, invisible in their game, and continued along glancing left and right into humble scenes of domestic activity.
