As they climbed slowly back out of the valley, now splendidly lit by a radiant noonday sky, the travellers were better able to appreciate the unique spot they had been in. Hidden in darkness on their arrival, the nuclear shelter’s illusion of pastoral beauty was now visible through the vehicle’s windows. The woods, the simulated quarry, the artificial lake, and the rows of red-roofed houses below them were all camouflage.
The elder brother could read the landscape as closely as a bedouin reads the desert. Once they reached the top of the mountains encircling the valley and started down the other side, towards the junction at which they had left the main road, he pointed out the stroke of luck their detour had been, despite the emissary’s illness. Apart from providing them with rest and good food, it had enabled them to escape the storm that had pursued them to this very junction. Uprooted trees and fallen road signs testified to the ferocity of the assault that had blown itself out in the expanse still ahead of them.
It was this expanse, with its forests and rivers, that they now had to cross. Neither of the two brothers was familiar with it. Although they had consulted the soldiers and been given a good military map, there was no knowing if they would be able to cover ground as quickly as they had done in their journey’s first stage.
Night fell. The darkness didn’t matter; the real problem was the frequent crossroads, whose signs had vanished in the storm or quite simply been turned around. Still, they had no choice but to press on. Their detour had taken longer than they had planned. The old grandmother could well have returned to her village by now and heard about her daughter’s death, the details of which she had a right to know as soon as possible.
As they drove farther into the night, they were surprised to discover that they were in a populated area. On the first leg of their journey, they had met no other traffic. Now, however, they occasionally passed a slow-moving truck or had to pull onto a shoulder to let a speeding car flash drunkenly by. Once, they stopped for two horses whose harness had become entangled in a wagon shaft. Another time, a large cow blocked the road. To their astonishment they even encountered another vehicle exactly like their own. It might have come from the same assembly line or even the same armoured brigade, the only difference being that this one had been turned into a mobile home and its trailer into a kitchen.
From time to time they drove through a town or village. Despite the late hour, the inhabitants were awake and friendly and ready to give and even draw directions. The news that the coffin had come from Jerusalem and was now on its way to the birthplace of a woman killed in someone else’s war caused a stir. More than one local resident doffed his cap and crossed himself as if in the presence of a sacred relic. Their warm reception encouraged the elder brother to listen to the advice of a gas station attendant to take a shortcut through a forest. By following it, he was told, they would reach the river crossing early in the morning in time to make the first ferry, an icebreaker that did not run at night.
It was nearly dawn when the driver, with the help of the attendant’s drawing, found the beginning of the shortcut. As exhausted as they were, they decided after a brief debate to set out on it. It was a dirt road strewn with twigs and branches, over which the vehicle crunched pleasantly.
It was still crunching when the sleeping travellers awoke to find themselves in milky daylight, in a forest whose branches were matted with a parasitical growth that hung in long, dull beards; snarled and tangled, these sickly curtains made it hard to see what lay ahead. The drivers were in constant danger of getting lost. Far from a shortcut, the forest now seemed like a huge creature that threatened to strangle them. The road, clearly marked at the outset, forked every several hundred metres, forcing them to choose.
The younger brother drove. The elder brother sat beside him. The travellers had never seen him so pale and tense. He held the map in one hand and a compass in the other, and both hands shook each time he said “left” or “right”. The route indicated by the compass did not always look correct; often it was the narrower or more rutted of the choices and caused the coffin to jounce wildly. Although the vehicle performed well, its big chassis, springs, and powerful engine a tribute to the engineer who designed it, their navigator’s growing anxiety that they might be on a wrong course, a course that would leave them stranded among the trees like another parasite, infected them all.
Each retreated into his own heavy silence: that of the consul, who until now had never lacked words and had served as a bridge between the locals and the foreigners, was the hardest to cope with. Yet the emissary was determined to respect it. Feeling hunger for the first time since his poisoning, he rose from his litter, found a baked potato, and gnawed at it with a steady appetite. He was facing backwards, looking out at the profuse matted clusters that brushed the woman’s coffin. How had he ever been foolish enough to agree to make her his business?
Several nerve-racking hours went by. At last, the lackadaisical sun, after blinking on and off through the trees, shone for an instant on a broad band of clear horizon. At once they set the vehicle on a course for it.
The attendant’s advice had been correct after all. The shortcut not only existed but had brought them to their destination — not a moment too soon, since the frozen river’s banks, between which the ferry plied a channel, were already crowded with people. Men, animals, cars, and wagons were waiting to cross to the opposite side, on which another multitude was waiting to cross back.
This was the river that had been mentioned to him by the consul — whether as a challenge, an obstacle, or a memorable experience — on his first day in the provincial capital. Frozen into a white glaze, it was solid enough to walk or play on. The elder brother, after parking their vehicle in line, was overcome with relief at being rescued from circling endlessly in the forest. A shy man unaccustomed to displaying emotion, he left the group and strode out onto the ice. By the time he reached the middle of it, he was no more than a dot on the white surface. There, as if suddenly hit by lightning, he fell to his knees and struck his head on the ice in thankful exaltation.
Once more a market had sprung up, a small one in the middle of all the people, vehicles, wagons, horses, cows, and pigs. If nothing else, it helped everyone to bargain away the time while waiting for the ferry. The consul, however, his red cap back on his head, feared a repeat of the emissary’s illness. Nothing that he did not personally authorize, he told the travellers, was to be eaten by them.
The daylight was fading. The coffin, it seemed, would not cross before morning; they would be marooned by the river for the night. The consul decided to throw himself on the mercy of the crowd. Taking the young boy with him, he circulated through it, stopping repeatedly to tell the tragic story of the dead woman going home to her old mother. The simple narrative had its effect, as did the boy’s handsome looks. The unyielding line relented and gave way, letting the coffin and its armoured escort proceed.
They boarded the ferry at dusk, on its last crossing of the day. A glorious sunset lit their way. Over the objections of the consul, who had lost his easygoing attitude since the poisoning, the human resources manager decided to cross the ice on foot and asked the photographer to record the event for his daughter. The journalist, unwilling to be bested, decided to join him. They walked cautiously, doing their best to keep their footing, while the photographer climbed on the coffin to get a better shot.
“If the ice breaks now,” grinned the pudgy journalist as they heard a suspicious crack beneath them, “our story will lose its hero and its author in one fell swoop. Nothing will be left but a back-page item about two adventurers who looked for trouble and found it.”