Checkpoint

either. “At least he had a glimpse of ours,” answered the priest, “and then he shut his eyes.” Whatever the case, when the refugees returned to the checkpoint the next day, there was nothing left of their gaiety; theirs was a procession of hollow people and the wind blew right through them. First they came up, one by one, to the table set up on their side of the barrier. There sat a soldier whose job it was to check their documents and fill out the form for each one. The information they were asked was the most basic, first and last name, date of birth, citizenship, blood group, medical history, and so forth. The soldier sat while the person giving the information stood because actually there was no better option. The other chair was taken by the woman who was their translator and who, bleary from the sleepless hours of the night before, kept dozing off and waking with a jolt when she’d start translating everything she could hear people saying around her. Once the form was filled, the person would be given a yellow slip with a number and they’d hand it to the next soldier, the one who manned the barrier. This soldier first entered the number into a large book in which on the first and last pages was written, in large print, “Checkpoint Crossings Register” and, in smaller lettering, the heading: “Entries” on the first page and “Exits” on the other. Then the soldier lifted the barrier and waved the people through with all the belongings they were carrying. There was another table beyond this where sat another soldier. He was also filling out a form, an affidavit for the registered person that in the new place, the name of which was not made explicit, he or she would behave in keeping with the local laws and regulations. The soldier entered the first and last name of the person arriving, after which the person signed it. Then the soldier stamped it, scribbled the information in a volume with nothing written on it, and smiled courteously at the now-registered person, who went over to a third table where sat the commander. He, too, smiled, though his smile was more like a grimace and sometimes faded altogether. Then the commander, leaning confidentially toward the person, would say a few words or sentences and hand them a brochure in several languages about the rights and obligations of refugees, published by the United Nations or some other international body, we weren’t sure which. In any case, the commander’s brochure made for attractive reading, because most of them who’d crossed over to the other side, to “our” side (though none of the sides of that hilltop were, technically, ours), sat down on the grass and leafed through it, poring over the commander’s brochure with rapt attention. The commander protested that the brochure wasn’t his, he was merely distributing it, but the moniker stuck, and this only confirmed that popular expressions slip easily into the linguistic corpus of new words or new meanings of old words and there they stay until the next popular new term elbows them out. The day moved on and with it, or rather following it, on moved the refugees who’d been processed. Fortunately there weren’t any clashes except in one case when the soldier filling out the first form bumped into the official translator, and she, probably waking from a happy dream, sent him straight to hell and said she hoped he’d hang from the nearest willow. Lucky thing she didn’t mention an oak or a pear tree; mythic sites like these should not be invoked in just any sentence, and even the mention of the willow was a little iffy, what with all that goes on with willows. A few minutes later the lady translator, as soon as she’d splashed her face with cold water, realized how rude she’d been and hastened to find the soldier, meaning to apologize. But by the time she returned to the table, she saw another man there and heard from him that the first (“your soldier,” the other soldier called him) had finished his shift and probably, said the soldier, had gone off to catch up on his sleep. The lady translator thanked him and headed for the sleeping quarters. If she’d known what awaited her there she probably wouldn’t have gone, but, as she later explained, she thought she’d run into the soldier at the door to the dormitory, rattle off her apology and expression of gratitude, turn around, and go. But the soldier was already there, lying on his cot and masturbating. This is certainly not unusual for soldiers, some of them masturbate several times a day, and group masturbations have been recorded with each soldier jerking off the soldier next to him, sometimes two at a time. It’s harmless fun, masturbating, harmless yet handy, since it eases tension, promotes physical relaxation, and stimulates the appetite. The soldier may not have known any of that, or was perhaps still unaware that she was standing there, or he may have been confused; whichever it was, when he came with a sigh and opened his eyes, he saw an attractive woman smiling down at him. His next move might be startling, but it certainly isn’t difficult to comprehend. He reached out swiftly with his left and grabbed her by the neck, and then, as he drew her to him and pushed her head down, he lifted the blanket with his right and exposed his half-erect penis. Later, when questioned, he did say it hadn’t occurred to him that she might be a genuine flesh-and-blood person—what, after all, would such a beautiful woman been doing in their quarters?—and only when he felt, and we quote, “her velvety lips on the head of my penis,” did he let loose. He pulled her head lower still which apparently so flabbergasted the woman that she fainted and sank to the floor next to the cot. The soldier wasted not a moment. He woke up a soldier who was asleep on the cot next to his and to whom he owed money—the sum in question was not stated—and asked him whether he’d like the debt returned in kind. The other laughed and, we quote, “told him to fuck off” and turned over, hoping to go back to sleep, but then the first soldier explained what he was up to and pointed to the insensate woman lying there on her back, her legs spread as much as her short skirt allowed, but enough so that at the top of her pale thighs they could see a flash of white panties and around them, strands of curly pubic hair. They grabbed her by the hands and feet, swung her up onto the first soldier’s cot, and then, first one, then the other, they shamelessly violated her. Later they claimed the sex was not against her will, that, in fact, she was awake the whole time and loved every minute of it, and as proof they said that during both, and we quote, “fucks,” the woman smiled blissfully and she only started screaming, writhing, punching, and scratching when she realized it was coming to an end. If they’d been able to find a third soldier, said the first two soldiers, the woman, and we quote, “would have gladly gone right on fucking,” which the woman denied as the most appalling accusation she’d ever heard. The commander, to whom they turned immediately afterwards, had no idea at first how to respond, as his mustache leered while the soldiers were telling him how they’d raped her. And besides, hadn’t he been alone with her for a full twenty minutes or more, and hadn’t both of them been grinning when they left the office? Was there a valid question as to whether the commander could be partial as a judge? This is a tricky one. Rape of the civilian population, regardless of age or sex, was punished severely, often by firing squad, but the commander was already undermanned and to give up two more men was a luxury he could not afford. When the translator heard his decision she nearly exploded, but by then the matter was done and dusted, and the commander no longer paid her or any of the remaining refugees any attention. They had all been issued their certificates of refugee status and could move forward. Theoretically speaking, they could have moved backward just as well, but nobody considered this as an option. In war one leaves at a run; it’s only in peacetime that one approaches at a walk, and we are now, as the commander put it, “up to our necks in war shit.” One of the two remaining corporals is supposed to have said: “Shit is shit, there’s no divvying it into war shit and peace shit, because then army asses would be different from civilian ones.” Wise words, no doubt, and they even coaxed a smile from the commander when someone reported them to him, though later when asked, he’d forgotten them. Forgetting is a marvelous defense, one widely known for years, but not everybody knows how to utilize it well. First of all the mind should be in passive, not active mode, in a mode known as standby, like a printer awaiting the print command. Power usage is at a minimum while the device is forever poised for action, something that is especially key if considered from a military vantage point. And does any other vantage point exist for us? From the checkpoint we watched as the refugee column snaked farther and farther away and then pivoted and disappeared into the forest, but unlike the scout squads that had followed the same path and had circled back to us, the refugees never again appeared, a fact that vindicated those who’d been claiming from the start that the forest was enchanted. Those who did not believe in miracles, and there were plenty of them though the number was dwindling, claimed there were many forked paths in the woods, and whoever knew their destination and knew the woods well, as did the refugees and their leaders, would never stray. Their feet would take them, so to speak, wherever they needed to go. Here Mladen chimed in to say that every forest has a thousand faces and the faces can be easily confused, but the claim that he’d lost his way or taken a wrong turn was highly unlikely. He, at least, knew this, he said, since he was born and had spent most of his life in a forest, on a mountainside, so as far as he was concerned, as with Tarzan long ago, the true wilderness was the city, a claustrophobic urban space. The forest was a different story, and he could go on and on about it, but this time he merely wanted to make the point that there are paths and byways in forests that meander, meaning they take some travelers in one direction and other travelers in the opposite or a different direction. While he was saying this, the other soldiers exchanged glances, shrugged, and tapped their temples. Many might say he was crazy, went on Mladen, but he dared each of us to go off into the forest following the same path the refugees had taken and we’d see whether we caught up with them or whether this seemingly meek path would take us to the shore of a lake, and then slam shut behind us and condemn us to a lifetime by the lake, living off fish and blueberries. Those who spoke up before him suddenly rebelled and said he should stop the gibberish; Mladen dismissed them with a wave, he spat and swore, and this caused a groundswell of protests and threats. Who knows what would have happened in the end if they hadn’t heard the roar of a motor and before their eyes appeared a clanking, old military jeep. The jeep clattered up the hill with effort and reached the checkpoint where it stopped, and from it stepped a portly soldier holding a large cloth sack. He strode over to the commander as if he knew him well, handed him the sack, smiled, and, clear as a bell, said—all of us heard it—“Your mail, sir.” Though we’d all heard it, each of us repeated the words and soon our unit was humming like a beehive. It’s difficult to say what kept us from charging the portly soldier and our commander, ripping the sack from his hands, tearing it open, and dumping the letters on the ground. No, we all stood there quietly and pretended the sack interested us not at all, that we weren’t soldiers but, say, beekeepers at an inter-city competition lasting only a day or two where nobody expects to receive mail. So we waited for the portly soldier to exchange sentences with the commander, at least two of which we couldn’t catch, in three we grasped a word or two, while the others were fully comprehensible. Short exclamations (and one quite innocuous swear) didn’t count, such as: “You don’t say!” “Heavens to Betsy!” and “Screw your granny!” The portly soldier sat in the jeep, beeped his horn in farewell, turned the jeep to go back where he’d come from, honked again, revved the motor, and swiftly vanished. For a time the softer and softer hum of the motor could be heard from the forest, and finally that, too, was gone. The commander breathed deeply, took hold of the sack and opened it gingerly as if thinking he might want to use it again. The soldiers in formation were shivering like drug addicts in crisis; their knives, with which they were poised to slice their packages open, kept dropping from their hands. Hearing the clatter of the knives, the commander offered his apologies and even mentioned the tendrils of arthritis that toyed with his fingers and prevented him from being more spry. While he was saying this he drew out the first letter and read the name of the addressee. No one responded and only after the third call did we realize it was for the sentry who’d been found dead in the latrine. “Idiots,” said the commander. “Again they’re shirking their duties!” He was thinking, of course, of the service that was tasked with informing the families of soldiers who’d been killed, and which clearly was not doing its job. If they had, no one would have been writing to the dead boy; the army did not deliver mail to heaven. Or hell, whichever. For those sorts of messages one needs angels or devils, depending on which variety seems preferable. The commander went on retrieving letters and calling the names, the soldiers came up and took them, some with hands trembling, some with lips contorted, two or three sniffling, and one soldier dropping a proper tear on the commander’s hand, the hand that was giving him the letter. For a moment the tear lingered there, then it began to slide, and finally it rolled off and dropped to the ground. The commander had tried to catch it midair but failed. “No point in wasting tears,” he whispered, which might have sounded to somebody like a transmission of secret messages and ancient lore. Then the commander took out two letters and crowed: “This is for me! And this, too!” It was obvious he’d be happiest racing off and settling into a cozy corner and there, in peace and quiet, read both letters. But the army is the army, duty is duty, so all he could do was fold them and tuck them into his pocket. On he went reading out the names and, after the letters, he gave out the larger and smaller parcels, as well as a postal form on which was a message that a parcel that was to be delivered to such and such a soldier had been discarded as it contained forbidden substances. In parentheses there was a handwritten note: “roast lamb, brandy, onions.” We all turned to look at the soldier, each of us with a mournful expression. We’d never recover from the loss, this was clear, but first we needed to discover where the mail sack had come from. No one knew where we were, all lines of communication were down, the equipment wasn’t working, morale was at a record low, and yet our mail was delivered. How could that be? We asked the commander to explain this to us, it was his job, after all, to inform us regularly on the state of affairs in the theater of war and elaborate on things that baffled us. The commander, however, was hopping around impatiently and could barely wait to retreat to his room and read his three letters in seclusion—the third was the last he took out when everybody already thought there were none left in the sack. “Why this mail?” wondered the commander and, bemused, scratched his head. He, of course, had no idea why, but still he tried valiantly to cobble together some sort of explanation. What he came up with held water so poorly, with the water seeping and dribbling out on all sides, that even the most reticent among us began speaking of a flood. Though not yet a flood, the situation completely changed that night when a downpour began that went on for hours, days perhaps, and showed no likelihood of letting up. At first, while thunder rumbled and fat drops of rain splattered on the roof, we all said how the drumming of rain is such a pleasant sound, how nature breathes better afterwards, how much easier we sleep, and how the windows should be opened and fresh air let in. The next morning when we opened o