four men and two women leading the column. Everything became clearer as they neared, and when the see-through blouse worn by the woman in trousers plainly displayed her womanly charms, perhaps a mite too clearly, the muffled cries of the soldiers and their moans on all sides were easy to hear. When the three men and three women came to within ten paces of the barrier, the commander ordered to them to halt—“Stop, stop, STOP!” he barked—and they did. The commander gestured, four soldiers approached those at the head of the column, and while two soldiers stood, guns cocked, the other two checked to be sure none of the arrivals were concealing weapons. They found nothing, but the commander did have to order them to stop searching the third woman, the one in the trousers, because those, remarked the commander, are not grenades. Reluctantly the soldiers obeyed and went back to their positions while the commander beckoned to the people at the head of the procession and called them over. The oldest pulled a bundle of papers from his briefcase and handed them, with a grandiose flourish, to the commander. “What’s this?” asked the commander, but the man said nothing. He turned and went back to the others. Later we saw it was a list of all the people in the column, both those alive and present and those who’d come to a tragic end along the way, struck down by illness or exhaustion, or murdered. And while the commander was staring at the paper bundle, the young woman in the trousers spoke up. She was, she said, a translator, though this was not her official function; she did it to help these despondent people who’d come out of nowhere and had only one little wish: to seek shelter from the horrors of war and start a new life in peace. “Not so little a wish,” replied the commander, but the young woman in trousers missed the irony, so she said, again, that the people we were seeing wanted to pass through peaceably and start life in the country that lay behind the commander’s back. The commander twisted to look over his shoulder. Who knows what he expected to see, but whatever it was he didn’t see it; instead he shook his head and told the woman he first had to go through the lists. He might have said more but the woman turned and went back to her group. Within moments, the smell of stewing cabbage wafted our way and this brought the conversation to a close. Among the people from the column, in a number of places by the road, fires were burning under pots where cabbage was, apparently, simmering. When they smelled it, the soldiers stopped being soldiers. They slipped their pistols back into the holsters and tossed their guns up over their backs, and then slowly, robot-like, as if spellbound, they moved toward the kettles. The people from the column burst into cheers, the girls spun around them dancing and yelping, the men passed around brandy, the older women ladled cabbage and meat onto plates, and soon only the commander was left standing by the checkpoint, facing the young woman. “Not a fan of cabbage?” asked the woman, in an oddly familiar tone. The commander’s brows shot up in surprise. Indeed he was not fond of cabbage, but how could this young woman know that? He tried taking a closer look at her, but he was afraid he might become mired in her treacherous, quicksand eyes. A half hour, thought the commander, I give the soldiers half an hour to gorge on cabbage and then I expect them back; the ones who stay longer will be punished accordingly. The woman said nothing, her nostrils flared, but the soldiers, as if they’d read their commander’s mind, straggled back. After a time the earlier order was restored and the soldiers formed a semicircle, standing between the refugees and the checkpoint. The leaders of the column had also returned, so next to the commander, near the barrier, only the woman was left who, as she’d said, was a translator, though she hadn’t said a word yet in the other language, whatever language it was. In fact, when he stopped to think, he realized none of them had heard a single word in the other language, and when the soldiers were asked whether they’d recognized the language of the people with whom they’d drunk brandy and eaten cabbage, they said they’d heard only exclamations such as “Aha!” and “Oh ho!” and an array of sighs, but they’d communicated mainly through gestures and mimicry. One soldier said that an old woman, when she saw how much cabbage he’d eaten, exclaimed “Ooh, la la!” but it would be difficult to deduce that she was French. They all agreed the cabbage was tasty, the meat delicious, the brandy smooth and clear, which some soldiers held to be a virtue while others felt it a serious flaw. There’s no way to please everybody all the time, said the commander when they informed him. He hadn’t had the chance to taste the cabbage himself but he did discuss with the lady translator all the details about going through the lists and confirming the identities of the men, women, and children in the column. At first when the woman heard what documents would be required to qualify for refugee status, she was dumbstruck, and it was only through a huge effort of will that she suppressed sobs in front of the merciless commander who, it should be said, had never been merciless, but, when necessary, could put on a convincing act. He was every bit as disturbed, it should be said, by this as she, if not more, and he hastened to draw her attention to the subsequently appended guidelines, including one that stated that in cases where there were difficulties in obtaining the documents, it would be possible to proceed with the go-ahead of the authorized military officer as long as the refugees were willing to sign statements by which they agreed—should they fail to produce the necessary papers within a reasonable time period (not precisely defined)—to return to their country at once. The lady translator rose and went over to the people in the column. She addressed them, and after her speech many of the girls began dancing, waving to the soldiers, and beckoning to them to join in. But seeing the commander’s scowls, the soldiers didn’t dare overstep the rules. However, when night fell, everything changed. One by one, the soldiers drifted off down the hill to where the girls and younger widows were waiting. The first couples walked off together seeking denser shadows, the seclusion of trees and bushes, but the later couples, eager, presumably, to waste no time, made love right there on the spot, without even trying to hide their nudity, so a passerby would’ve had the impression of a sea of sighs, keeping in mind that the “sea” air smelled not of salt but of rank sweat and other secretions. At least that’s what the commander smelled when, an hour or so later, he tried to ascertain where his soldiers had gone off to. It was when he stood up, pressured by an overfull bladder to make his way to the little room where the toilet buckets were, that he saw that the soldier’s quarters were empty and he was hardly able to persuade the guard to tell him what was going on. Then the commander strode off into the dark. As he went down the slope, leaning slightly back to keep his balance, he thought he might be approaching a bizarre beast that was gobbling and slurping in the dark. He unbuckled his holster and pulled out his pistol. This was not a single beast but an entire herd, thought the commander, because the panting and guzzling were reaching his ears from many sides at once. It would have been easier had he brought a flashlight; as it was, with no light, the only thing he could do was strike a match. And then, in the flickering matchlight, he saw that what he’d been hearing was not the slapping of waves but the slap of thigh on thigh. The matchstick was meanwhile burning down and scorched his fingers. The commander swore under his breath and, in a sweeping arc, swerved to stride back up to the barrier. Here the stories begin to diverge and there are several versions of what happened next, but it would appear that the closest to the truth is the one according to which the commander—infuriated and disgusted—flew into his office, where he also slept, snatched a flare gun, ran out and shot a flare off high into the sky. The flare was white, and when it blazed it cast an unnatural light on the dozens of naked and half-naked couples engrossed in their very natural activities. In some places two or even three couples formed larger, entwined groups, which writhed and tossed as if this were the end of the world. The flash quickly fizzled and the commander felt the kind of nausea that usually comes before vomiting. Then he heard men’s shouts and women’s screams and several shots. Then there was nothing more till the commander heard voices approaching. The commander spun around to find somewhere to duck into, but all the hiding places were too far off, so he chose to crouch behind the concrete pillar to which the barrier was affixed. This wasn’t much of a hiding place because no matter which posture the commander assumed, a part of him protruded from behind. In that sense, thought the commander, I’m willing to sacrifice my backside, but luckily it turned out the sacrifice wouldn’t be necessary because the voices he’d heard belonged to his own men. They were coming back from down below, chased away by the young women’s relatives as well as others from the column. And they weren’t just chased away, the commander realized, but several of the soldiers had been beaten up. And, what’s more, as one of the corporals dared to add, one of our men was killed. He uttered these words in a heavy, sad tone in which there was a trace of a sort of relief, probably because he’d passed on the terrible news and was now free of it. I’ll give you relief, thought the commander, you scum! “Is this how I trained you?” he growled. “Is this how one of ours is at the mercy of the enemy?” The soldiers said nothing. “In ten minutes,” said the commander to the two corporals, “I want everybody out here for inspection.” The corporals saluted stiffly and began chasing after the soldiers and shouting. The soldiers were in boxers and undershirts, barefoot or in stockinged feet, and driven by the corporals’ cries they dashed into the barracks for their uniforms. All this went on in the blackest of darkness, but ten minutes later when the commander strode out to face the men, no one could have said that only a quarter of an hour before they’d been lying between the women’s spread legs. Sound travels farther by night than it does by day, so the commander spoke in a mess of hisses and whispers; he was later, for this, dubbed The Snake, a nickname he was proud of, though no one, including him, knew exactly why. Whatever the case, the commander hissed at them from the dark, threatened them, and called them names, and then he switched to a solemn, slow whisper in which he lectured them on how none of our soldiers, living or dead, must be abandoned to the wiles of the enemy. “Maybe by now they’ve devoured him,” said the commander in a solemn tone, as if he actually knew that the refugees at the foot of the hill were cannibals. In the dark someone could be heard retching. “Soon,” said the commander, “the sun will be up. I order you to bring him back here when the day dawns, have I made myself clear? And I don’t give a damn how many victims there’ll be. Understood?” “Yessir, as you say, sir!” hissed the soldiers in response. Only one voice rang out distinctly, “Whose victims, Commander, sir?” The commander stood on his tiptoes as if to peer better through the dark and answered: “Any more stupid questions?” Someone giggled like a frog, but a hush, after this, reigned. “At ease,” ordered the commander. Just then, to the east, right over the pointy conifer tips, the sky began to redden and the shadows, hidden until then by the dark, began shivering with anticipation. In no time they’d be venturing into the world, all they needed was to be told whether to go in front of or behind the soldiers. Shadows have a way of moving slowly and faltering, but when they finally make up their minds, their resolve is legendary. And so, when the soldiers set out on their “punitive expedition,” as the commander noted in his ledger, the shadows followed