Everyone around there knew Bebe Tescovina, the daughter of commissary manager Nikifor Tescovina, by her fiery red hair. Indeed, until the first snowstorm buried the railroad tracks, she would fly down to school in Dobrin City on a handcar, her hair like mountain ash berries blazing its way right past the gray gates and the watchful locals. Now it turned out that her eyes blazed too, and I was being asked to find out why.
“I’m no expert in such matters.”
“Don’t try kidding me. Also, there’s a little package waiting for you at the guard booth at the barracks that you are to take to Géza Hutira.”
“Géza Hutira. . Géza Hutira, who’s that? I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting him.”
“He’s the meteorologist up in the conservation area. You can’t miss him, his hair reaches the ground. Hasn’t had it cut in twenty-three years.”
Andrei Bodor had waited five years for this day. Countless times he’d imagined the moment he and his adopted son would meet again. But not a muscle in his face moved on hearing the news.
“I know nothing about any of this — maybe I wouldn’t even find my way there.”
“I’m convinced you would.”
“You know, I’m not keen on rambling about the forest in the dead of winter. You can guess what I’m thinking: I might catch something. We haven’t gotten inoculations yet this year.”
“That’s true — Miss Coca stopped them. Said she didn’t like the idea of her men getting stuck full of pins. Said she’d come up with something else.”
The package waiting for Andrei at the guard booth was just a single aluminum pole. Well, not quite a pole, but a contraption of telescopic Popes extendible to quite some distance, with little holes of various sizes from which orange-red and yellow woolen threads dangled. Its purpose was a mystery. Placing it on his shoulder, Andrei headed off.
Across the road the bust of the heroic bear warden Géza Kökény was soot-black, what with the crows perched all over it. But as Andrei approached they flew off, and suddenly the monument shone snow-white from their droppings. This was both a good omen and not. The Red Cross jeep stood nearby, Coca Mavrodin’s moth-dusted face behind its window. One would not have taken her for a woman, had it not been for the pendant around her neck, emitting a fiery glitter: a five-pointed red star encased in a brass frame.
By the end of autumn passing snowfalls had only flecked the lower reaches of forest with gray slush, and even this had quickly melted off from the railway embankment and the narrow-gauge tracks. Andrei, the aluminum pole on his back, trudged right to the station to take the line-inspection handcar out to the conservation area: the tracks ended there, in front of Nikifor Tescovina’s commissary.
Halfway there, at the preserve entrance, a crossing gate barred the tracks. In his guard booth Colonel Jean Tomoioaga, noticing from a distance who was approaching, stepped onto the embankment to open the gate for Andrei.
Andrei applied the brakes and tied the handcar to the crossing gate to keep it from rolling back down the incline. The colonel, seeing that Andrei was in no hurry, pulled out the chess set from underneath his cot. Beside an open door they spread out a canvas board on the floor and pushed the ungainly little carved figures about: should anyone appear, the whole thing could be swept up in one motion.
Knowing that his friend had never gone beyond the fence, Colonel Jean Tomoioaga cautioned Andrei that after the crossing gate the grade began to ascend steeply, so it wouldn’t hurt to grease the axles thoroughly before heading out. The tallow was in a tub under the eaves of the guard booth, and in the tub was a broad wooden shovel. After the game, while Andrei went about smearing tallow over the axles, the colonel examined the aluminum pole. Extending it, he pulled the Popes out from one another until he noticed the name of the late forest commissioner, Colonel Puiu Borcan, engraved on one of the middle components.
So, even if the late colonel was not to be buried, it seemed then that the spot where he lay nailed to the ground and covered with plastic bags was to be marked with the bright aluminum pole, which could be seen from afar. The colored strings, meanwhile, especially the orange-red ones, would be visible even in thick fog, and the wind would whistle through the holes. Thus the spot could be located even at night if necessary, and even once entombed by blizzards.
“The soldiers who found him,” added Colonel Jean Tomoioaga, “say he was already a bit nibbled. By bats, of course.”
“Oh yes,” grumbled Andrei. “Very funny. Bats hibernate in winter.”
Having unfastened the handcar, Andrei stood behind the crank and drove on. Alongside the stream gushed downward with blinding clusters of foam, its din completely obscuring for him the creaking of the handcar. The sound of the wheels resounded far along the tracks, however — all the way to the last station, buzzing and droning in the trestles that signaled the end of the platform. It could be heard even in the commissary: when the handcar appeared around the final curve, Nikifor Tescovina was already waiting with folded arms at the end of the track.
“You’re looking for my little girl,” he said by way of greeting. “Unfortunately she’s not here. She went for a walk with Géza Hutira.”
Though winter was descending down the mountainsides in banks of roving gray mist, Nikifor Tescovina stood about in the mud with an uncovered head, in a tank top and moth-eaten army trousers, his bare feet in leather sandals. The mud around him was full of children’s barefoot tracks.
“First I’ll go find the meteorologist,” said Andrei. “On the way back I’ll spend the night here.”
“Yes, I know. But I might already be asleep, so let’s knock back a shot or two right now.”
The commissary comprised a single, dank room that smelled of mushrooms. At one end was a makeshift bar, behind which was a stove, ringed by sundry kitchen implements and appliances; in the corner, a wide cot. The three bear wardens cowering about in the room wore high-collared fatigue jackets glossy with grime, and cuirassed and otherwise covered with iron fittings and rivets — perhaps as protection against bear scratches. The chief warden, Doc Oleinek, was sprawled alone at a table, while the albino twins sat drinking on a narrow bench by the wall, arm in arm. According to the sheet-metal dog tags hanging from their necks, their names — and even among twins this is extremely rare — were the same: each was called Hamza Petrika. Seeing Andrei for the first time, they kept sticking their tongues out at him.
Nikifor Tescovina’s two dark-haired children now appeared as well, lured by the brilliantly-colored aluminum pole. They licked the glistening Popes and ran their fingers over the inscribed letters. They’d been the last to see Colonel Puiu Borcan alive; from the commissary the forest commissioner had headed off toward his final resting place. The colonel had been nearly transparent, so close was he to death: beside the table where he’d sat one last time to drink some hot spiced wine, only his outline trembled; translucent from fever, his great big flaccid ears had sparkled like crumpled cellophane. By the time they found him, so it was said, he’d already been nipped at and then some.
“I’m afraid I’ll be disturbing you a bit tonight.”
“Go ahead and come. As I say, I know what’s up.”
The trail that led to the meteorologist’s cabin started at the bottom of a narrow dale across a meadow full of tiny mounds from the commissary. At the edge of this meadow was Gábriel Dunka, the dwarf, roaming about among the mounds on all fours. He wore shoulder-length gloves, and from time to time stuck his entire arm into the ground, into a mysterious little shaft. For a long time he’d been doing business on the side with Nikifor Tescovina, catching marmots for him in the commissary meadow: every time a train or a hand-operated trolley approached on the tracks, the marmots streamed out among the mounds.