The main road, after winding its way down from the pass, followed the railroad embankment for some distance until all at once the double set of train tracks disappeared into a tunnel. The track watchman stood at the entrance, playing a clarinet. And then, further down, near the village, the embankment ran up alongside the road once again, and before long the main tracks were joined by a local, narrow-gauge railway line. Bicycling along, I arrived at the terminal of the Sinistra branch railway almost simultaneously with the train.
The tracks came to an end by a ramshackle one-story building. Hanging from its eaves was a wooden board painted with the name of the village: DOBRIN. That wasn’t all. Someone had sketched on the wall below with mud: CITY.
It was spring when I arrived in Dobrin City, toward evening.
Having propped my bike up against a railing, I waited for the throng of silent passengers who’d just gotten off the train to pass by. Some wore rubber boots; others, sandals. I figured if someone seemed agreeable, I’d strike up a conversation. This was my first time in Dobrin.
Smoke stirred above the station — wood smoke, for the trains around there ran on timber — and a few clouds even crept upward along the main road, away from the station, as if pulled along by the passengers now walking home. A man with olive-brown skin stood leaning against the wall of a loading platform across the street. Blinking incessantly, he eyed the openings that formed in the departing crowd. He wore a dirty white tank top and stained army trousers; sandals held his bare feet. I had no intention of greeting him, but once the passengers had dispersed, he jumped off the ramp and ran directly over to me across the now empty space.
“You look,” he said in a soft, greasy voice, “as if you need a place to stay.”
“Well, something like that.”
“I know a place.”
That is how I met Nikifor Tescovina. His name was obvious from the start: a sheet-metal dog tag dangled on a chain around his neck. For his part, he didn’t want to shake hands, much less know my name. “Let’s not hurry things,” he said. “Just who you are can wait until Colonel Borcan looks you up.” He explained that the forest commissioner who commanded Dobrin’s mountain infantry would, among other things, decide on a name for me.
“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but nobody here rides a bicycle. You won’t need yours anymore — just leave it there, someone will take it.”
He was always one step ahead of me as we walked through the village, which stretched out across the bottom of the valley. More than once he stepped into a puddle to wash the dust off his sandaled feet, as if summer had arrived, though in fact hardly had the sun disappeared for the day behind the peaks to the west than a cuticle of ice had started to form around all the puddles. A narrow, weasel-shaped patch of snow glistened on the steep mountainside above, and the cut power lines that dangled from the utility poles along the main road in Dobrin City swung back and forth as a cool evening breeze, spiced with the scent of spruce buds, swept down into the village
“Everything here belongs to the mountain infantry,” Nikifor Tescovina explained in that same soft, greasy voice. “The place you’ll live in, too — they take care of people around here.”
“Up to now I’ve seen them only in pictures,” I replied, in as hushed a tone as possible, “but I’ve heard the mountain infantrymen are decent soldiers.”
“Oh yes — and make sure to tell them you lost your papers. Colonel Puiu Borcan will pretend he believes you.”
“Oh! My papers —” I said with a start. “I stuffed them under the bicycle seat. I should go back and get them.”
“Oh, forget about them — your bike’s gone by now, anyway. Forget those papers ever existed.”
Toward the end of the village, a stream passed in white torrents under a covered wooden bridge, and beside it sat a dwarf, soaking his feet. Before long Nikifor Tescovina turned off the road into an alley that soon narrowed into a trail. Making its way along a small stream whose soggy banks were overgrown with weeds, this trail passed between the village yards out into a meadow. At the far end of the meadow, beside a cluster of spruces, willows, and black alders, stood a decrepit old building with a dented but glistening roof. It looked as if it used to be a water mill, but the stream had changed course, leaving the mill high and dry on the meadow. Birds nested in the building’s broken windows and twilight showered down from the sky through the cracks in the wood-shingle roof like a mass of thin, many-colored, shimmering blades. The mill’s axles, grindstones, and other onetime furnishings had long been removed, and the evening scent of the meadow blew gently through gaping holes in the wall.
Nikifor Tescovina passed through a hollow space between those walls and straight up to the second floor and stopped before a wide-open, rickety door. In a corner of the adjacent room, which seemed to have been used to store tools and other things, was a berth of freshly torn spruce branches.
“You can lie low here,” said Nikifor Tescovina. “No one’s going to ask you a thing.”
“How did you know I was coming?”
“Ever since you set foot in the Sinistra Zone, Colonel Borcan has followed your every move. This area attracts people like you — they follow the Sinistra River upstream and don’t stop until they reach Dobrin.”
“Then the colonel knows I’m just a simple wayfarer, that’s good to hear.”
“Oh, of course he knows. And what is the simple wayfarer planning to do? You seem versatile.”
“Well, I’m at home in the woods — I know about trees, bushes, mushrooms, fruit. I’ve worked at food markets. I can work at a lumberyard or help peel trees. I could even set traps.”
“Sounds good. I’ll tell the colonel. But until he comes by, don’t leave — In fact, don’t even step outside.”
“And what should I do if nature calls, in a big way?”
“Just stick your ass out the window.”
Nikifor Tescovina waved good-bye by putting a palm to his forehead. By the time he reached the far end of the meadow, where the village fences began, dusk had swallowed him up. Leaning over the windowsill, I kept looking his way until from behind me an owl flew outside, amid a great buffeting of wings.
Days passed before he deigned to show himself again, but every morning I found a little bag hanging on the doorknob, a bottle of water always inside it along with a few congealed boiled potatoes; onions; a handful of prunes; and some hazelnuts. Those days there, spent consuming such fare, fused together as quickly as the fog passing over the meadow; for a long time I had no idea whether it was Monday, Wednesday, or Saturday. The passing of time was signaled by the changing shape of the patches of snow on the mountainside above Dobrin.
One morning, though, there he was again: Nikifor Tescovina, seated on the threshold beside the dangling bag of grub.
“I’m glad to see you’ve been sleeping so well,” he said. “I’ve stopped by more than a few times but didn’t want to wake you. I thought: let the guy get his sleep. In the meantime, though, Colonel Puiu Borcan and I got to talking about you.”
“You mean he has time to think about me?”
“Of course he does — he’s the forest commissioner, right? He wants to see you — so he’ll come by soon. It looks like you can stay here in Dobrin.”
“If you’ve really arranged that, I’ll repay you someday. I’d like to make a go of it here. Something tells me this is this is the place I’ll make something of my life.”
“That could well be. Colonel Borcan figures that if your proposal to oversee wild fruit harvest is serious, something can be worked out. He thinks the harvested fruit could be stored here at the mill in barrels and tubs.”