Wasting no time in making an introductory visit to pay my respects, I soon found myself standing before the new forest commissioner in my now dustless quilted jacket, my rinsed and freshly shined rubber boots.
But before she’d even finished looking me over, which she did thoroughly, she ordered me to leave her office.
In the days and weeks to come she left me messages here and there, scribbled little trifles. But whenever I then reported to her in person, out of breath, she would send me away once again. “Must be some mistake,” she’d say, claiming to not even know who I was, while at other times she’d say: “Let’s put that off for now, we’ll talk some other time.” I had no doubt she wanted only to test me, to get on my nerves, and that one day she would be ready to reveal her true intentions — whether openly or not. And then she would have her mountain infantrymen, her dogs, and her falcons search under every rock until I turned up.
I may have been getting on in years, but that didn’t stop me from flirting madly enough that fall with Aranka Westin, and not without cause for hope. When, as sometimes happened, she would be left unattended after a delivery, I’d go look her up. One fine morning the gray ganders found me there engaged in some serious kissing. Hardly had they arrived, and they were already taking me away.
The next stop was the office of Coca Mavrodin, who now announced that she’d been grappling long and hard with the question of what should become of me. The wild fruit depot had been shut down, she noted, and so my post as harvest coordinator had ceased. Since I hadn’t been born around here, anyway, but who knows where, it would be best if I soon left the Zone altogether.
“Strawberry picking, mushrooming, rambling in the woods — that sort of thing has seen its day,” said Coca Mavrodin in a subdued, colorless voice. “In fact, it’s been completely unnecessary for some time now.” After a pause she added, “But the biggest problem is that your papers are missing. You can’t stay here.”
To drive home her point, she now pulled a worn-looking gray file folder from her desk that bore the words ANDREI and BODOR in big, scrawled letters. My alias. She opened it up and showed me, as if to indicate that I didn’t exist, that it was empty. It couldn’t be ruled out, she said, that someone or other, figuring my papers were not needed, had burned them or thrown them out — or maybe the documents had self-destructed.
By jingling the sheet-metal dog tag that hung from my neck, I now showed her that Colonel Puiu Borcan had had me registered in the usual manner, so that if need be I could prove my identity. Those in Dobrin who worked in the woods wore such dog tags engraved with all of their personal data. Around here, that was what counted as real identification.
“If you were to stay here,” said Coca Mavrodin, “you’d need that one day. But now you won’t, as long as you’re alive and kicking.”
Short, hunched, and pallid, Coca Mavrodin-Mahmudia was buried deep in her greatcoat like some lurid nocturnal moth. Even her eyes were leathery: they didn’t so much as blink. And yet — as the stink of dead bugs steamed from her lusterless, feltlike hair and from the yellow tufts of cotton in her ears — her black nostrils flared at me.
“All the same,” I said, figuring it was worth a try, “if possible I’d like to stay, anyway. I’ll do anything. I’ve already applied for a job as signalman with the narrow-gauge railroad. Maybe we can still talk things over.”
“I’ve heard of your plans,” said the forest commissioner with a dismissive wave of her hand. “But once the snow falls, that rail line shuts down, and I’m not so sure I’ll be starting it up again come spring. Sooner or later you’d get into trouble here — come on, you don’t even have a name. Get out while you can, with your honor intact. Go while I let you.”
Her words were clear enough, so I took hold of my cap, cast her one or two malicious glances instead of a greeting, and spit out the open window on my way to the door. Coca Mavrodin’s voice reached me on the threshold.
“Stop right there. Go ahead and spit, I don’t care — but I thought you were a gentleman.”
“I am, and besides, I didn’t spit.”
“That’s different. Then I can ask you for a favor, after all. There’s a pass around here, The Baba Rotunda Pass. I’d like you to guide me there. I’m not exactly crazy about having these mountain infantrymen take me.” She turned around, chair and all, raising a finger to the topographic map on the wall. Searching out the high point where the main road began to somersault back downhill on the other side of the range, she added, “To be honest, I’ve never spent much time in this sort of terrain — I’m from down south. So it would be a relief if a civilian would show me the way, someone I won’t be seeing again in any case.”
“All right. I won’t refuse.”
The gray ganders sat beside each other on a bench by the entrance, sweat gathering in white welts on their black oxfords. Their button eyes sparkled in the bright autumn sunshine and the smell of cheap cologne.
“This here,” said Coca Mavrodin, pointing at me, “is the big bad bird. He’s promised to leave. Tomorrow morning you’re to accompany him to the border of the Zone. Wait there till he takes wing and flies away.”
The Red Cross jeep was waiting in front of the barracks. The rainwater swaying about in a tiny puddle on its canvas roof was speckled with blue, leeching from the fallen birch leaves that floated on top; this puddle also held a crow — a crow with upturned feet. In those days, birds would often drop right out of the sky.
Géza Kökény, the valiant bear-keeper of old, was basking in the sun at the front gate, puffing his Pope. As the smoke reached me, my nostrils caught the aroma of languishing thyme. In a salute of sorts he raised the fingers of his right hand to his forehead.
Winding its way up to the Baba Rotunda Pass in eight or nine zigzags was an old dirt road pockmarked with sparkling puddles and slashed here and there by water-filled ditches. Except for a single bus route that led toward Bukovina, it was used only by charcoal burners, forest rangers, and the mountain infantrymen of Dobrin. At the top, in addition to a few tiny farms scattered about some clearings, was the home of road worker Zoltán Marmorstein: a log cabin faded gray from wind and rain. There we stood facing the steep rock walls of Dobrin; the Kolinda forest loomed to the east, and the crags of Pop Ivan Mountain blazed weasel-red to the north.
This, then, was a sort of get-acquainted session, an initial joint reconnaissance mission. I went on ahead of Coca Mavrodin, bending back the branches to clear the way for her, kicking spruce cones off the path and clapping loudly to scare away the birds in plenty of time. A week or two earlier the mountain ash trees still held their clusters of fiery red berries, but by now only denuded branches remained: the waxwings, which feed on the berries, had arrived, driven here by the piercing winds up north.
To break the silence, I mentioned this bit of natural history trivia. At first Coca Mavrodin seemed not to notice. Only minutes later did she reply.
“So you’re a man of learning — I still don’t have any use for you,” she said. “A man shouldn’t give his mind over to fruit and birds. What the hell grows around here, anyway?”