“Blueberries and blackberries were my specialty,” I replied. “As you know, I delivered supplies to the nature reserve. The bears are partial to blackberries.”
“I’ve never seen a blueberry in my life, but you’ll show me one, all right? As for blackberries, we’ve got the trailing sort down in Dobruja, dewberries. We don’t get much snow, but all year round the hills and knolls are white with salt, and the dewberries trail all over those pale mounds, with their furry stems packed full of leering little berries.”
“Must be interesting.”
I wasn’t exactly in the mood for polite conversation. In fact I was terribly annoyed at being forced to leave. The couple of years I’d spent in the Sinistra Zone suddenly seemed in vain. I had hoped to help my adopted son flee once I found him; or, if he didn’t want to go, I would have taken Aranka Westin with me. And now along came this woman, Izolda Mahmudia, to banish me. I huffed and I puffed, spitting furiously.
“Say, Andrei, you don’t happen to have any idea what might have become of your papers, do you?”
“Yes I do,” I answered peevishly, “I believe they stayed in the big man’s pocket.”
“What big man’s?”
“In his, of course — the Colonel’s.” Lackadaisically I pointed ahead to the snow-covered peaks above Dobrin sparkling amid ragged drooping clouds: there Colonel Puiu Borcan rested on a lone mountaintop in eternal peace among flat green stones.
“That’s too bad. Don’t even think of rummaging through his pockets. They say he was done in by the contagion. I’m going to have a fire lit under him. And don’t call him ‘The Colonel’ anymore.”
Minutes later, flying low over a distant rolling meadow and bouncing repeatedly off its hillocks, came Colonel Puiu Borcan’s umbrella. In no time it had flitted on, passing right by the rock walls above Dobrin.
“I’ve never in my life seen such a big bat,” whispered Coca Mavrodin.
Past a spruce-covered bend along the road, beyond road worker Zoltán Marmorstein’s cabin, stood an alpine farmhouse; near this farmhouse was a barn, a hay shack, and a tiny wooden shed. Glistening black heaps of manure steamed on the rimy autumn meadow along the fence. Severin Spiridon, a mountain resident recognizable on sight, ambled along among the piles with pocketed hands, sometimes looking up in apparent alarm. Huge black birds, carrion crows, strutted along on the ground before him; a woolly, dappled dog followed behind.
Having been the first to notice the manure piles, the dog, its tail erect and swaying in the wind, promptly urinated in spurts. Severin Spiridon stopped, too, a hand half covering his eyes as he peered into the distance through the translucent wisps of steam rising from the manure. First he opened his jacket at the neck, then his trousers, and keeping one hand above his eyes, he, too, nervously relieved himself.
“Who’s that?” asked Coca Mavrodin.
“Severin Spiridon — You’ll meet him, Miss, he’s been with the mountain infantry for a while now.”
“Just between us, I don’t care for these mountain infantrymen. Each and every one of them is a cocky little bastard.”
Severin Spiridon had meanwhile circled his house and was now peering about with a pair of binoculars that he must have found hanging somewhere or other, for they hadn’t been on him before. No doubt he noticed Coca Mavrodin and me roaming those soggy paths, and, even from a distance, he surely recognized me.
“How the hell did your papers wind up in Colonel Borcan’s pocket?”
“It’s a bit embarrassing, but he figured I owed him something, so he kept my papers as collateral. Supposedly I owed him a fish that had been sent to him by god-knows-who.”
“It’s not good to be in debt to a colonel.”
Skirting well around the wet meadows to the south, we finally reached the edge of the boggy ground that stretched its bumpy way all the way to Severin Spiridon’s fence. By then, though, there was not a sign of life around the farmhouse, neither of the dappled dog nor his master. Coca Mavrodin went over squelching clumps of grass, straight toward the farm.
“Come on, let’s take a detour. I’d like to have a word with that man with the binoculars.”
But by then, of course, Severin Spiridon was nowhere to be seen. On arriving we found only his boots, placed neatly beside each other in the doorway. Barefoot tracks led through the mud toward the barn. The whining dog could be heard from behind the kitchen door.
“He’s hiding,” observed Coca Mavrodin. Proceeding to walk through the yard, well ahead of me, she added, “So we’ll just have to find him.”
There was no lock on the barn door, so Coca Mavrodin opened it. She disappeared into the darkness inside for thirty seconds at most, and by the time I got there she was back out, standing on the threshold. She didn’t even bat a dry, leathery eye.
“Got a knife?”
I promptly handed her my mushrooming knife, which I always had on me. She refused.
“I can’t reach up there; you do it. Cut him down nice and easy.”
Inside the barn, light from gaps in the ceiling — gaps formed by cracks in the roof’s ice-smashed tiles — shone through the darkness like glinting blades. There swayed the silhouette of Severin Spiridon, hanging from a rope, the binoculars still around his neck. He was barefoot, but the scent of rubber boots lingered above his limp feet.
Izolda Mavrodin urged me on.
“Hurry up. Before someone thinks I did this.”
I went into the barn, perched on the edge of the manger, and cut him down, like that. Severin Spiridon plopped onto the hay-covered floor. Through the thin rays of light I could see steam still coming from his mouth. Kneeling down beside him, I pinched his cheeks and pressed my lips to his. I puffed and inhaled again and again, giving it my all, until I felt him cough gently into my face. Once his eyelids started quivering, I fetched a pail of water, poured some over his face and neck, and left it there for him to find at hand.
All the while, Coca Mavrodin had been pacing back and forth out front.
“I asked you to cut him down. Not to go kissing him. How on earth did such a thing cross your mind?”
“I only gave it a try — ”
“But you revived him.”
Severin Spiridon’s dog was barking from behind the farmhouse door. Passing by the boots its master had removed, we veered back out to the trail and crossed the meadow to the solitary jeep. Brilliantly colored autumn bugs now covered the dead crow in the puddle on the canvas roof. Wispy clouds frizzed under the peaks above Dobrin, and the squealing of geese resounded like the curt sounds of a track watchman’s whistle.
“I’m going to have a smoke,” I said. “If you’re in a hurry, Miss, don’t wait around. I’ll be fine. I’ll get down on my own. I know the shortcuts.”
Coca Mavrodin sat behind the wheel, closed the door behind her, and rolled down her window.
“Do people around here often do this sort of thing?”
“They aren’t hooked on it just yet.”
“All I’ll say is, don’t you dare touch a dead man again.”
“If I can stay here, I promise. If not, I can’t be held responsible for my actions.”
“Get one thing through your head: a dead man’s job is to never move again.”
Often I found cigarette butts around the barracks, and I kept them in a little sheet-metal box in my pocket. Having now picked out a particularly fat one, I slipped it into my cigarette holder. The jeep didn’t start, so I lit up and kept puffing away while resting my elbows on the hood. From there I saw Severin Spiridon lying prostrate, his elbows on the threshold of the barn. His saliva still clung to my face.
“Odd, isn’t it, that he happened to do it just now?” grumbled Coca Mavrodin. “Precisely when we were coming this way. A bit odd, if you ask me.”