Their listeners stared into space. ‘Things like that happen,’ one of them said. The others remained silent because they didn’t know what to say; two of them had witnessed something they couldn’t explain, and had run away from it. They had described a forlornness that seemed beyond this world — a sense of horrors that couldn’t be told.
Things beyond their control.
‘Tina!’
Tina came over and filled all their glasses.
‘Cheer up, guys,’ she said. ‘It can’t be all that bad.’
Budnik and Toth smiled wanly, and knew there was comfort in the sight of her bosom. So, too, when she walked back and forth behind the bar, in the tight leather skirt into which she had wedged her flesh. They were too young to have known her in her capacity as a trollop, but in the course of time their imaginations had been set afire by the stories their colleagues told — stories that made their blood run hot and made them mourn lost ground that could never be recovered.
The razzia began by order of the powers that be — vagrants were picked up all over town. The basement cells were packed. Fights broke out. One detainee was stabbed in the neck with a pen that the guards had overlooked. Almost every transient in town was swept off the streets, but the ones they were looking for weren’t among them. They seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth. The sightings that were reported were too diverse to all be true.
Maybe, Beg and Koller reasoned during a meeting, they had moved on and were trying to cross the border.
‘Then we’ll be hearing from them again,’ Koller said.
The border was locked down tight. Every car, every truck, and every train was searched twice — first on this side, then on the other. The technology on the other side belonged to the domain of science fiction. They had heartbeat detectors, carbon-dioxide sensors that betrayed people’s presence by their own breath, infra-red cameras, and night-vision equipment — all their technological ingenuity was applied to catching illegal migrants. Visas were awarded only very rarely; anyone headed for the other side took refuge in illegality. Countless of them became stranded at the border. Michailopol was home to many of those who had been picked up and sent back. They often remained drifting, and never returned home.
He had a predilection for problems that solved themselves, but Beg still felt regret at the idea that he might never know who the emaciated transients were. Budnik’s report had made him curious.
‘Like they were standing beside their mother’s grave, that’s the way they were crying,’ the patrolman had said.
Beg asked what they were crying about.
‘About nothing. I racked my brains trying to figure it out, but I couldn’t see any reason.’
‘No pain, no visible injuries?’
‘Pain, yeah. But not like someone who’s just got a beating. It was different.’
‘Could you describe what they looked like?’ Beg rested his chin on his clasped hands and closed his eyes, so he wouldn’t have to see how the patrolman swayed back and forth in his chair.
‘Like the Jews in the camps, sir. That’s what they looked like. I don’t know how else to put it.’
Beg opened his eyes. ‘And what did they look like, in your view?’
He saw the man — in fact, still only a big boy — searching for words to match the pictures in his head.
‘You know, terrible,’ he said then.
‘Where are you from, officer?’
‘Barsan, sir.’
‘That’s Oblast Grünewald, isn’t it, unless I’m mistaken?’
The constable laughed shyly. ‘Yes, um hum, Grünewald, that’s right. Twenty kilometres from Brstice. You know it?’
Beg withdrew the hand he’d held out and told him he was dismissed. The young man saluted and went. In fact, Beg had been meaning to upbraid him for his negligence on the street that night, but his heart was softened by the dialect of his native region.
He would have Koller do it. Frightened patrolmen were no good to anyone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX. The undead
Grey wood smoke was coming from the shed close to the old train station. A metal pipe had been stuck through the window, so the smoke rose straight up to the rooftop before it blew away. Lev Krasnik, a scrap-metal dealer, leaned his motor scooter and its trailer against a wall and walked over to the storage depot. He pressed his nose against the windowpane. The glass was dirty; something had been put in front of it on the inside — he couldn’t see a thing. Krasnik went to the door and gave it a little shove. He pushed harder, and something behind the door gave a bit. The crack was wide enough to look through now. It was a dim, deep space, and it stank inside.
‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Anybody there?’
He leaned against the door with his full weight, and then he was inside. The dank smell of rotting, faeces, and smoke took his breath away. Beside the window was a makeshift woodstove; the flickering glow from its belly illuminated the coffins someone had stored here. In front of it lay two long bundles. He strained his eyes to make them out — people, those were people lying there. In two lidless coffins on the floor, he saw human forms as well. He wanted to run, but was frozen to the spot in the semi-darkness. Then he saw the eyes looking at him from beside the stove: they belonged to a man sitting on the floor. He was wrapped in blankets, looking at Krasnik motionlessly. ‘Holy Mother of God,’ the scrap dealer whispered, and made the sign of the cross.
The man leaned forward and swept together some splinters from the floor. He tossed them in the fire, and it flared up. Krasnik saw splintered wood all over the floor; they had chopped coffins to pieces for firewood.
The mouth of the man by the fire formed words that Krasnik couldn’t make out. It was an old voice, like cracked dinnerware. Krasnik swallowed a lump of saliva and said: ‘Sorry, I didn’t get that.’
‘Close the door,’ the man said. ‘It’s cold.’
‘Yes, of course, yes. Sorry.’
He took advantage of the moment to hurry out of the shed. His hands shaking, he tried to pull the door shut from the outside, but the lock had been forced and the door wouldn’t close completely. Krasnik stepped inside and took a wedge of wood from the floor.
‘Sorry,’ he said, bent over and peering into the darkness, ‘but it won’t stay closed.’
Then he was outside again, where he jammed the splinter between door and threshold. Now it remained shut.
On his scooter, decked with frozen autumnal mud, he drove to police headquarters as fast as he could. On the way there, he tried to figure out why he had said ‘sorry’ so often. Apparently you couldn’t help but be apologetic when you stood face to face with creatures of the twilight.
Five patrol cars pulled up to the old train station — not all at the same time, but still, five in total, giving their occupants a rare feeling of urgency. Sergeant Koller was in charge. He had gone to work that morning with a nagging pain in his lower back; he had been planning to consult a physical therapist about it later in the day. But before he could leave the building, the unpleasant news came in that someone had apparently found the drifters.
The police station buzzed like a hive, stories large and small zooming around constantly. Koller knew he was about to play a leading role in one of the big stories of the day — one told with the relish of sensation but also with a superstitious sort of concern.
Still sitting in the car, he watched the smoke rising from the chimney pipe. Action, he thought, but the word only made him feel abysmally tired. For a moment he considered firing a teargas canister into the shed, but there was nothing to justify such overkill.