Vitaly sank to his knees in the snow and stayed there, unable to take another step. He would have frozen in that position had the poacher not gone back to pummel him to his feet and drive him out ahead, cursing. Behind them came the woman and the man from Ashkhabad. The boy brought up the rear.
Hour after hour passed. His eyes averted, he followed the footsteps in the snow. That was why he was the last to see it: the light in the distance, light that was unsteady and casting about in the darkness and the driving snow.
A car.
First, a car. Then, for a long time, nothing. Then the city.
Spring
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE. Little Moses
The soil had come unfrozen, the cold afternoon sun shining through the light-green leaves of the poplars. In the distance you could hear the deep, continuous barking of dogs. The pope cleared his throat. He had buried a nameless girl. The scant information he’d had was given him by the other man at the graveside — the police commissioner. In a level, earnest tone, he had told the pope about the anonymous girl. The commissioner had a boy with him. His son? Why would he bring his son to a sad occasion like this?
The weak breeze rolling across the graveyard held traces of winter and the cheerful warmth of spring. It was full of old scents that reminded your old heart of desires from long ago — vague but oh-so-strong. It led young people into the worst of blunders and the greatest of happiness, so you could imagine how the girl had left her parents’ home on a day like this to go her way, heading for adventure. Don’t! Beg shouted straight through the years, Stay home, please, the world is a dangerous place! But she didn’t hear him. Her heart pounding in excitement, she took up her position along the road, and it wasn’t long before the first car stopped …
They parted at the end of the lane, close to the Polish graves. The pope watched them go, the stocky policeman and the dirt-poor boy with eyes like a doe’s. Then he returned to the chapel, his black skirts flapping around his body.
Beg left the city behind, and they drove through open countryside, past dilapidated sheds amid tall bushes and weeds — the tail ends of town. With his window open a crack, the wind seized at his doleful thoughts about the girl and blew them away. The boy toyed with the knobs on the radio, alighting on snatches of voices, metallic jangling, and a music station from beyond the border. The boy liked contraptions, as long as they had buttons. The noise didn’t seem to bother him. At Beg’s house, he hadn’t been able to keep his hands off the TV and sound equipment. Now, Beg reached out resolutely and turned off the radio, so that they heard only the toiling of the engine and the hiss of wind through the window.
‘Don’t you like music?’ the boy asked after a while.
‘Yes, but not that loudly.’
‘So you could have turned it down, couldn’t you?’
Beg didn’t reply; instead, through the windshield, he looked at the hills in the distance. The road climbed gently.
‘I want to show you something,’ he said. ‘It’s not far now.’
‘Did you bring any bread along?’
That was the other thing: the boy was always hungry. He seemed to have a hollow leg. Beg looked over. ‘We’ll buy something on the way back.’
The boy opened the glove compartment. He found handcuffs and sunglasses, a pair of binoculars, a citation book, pens, and sheets of paper — but nothing that could still his hunger.
‘Why do you have such an old car, anyway?’ he asked. ‘You’re the boss of the policemen, right?’
Beg glanced over. ‘A long story,’ he said.
They drove into the hills. Beg avoided the potholes. At a turn-off, broken graders stood rusting in the open air.
Beg crossed the road and drove up a dirt path beneath the trees. They went downhill again, the car jolting over stones. The woods thinned out before Beg parked the car on a little promontory. They climbed out.
It was quiet, and cold air streamed from the woods. Sand and stones crunched beneath the soles of their shoes as they walked to the edge of the bluff. The range of low hills was nothing but a blip in the flats; at his feet, the vast landscape began anew. The steppe in front of them stretched as far as the eye could see. The dead, yellow grass was making way for new shoots, so that the landscape was shot through with a green haze. The wind swept it, and the grass billowed. Rays of sunlight fell between the clouds. The horizon was hazy, uncertain.
The boy looked up at him. Where were they? What were they doing here?
Beg pointed at a line in the distance. ‘The border,’ he said.
Neither of them spoke.
Far below them, the border meandered. Once it had been heavily guarded on this side. In those days, refugees were shot down by snipers. Now it was the other side that had thrown up new defences.
Beg took the binoculars out of the car and handed them to the boy. He looked through the lenses, and then held them a little way from his eyes.
‘Here,’ Beg said, ‘you have to turn this until the focus is right for your eyes — no, hold them up to your eyes … and now turn it. Until everything gets clear.’
‘Is that a fence?’ the boy asked after a while.
‘This section of it is a fence. Further up, north of here, they work with infra-red, mobile teams, even satellites. They have night glasses. It’s watertight.’
The boy snorted. ‘Not for me.’
‘Yes, for you, too.’
‘I can make myself real small …’
‘But not invisible.’
The boy peered at the horizon. ‘Houses!’ he said in surprise.
Never had the promised land been this close. It looked like you could touch it; all you had to do was reach out …
‘Cars! Over there!’
What seemed to surprise him most was that life on the other side looked just like it did here — the same grass, the same cars, the same houses. He sighed. A cloud slid across the sun, and the steppe faded to an ashen grey.
Little Moses, Beg thought, come so far, and now at last he sees his destination.
It was sheer torment, for this was where the road ended for him.
Still holding the binoculars to his eyes, the boy asked: ‘Is it really that difficult?’
Beg nodded. ‘Very difficult.’
The boy was soaking up the world on the other side. He had no greater desire than to be there — there, where there were no problems. It was impossible for there to be problems, no matter what anyone said.
‘Have you ever heard of Israel?’ Beg asked.
The boy shook his head.
‘It’s a country, too, far away from here.’ Beg waved his hand, in a gesture that went far beyond the horizon. ‘A sunny country, beside the sea.’
‘So what about it?’
‘Maybe you should think about going there. It’s a civilised place. Not like here. They’ve cultivated the desert, they grow dates and grapes and mangos. Later on, I can show you some pictures.’
Deep thought was traced on the boy’s forehead. ‘How would I get in there, into …’
‘Israel.’
‘Is it really far away?’
‘I’ve been thinking about it a bit lately,’ Beg said. ‘Imagine for a moment that you actually did get across the border here. One day, I’m sure you’d make it — maybe the first time you tried, maybe the tenth, but you’d make it. You’re smart enough; you’re not the kind who gives up. But after that, you’d still be nothing more than an undesirable alien. They don’t want you over there; they really don’t. It’s important that you realise this. There are so many people like you over there. You’re going to have to put up with humiliation. Maybe you’ll sell newspapers in front of a train station, or lug boxes at a market, or wash dishes in a restaurant. There’s a good chance that you’ll have to share a room with seven other men; you’ll have to take turns sleeping.’