year-old sister. Pavel hadn't given much thought to his crime; what bothered him most was that it was impossible to get Gabo to work properly, and because they couldn't fulfil their quotas, they had their already meagre rations cut back.
The explosions sounded closer.
'The dynamite plant is on the other side of the woods. They're always testing explosives over there. Do you want to take a look inside?'
'Will they let me?'
'They might, if I went with you.' She attempted a coquettish smile. 'You see those buildings in front of us? You can take a look in one of them if you like. You'll be surprised. Instead of setting up proper safety procedures and buying new machines, they simply put light roofs on the buildings. If there's an explosion, the roof flies off and so do the people, but the walls and the buildings around it remain standing.' She was becoming talkative, perhaps to reciprocate his own attempts to be friendly. 'Over there, in the nitroglycerine plant, they have fully automated vats for mixing liquids by remote control. But they still do it by hand, with paddles. The automated equipment doesn't work. If the men were to get slightly out of sync, they'd all go up. Have you seen The Wages of Fear? It's exactly like that. But no one's going to make a film about us. They'd never be allowed.
'I bet you're wondering why they work there. It's obvious: they do it for the bonuses. We're selling ourselves and we never think about it any more. Mum's got emphysema and she's on permanent disability. My brother's little girl is in the children's cancer clinic. In our block of flats three people have died in the past year and not one of them was over forty. Go to our cemetery and have a look at the dates on the tombstones. What good are bonuses to them now? But nobody thinks they'll end up that way. I'm the same.' She smiled flirtatiously again. 'But you'd better keep all this to yourself.'
The path led through the woods. There wasn't a soul around. If he were to put his arms around her now and kiss her, she probably wouldn't object, but what then?
Bare branches, trees with their crowns lopped off stretched towards the sky. The wire fence was quite near now, and he even glimpsed a soldier in a green uniform on patrol.
'Oh, look at the poor thing!' she cried suddenly. A jay was hopping about on the path waving a single wing in a vain attempt to fly.
The poor bird was being punished for the sins of others. Too bad he didn't have his camera with him. He would have liked to film the jay. A ghastly bird in a ghostly wood. If he ever made a film about the end of civilization, or about the world after some great catastrophe, the image might come in handy. But he would never make a film like that now. He would end up like this bird first.
He wanted a drink. He'd ask her to take him into one of the company canteens and buy her one to thank her for her company and then, then he would see. He really should have tried to remember.
She bent over and picked up the bird. 'Oh, you poor little thing. Are you afraid? Do you see that?' she said, turning to him. 'Do you see that?'
'It won't survive,' he said, 'unless you want to take it home.'
She shook her head. 'There's no point. I can't take them all home.'
'Let me have it.' He took the bird out of her hand and ended its suffering with a single twist. Then he kicked aside some leaves with his shoe, put the bird's dead body in the depression and covered it with leaves.
This factory, he realized, was a microcosm of the whole country: shabby, decaying structures surrounded by a double wire fence. Life is dying off, and not even the birds will survive, but there's something explosive in the air. All it needs is a spark, and everything will blow up.
Who will strike the spark? Who will survive the explosion?
'All the same,' she said, 'I envy you. By evening you'll be gone and you'll never have to come back.'
4
It was shortly after noon when he turned off the main highway and followed a road that rose gently through a wood. He still did not really know where he was going, but he needed to drive somewhere. He couldn't just stay put or return to a place where he'd persuaded himself he had a reason to be, where he thought he was at home.
Yesterday, when the meeting with the predetermined outcome was over, he had invited the secretary for a drink, and afterwards she took him to a party in a large house. Outside, to his surprise, several luxurious western cars were parked. Indoors, their owners were getting drunk. Though he drank a lot too, he was aware of how alien these faces marked by life under a volcano seemed to him. The secretary was pleased to have him as her guest, and she introduced him to people who had no desire whatsoever to know him, and whose names and positions he had no need to remember.
There were also many strikingly or scantily dressed women at the party, but they all seemed to be with someone. He listened to several stories from lives which, except for occasional explosions and premature deaths, were much like the lives people lead anywhere else. Here, however, the line between being and non-being had been blurred. Wherever this happens, other lines become easier to cross as welclass="underline" lines marking greed, dishonesty, dishonour, shamelessness and the despair which probably lies behind all the rest.
What was greed, and dishonour? What was wretchedness?
Greed was a finger down the throat of the satiated, an extra room for useless junk, an unloved lover in one's arms.
As the night wore on, inhibitions vanished and, again without his camera, he watched a young man with trembling hands trying to give himself an injection, unable to find a vein. He saw a couple dance half-naked into the corner of a room and sink to the floor in an amorous embrace, and a man vomiting into a large Chinese vase through a cluster of red asters.
Dishonour was a substitute for honour which had exhausted itself in a vain attempt to bind someone to itself.
Then his attention was caught by a red-haired woman who appeared to be there alone. For some time now she had been gazing at him mistily. Her eyes were red, either from the smoke in the air or from crying. He invited her to dance. She shook her head, but then she stood up with great difficulty. 'Don't be angry,' she warned him, 'I probably won't be a very good partner tonight.'
'You mean a dance partner?'
'Isn't that all you want me for?'
'We don't have to dance if you don't feel like it.'
Wretchedness was the lot of those who hadn't the strength to be honourable nor the courage to be dishonourable. Wretchedness was the lot of those who, under all circumstances, remain in the middle.
She led him away to a room that was empty except for a solitary drunk who had fallen asleep in a leather armchair. She poured two glasses of cognac from a bottle that had been put there for guests who knew their way around. Five years ago, she said, she had married the marketing director of the company. She was a lawyer and had worked in his department. Her husband travelled a lot and had taken her on some of his trips. She had visited many countries and had seen a lot of exotic cities — Tripoli, Dakar, Amman, Lagos — but the names don't tell you anything. If you haven't been there, it's hard to imagine the atmosphere. The sea; the dark, narrow streets; hotels with swimming-pools on the roof; that strange light that makes everything seem to glow; those magnificent carpets in the mosques; the palm groves; the tiny villages with houses that look like brightly painted termite mounds; markets and bazaars where you can wander for hours, haggle with merchants and buy everything from magnificent embroideries, gold, precious stones and beaten copper to miraculous amulets, rattles, marimbas. You can't imagine those sounds, shouts, the music and the whistling, the different smells, and then evenings in sterile hotel rooms, negotiations in which millions change hands. You have no idea what an incredible demand there is in the world for a cheap