“And he doesn’t say what happened to her?”
“No,” lied Bartolomeo, “he doesn’t.”
“Perhaps they both got across the mountains. Perhaps they’re still alive. . . .”
“I don’t know about that.”
“What does he say about her?”
“I’ve told you about ten times already, Milena. He says she sang beautifully, and everyone adored her.”
“Sang . . . adored. Was all that in the past tense in his letter?”
“Yes . . . no . . . I don’t remember.”
“Would you open it and look, please?”
Bartolomeo put his hand in his coat pocket and then changed his mind. “I won’t be able to read it. Too dark in here. Leave it till tomorrow.”
“Bart, are those words in the past tense in the letter?” Milena persisted.
He hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Yes. They’re in the past. But that doesn’t mean anything except that they were leaving this country. So it makes sense for him to have written in the past tense.”
The road wasn’t winding so much now. They fell asleep at last, leaning against each other. Milena had a very odd dream in which Old Ma Crackpot had brought a symphony orchestra into the classroom, but the musicians weren’t playing. Instead, they were sitting on the tables and making friendly conversation with the girls, who were delighted. The Tank and Miss Merlute, perched on the top rung of a ladder, were looking in through the window, their faces red with fury as they angrily tapped on the panes in protest. But no one took any notice of them except Old Ma Crackpot, who made gestures of powerless despair in their direction.
Milena woke up with a start. Two pale, washed-out eyes were staring at her from a few inches away. She realized that her head had slipped off Bart’s shoulder and was now hanging down over the aisle. The man on the next seat was scrutinizing her with frank interest. He wore a farm laborer’s jacket and pants, and his large, chapped hands rested on his knees. There was a cage containing two fat gray rabbits at his feet.
“Eva-Maria Bach,” he muttered in a thick voice. His flat face, which wore a blissful smile, suggested that he wasn’t quite right in the head.
“I’m sorry?” said Milena. “What did you say?”
“Eva-Maria Bach . . . that’s you, right?”
“No, I . . . Who do you mean?”
The man did not reply but nodded, looking satisfied, as if Milena had said yes to his question. Seeing that he was still staring at her as hard as ever, she turned away. Bartolomeo was asleep beside her, his head against the window. She dug her elbow into his ribs.
“Wake up, Bart. There’s a weirdo on my other side.”
The boy opened his eyes, leaned forward, and spoke to the man on the other side of the aisle. “What do you want?” he asked.
The man, still beaming, picked up the cage so that they could get a better view of his two rabbits.
“Never mind him; he’s a bit simple,” Bartolomeo whispered into Milena’s ear. They smiled at the man and agreed: yes, they were very handsome rabbits; he should be proud of them.
Day was dawning now, and they were close to the town. Patches of light fell on the countryside here and there. Farmhouses with slate roofs sometimes came into sight as they turned a bend. Soon they were going along an endless straight road full of potholes, but instead of trying to avoid them, the driver was driving as fast as the engine would go. The bus raced furiously on. Tuned between two channels, the radio was blaring out appalling music at full volume. Very soon the travelers, shaken like plums falling off a tree, were emerging from under their blankets one by one and beginning to get their things together.
“You don’t like music?” bawled the driver, laughing at his own joke.
“Yes, we do. That’s the trouble,” Milena murmured.
A few minutes later they had reached the suburbs of the town and then the bus station. The driver parked his vehicle beside a dozen others, all lined up by a building with flaking walls.
The place was deserted. It was bitterly cold. Milena put the hood of her coat up over her head. “Do you think that’s the café over there? We could get a hot drink before we start out.”
“It would be better not to let people see too much of us,” Bart suggested.
But the glazed door they were facing, with a pattern of a cup with a small spoon in it, did look as if it led to a café. They made for it. Inside, three men drinking white wine at the bar were half hidden by the smoke of their cigarettes. Bus drivers, perhaps. A fat man, the café manager, was sweeping the floor in a desultory way. Reassured, Milena and Bart opened the door and went to sit at a table by the opposite window. From there they could just make out the first hills, with the dark mass of the mountains beyond them.
“Yes?” asked the fat man, his three chins quivering.
“Two coffees, please,” said Bart.
They sipped slowly, holding the hot cups of coffee between the palms of their hands. Now that she felt a little warmer, Milena put her hood back, letting her luxuriant, blond hair tumble over her shoulders. One of the men at the bar immediately turned. He stared at her, and went on staring. A second man soon followed his example. There was nothing pleasant in the grins on their faces.
“What are they after, Bart? They keep on looking at me.”
“You’ll have to get used to it,” said Bart, jokingly. “Looking at you isn’t exactly a hardship, you know.”
At any other time Milena would have liked the compliment, but her uneasiness spoiled any pleasure she might have felt. “Stop it; it’s not that. It’s more as if something about me intrigues them.”
By now the three men were talking in low voices and openly looking her up and down.
“That’s enough,” said Bart firmly. “I don’t like this. Let’s go!”
Milena swallowed the last of her coffee, the sweetest mouthful at the end, and they both got to their feet, leaving some of the money that Martha had given them on the sticky tablecloth.
“Good-bye,” they said to the men as they went out.
“Good-bye,” one of them growled in return. Bartolomeo was just shutting the door when the man’s hoarse voice caught up with them, followed by a coarse laugh from his two companions. “Think she’d give us a song before she goes?”
Milena stopped dead. “Did you hear what he said?”
“I heard.”
She took hold of the collar of Bartolomeo’s coat, almost hanging on him. “Bart, you don’t understand!”
“What is there to understand?”
“They think I’m my mother! You can see they do! In the bus earlier, and now too . . .”
“A simpleton and three drunks, Milena! Come on. Please.”
She resisted him. “No, I’m going to ask those men! They must know. The one in the bus called me Bach. He said my name, do you hear? And a first name too. He said my mother’s name, Eva-Maria; I’m sure he did.”
“You may be right, but we can’t hang around here. They’ll be after us, remember. All it takes is for the manager of that café or one of his customers to make a phone call. So come on.”
He took her arm, and regretfully she let him lead her away.
The rain never stopped all morning. They walked on side by side through the drizzle, their steps in time with their breathing. The road went uphill, but they could see almost nothing of the plains they were leaving behind or the mountains ahead of them. Milena was feeling gloomy, and they didn’t talk much. A few cars slowed down as they caught up with them. They saw surprised faces and suspicious glances behind the windows.
“Let’s get off the road,” Bart said. “I’m sick of the way they’re staring at us.”
Late in the afternoon they caught up with a horse-drawn cart going up a stony path. A small, swarthy man was leading the horse by its halter. Milena, whose feet were beginning to feel sore in spite of her boots, put on her prettiest smile and asked, “Could you give us a lift?”