Outside the front door, as agreed, she met Milena, who was waiting for her, muffled up in her black coat. Dora was with her and was amused by Helen’s surprise. Both Dora and Milena wore the same kind of fur cap, which made them look like sisters.
“Don’t worry,” Milena assured Helen at once. “You can talk as freely to Dora as to me.”
They walked together along the roads leading uphill from the square. It was a chilly but clear night. A few dimly lit windows cast patches of light on the somber granite facades, and Milena slipped her hand under Helen’s arm. “Remember the last time we walked like this?”
“Yes, crossing our bridge. I feel as if I’ve lived ten years since then.”
“So do I!”
Dora went ahead. She seemed to be very much on her guard, stopping and looking around intently whenever they came to the corner of a road. Twice she decided that they should retrace their steps and take a different route.
“The idiots — they hide in porches, but they can’t keep from smoking. You can see their cigarettes glowing two miles away.”
“What idiots?” asked Helen.
“The security police on night duty. I’d advise you to avoid them as much as you can.”
“So how do I spot them?”
“Easy. They’re all over the place. They’re muscular and stupid, and they go around in pairs.”
Higher up, Helen recognized the roads she had gone along the night before on Mitten’s motorbike. They stopped for a moment.
“Jahn’s Restaurant is over there,” said Dora, pointing. “Just beyond the factory. See it?”
Three tall brick chimneys reached toward the sky. In the absence of any wind, gray smoke was rising slowly from one of them. Helen could also see the Wooden Bridge to the north, with several fires flickering below it, and farther away, the Castle. Its dark mass dominated the city on the other side of the river.
When they reached the cemetery, the three women thought at first that Bart hadn’t come to the meeting place. They waited a little while on the grassy promontory, watching the roads below for his arrival. The moon had gone behind a cloud, and they could hardly make out its pale disk. Helen blew on her numb fingers to warm them.
“Would it really be so dangerous to talk down there where it’s nice and warm?”
“Yes,” said Dora. “The Phalange has spies everywhere. There are ears listening where you think you’re safest: in the corridors, in the canteen, even in your room. Mr. Jahn is closely watched. If anyone was caught criticizing the regime in his restaurant, they could arrest him and close the place down within the hour. It’s the same in the city, as you’ll find out. At least up here we’re sure of not being overheard, we can see people coming a long way off, and the people behind that wall couldn’t care less what we talk about!”
As if to contradict her, the rusty gate of the cemetery opened with a long, low, moaning sound, and the tall shape of Bartolomeo emerged from the night.
“Were you waiting in the cemetery?” Milena was surprised.
“Yes,” he said, coming toward them. “Know anywhere safer and quieter?”
“Don’t you find it scary being around all the dead people?” asked Helen, impressed.
“No, the dead don’t make trouble. It’s the living I don’t trust. Now, tell me about Milos.”
Helen cleared her throat and began at the beginning: their climb to the school roof, the extraordinary spectacle of the staff at their annual assembly, Van Vlyck, how they went to free Catharina, who turned out to be free already. Then she did her best not to leave out any of what followed: their flight, the night in the bus, their freezing wait in the snow, Milos’s terrible fight. As her story went on, Bart shook his head, sighing. He had known that his friend was fearless and generous; he’d never thought he would take on two men and six dogs with his bare hands to protect him.
“He really did that?” he murmured incredulously.
“Yes, he did,” Helen confirmed. “But he’s paid such a price for it!”
She found it hard to keep back her tears as she described the way the men had thrown Milos’s racked body on the sleigh like the carcass of an animal.
“Dr. Josef thinks he’s alive,” she finished, then blew her nose. “He said that if he wasn’t, they wouldn’t have taken him away so quickly.”
“I’m sure he’s right,” Dora comforted her. “Try not to worry.”
And she opened her arms. Helen fell into them, and all four stood there in silence for several seconds. In the quiet night it was like a mute prayer for their friend, a prayer that he was still alive and well. Bart and Milena too were in each other’s arms, standing very close.
“What about Basil?” Bart asked at last, in a voice full of concern. “Did they keep him in the cell? Did Milos say anything about that?”
“No,” Helen lied, promising herself to tell him the truth some other time. She just didn’t feel brave enough to do it at the moment. “And what about you two?” she asked. “Tell me what happened to you.”
They told her about their crazy expedition into the mountains, their journey down the river in the boat, their meetings with so many people who were sure that they recognized Milena as her own mother.
“Are you really that much like her?” Helen smiled. “Now I understand about your hair. But why did you turn back?”
“To fight,” said Bart. “You know I’ve just been walking among the graves here. It may be silly, but I like it. Even at night. At school I’d sometimes go to the cemetery instead of seeing my consoler or walking around the town. Milos thought I was crazy. He said it was no way to use our few hours of freedom. But I like such places; I don’t find them sad, not at all. They make you think of your own life and what you’re going to do with it. And that’s what Milena and I decided: we made up our minds to do something with our lives. We want to fight back against the Phalange.”
“Oh, is that all?” said Helen ironically. She had spoken without malice, more with the melancholy feeling that they were powerless.
“Yes, that’s all,” said Bart, unperturbed. “And we may have more weapons than you think.”
“Meaning?”
Bartolomeo turned to Milena. “Will you explain?”
Milena took a deep breath. “It’s a love story, Helen. Do you want to hear it? Even at midnight outside a cemetery, in the freezing cold?”
“Go on.”
“Right. It’s the story of a girl of twenty who has a lover. One day she notices that her stomach is swelling a little too much. And then her lover leaves her; he goes off into the wide blue yonder and never comes back. The girl cries her eyes out, and a few months later she has a baby, a little girl, and calls her . . . Let’s say she calls her Milena. Are you with me so far?”
“I think so. Go on.”
“OK. The young mother is quite pretty, and she sings rather well.”
“No,” Dora interrupted gently. “She isn’t ‘quite pretty’; she’s staggeringly beautiful. And she doesn’t just sing ‘rather well’; she’s a contralto and her voice is miraculous. Put it that way and it makes a difference, doesn’t it? She joined a choral society when she was fourteen, and all the other girls who sang with her, like me, for instance, suddenly decided to give up singing and go in for drawing or painting or something else instead! She was a soloist at sixteen. At nineteen she was engaged by the Opera House, and all the concert halls in the country were fighting over her. You have to put it like that if Helen’s going to understand. Now you can go on!”
“All right,” Milena continued. “So yes, she sings very well. One day a big red-headed guy happens to hear her singing in a Requiem Mass in a church. This guy is a policeman. He’s married, and he has a family of kids, all redheads like him. He’s not a music lover; in fact he’s something of a brute. Don’t ask me why, but this woman’s voice knocks him sideways. He falls madly in love. He makes advances to her. She doesn’t want to know him. He persists. He pesters her. He leaves his wife and children for her. She still doesn’t want to know him. He’s beside himself with pain and rage. He swears that she’ll pay for it. His name is Van Vlyck. Are you still with me?”