“What's your name, Gypsy?”
Let me go.
The younger one slams the empty cup down and leans across her, his breath smel ing, strangely, of fresh woodmint. So he knows the woods, she thinks, he wil not be easily fooled. She nudges the knifeblade back into her coatsleeve where it feels cool against the soft of her wrist.
“Conka,” she says, immediately regretting it.
“Conka?”
“Elena. I was with my people.”
“Elena now is it?”
“When the troopers came.”
The younger one chuckles: “Is that so?”
“The families were taken away. The last of us were driven to the city under the new laws. We were pushed along by dogs. My husband was forced to carry a large wooden box with lacquer patterns and al our belongings inside.”
She hesitates and searches their expressions—nothing.
“A huge lacquer box,” she says. “He dropped it on the road. The rain was beating down like a drunk. Everyone was slipping in the mud. The dogs, they had such sharp teeth, you should have seen them. They ripped us. They took a chunk from my mother's leg. The troopers hit us with their sticks. I stil have the marks. They let the leashes loose. My children got bitten. Eight children, I once had eleven. Al our belongings were in that box.
Al my jewelry, papers, everything, inside that box. Wrapped in old twine.”
She pauses again—only a slight twitch at the side of the younger's face.
“I've come now from the city. To get the box. Eight children. Three died. One stepped on an electric cable by the cypress lake. When the thaw came they were digging by mistake with metal shovels. Once there were eleven.”
“A whole team?” says the younger with a grin.
She turns away and stares at the older man who smooths out the hairs of his eyebrow with his knuckle.
“We have a roof now,” says Zoli. “Electric lights that come on al the time, water that runs. The new directives have been good to us. Good times are coming. The leaders have been good to us. Al I want is to find the box, that's al . Have you seen my things? ”
The older pushes himself wearily from the stove and sits down, carrying with him a bowl of kasha with smal pieces of lamb scattered in it.
“You're lying,” he says.
“A blue lacquer box with silver clasps,” she says.
“For a Gypsy you don't even lie very wel .”
Light crawls up and around the window—no curtains, she notices, no woman's hand in the cabin. She al ows the tip of her knife to press deeper into her cupped finger.
“What's your name?” says the younger again.
Elena.
“That's a lie.”
The older man leans in, serious and gray-eyed. “There was a man out in these parts riding a two-stroke Jawa. An Englishman. He was looking for you, says you've gone missing. Says he's been searching al over. We saw him by the forest road. He wants to take you to a hospital. He looked like he should've been in the hospital himself, driving around with a broken leg. Hadn't shaved in a while. Said your name is Zoli.”
He slides the bowl of kasha across the table, but she does not touch it.
“I real y need to find the box. It has so many precious things inside.”
“He said you were tal , with a lazy eye. He told us you'd be wearing a dark overcoat. That you might have a gold watch. Rol up your sleeve.”
“What?”
“Rol up your fucking sleeve,” says the younger.
He steps across and hikes her coat, wrist to elbow. The knife fal s with a clatter to the floor. He stamps on it, picks it up, tests the blade with his thumb, then turns to the older. “I told you. Last night. I fucking told you.”
The older leans in further to Zoli: “Do you know him?”
“Know who?”
“Don't play us for fools.”
“I know nothing about a watch,” says Zoli.
“He said it was his father's. A precious timepiece.”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“He asked for petrol for his motorbike. He didn't seem much of a threat. He spoke a funny Slovak. He tried to tel me he grew up here, but I know better. Is it true, then, what he says? How did you get a man's name?”
Zoli watches as the younger one cuts the hairs on his arm with the knife, whistling at the sharpness of the blade. The older takes off his cap, something soft and compassionate in the lift. His graying hair, a little damp, lies pressed against his scalp. When he leans forward she notices a smal scapular swinging at his neck.
“It was given to me by my grandfather,” she says final y. “It was the name of his own father.”
“So you're a real Gypsy then?”
“You're a real woodsman?”
The older laughs and drums his fingers on the table: “What do I say? We're paid by the cubic meter.”
So, she thinks, a workcamp for prisoners. They remain out here, al summer and winter. Minimum security. Morning until night, sorting wood, gauging it, chopping it, weighing. She watches as the younger rises and goes to the door where he takes an oilskin cloth out of the hanging pair of trousers. He unties a string from the cloth and produces a set of playing cards, slides them across the table to Zoli.
“Our fortune.”
“What?”
“Don't be a God-fearing idiot,” says the older, slapping the cards off the table.
The younger one retrieves them from the floor. “Come on, tel us our fortune,” he says again.
“I don't tel fortunes,” says Zoli.
“It gets lonely out here,” says the younger. “Al I want is my fortune told.”
“Shut up,” says the older.
“I'm just tel ing her it gets lonely. Doesn't it? It gets real lonely.”
“I'm tel ing you to shut up, Tomas.”
“She's worth money. You heard him. He said he'd pay us money. And you said—”
“Shut up and leave her alone.”
Zoli watches as the older goes to a smal bookshelf where he takes down a leather volume. He returns to the table and folds back the cover.
“Can you read this?” he says.
“Christ rides!” says the younger.
“Can you read it?”
“Yes.”
“For fucksake!”
“Here's where you are now. Right here. It's an old map, so it looks like it's Hungary but it's not. This is where Hungary is, along here. The other way, over here, is Austria. They'l shoot you before they lay eyes on you. Thousands of soldiers. Do you understand? Thousands.”
“Yes.”
“The best way to make it through is this lake. It is only one meter deep, even in the middle. That's where the border is, in the middle. They don't patrol it with boats. And you won't drown. They may shoot you but you won't drown.”
“And this?”
“That's the old border.”
He closes the book and leans in close to Zoli. The younger looks back and forth, as if a language lies between them that he wil never understand.
“Ah, fuck,” he says. “She's worth money. You heard what he said. A reward.”
“Give her back the knife.”
“Shit.”
“Give her the knife, Tomas.”
The younger skids the knife across the floor and sighs. Zoli picks it up, backs across the hard stone floor towards the door, pul s down the handle.
Locked. A brief panic claws at her throat until the older man steps across, leans forward, turns the handle upwards, and the door swings open. A
blast of cold wind.
“One thing,” he says. “Are you real y a poet?” I sang. A smgerr
“Yes.”
“Same thing, no?”
“No, I don't think so,” she says.
Al three step out into the stinging light of the morning. The oldest extends his hand.
“Josef,” he says.
“Marienka Bora Novotna.” She pauses a moment: “Zoli.”
“It's a funny name.”
“Perhaps.”
“May I ask one thing? I was wondering. I think I've seen your photograph once. In the newspaper.”
“Maybe.”
“I ask only then—”