I had acquired the confidence of a blind woman—I could have stepped down the road with my eyes ful y closed. I was fol owing the grass along the busy way to Kapfenberg, Brück, Leoben, when the mountains began to rise, higher even than the biggest of the Shivering Hil s. I paused at the path heading south, and the other heading north, and took, like many times before, the wrong one. I walked north along a different river, the mountains crowding in closer, the trees on the cliff faces above me, steep rocks held back by giant nets. The traffic whizzed past and it was then that I saw signs for a tunnel, a red sign with a white border. Nothing petrified me more—even when I was a child I refused to go into such darkness. I looped backwards and tried to find a smal er road, but there was no way around. In a roadside petrol station I made inquiries of an old man who said that there were roads that would lead me over the mountains, but I would surely perish. The safest way to get through the tunnel was with the Lastwagenfahrer, the truck drivers.
They lined up behind the petrol station and talked across from truck to truck in languages as coarse as they were varied. I was not sure if they would look kindly on a Romani woman traveling alone, but the truth is that I was so deeply scared of the tunnels I would have done anything to avoid walking through them. For two days I turned and returned to that station before I bought myself, to my shame, a bottle to put me under a spel . The bottle was labeled with green vines and tasted of cough mixture, but it gave me courage to walk in amongst the drivers time after time. I climbed into the trucks, brought my knees to my chest, stared straight ahead. There were many tunnels, of course. Often they were only just being built and we would sit for hours, but the drivers, up until the last, were good to the core. They gave me cigarettes and sometimes the last of their food. They showed me pictures of their children and one al owed me to take the smal statue he cherished of Saint Jude. Later I sold it, to my shame, for food.
At the end of each tunnel I got out of the truck to clear my head and bid goodbye to the men who often told me that I could go further with them if I wanted. But my spirit had been put in my feet, chonorroeja, and I felt safe there, and wanted to walk again, and I thought, Am I cursed to this?
I kept my head down and for the most part I stil stayed in the val eys and slept in the abandoned sheds down on the val ey floor. At times I balanced on narrow tree trunks laid across streams so I could find shelter in a light forest. When I approached the tunnels I bought myself a bottle and went then to wherever the trucks might stop.
It seemed to me that there were two different worlds, that of trees and that of engines: one seemed clear, the other dark.
Sometimes when I got to a vil age there would be a few of our own people on the outskirts. For my own safety—I did not want to talk to my own for fear of pol uting them—I could easily shoo the children off with curses. I remember, though, a settlement on the edge of a smal town in the plains beneath the central Alps. A few young boys could be seen through the low trees. I did not want to be seen by any adults, but a woman came over from a wel carrying water and she greeted me first in German and then Romani. Her dialect was hard to fathom, but in her delight she dropped the bucket and blessed me three times and then took me to their camp. I could not get away, she had such a grip on my arm. The children danced around me, tugging at my clothes. I became so caught up with them that I sprinkled a metal sheet with a pile of sand and used a saw to show them how the sand jumped. They giggled and rol ed about in joy. The women cooked me potato pancakes and fil ed my cup with fruit juice, I tel you the truth, there was never such generosity.
Five girls were brought out to dance. They wore identical green dresses with corded sashes of white tied around the waist. Listening to the music, I was happy, but imagine my raw fear, daughter, when they announced that there were three of our own from near Trnava who had been staying with them for some years now. They would be back in the evening from their work in an automobile factory. I tried to break away but could not, the force of their friendliness was too strong. They even gave me some old clothes and washed my own for me. I feared for the evening and, sure enough, when the men came along, the first word that came out of their dark mouths was Zoli.
Nobody had cal ed me this name in such a long time that it had the strength of a slingshot.
And yet they did not cower or retreat, nor spit or curse me. Instead they raised my name to the air. They were of settled folk from out near the chocolate factory, but they had left shortly after the war. They had seen me singing a few times but did not know of my time as a poet. It was soon clear to me that they knew nothing of what had happened in the judgment, nor even what occurred in the last few years to our people, the resettlement, the laws, the burnings. They had been turned back at the border several times now, these men. They stil knew routes across the Danube, they would get back eventual y to Slovakia they said, there was no other place they wanted to be. One always loves what is left behind—
and I feared I would break their hearts if I were to tel them the truth about what had been done to our people, although I knew that sooner or later in the evening the questions would come to me, deep hard questions that I would be cal ed on to answer.
The mind can do anything it wants. Al along I had blocked out song, it was a denial that came from deep inside. The choice to forget is a way of surviving. Yet at that moment I knew that, to survive, I had to sing once again. The people crowded around me, a lantern was turned on, bottles were passed. I knew I would never sing one of the songs I had written down—that was the pact I had made with myself—but I could sing the old songs, the ones I had known as a child. I took a deep breath. The first notes were awful. The people cowered. Then I relaxed and I felt the music move through me. When I cut brown bread don't look at me angrily, don't look at me angrily because I'm not going to eat it. The old horse is standing
though he is not sleeping, he always has a watching eye, a watching eye, a watching eye. If you have the money you can think what you like. I do not suppose that you wil doubt it when I say that there were tears in the eyes of the people that evening and they hugged me to their hearts like I was their very own sister. I thought, I am pol uting them and they do not know, I am bringing shame down upon them and they have no idea.
It brought a sharp knife to my heart and yet what was I to do? How many smal betrayals would there be for me? It is rules not mirrors that steal away our souls.
They danced that night, the firelight catching the red thread in their black dresses. In the morning, when I stole away, I al owed myself to sing a few of the songs as I went. They surprised me with their beauty and carried me along. Once or twice I would hear some of my own songs in my head, those I had written down, but I forced them out, I did not want them.
The road hooked west. A family stopped for me and the man jerked his thumb and told me to get into the back with his children. The children unrol ed the window and I felt the warm wind blowing on my face. There were nose prints of a dog on the rear window, but no animal. I did not ask, though I could see tearmarks on the faces of the children, and I had an idea that they had lost their pet. Red, I thought. To gladden them I began to hum the tune of the old horse song. The man turned in his seat and gave a smal smile, though the mother kept looking straight ahead. I sat back and hummed some more and he said he liked the humming and I surprised myself with song. My voice tipped out into the wind and back over the hundreds of roads I had already traveled.