Two weeping willows marked the line where the bed of the stream must have run before the floodwaters at the end of winter altered the lie of the land. They climbed up the bigger one to dry out. Undressed, they shivered in the cold. Hissing in the freezing air, they slapped themselves and each other with their clothes.
“Let’s go on, before they catch up!” said Dr. Pista Kádas.
“Take it easy. In wet clothes we’re certain to fall ill, and a long journey lies ahead of us… if we’re lucky.”
“Yes, if…!”
As soon as their stuff dried out a little, they continued on their way. Balázs Csillag clung obstinately to the line of the stream, thinking that this was the best way of ensuring the dogs lost their trail. He had read something of this sort in his childhood in the Karl May stories about Red Indians. He battled on ahead, his boots raising spurts of liquid mud. Behind him, more slowly, came Dr. Pista Kádas. He could not imagine how they could ever, on foot, reach anything worth reaching. He was getting colder and colder, as hunger froze into an icy sponge in his stomach. He begged Balázs Csillag to stop and catch their breath.
“Impossible. If we survive the first day we have a chance. Come on!” He took him by the arm and pulled him along.
This forced march lasted until night fell. Then Balázs Csillag again sought out a suitable willow, whose trunk divided into four main limbs; they climbed up and perched on the thickest limb, propping each other up back to back.
“So far, so good,” said Balázs Csillag.
“We shall die of hunger by morning.”
“Nonsense!”
“Or freeze to death.”
“Nonsense!”
“And we’ll have no cares.”
“How many times do I have to tell you: we’re going to get home!”
Dr. Pista Kádas was no longer able to reply; his teeth were chattering so loud, it was painful to hear. This noise irritated Balázs Csillag, who put his arms around Dr. Pista Kádas and rocked him like a child. The clan’s ancestor, Kornél Csillag/Sternovszky, had survived for a long time living like the smaller creatures of the forest in an isolated clearing, even though he was but a child and lacked the use of his injured legs. Even so he managed to learn how to catch fish in the stream.
When dawn broke Balázs Csillag carefully disentangled himself from his still-sleeping companion, adjusted his position on the branch, and then climbed down. There is a stream here, too, wider than the other; surely it will see us through. He could test if the technique still worked some two and a half centuries later. Does man function the same way in the middle of the twentieth century, and do the fish also function likewise, the Russian fish, here in the boggy forest in the back of beyond? He lay flat on his stomach on the bank of the stream, dangled his arm in the ice-cold water, and waited for food to swim by.
He nodded off a little. He awoke to a hissing in the water. Less than a span under his fingers, frozen to insensibility, there fluttered a plump little fish with an opalescent back. Balázs Csillag thought he could see the foolish expression in its eyes: “What are these five red sticks? I have never seen the like!” as it warily approached. Balázs Csillag employed the technique of his ancient kinsman, waiting until the fish touched his skin and then closing his fingers around it with a slowness that was almost imperceptible. Provided he pays enough attention to this manipulation in time, suddenly it will be as if he has the fish in the palm of his hand and there will be nothing left to do but suddenly fling it onto the bank.
He counted silently to three and pounced: but the fish clung to his hand, producing a stabbing pain. Ouch, it’s bitten me!-he shook his lower arm but no way could he free himself of its grip. The little dancing-dangling creature-it couldn’t have been more than three spans long, it had looked bigger in the water-would not let go until he picked up a stone with his left hand and beat it into shreds. His index finger was left a bloody mass of flesh. He bound it up with a rag and watched in growing disbelief as the throbbing increased. Even the fish are thirsty for blood these days, he thought.
After this injury his index finger was never again to be straight and would always be awkward to use. But this did not bother him at the time. He experimented further, hunting for other types of fish. He came back to Dr. Pista Kádas clutching a dozen or so. They crunched them, raw, competing at spitting out the bones.
They spent two days hiding in the bog, moving west as they had intended. On several occasions, however, Dr. Pista Kádas became convinced that they were going round in circles. “We’ve been here before!”
“Impossible.”
“But I remember this rotting tree!”
Balázs Csillag became uncertain. He tried to orient himself by the rising and the setting of the sun, and the mossy side of the tree-trunks-at school they were told that north was that way. But still… they needed a map. Sooner or later they had to leave this boggy forest. Without the help of the locals, they stood no chance of survival. He tried to work out how far away they were from Pécs. He knew how many versts the Russian part of the distance was, and on this scale those sixty-seven meters extra per kilometer could be ignored. Even just saying it was appalling: some one thousand four hundred (that is: ONE THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED) kilometers separated them from their birthplace.
Before he was called up, he and a couple of friends had walked to Budapest for a bet: it took six days; at night they asked if they could stay in barns and stables. On this basis, their tramp home would take about a month and a half, always assuming they did not have to break the journey, and further assuming that they were not caught by the Russians. Or the Germans. Or the Hungarian Military Police. Sooner or later they would have to cross the front line.
They were fighting their way through scrubland, the thorny branches tore at their skin. They lost track of the stream. They reached the trail that crossed the scrubland bleeding from a number of wounds. Fresh wheel tracks in the mud indicated that carts plied their way through here, and that meant there must be a settlement hidden somewhere nearby in the hills. Dr. Pista Kádas had a lucky coin that they tossed to decide which way to go. The track took whimsical turns to the left and right. Soon they reached a wooden hut with black smoke rising from its chimney towards the steel-gray sky. A chained wolfhound noticed them and began to bark loudly. They flattened themselves on the ground, just watching for a considerable while.
From behind the house there emerged a squat shape they at first took to be a man, but which turned out to be an old woman in a fur hat. She told the dog to stop that row, but the dog continued to bark away. The old woman threw him something and the dog jumped up and clamped the item in its jaws, gnawing and then swallowing it with much growling and snarling. It made Balázs Csillag and Dr. Pista Kádas salivate. They began to inch their way towards the house, slithering along the ground with great care. But the beast kept barking at them, though he could not even have seen them. The old woman again gave it a piece of her mind and a piece of something more solid, and when they heard the jawbone crack hard, a shiver ran down Dr. Pista Kádas’s back.
“Steady,” whispered Balázs Csillag.
And that was when the old woman noticed them. She stared in their direction and then went back indoors.
“Let’s get out of here!” said Balázs Csillag. Dr. Pista Kádas shook his head in resignation; he felt he could not stand up.