Urban lifts himself up on the bench. A mixture of astonishment, recognition and relief runs over his face.
“Freddy…” he breathes out. “I… was looking for you…”
He closes his eyes and again loses consciousness.
Telgarth turns around with a burning look.
“This man is my best friend,” he says. “I don’t know how he got here, but he’s come to see me.”
He looks at the medic Stano Čierny-Orkiš-Horniak.
“Take good care of him!” he tells him. “Your own life is at stake.”
Then he stumbles towards his own bench and again falls asleep.
Soon not just the whole carriage, but the entire train is asleep. Only the men in the two locomotives are up, stoking their engines and trying to penetrate the thick fog with their sharp eyes.
* * *
A host slices reindeer meat in thin slices; a guest puts four in his mouth at a time.
Junjan Slovak proverb
The moon appears between the hills. It climbs higher and higher up the sky. At times the fog veils it and then the stars shine brightly.
Silence reigns all round. Only occasionally can reindeer herds on the tundra be heard. They run fast. The stomping of hooves drowns out the herders’ shouts. The herds are moving south, deeper into the tundra; the silence returns, interrupted only by the monotonous and distant murmur of the sea behind the ribbon of the ice field.
“They were that close?” Urban is astonished.
“They are and they aren’t,” says Telgarth. “In the tundra sounds carry a long way. Anything can be ten kilometres away and yet you can hear it as if it were just here, round the hill.”
Geľo impatiently waits for Freddy to finish.
“Let’s go faster!” he orders. “We can’t waste time!”
The guerrillas’ dog sledges turn sharp right, into the snowy tundra.
Further from the coast, deeper in the tundra, a wild wind blows. It knocks the dogs off their feet.
Telgarth takes a shiny bottle from under his fur jacket. He takes a long swig and then gives it to Urban. Urban takes a sip. A pleasantly sharp heat invades his body. Freddy takes another sip and then puts the bottle back in the furs.
“It’s not Martell, but it warms you up just as well,” he laughs.
Video Urban nods.
“What’s going on back home?” Freddy asks. His voice suggests that he’s not that interested.
“No change,” says Urban. “There is no point doing anything over there. That’s why I’ve decided… to move to the Czech…”
“You know,” Telgarth starts talking, “at first, I felt differently about it. I took pictures, made films, and filed reports. But I felt I didn’t belong here, that I was a foreigner. I felt I’d come to Mars. Junjan Slovaks? They were as interesting as guinea pigs. Like meeting a distant relative, so distant that you feel nothing for him. But then the Junjans captured me. They didn’t care that I was a reporter. They put me in a camp. And Junjan Slovaks helped me escape. So I’ve stayed with them. I taught them how to fight and rob goods wagons. And now I’m one of them.”
“YOU taught them how to rob goods wagons?” exclaims Urban. “And who taught YOU?”
“It’s a long story,” says Freddy evasively. “You don’t know much about me.”
For a moment, Urban feels a special kind of respect for his old friend and business partner, a kind of remote admiration. The dizzy transformation of the clumsy, stingy, perverse, stupid fat slob in one year in Junja has taken his breath away.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you for some time…” says Urban. “Where did you lose an eye?”
“This war is cruel,” says Freddy, thoughtfully scanning the white horizon indistinctly outlined far off in the dark. “It spares no one. And sometime you have bad luck. I’ve been in a labour camp, too, but I got away from them. And just a few days ago, I was a prisoner of Tökörnn Mäodna himself and escaped!”
Urban nods with understanding. Freddy fixes a burning gaze on him.
“But a few Junjans have paid for that eye now,” he says, his mouth wildly contorted. “They’ll pay for everything! I won’t be coming home. You can keep the whole company. Sell it, strip it, do what you like with it. I’m giving you my share. I’m not a businessman; I’m a fighter. If you like, I’ll put it in writing. The main thing, that whoring bitch, you know the one I mean, is not to get any of it. Considering she let me down so terribly, she’s doing fine. She cleaned out my accounts, kept the house, so she has somewhere to live. And the child? Who knows if it’s mine, anyway? In any case, I belong here now. This country needs me.”
Suddenly Geľo stops the dog sledge, flings himself onto the ground and examines the reindeer droppings. They tell him when the reindeer herds passed by. He clears the snow with a stick, and removes moss, grass, and willow leaves: they tell him which way the reindeer passed.
“I have nobody in Slovakia now,” says Freddy. “My family’s been taken from me. My parents are dead. And my friends? You’ve always been my only friend.”
Urban is quiet. If he weren’t a cynic, he’d have said he was moved at that moment. A man has to fly thousands of kilometres and trek through hundreds of kilometres to know someone whom he thought he had known for so many years.
And again the guerrillas’ sledges rush into the wind. The lead dog finally smells human habitation and turns sharp left, rushing ahead, straining its last remnants of energy.
A man’s silhouette appears in the dark.
“Who are you, in God’s name?” shouts Geľo and gets ready to fire his submachine gun.
The unknown man recognizes Geľo’s voice and comes up.
“Geľo?” he shouts, “Is that you, brother? Don’t shoot!”
“Martin!” shouts Geľo and jumps off the sledge.
They introduce each other, and Telgarth passes round his bottle of moonshine.
Urban is amazed again to see what respect and admiration Telgarth commands among these people. Everyone knows his name.
“In this weather, wolves get at the herd,” says Martin. “They attack the deer every night. We don’t have enough herders. So I’ll help them. I, too, have ten times ten reindeer over there!” he adds, not without pride.
“Is the herd far away from here, brother?” asks Geľo.
“Not far,” says Martin. “If you run, you’ll sweat only eight times. That’s why I’m walking. There’s no point taking out the wind sledge.”
“And where are your yurts?” Geľo asks.
“Here, quite near,” says Martin. “You’ll sweat only three times.”
“Are my children and wife all right?” asks Geľo.
“They’re fine,” says Martin. “Kresan’s made them their own yurt.”
“And how about your Maria?” asks Geľo about his sister-in-law.”
“Oh, she’ll be glad to see you!” Martin says.
“And Zuza and her child are fine?” asks Geľo after his sister-in-law and future wife inherited from his brother. He feels as if something has moved in his crotch.
“All’s as it should be,” Martin assures him. “They’re with your family.”
“And our father?” asks Geľo.
“He died a few weeks ago,” says Martin. “He went out at night to take a shit in the tundra and the wolves tore him apart.”
“So the wolves did it,” Geľo nods. “And is Kresan at home?”
“He is,” nods Martin. “He’s been waiting for you for a long time.”
“Take us there, brother, and then one of us will take you to the herd,” Geľo proposes.
“Wise words, in God’s name, brother!” agrees Martin, takes another sip of moonshine, shoulders his rifle and hops onto Geľo’s sledge.
* * *
Kresan’s herds are numberless. His wealth cannot be counted. Where his reindeer pass, no moss will grow even after three warm summers. They’re divided into ten herds. In each herd, there are twenty times twenty, and twice more twenty times twenty. That’s how many reindeer old Kresan has. You can’t keep them in one herd: they get restless for lack of moss and will run away from you.