‘Not really.’
Grace was quiet. She chewed her top lip. ‘But you used to.’ She said it as a statement, not a question.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘So what happened to them?’
I shrugged.
‘You knew the people who lived in our house before, didn’t you?’
‘Gost is a small place. I live a few hundred metres away. How could I not know them?’
‘Yeah but.’ She raised her hand to shade her eyes as she turned to look at me, I had my back to the sun. ‘I think you knew them quite well.’
‘So I did. So what?’
‘Mum hasn’t figured it out because she doesn’t care to look. It’s how she is. She sees the world the way she wants to see it, and then she believes that’s the way the world actually is, if that makes sense. And Matt, well you know Matt.’ She stopped and smiled at me: a sweet, small smile. ‘But it’s not that hard. Remember you told me how Kos found her way around? The places she knew by heart, you’d never know she was blind. Then other places, I remember you said she’d rely on Zeka or sometimes you’d have to call to her.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘So Kos knows our house. I mean, she knew it.’ Grace paused. ‘She knew where the doors were and where to lie down so she was out of the way without anyone having to tell her.’
I shrugged again.
Grace went on, ‘Also the way you touch the table. I’ve seen you do it. Of course, you knew the mosaic was there all along. I worked that out ages ago. ’ She stopped talking and bent to pick a blade of grass and smoothed it between her fingers. ‘So I think you knew the people well and you used to visit there a lot. Before us.’ She sat down on the ground and began to chew the end of the blade of grass. ‘It’s OK. You can tell me. I want to know.’
20
I discovered the bodies at the ravine.
On the way down the hill my head and heart pound, there’s a metallic taste in my mouth, also bitter bile. I am suddenly cold. And thirsty, desperately thirsty. I find a stream and drink from it, the water tastes of rotten leaves, I gulp it down like a man who has been lost at sea. The stink of the corpses is in my nostrils, my clothes, my hair. When I begin to move again I don’t run, I drag myself through the woods. What slows my pace is the immensity of the crime and of what it required for those bodies to be there: dumped in the ravine and raked over. How many people did it take? Who else knows about this? How many people in Gost are part of it? At times I imagine I’m being followed or watched and that somebody will challenge me. Once or twice I stop and listen. The further I get the more the idea of the bodies being up there, carelessly buried, nobody to guard over them and left to the animals, seems impossible: the baker and his family and their Mongol daughter. Who else has been killed and discarded? I think of the others who have gone, the empty houses. I think of my father’s colleague from the post office, whose boss is Javor’s father — walking along with his pockets stuffed with envelopes. What was it he knew or imagined? He was a man in his sixties, who’d seen more than I ever had, who may even have fought a war. I wonder at the fate of Javor’s father. I walk on, my mind becomes clearer. First, Javor. Javor must get out of Gost. I start to think how this might happen, I don’t trust the roads: full of checkpoints, militiamen and soldiers. Maybe through the mountains. Javor is no outdoorsman but I could go with him. Winter, when the passes became snowbound, is still some way off. There is fighting further north, which is where it moved after it left Gost. To the coast then. Across the plains, by foot. The hardest thing would be to stay out of sight. My thoughts loop back to leaving by road, of what it would take to smuggle Javor. Who could I rely upon? Now and with this new knowledge, how do I know who to trust?
I pass nobody. The light is going. At this hour people are at home, especially these days when people spend a lot more time shuttered indoors. I think about them, huddled over their plates of food: cans of potatoes and meat taken from their neighbours’ larders, wearing their neighbours’ clothes, maybe even burning wood from their neighbours’ woodsheds in their stoves. No sight of the moon. A wind from the north brings more wind and with it a light rain, which as I walk begins to fall more heavily, gusting across the road. I wipe the water from my eyes and carry on. At the bend in the road I take the short cut which leads to the back of my parents’ property, behind my father’s shanty town. There, standing at the back door of the house, I see my mother. She isn’t wearing a coat or holding an umbrella, she’s just standing holding herself, allowing the rain to soak through her clothes, looking in the direction of the road. On the road, just pulling away, is the grey van. I recognise it immediately: the grey van with the old-fashioned shape, I last saw it parked outside the school. I’ve only had the knowledge for a short while and I’m already too late. Javor! Do I shout his name? I don’t know. I see my mother turn in my direction and raise both her hands, one in my direction and one in the direction of the van.
I thought I had seen the worst, but worse is to come. I have been wasting time.
Now I run. I cut back out to the road and follow the van. Like a delivery van which has collected a package it isn’t moving especially fast then after a short while it begins to gather speed. It’s headed downhill towards the blue house. I can think only: Anka. I keep running. Briefly I’m aware of my mother’s call. I run through the long field, slash through wheat ready for harvest, releasing clouds of insects. To my left I can see the headlights of the grey van sweeping away from and then back towards me as the van rounds the bend and even though I have been able to cut the corner, moving as fast as I can, I am being left behind. The van is gathering pace. This gives me hope and sure enough the van passes the blue house. I begin to slow down. Saliva floods my mouth, and again the aftertaste of copper. I have sprinted for almost a kilometre. A pain in my side makes me twist. I bend over, my knees crease and I go down. For a few seconds I remain on all fours; I smell flowers, wet soil.
I walk the rest of the way. I think they must be taking Javor to the school building. There may be time yet, something we can do. My mind races through possibilities, turns again to who might help, but no names come to mind. In the last few months everything and everybody has changed. People you thought you knew. There’s Danica and Luka, I trust them, of course. Anka and me. But what can any of us do? Fabjan is the only person I know who might have influence. Fabjan knows the militiamen, they drink in his bar, he buys them rounds. They supply him with black market whisky. I reach the blue house. Fabjan’s car is parked outside. For a fraction of a second I am relieved because Fabjan is already there, ahead of me, but before the whole thought is even formed I know I’m wrong.
Fabjan has known about this all along. He is part of it.
The door of the blue house opens. There is Fabjan now. And there is Anka. He is holding her, fingers closed tight around her upper arm, hurrying her towards the car. Holding the back door open is a man in uniform, one of the new arrivals. Next to him is the young man I spoke to at the school; he wipes his nose with his fingers, his head low while he watches Fabjan with Anka. There is something feral about his posture, that stare. Anka is tying a scarf around her head, she is hurrying. What is she thinking? That Fabjan has come to help her, take her somewhere safe, or maybe somewhere where she can talk to someone who might be persuaded to let Javor go? She has put her trust in him and there’s urgency in her movements, such that she doesn’t seem to notice the grip of Fabjan’s hand on her upper arm.
I’m running again. With two hundred metres between us, I call Anka’s name but the wind, the rain, the cloth of the scarf she is tying around her head blot out the sound. Fabjan, though, hears something. He raises his head sharply and peers into the gathering darkness. I can see him, but he can’t see me. He gestures to the two men, says something to Anka, pushes her along. Now they’re getting into the car. The doors slam. Fabjan guns the engine.