Time passes.
I stand in the rain outside the blue house and when I start moving again it’s at a steady jog. I am wet through, but I feel nothing, just a pulse in my forehead, the beat of my heart, the butt of my rifle hitting my shoulder. By the time I reach the school building it is dark. No lights, no grey van, no sign of Fabjan’s car either. I walk back the way I have come. I have only one idea, which is that they might at some point take Javor or Anka or both up to the ravine and that if I can do nothing else I will go to the ravine and wait. Kos is still with me, keeping pace, the run has scarcely put her out of breath. I have a growing sense now of what I must do.
The door of the blue house is locked. I find the key and let myself in. All is darkness, the smell of cooking and pottery glaze, on the table a pair of freshly glazed dishes. I pick up a cloth lying there, one I’ve seen Anka use to wipe her hands. On the back of the door are scarves, jackets and coats. I take a scarf belonging to Javor. On the counter in the kitchen is the heel of a loaf of bread and a couple of apples, which I stuff into my pockets. I find a piece of salami and take that too. I fill my water bottle from the tin jug of well water in the corner.
On the way back up the hill I run to a slow rhythm, one I maintain until I reach the lower tree line. Only there do I stop for breath. No sign of either the grey van or of Fabjan’s car. I can hear nothing beyond the rain and the wind. I stop and crouch down next to Kos, I talk to her until she is still. One after the other I offer her the things I have taken from the blue house: first the cloth, then the scarf. Again, the cloth and then the scarf. I give her a small piece of salami and shove the rest back in my pocket. I stand, sling my rifle over my shoulder again and we press on, Kos with her nose to the ground. The woods are dark; the only separation between the trees and the air is a difference in the density of the darkness. The trees are a solid black. The air shimmers, is speckled black and grey.
Kos sweeps her head from left to right across the ground and occasionally lifts her head and tilts her nose to the sky. The rain, though heavier now, for the most part fails to break the canopy. The sound of drops hitting the branches creates a white noise that absorbs everything else. We head steadily uphill. All the time I am listening for sounds, of men’s voices or a truck engine, looking for the light of torches between the trees. Although the temperature has dropped and my clothes are soaking I feel neither cold nor hungry, nor thirsty as I had before, instead I feel alert, alive. I have slipped the rifle from my shoulder and now carry it in one hand, my fingers grip the stock. I try to work through events and possible outcomes in my mind, but I can only think of one. The way seems longer than it ever has and when finally I reach the edge of the ravine all is silent. The sky is dark. The moon, in its last quarter, has not yet risen. A scattering of stars and the lights of Gost. There is nothing and nobody. I think about what to do next. I sink to my knees and press my forehead against the barrel of my rifle. Impossible they could have got there before me, without me seeing or hearing them. Kos had picked up no scent. She stands next to me patiently waiting to be told what to do. But I have no other plan.
I have no other plan.
This is it.
After a while I stand and go to wait inside the trees, squatting with my back against a trunk. I’m not hungry; I eat an apple for the energy I may need. I eat it all including the core. Then I kick over the sodden pine needles at my feet and make a place for myself and Kos among the dry ones. I sit and listen to the rain. I tell myself nobody can get past me to the ravine. I wait. From time to time I stand up to stretch my legs. The moon rises. The rain eases off. Perhaps I doze; I am not aware of dreaming and yet it seems as though I am, as if everything that is happening is taking place in a dream. I pray for it to be so. I wait, adrift in time and space.
The hours pass and nobody comes. It’s well past midnight when I head back down the hill with Kos at my side. We go back down through the woods, cutting across the hillside. The thoughts fly, of what I will do next, I don’t yet know but I am no longer in the same state as when I found the bodies, ran through the long field to the blue house. Then the fear had been at my heels. Now it is curled around my heart, my heartbeat has slowed and my mind is sharp and cold.
We have almost reached the bottom tree line when I become aware of a shift in Kos, a new tension. She trots ahead and begins to loop, running in circles and swinging her head from side to side. She is breathing heavily. I go to her and offer the cloth and the scarf one more time. She sets off, running in circles and figures of eight, and then she stops, sniffs the ground and heads unhesitatingly in the opposite direction from the one we have come in, uphill away from the ravine. Her pace gathers, her nose is close to the ground. I run behind her. It’s hard going, my legs are heavy, my boots soaked. Kos never stops, except once when she loses the scent and doubles back on herself a short way to make sure, then follows the same line. She leads me straight uphill towards the old concrete bunker. A few hundred metres from the top tree line I see the beam of torchlight stitched through the trees. I slow down and stop and put out a hand to touch Kos, who slows too. I make her wait as I go forward.
A group of people. I count four. There is Fabjan and the two men I saw with him earlier. And Anka. The first thing I notice is that she no longer has the scarf she was wearing when she climbed into his car and I wonder what happened to it. Another thing, she is barefoot. Why is she barefoot? Where have they been all this time? What has Fabjan done to her? The thought fills me with rage, I come close to rushing at him. Was Anka Fabjan’s reward for a job well done? It cannot be, and yet what else could account for the missing hours?
Anka. What has he done to you?
I look to the left and to the right. Nothing. I move forward until I am level with the last line of the trees. I can hear them talking. I can’t catch the words, but they are spoken in an ordinary tone as though they are trying to decide on something. Nothing from Anka. Then an exclamation from Fabjan: ‘Jesus!’ He covers his nose with his hand. A gust of wind brings with it the stench of the pit latrines. They start to move further on, away from the smell. The youth moves Anka on by pushing her in the back with his elbow. How full of swagger he is now. I follow them, moving parallel to them, soundlessly, behind the line of the trees.
Another hundred metres on they stop. The rain has started again and is growing heavier, the moon risen to its full, faint strength and the light catches the slanting lines of rain. Now that there is a little more light I can see the two men carry rifles; the youth’s is an old hunting rifle with a wooden stock, the uniformed man is carrying a military-issue rifle and has a pistol in his belt. Fabjan appears unarmed, instead he stands before Anka revealed in all his true nature. And Anka stares at him through the rain. It’s hard for me to see her expression. There’s fear, yes. But it seems to me, as far away as I am and as little as I can see, there’s puzzlement too. People who find themselves about to be killed, for no real reason, must wonder how it came to this, when they have hurt nobody, done nothing to deserve it. She must have thought Fabjan hated her and wondered why. But what Fabjan has for her isn’t hatred, Fabjan doesn’t hate, he doesn’t need to hate to do the things he does. This is what you have to understand: for him, people like him, it’s not difficult.