It took me almost a year, after I was finally settled, to purge myself of the urge to be completely aware of my surroundings each second. In the quiet, it was easier to do, to let the world pass without the overpowering need to recognize the shadow of the hawk, the soft beat of the owl’s wings, the talons that were just above your neck. It was only when I learned to be so still and hear things without listening that I caught the pattern within the rumble of explosions-three in a row, several seconds apart. The explanation from the farmer about the dam building had stopped making sense one crystal clear morning when I went to the top of the mountain and saw-across the valley that lay behind me-a heavy truck coming out of a building built directly against a hill. Big construction vehicles don’t come out of buildings next to mountains unless the buildings are covering tunnel adits.
The old truck driver gave me a blank look when I asked him about the explosions. “I never hear them,” he said. “I don’t know about what I don’t hear. Maybe neither should you.”
When the doctor came up in September, I asked if he had an idea what the explosions could be.
“Blasting,” he said. “Dams, mines, tunnels-could be anything. This is a funny part of the country. I’m surprised they let you stay here.”
“Yes, very gracious of them. Anything special going on?”
“Always something going on. I’ve heard people say that Thursdays are a good day to stay off the roads around this mountain. But you don’t know it for sure, and neither do I.”
In addition to the books, the doctor also brought a few pieces of wood on his visits-mostly scrap and almost always pine. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that used pine is almost never fit to be something else, and even then not without so much coaxing that it is rarely worth the effort. My grandfather wouldn’t take scrap pine, and that was at a time when it was almost the only thing he could find. He had nothing against scrap wood as a rule, but he said he would rather do without than argue with a pine board that thought it already knew what it was meant to be. Some people in our village fashioned new furniture out of old boards. The old man considered this a form of prostitution. I told this to the doctor, who laughed and shook his head.
The last time the doctor showed up, he stood at attention and opened the back door of his car with considerable fanfare. He pulled out a long board.
“I don’t know what it is,” he said, “but I think it’s a virgin.”
It was hard to do much in winter. My fingers were too cold to hold the tools, and I didn’t want to run out of wood while the road was impassable, which it usually was from late December until March. Summers were often too wet, and even when it wasn’t raining, the wood swelled in the humidity and the joints in my fingers ached. Autumn was the best time to work. I started at noon and worked through the day until the sunlight began to fade.
Most mornings in autumn I went for walks along the ridge of the mountain. There was no one to stop me from going into the valley on the far side, but I went only once and decided I would not go again. The trees were bent in odd shapes, which made the wind moan like a man dying of a grievous wound.
Chapter Six
No one called at noon to say a car was waiting. No one called at one o’clock. Or two. At two thirty, there was a knock at the door.
“Room service.”
Only it wasn’t. It was Major Kim, and he didn’t look happy.
“We’ve got a problem, O.” He walked past me as soon as I opened the door. “I’m supposed to be in Paris. I should have been in Paris, but no, no, I ended up here. Here!” He closed the curtains by hand.
“You just broke something,” I said. “Light bother your eyes?”
“I’ll tell you what bothers my eyes. Looking at the mess you call a city, that’s what bothers my eyes. Looking at that statue every morning on the hill, that bothers my eyes.”
“So, don’t look. Or take it down.”
He sat on the bed. “Not yet,” he said. “A problem, O, we have a big problem.”
“How come every time we meet, you say we have a problem? Last time it was little. This time it’s big. Doesn’t matter to me-whatever it is, it’s yours. I don’t have any problems.”
“Where are you, O?”
“In Room…” I went out and looked at the number on the door. “In Room Twelve Nineteen.” I stood in the hallway and looked from one end of the corridor to the other. No one was hanging around. I came back in the room. “Makes you wonder. Does this hotel have guests, or did you build it specifically for me?”
The major took a piece of paper from his jacket. “Close the door,” he said, “and read this.” He handed me the paper.
I glanced at it and shrugged. “This is a State Security Department operational order.”
“I know what it is. I want to know what it means.”
“Do I look like I work for SSD?”
“Don’t screw with me, O.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, Major, I don’t owe you anything. I still don’t know who you are. At this point, I only have a vague idea of what is going on. And for as long as I can remember, I have made it a practice never to inquire too deeply into SSD orders. They have their own codes, and they don’t spread around the decoding instructions. SSD does not get high marks for sharing. One of those three dogs at the table the other night seemed to be from SSD. He’ll roll over if you order him to, won’t he?”
“Not him. You, you’re going to tell me, and you’re going to do it in the next thirty seconds.”
“Or?”
“Don’t push me, O. I don’t have any patience right now. Why is SSD using code?”
“That’s what they do. They do it all the time. It’s in their nature. They think in code. They sleep in code. They probably make love in code. Don’t let it worry you.”
“What does it say?”
“If I knew what it said, it wouldn’t be much of a code, would it?”
“What. Does. It. Say.”
I looked at the paper. The grouping of numbers on the top indicated it was an alert order of some sort; of what sort I didn’t know. The two letters at the end of the number group indicated it was an immediate-precedence message. I’d learned this much about SSD orders, because it was what I needed to keep my head above water when I was in the Ministry. Kim didn’t have to know. “I take it you and SSD don’t work together real close.”