She was often so afraid she wanted to cry. Sometimes her legs shook so much it was hard to accelerate. The car jerked forward as in fear through the endless woods. She was leaning forward, her hands anxiously clutching the wheel, not wanting to admit what she’d gotten herself into.
She was afraid, and her insecurity only grew the farther into this landscape she went. Everything was alien and indecipherable; she was a complete stranger in the landscape that surrounded her for miles and miles on all sides, she knew nothing about the things she saw, knew nothing about the rules that must govern in places like this. Sometimes, when the road brought her to a high point and she could look out over the trees, she saw that the place she’d come to was endless. She was imprisoned by that endlessness, captive in a network of nameless gravel roads, and the farther she drove, the more lost she got.
Once, she stopped and stepped out of the car to look at the scenery. A long, low mountain range stretched in every direction. The silence was immense. It was as if for the first time she understood the true meaning of silence, the complete absence of sound. The silence pressed against her ears the way compact darkness can press against your eyes. She stood listening to the pounding inside her head while her eyes were gliding over the vast landscape, and in awe she let her gaze move gently along the shapes of the giant mountains that continued for as far as she could see. There were lakes out there too, calm, silvery gray sparks in the silence. Everything around her stayed where it was; it was there, it simply existed. Through her fear, she realized that this silence was a powerful language, a mighty voice louder than anything else. She’d never felt as terrifyingly small as she now did. She felt she could be obliterated here, the vastness of the landscape could dissolve her with just a whiff of wind; she’d have to beg the small, dim-green pines for mercy. At the same time, she felt herself growing in the vastness, felt herself being pulled and stretched and filled by it. It was as if she could contain it, could contain everything around her.
While she stood there on the slope and let the silence and the vistas fill her up, the wind casually moved closer from the mountains on the other side of the valley. It traveled down into the woods below and kept moving from one forest to the next, from tree to tree, up toward the place where she stood. A sound grew slowly through the silence, slowly sort of snuck up on it, as if tiptoeing. The sound was at first slight and scattered but then grew denser and gathered in a herd of whispers and sighs. Suddenly, it was as if she were standing in the middle of an enormous chorus. All the forests in the landscape took several deep breaths and then they sang. Upper and lower voices washed over her, high and low notes like big boulders rolled through the silence, but the gale itself, the wind, still hadn’t touched her, she could see it tearing through the crowns of the trees below her for a long time before it suddenly reached her, grabbing hold of her hair.
She ran to the car and sat inside it, gasping for breath. She had absorbed the performance outside feeling a mixture of pleasure and terror, she had stood as if petrified listening and watching and now she wanted to scream out loud, now she felt that the immensity of everything threatened to suffocate her. It would make her explode if she wasn’t allowed to use her own voice to resist and scream that she was here too, she existed and wasn’t going to let herself be obliterated by something huge, she was here and had the right to be.
But Marta didn’t scream. She sat for a while, letting her breathing slow down. Then she started the car and kept driving. She’d stopped looking at the map on the seat next to her; it wasn’t right. No map could capture or describe a place like this, she thought. She drove without direction, and it was already evening. She was so worked up that when she saw a small, beat-up, pale yellow sign with the words Deep Tarn, 4 km, she immediately turned onto the road simply because it had a name, because there were letters.
It was a very bad road, narrow and full of potholes. In some places, large, sharp rocks poked through the gravel like sharks’ teeth, and in other places, it was so wet and muddy that she had to press the gas hard and swerve forward. Here and there, thin saplings grew out of big holes in the road, as out of the holes of a lake covered in ice. She regretted that she’d taken this road, but it was too late now, there was no place to turn around. Fear kept her going, a compact wall of anxiety that had pressed out of her the sheer will to survive. She had to keep moving along this road, there was no other option.
When she spotted a small barn, propped up among big stones in a spacious and tall gathering of pines, she felt an almost overwhelming gratitude. The small, simple barn appeared to her a symbol of gentleness and goodness. Some of her tension subsided, something softer revealed itself among everything that was harsh and rigid. Then the woods opened up a little more and there was a clearing with lots of open sky above, a house and a couple of barns, little lodges and sheds and lavvus. Some buildings were on the edge of the sparse forest, others among the trees. Some were right on the boundary between the woods and the meadow opening up behind it all. The meadow, with its yellowed last-year’s grass and two small barns in the middle, seemed so friendly, surrounding the entire area with its light.
Marta turned off the engine some distance away from the hamlet. This too might be a ghost town, inhabited only by its own memories. She wasn’t sure if she preferred a farm where someone lived or one that was empty; both alternatives seemed equally frightening. But there was something about the way the houses were so beautifully placed around her. She felt a touch of longing for a home, and this was almost like coming home. She felt that she could be here, maybe she could rest here overnight and then, the next day, she’d look at the maps with a little more focus, and find the right road up to Mervas.
It was at that moment the dog appeared. A ragged, gray, wildly barking projectile came running along the road as if it were a missile someone had aimed at Marta’s car. When it reached her, it proceeded to run around the car in circles, all the while barking loudly and ceaselessly. Marta grabbed the steering wheel; she wanted to leave, didn’t want to sit here confined by a barking dog. But the dog moved so quickly around the car, in an instant it seemed to be everywhere, and she sat there squeezing the wheel until her knuckles turned white, helplessly watching the animal dutifully jumping around the car, barking all her thoughts to pieces. Her feeling of unease soon turned to panic. No one may pass here, no one, she thought the dog was barking. Soon my master will come, my master, she heard. And he’ll shoot you with his gun, his gun.
“Shut up!” she screamed in falsetto to the dog. “Get away from here!”
But the dog only seemed to get excited by her voice. With a growl, it curled its upper lip and bared its teeth and Marta didn’t want to see any more. She leaned forward over the steering wheel and pounded her head against it, pounded and pounded. The thoughts were screaming in her head. I’m too old, they screamed, I can’t do this, can’t handle things like this, I’m a fool, they screamed, a fool, I want to go home, I don’t want to do this anymore, don’t want to, I’m a fool and I want to go home.