The lorry is backed up against a loading ramp with wooden doors. In front of the doors there's a tall pile of the same kind of cases that sheltered him in the truck. He climbs cautiously on to the loading ramp and looks out from behind the truck. He is in a cobbled courtyard with a set of rails for a yard engine running across the middle of it. High brick buildings dominate the courtyard on two sides. The third side is formed by a stone wail with a gatehouse. The fourth side appears to be the best place to
hide, since there are only a few one-storey buildings, apparently warehouses. He can't see anyone; the working day must be over. He creeps cautiously along the loading ramp towards the low buildings. When he passes the last of these, he comes to an open area that serves as a scrapyard. It is filled with rusting machines, old pipes, bundles of wire, piles of empty tin cans, used barrels and even a few ancient, rotting beer wagons. Behind that, there is an overgrown wall low enough to crawl over. Beyond the wall are three apartment blocks, the only vantage point from which he might be seen.
On a pile of refuse he finds several pieces of wire and nails, then he squeezes under one of the old wagons. It will be hard for anyone who doesn't know where to look, or who doesn't have a dog, to find him here. He can remove the handcuffs at his leisure.
He begins to probe the lock on the handcuffs. He's managed to open other locks before. Even back when he was in the children's home, he was determined not to become a uranium miner or a mason. They'd threatened and cajoled, but they backed off in the end and let him train as a locksmith. He'd learned by then that you have to know what you want and let no one stand in your way.
The spring clicks, and he shakes the hideous mark of imprisonment off his wrists, squeezes out from under the wagon, walks over to the pile of scrap metal and throws the handcuffs into an old barrel.
He's not afraid of work. If he lived in a decent country and could open his own workshop he would happily work twelve-hour shifts every day; he would be his own boss, not someone else's lackey. Occasionally, he would close the business for, say, a month, pick up some cute little thing and take off with her to somewhere where they would all call him 'Sir'.
He goes back under the wagon and pulls a flattened and somewhat stale piece of pastry out of his pocket. It's getting dark. Where are they now? There isn't a sign of them. He's given them the slip. If he had some food, he might be able hold out here for a few days. Meanwhile the police would get tired. They'd realize they'd lost him. His
leg would have begun to heal, his whiskers would grow and by the time he got himself some new clothes those smart-arse bastards wouldn't recognize him, not even if he flagged them down and hitched a lift.
But the only thing to eat here is nails washed down with stale beer. And tomorrow morning, people would start turning up for work, so by then he'd have to be somewhere else. His best chance would be in some ordinary house where he could wait for a day or two by himself or, even better, with a hostage. But he has some time now, and he can afford to take a rest.
He stretches out on his back and stares up at the underside of the wagon. A clump of old dried clay is hanging from the mud-covered boards. He closes his eyes and tries to ignore the pain in his leg. It seems to him that the wagon is beginning to float above him slightly, that its floorboards are becoming transparent and penetrable. He passes through them and gently rises above the earth, floating higher and higher, like a kite. When he's so high that not even the sharpest eye can discern him, he catches the wind and floats west until he can feel beneath him that cursed line, defined by barbed wire, so impossible to cross on the ground.
CHAPTER THREE
1
Tiny flakes of snow swirled in the air, melting the instant they touched people's clothes. The crowd was so densely packed that almost no snow reached the ground. Carrying his camera on his shoulder, Pavel pushed his way through the people until he reached the statue of the country's patron saint. They had hung flags on it and surrounded the saint with flowers and burning candles, and stuck posters on the pedestal demanding free elections, democracy, the end of one-party rule, dialogue, freedom of expression and information, the dismantling of the People's Militia, solidarity with the students, a general strike and the resignation of the government. Only a few days ago no one would have dared voice a single one of those demands, let alone write them down and post them up in the centre of the city. And even if someone had dared to do so, the poster would have disappeared before anyone had had a chance to read it.
The demonstrations had been going on for five days now. On the first day, the police had attacked a student march with such fury that they had wounded many of the participants and onlookers. How many had really been hurt, he didn't know, nor did anyone else. Official reports could not be believed, many of the wounded were afraid to seek medical help and doctors preferred not to reveal how many they had treated. Either the cruelty of the police had gone beyond bearable limits, or the present regime's time had simply come without its even noticing. The students declared a strike, were joined by actors and supported by everyone Pavel knew from earlier demonstrations, and this time they in turn were supported by all those who had so far remained silent. There were so many of them that only gunfire could have scattered them now.
He watched with amazement, or rather with suspicion, this strange transformation by which those who had so recently been beaten and doused with jets of water now addressed the assembled crowds, and those who had until recently been silenced and bowed now cheered, clenched their fists, raised two fingers in the victory salute and rattled their keys in anticipation of victory.
What was victory?
The illusory hope that a dream could last; the mad dance of those who are about to die, on the graves of those who have just died. It was a state in which the weeping and wailing of victims was drowned out by shouts of joy.
In the faces of people, he saw an ecstasy that he had seldom witnessed.
He looked around for the familiar faces but could not see them. The people who filled the square now had obviously swarmed out of places he had never been. They were an alien people, yet he found their excitement infectious, to the point where he had to remind himself that he was here to record the event, not to join in. If anything excited him, it should be the possibility that what he was filming might actually reach television viewers. For the past two days he'd gone around with Sokol, who had suddenly become a man of action. He forced his way into striking schools, tirelessly asking people questions without trying to second-guess their answers as he always had in the past.
And now Sokol was thrusting the microphone into the face of a plump older woman. He had selected, perhaps unconsciously, a type he chose to interview during the May Day celebrations every year. 'What do you do?' he asked her.
'I work on a cooperative farm.'
'Great! And what exactly do you do there?'
'I milk the cows.'
'So you've come from far away?'
'I have a daughter studying here. It's not right for them to beat our children.'
People gathered round to listen.
'It's enough what they've beaten into us. They hauled my father off to the uranium mines. Do you know why?' She was getting ready to launch into her life story. But now wasn't the time for life stories. Pavel panned his camera into the crowd where a little boy was perched on a man's shoulders waving a flag.