“But you could go away, yet you don’t.”
“Who hasn’t thought of it? And I’m just as human as the rest of them. But something about this part of the world makes it hard to leave. It’s not to be explained in the ordinary ways, and poetic yearnings for the sky and the earth seem awfully meager when the Chekists come around. Yet one stays. One decides to leave, puts it off a week, then something happens, so then it’s Thursday for certain, but on Thursday it can’t be done, then suddenly it’s Monday but the trains aren’t running. So you wait for March, and some new decree gives you hope, then spring comes in April and your heart is suddenly strong enough for anything. Or so you think.” He shrugged, then said, “You wake up one morning; you’re too old to change, too old to start again. Then the woman in your bed snuggles up because her feet are cold and you realize you’re not that old, and after that you start to wonder what shattering horror or peculiar pleasure the rest of the day might bring, and by God your heart has grown Russian and you didn’t even notice.”
Vyborg smiled. “I should read your writing,” he said. “But what kind of a Russian speaks this way yet lives in Paris? Or do I have it wrong?”
“No. You have it right. And all I can say in my defense is, what poet doesn’t praise the love that loves from afar? “
Vyborg laughed, first politely, then for real as the notion tickled him. “What a shame,” he said, “that we’re about to lose this beautiful, heartbreaking country of ours. If that weren’t the case, Mr. Szara, I assure you I would recruit you to the very corner of hell simply for the pleasure of your company.”
That night he lay on a blanket beside the car and tried to will himself to sleep. That was the medicine he needed-for exhaustion, sore spirit, for survival-but when it came, for a few minutes at a time, it wasn’t the kind that healed. An area around his right temple throbbed insistently, seemed swollen and tender, and he feared something far worse than he’d imagined had gone wrong inside him. The night was starless and cool. They’d driven and driven, managing only a few miles an hour over the wagon ruts, then given it up just at the last moment of dusk.
Leaving the oak forest, they’d suddenly entered a seemingly endless wheat field that ran uninterrupted for miles. There were no villages, no people at all, only ripe wheat that rustled and whispered in the steady evening wind. The last jerrycan of fuel had been poured in the gas tank; somehow they would have to find more. Szara had frightening dreams-the genial irony that had sustained their morale during the day disappeared in darkness-and when he did manage to sleep he was pursued and could not run. The ground beneath him was hard as stone, but turning on his other side made his head swim with pain and forced him back to his original position. Long before dawn he awakened to the roll of thunder, then saw on the horizon that it was not thunder: a pulsing, orange glow stained the eastern edge of the night sky. For a few minutes he was the only one awake; rested his head on his arm and watched what he knew to be a burning city under artillery barrage.
When the sergeant and the colonel awoke, they too watched the horizon. For a long time nobody spoke, then the sergeant took both canteens and went off to try to find water. They’d had nothing to eat or drink since afternoon of the previous day, and thirst was becoming something it was hard not to think about. Vyborg lit a match and tried to study the map, not at all sure where they were.
“Could it be that Cracow is on fire?” Szara asked.
Vyborg shook his head that he didn’t know and lit another match. “Our little wagon track is not on the map,” he said. “But I’ve estimated we’ll hit the north-south rail line at a switching station somewhere north and east of here.”
Szara took the last crushed Gitane from a battered pack. He had two more in his valise, rolled up in a clean shirt. He thought about changing clothes. He had sweated and dried out many times and was everywhere coated with a fine, powdery dust that made him feel itchy and grimy. Too much Parisian luxury, he thought. Baths and cigarettes and coffee and cold, sweet water when you turned on the tap. From his perspective of the moment it seemed a dream of a lost world. France had declared war, according to the colonel, and so had England. Were the German bombers flying over their cities? Perhaps Paris was an orange glow in the sky. Vyborg looked at his watch. “There must not be water anywhere near,” he said. Szara sat against the tire of the staff car and smoked his cigarette.
An hour later the sergeant had not returned, and dawn was well advanced. Colonel Vyborg had twice walked a little way up the path-with no results. Finally he seemed to make a decision, opened the trunk and took out an automatic rifle. He detached the magazine from its housing forward of the trigger guard and inspected the cartridges, then snapped it back into place and handed the weapon to Szara. From the markings it was a Model ZH 29 made in Brno, Czechoslovakia, a long, heavy weapon, not quite clumsy; the hand grip just behind the barrel was protected by a ribbed metal alloy so the shooter didn’t blister his fingers when the gun fired automatically. Vyborg said, “There are twenty-five rounds, and one in the chamber. The setting is for single shots, but you can move the lever behind the magazine to automatic.” He reached over and worked the bolt. “I’ve armed it,” he said. He drew his weapon, a short-barreled automatic, from its holster, and inspected it as he had the Czech rifle. “Best we stay a few yards apart but side by side-a field is a bad place for walking about with armed weapons.”
For a time they moved along the path, the colonel stopping every now and then and calling out softly. But there was no answer. The track curved upwards around a low hill and, as the sun came above the horizon, they found the sergeant on the other side, some three hundred yards away from the car, at a place where the wheat stalks had been crushed and broken. His throat had been cut. He lay stretched on his stomach, eyes wide open, a look of fierce worry settled on his face. A handful of dirt was frozen in each fist. Vyborg knelt and brushed the flies away. The sergeant’s boots were gone, his pockets were turned out, and, when Vyborg reached inside his uniform jacket, a shoulder holster worn just below the armpit was empty. There was no sign of the canteens. For a time, Szara and Vyborg remained as they were: Szara standing, the rifle heavy in his hands, Vyborg kneeling by the body, which had bled out into the earth. The silence was unbroken-only the distant rumble and the sound of the wheat stalks brushing against each other. Vyborg muttered an obscenity under his breath and went to take a religious medal from around the sergeant’s neck, but if he’d worn one it had also been stolen. At last the colonel rose, the pistol held loosely in his hand. He kicked at the ground experimentally with the toe of his boot, but it was hard and dry as rock. “We have no shovel,” he said at last. He turned and walked away. When Szara caught up with him he said, “This always starts here when there’s war.” His voice was bitter, disgusted and cold. “It’s the peasants,” he said. “They’ve decided to look out for themselves.”
“How did they know we were here?”
“They know,” Vyborg said.
By full daylight they could see columns of black smoke where the city was burning and the sound of the barrage had grown more distinct, could be heard to crackle like wet wood in a fire. Vyborg drove, Szara sat beside him. They did not speak for a long time. Szara watched the needle on the gas gauge, quivering just below the midpoint on the dial. Now, when they encountered a rise or a low hill, Vyborg stopped the car just below the top, took his binoculars, and climbed the rest of the way. Szara stood guard, rifle in hand, back protected by the metal side of the car. On the fourth or fifth scouting expedition, Vyborg appeared just below the brow of a hill and waved for Szara to join him. When he got there Vyborg said, “They’re on the other side. Go slowly, stay as close to the ground as you can, and do not speak; make gestures if you have to. People notice motion, and they hear human sounds.” The sun was blazing. Szara crawled on his elbows and his knees, breathing dust, the rifle cradled across his arms. Sweat beaded in droplets at his hairline and ran down the sides of his face.
When they crested the hill, Vyborg handed him the binoculars, though he could see the valley very well without them. They’d reached the railroad switching station-as Vyborg had predicted- which lay by a dirt road at the foot of a long gentle grade. A single set of rails curved to the west, coming together by the switching station with a double-track north-south axis. A switchman’s hut and a set of long iron levers housed in a wooden framework stood to one side of two laybys, lengths of track where one train could be held while another used the right-of-way.
The little valley, mostly weeds and scrub trees, was alive with Wehrmacht gray. The hut and the switching apparatus had been protected by a sandbagged machine gun position; a number of Wehrmacht railroad officers, identifiable by shoulder patches when he used the binoculars, were milling about with green flags in hand. From the position of the long row of freight cars parked on the western track, Szara inferred that the troop train had arrived directly from the German side of the border. There was further evidence of this. Across the wooden boards of one of the cars was a legend printed with chalk:
