wearing the wood away over decades. She wondered what the ropes had been for. She wondered if a rope tied to the rafter had ever been used to hang someone. They were in the Carpathian foothills, the Skoda having coughed and sputtered its way. The Czech and Hungarian frontiers were nearer, just across the northern range. They were already within the region of border disputes and turmoil, which took place during the last war. Perhaps the rafter above had been used for hanging dissenters. And now abandoned, with no other task, the barn awaited future hangings.
“Do you think we’ll make it?” asked Juli.
Lazlo was in the center of the barn, putting the finishing touches on the car with a brush and a can of oily black paint he had found.
“We’ll make it. If anyone tries to catch us, they’ll stick to our fly-paper.”
“Isn’t it drying?”
Lazlo dabbed at the roof. “Slowly. The part you did is only sticky now, not wet.”
“Our little Skoda with a brand-new skin.”
While Lazlo continued painting, Juli shook out the blankets they had taken from the Kopelovo collective and arranged them on the bed of straw near the stone wall at the back of the barn. Last night they had slept in the car. Tonight would be more comfortable. After the blankets were spread out, she stuffed straw beneath the bottom blanket at the end nearest the wall to form a wide pillow.
When she finished making their bed, she took off her slacks and blouse and got under the top blankets. Lazlo was stooped behind the car and hadn’t seen her undress. The lantern was aimed at the car, and their bed was in the dark corner against the wall.
Although the barn was in good condition, it seemed unused.
Lazlo said it might be used to house livestock in the winter. It was some distance from the collective village and was probably left over from a time when one family owned the farm. Near the barn there was an overgrown foundation, which might have been a house before one of the wars.
Because the barn walls were made of stone, they were not worried about anyone seeing light through a crack. Earlier in the evening, after lighting the lantern, Lazlo went outside to make certain. To celebrate their find, they ate some of the food Lazlo had purchased at a local market. While eating, they took turns with the brush changing the Skoda from white to black. If someone questioned the last farmer who saw them today, he would say the technicians eating lunch by the pond had driven a white Skoda.
When Lazlo finished painting, he washed using the bucket of water drawn from the covered well outside. He sat inside the car using the mirror to shave with the razor he’d purchased back at Kopelovo. When he finished, he closed the car door, took off his shirt, dried his face with it, and hung it on a nail on a post. His shoulder holster and pistol also hung there. Finally he blew out the lantern, came to the dark alcove, and climbed into the bed of straw.
“How long have we known one another?” asked Juli.
“A thousand years,” said Lazlo.
“Either clocks and calendars are all wrong, or we’ve gone mad,” said Juli. “Which is it?”
“Both.”
She pulled Lazlo to her, and they fell quickly into the momentary otherworld of not knowing what had happened or what could happen. She thought only of Lazlo, how she needed him and loved him. When he was inside her, she felt complete. Even if someone told her that in a few moments she would be tortured and hung from the rafter herself, it didn’t matter because the momentary otherworld had opened, and she and Lazlo had tumbled into it.
After what seemed only a few moments of sleep, Lazlo awakened.
Juli was in his arms, her head on his chest. Even though she had washed her hair several days earlier at Kopelovo, it still smelled sweet. He pushed his face deeper into Juli’s hair and inhaled.
“What do you think about when you lie awake?” asked Juli.
“I thought you were asleep.”
“And I thought you were. What do you think about?”
“About you. About us. About everything around us.”
Juli turned her head on his chest and faced him. “It’s a dilemma, isn’t it? All these things happening around you, people depending on you even though you’re the one in the most danger.”
“You know I must go to Kisbor before I can cross the border. If I simply leave, I’m afraid Komarov will hurt Nina and the girls, and even Bela and Mariska.”
“He’s vindictive, one who can never forget?”
“Yes. It’s his game. He knows I’ll go to the farm because I know he’ll go there. Going there will not guarantee their safety, but I can’t leave Nina and the girls alone as long as Komarov is in power. I should have gone after him in Kiev instead of waiting for him to act.”
“You sound like Mihaly.”
“Perhaps I am Mihaly.”
They were silent for a time, the only sounds their breathing and a mouse somewhere in the corner of the barn tunneling beneath straw. Juli broke the spell.
“How long will it take to get to Kisbor?” she asked.
“It’s a few hours’ drive across the northern range. The Hungarian frontier is only about a hundred kilometers away. Kisbor is another hundred northwest at the edge of the steppes. When we were boys, Mihaly and I sometimes worked in fields near the frontier when other collectives needed help during the harvest. Last June on holiday, I told Mihaly we would have been better off staying on the farm. We were in the wine cellar. The cemetery’s not far from the house. The wine cellar’s about as deep as a grave, and I can’t help wondering if Mihaly had been predicting his death.
There we were down in the ground… we even spoke about how I used to be frightened that dead people from the cemetery visited for a drink now and then…”
Lazlo paused, and when Juli remained silent, he knew it was time to tell her about the deserter he’d killed on the Romanian border when he was a boy soldier. He told of the snowy day, he and Viktor leaving the army truck with their rifles. He told of their officers’ anger at Khrushchev’s Cuban missile fiasco, taking revenge anywhere they could. He told of the silenced violin in the village, the pistol in the violin case, the boy deserter shooting Viktor, his own rifle aimed, the trigger pulled, the blood exploding from the deserter’s face, the mother and sister screaming. He told of the return visit with his captain, the sister’s eyes as she stared at him, and finally his baptism with the name Gypsy, the name taken from the deserter he had murdered.
“I was going to tell Mihaly about the deserter, but he is gone. So now I have told you.”
Juli hugged Lazlo to her. “You used the word murderer. Promise me you will never use it again. I saw what happened in Visenka.
I saw the agent aim the pistol at us. You are not a murderer, Lazlo!
Never, never use the word again!”
Juli held him tightly for a long time, long enough for him to shed a decade of tears. She wiped the tears away with her hands and with her lips as they kissed. They lay together in silence until Juli spoke.
“My father wanted me to be a doctor. He said lots of women were becoming doctors. He said women were better at healing.
When I didn’t become a doctor, I felt I had disappointed my father.
The past is gone. Even if you had stayed on the farm and I had become a doctor, we might still be running away together.”
“We’re not in control,” said Lazlo. “We feel we’re in control from minute to minute or even from day to day, but in the end, destiny rules. My destiny is to guarantee nothing happens to Nina and the girls.”
“We’re back where we started,” said Juli.
“The dilemma.”
“Yes.”
They lay silent again, listening to the mouse in the corner. During the silence, Lazlo kept visualizing the farmhouse, the yard, the exact placement of trees, the position of the wine cellar in relation to the house, the border of the private plot at the back. Since it was spring, there would be no tall crops to hide among. Then he remembered the lazy afternoons beneath the chestnut tree, Anna and Ilonka and Mariska’s baby playing, the cover
