and Petre returned, the boy now very awake, scrambling inside while they helped Lia up. Jan appeared again, a burned-down cigarette in his lips, and they all retreated to the secret room behind the boxes. Before the driver and Roman walled them in, Jan asked how long they’d be driving. “Four, five hours,” said the driver, but his voice wasn’t very authoritative.
From the other side of the boxes, Brano and the Sorokas heard the men murmur to each other; then Roman’s voice, louder, wished them luck. The men jumped down into the gravel, and the doors ground shut-first one, then the other-and the darkness was complete. Petre yelped, but Lia calmed him. A rusty squeal as the latch was pulled into place, then the snap of the lock being secured.
Brano sat against the luggage as the Sorokas huddled in the opposite corner, their whispers indecipherable above the knocking groan of the engine and bone-crunching thumps when they hit potholes. This man was not a careful driver; he sped and slammed the brakes indiscriminately, and occasionally they heard his voice through the wall, singing: Infant holy, infant lowly, for his bed a cattle stall. Oxen lowing, little knowing, Christ the Babe is Lord of all.
The song crept on, its melody circular and incessant. Swift are winging,
Angels singing,
Nowells ringing,
Tidings bringing,
Christ the Babe is Lord of all,
Christ the Babe is Lord of all.
Despite himself, Brano found he was humming along.
Although he could neither see nor hear them, he knew the Sorokas were scared. He had watched them during Roman’s drive, Lia most of all-her stern silence was a mask. She had never fled her country before, and here she was with her boy, at the mercy of strangers who handed the family off to one another like a shipment of… of canned plums. Worse, they had brought along a state security agent neither of them had any reason to trust.
Brano closed his eyes-the darkness remained dark-and felt the truck’s erratic thumps and leaps dig into the old wounds from Bobrka.
After three or four hours, the truck stopped and idled. Lia whispered to her husband, and he whispered back. The truck moved forward a few feet, then stopped again. Petre asked when he’d be able to pee again, and Brano leaned in their direction. “Stay quiet now. We’re at the Hungarian border.”
They answered with silence. The truck lurched, crept forward, and stalled. Was restarted and crept again, then turned off. They heard the thin man climb out of the cab and talk with the border guards, make a joke and laugh. Then footsteps around the back of the truck. The snap of the lock being opened, the doors unlatched. Brano heard the boy’s quick inhale, and when the doors opened gray late-morning light bled through the boxes. Lia’s hand was tight over Petre’s mouth. Above her hand, his eyes were perfectly round, focused on Brano. Jan held Lia from behind, biting his lips.
The driver talked with the border guard about plums and how late he was running. The guard told him he was always running late. “You shouldn’t drink so much, Jaroslaw, it messes up your nerves. Know what my wife gets me to drink? Slivovitz, the kosher stuff. Wake up fresh every morning. Those Jews know what they’re doing.”
“I’ll remember.”
Then they closed the doors again and, after a few minutes and a couple more jokes, the truck moved on. Once they were on their way, Jan said to the darkness, “Welcome to the Hungarian People’s Republic.”
The second roadblock only checked the driver’s papers. It seemed that Jaroslaw knew all the people he ran into; he even spoke to them in Hungarian. This was his regular delivery route.
After a while, they stopped again, and Jaroslaw opened the doors. “Let’s move, everyone. I’ve got to get this stuff to Budapest.” He climbed into the truck and started shifting boxes as Brano moved the ones on their side.
They were at the end of a long forest trail, beside a small dacha. Impatient, Petre ran to a tree and dropped his pants. Jaroslaw unlocked the dacha and beckoned them inside, nervous hands fumbling with the keys as he spoke.
“I’ll be back this evening, and I’ll be able to tell you what’s happening next.”
“You don’t know already?” asked Lia.
He raised the corner of his lip. “I know what I’m doing, okay? I need to contact someone, and then I can get rid of you. But in the meantime, stay here and don’t go out. If anyone knocks on the door, you’re not here. Okay?”
Jan squeezed his wife’s arm. “We understand.”
There was stale bread and jam in the kitchen, so Lia made sandwiches while Jan and Brano sat in the main room, smoking Jan’s cigarettes. Jan seemed nervous, but when Brano asked, he said, “No, it’s all right. This is the way they said it would be. It’s still unnerving, though.”
“You didn’t follow this route before?”
“Before when?”
“When you went to Vienna.”
Jan smiled, finally admitting the truth. “No, that time I took a different route. Through Yugoslavia.”
Brano didn’t ask anything more.
They spent that day floating through the dacha’s two cold rooms. Lia and Petre took a nap together in the bedroom while the men talked. They discussed the discomfort of that truck, both hoping they wouldn’t have to board it again, and Jan told him that for the whole ride Lia had been sure they were heading to prison. “She just can’t believe what she’s doing. I’ve done it before, but I can’t, either.”
“Neither can I,” said Brano.
“But this time it’s for real.” Jan lit a cigarette, forgetting to offer Brano one. “This time I’m not going back.”
“And this is why you returned? To get your family?”
Jan shrugged. “What better reason is there?”
“What about me? I don’t understand why you brought me along.”
Jan looked at his cigarette, then, remembering, offered one. He lit it for Brano. “Because I could tell you needed it. You were in a bind. Like everybody else in Bobrka, I knew you were going to be arrested.” He paused. “And I like you. It’s as simple as that.”
“I’d like to believe you,” said Brano. “But we both know it was decided long ago, in Vienna.”
Jan’s cigarette stopped halfway to his mouth.
“Dijana Frankovic,” Brano explained. “The Americans gave you that name to assure that I’d be the one sent in. And I suppose they paid Pavel Jast to give me a reason to leave.”
Jan Soroka stared at his hands in his lap. He took a breath. “Well, Brano. Let’s say this was true, that I was part of some conspiracy to get you out of the country. Do you think the Americans would tell me everything?”
“I suppose they wouldn’t.”
“So what will you do?”
Brano took a drag of his cigarette. “What?”
“East,” said Jan, “or West?”
Brano surprised even himself by dredging up another smile. “I don’t suppose I have a choice anymore.”
While Jan slept, he watched Lia shepherd Petre around the dacha and intervene with a nervous smile when he began to talk too much to Brano. Perhaps she was afraid he’d repeat things he’d overheard. Brano hadn’t had much experience with children, but he felt that, despite the blemish on his cheek, Petre was like most boys-he saw this trip as an adventure. He peed a lot and asked for more bread and jam and exclaimed unexpectedly about details that caught his eye-“Mama, there’s a spider!” He pointed, trembling, at a dirty corner, where there proved to be no spider at all-but a cockroach. Brano began to suspect the boy was a little dumb, then decided that he was only overenthusiastic, with a penchant for quick, unreflective judgments. Lia would crouch over him and point out his mistake, and the boy would nod, register the correction, and move on to the next mistake. It was like watching a puppy and its master.
After the tense silence had stretched long enough, he asked Lia about her work in the Galicia Textile Works back in the Capital, how long she’d known Jan, and how Petre was at school. At first, she answered his questions easily, folding her relaxed hands in her lap. Her cheekbones were very strong; when she paused, she pressed her thick lips together until they wrinkled. He asked, and she told him that her fear was lessening now that the trip was
