“Go ahead,” said Stransky, “just write it down.”
“I don't real y create them on the page,” she said.
“Just scribble the last verse, go on.”
Stransky tapped his knuckles on the edge of the table. Zoli turned the thread on a button. Her lip was bitten white. She lowered her gaze and began to write. Her penmanship was shabby and she had little idea about line breaks, capitalization, or even spel ing, but Stransky took the sheet and clutched it to his chest.
“Not bad, not bad at al , I can show this to people.”
Zoli pul ed back her chair, bowed slightly to Stransky, then turned to me and said a formal goodbye. Her kerchief had slipped back on her head and I noticed how pure the parting was in her hair, how dark the skin between two sets of darkness, how straight, how clean. She readjusted the scarf and there was a flash of white from her eyes. She stepped towards the door, and then she was gone, out into the street in the last of the light, under the trees. A few young men on a horsecart were waiting for her. She put her nose to the horse's neck and rubbed her forehead along the top of its spine.
“Wel , wel , wel ,” said Stransky.
The horsecart went around the corner and away.
I felt as if a tuning fork had been struck in my chest.
The next day Stransky and I were invited to an air show for journalists on the outskirts of Bratislava: three brand-new Meta-Sokols, high-technology jets, were on display. Their noses were pointed westward. It was stil a no-fly zone around Bratislava, and the pilots had been forced to drive the jets into the airfield on huge trucks, which had become bogged down and had to be pul ed onto the field with ropes. Stransky had been asked to write an article about the Slovak-born fighter pilots. He slinked around the machines with a general who lectured us earnestly about landing patterns, high-range radar, and ejector seats.
After the lecture, a young woman from the air force strode out to the planes. Stransky nudged me: she had a stil ness at her center that might have been cal ed poise, but it wasn't, it was more like the tension that can be seen in tightrope walkers. Her blond hair was cut short, her body slim and winsome. He fol owed her up into the cockpit of one of the machines and they sat for a while, chatting and flirting, until she was cal ed away.
The journalists and dignitaries watched the thin sway of her as she climbed down. She reached up and helped Stransky to the ground. “Wait,” he said. He kissed her hand and introduced me as his wayward son, but she blushed and shimmied off, with just one look over her shoulder—not at Stransky, nor at me, but at the military jet stuck in the grass.
“Hey-ho, the new Soviet woman,” said Stransky under his breath.
We walked across the airfield, through the giant muddy marks made by the trucks. At the field's edge Stransky stopped and wiped some of the muck off his trousercuffs. He turned, rubbed one shoe against the other and said, suddenly, as if to the trampled grass: “Zoli.”
He hitched up his trousers and walked over the tire marks. “Come on,” he said.
Out past Trnava, towards the hil s, along a dirt road, through an isolated copse of trees. I clung on as Stransky brought the motorbike to a skidding stop and pointed to a series of broken twigs arranged to mark a trail.
“Around here somewhere,” he said.
The engine of the Jawa sputtered. I hopped off. Smoke rose from some distant trees and a series of shouts rang out. We pushed the motorbike into the center of a clearing, where intricately carved caravans stood in a semicircle. Light came through the high pines, creating long shadows.
Young men stood by a fire. One turned an axehead with a pair of tongs; another blew a bel ows. A number of children darted towards us. They climbed on the bike and yelped when their bare feet touched the hot pipes. One jumped on my back and slapped me, then yanked my hair.
“Say nothing,” said Stransky. “They're just curious.”
The crowd swel ed. The men stood in shirts and torn trousers. The women wore long-hemmed dresses and thick jewelry. Children appeared with babies clasped against their chests. Some of the babies wore red ribbons on their wrists.
“It's an adorned world,” Stransky whispered, “but underneath it's plain enough, you'l see.”
A middle-aged man, Vashengo, with long wisps of graying hair, strode through the crowd and stood straddle- legged in front of us, hands on his hips. He and Stransky embraced, then Vashengo turned to assess me. A long stare. An odor of wood-smoke and rank earth.
“Who's this?”
Stransky slapped my shoulder: “He looks Slovak, sounds Slovak, but at the worst of times he's British.”
Vashengo squinted and came close, dug his fingers into my shoulder. The whites of his eyes had a smoky gray tinge.
“Old friend of mine,” said Stransky before Vashengo parted the crowd in front of him. “He owes me a thing or two.”
At the rear of the crowd, near a series of carved wooden caravans, Zoli stood with four other women in colorful dresses. She wore an army greatcoat, river boots rol ed down on her calves, and a belt made out of wil ow bark. She held a coat- hanger skewered with a piece of potato. She glanced at us, strode towards a caravan, stepped up, closed the door behind her.
For a split second the curtain parted, then ricocheted back.
Food was prepared, a bal of meat served with haluski and flatcakes. “How's your hedgehog?” asked Stransky. I spat it out. Vashengo stared at me. It was, it seemed, a delicacy. I picked it up from the dirt. “Delicious,” I said, and speared a mouthful. Vashengo reared back and laughed, jaunty and intimate. The men gathered and slapped
