She slipped into the far bed.
When I stood up and walked over to her she did not move. She lay with her back to me, her neck bare. A draft flattened the candle flame. She al owed my arm across her waist. She said that there were many things she missed in her life, not least a sinewy voice that might come up from beneath the ice. I nudged in against her, kissed the back of her hair. It smel ed of grass.
“Marry me,” I said to her.
“What?” she said, speaking towards the window, not as a question, nor an exclamation, but something distant and unfathomable.
“You heard me.”
She turned and gazed some other place beyond me.
“Haven't we lost enough?” she said.
She turned and kissed me briefly as she lowered the guil otine for a final time, and I was grateful in a way that she had waited so long. A single phrase, and yet it hit me with the force of an axe. She had put a line down between us, one I could never again cross.
Zoli rose and gathered her possessions. When she left the room, I punched into the wal and heard a knuckle crack.
She was waiting outside. I had to drive her to another town. She smiled slightly at the sight of my fist wrapped in a towel, and for a brief moment I hated her and al the bareness she brought to her life.
“You've got to drive me through the mountains,” she pleaded. “I can't stand the idea of those tunnels.”
And yet we were in a tunnel anyway, we knew it, and maybe we had always been. We had sped into the arch of darkness, slowed down, steered a moment in the unusual cold, until it felt right, and then we'd jolted the bike forward again, pushed against the headlong wind. We had recognized a pinpoint of light, a tiny gleam that kept growing, and the longer we journeyed in the darkness the more dazzling the light had become, ever brighter, more bril iant, and we leaned forward onto the handlebars, until eventual y, like everyone, we had approached the mouth of the tunnel. Then we smashed that motorbike out into the sunshine, momentarily blinded, stunned, and we stayed so for quite a while, until our eyes adjusted and we began to blink and things came into focus and al around us were pebbles and amongst the pebbles, stones, and amongst the stones, rubbish, and amongst the rubbish, smal gray buildings, and between, and beyond, pockets of gray men and women, a wasteland of them—ourselves. Instead of letting our hearts sink, we had closed our eyes once more and we had ridden that bike into another darkness, another tunnel, thinking there would be a brighter light just a little further along, that nothing would derail us, and that belief, like most beliefs, was more precious than the truth.
What is there to say?
Stransky's last words to the firing squad: “Come closer, it wil be easier for you.”
The hubs were of elm. The spokes, mostly oak. The rims were made from fel oes of curved ash, joined by strong pegs, bound with iron. Many were painted. Some were badly nicked and scarred. Certain ones were rigged with wire. A few were buckled with moisture. Others were stil perfect after decades. They were hauled in from riverbanks, deep forests, fields, edges of vil ages, long, empty tree-lined roads. Thousands of them. Sledgehammers were used to remove them. Two-man saws. Levers. Tire irons. Mal ets. Pneumatic dril s. Knives. Blowtorches. Even bul ets when frustration set in. They were taken to the railroad yards, state factories, dump grounds, sugar mil s and, most often, to the weedy fields at the rear of police stations where once again they were tagged and then, after meticulous documentation, they were burned. The troopers worked the bonfires in shifts. Smal groups in the vil ages gathered, bringing their chairs with them. In the freezing afternoons workers broke off early to see the stacks as they whistled and hissed in the fires. At times the air bubbles popped in rackety succession. Sparks yawed off into the air. The rubber caught and threw huge flames. The iron hoops reddened and glowed. The nails melted. When the fires waned, the crowds threw on extra paraffin.
Some cheered and drank from bottles of vodka, jars of cucu. Policemen stood and watched as the embers made silent passages into the air. Army sergeants leaned in and lit cigarettes. Teachers gathered classes around the flames. Some children wept. In the days afterwards, a slew of government officials rol ed out in jeeps and cars from Kosice, Bratislava, Brno, Trnava, Saris, Pobedim, to inspect what had happened under Law 74. It had taken just three days, an incredible success, so our newspapers and state radio told us, generous, decent, Socialist: we got rid of their wheels.
There were horses too, of course, requisitioned and sent to the col ective farms, though many were old and bony and ready for the glueyard.
Those were shot where they stood.
I walked the backstreets of Bratislava, reeling, the copy of
Zoli's kumpanija, which had been hiding out in the forests not far from the city, had tried to flee, but they were surrounded and brought to the city.
They cal ed it the Big Halt. They were joined by other families as the roads fil ed. Women at the front, men at the flank. Long lines of carriages and children. Dogs snapped and kept them in line. The people were herded into fields at the foot of the new towers. The troopers disappeared and the bureaucrats came, waving files. The children were deloused in the local spa, then everyone was lined up and inoculated against disease.
Speeches were given. Our brothers and sisters. The true proletariat. Historical necessity. Victory is swift. The dawn of a new era.
Flags were unfurled. Bands played trumpets as Zoli's men and women were guided towards community centers—from now on they'd live in the towerblocks. They were a triumph of what we had become. They were to be envied.
Alone in my room, I listened to the radio reports: serious and high-minded, they talked of the rescue of the Gypsies, the great step forward, how they'd never be shackled by primi-tivism again. One of Zoli's poems was read out on the midnight program. I didn't have the bravery to turn it off.
I went downstairs, snapped the front cable on the motorbike, took apart the chain and left the links in pieces on the ground. I wandered the al eyways, my hand trailing the lichen on the wal s, paced underneath the marble arch carved with Soviet stars. Blue posters were pasted on street corners, long columns of names of
