those who had committed crimes against the popular democratic order. I looked down at the dismal sweep of the Danube. Citizens moved along the waterfront without motive, without volition. It was like watching a silent movie —they spoke but remained silent.
In the mil , the new boss, Kysely, was a vicious little corner-shop of a man. He waited for me with a clipboard.
I ventured down past Galandrova Street, wearing a black-belted shirt and a pin from the Union of Slovak Writers, and there she was, huddled in the shadows of the mil . She wore her overcoat and her kerchief had fal en down over her eyes. I walked up and stood in front of her a moment, lifted her chin with a forefinger. She pul ed away. I could hear the noise of the mil behind us, its mechanical hum.
“Where've you been, Stephen?”
“The motorbike.”
“What about it?”
“It's broken down.”
She took one step back, then reached forward and ripped the pin out of my shirt.
“I tried to get out there to help you,” I said. “I was stopped, Zoli. They turned me back. I tried to find you.”
She pushed open the door of the mil and strode inside. Kysely, grimy and yel ow-faced, was wearing one of Stransky's shirts. He stared across the machines at her. “Identification?” he said. She ignored him, stamped across the floor, and went to the filing racks. The original poster plate was there, cased in steel. She took it and threw it against the wal . It bounced on the floor and slid against the hel box. She picked it up and began to hammer the image of her face against the ground.
Kysely began to laugh.
Zoli looked up at him and spat at his feet. He gave me a smile that froze me to the ground. I took him aside and pleaded: “Let me handle this.” He shrugged, said there would be repercussions, and went upstairs, past Stransky's colored footprints. Zoli was standing in the middle of the floor, chest rising and fal ing.
“They'l keep us there.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The towers,” she said.
“It's temporary. It's to control—”
“To control what, Stephen?”
“It's just temporary.”
“They played one of your recordings on the radio,” she said. “My people heard it.”
“Yes.”
“They heard there wil be a book.”
“Yes.”
“And do you know what they thought? ”
I felt something sharp move under my heart. I had heard about the Gypsy trials, the punishments that could be handed down. The law was binding.
Anyone banished was banished forever.
“If you print this book they'l blame me.”
“They can't.”
“They'l have a trial. They'l make judgment. Vashengo and the elders. The blame wil come down on me. Do you understand? It'l come down on me. Maybe it should.”
She crossed the floor towards me, her knuckle to her chin. There were only two floorboards between us. She was pale, almost see-through.
“Don't print the books.”
“They're already printed, Zoli.”
“Then burn them. Please.”
“I can't do it.”
“Who is it up to, if it isn't up to you?”
The sharpness of her voice slid right through my skin. I stood, trembling. I tried rattling off excuses: the book could not be shelved, the Union of Slovak Writers wouldn't al ow it. Kysely and I were under strict instructions. The government would arrest us, there were darker things afoot. They needed the poems to continue resettlement. Zoli was their poster girl. She was their justification. They needed her. Nothing else could be done.
They would soon change their minds. Al she had to do was wait. I stammered, came to the end of my arguments, and stood, then, rimrocked by them al .
Zoli looked momentarily like a window-stunned bird. Her eyes flicked the length of my body. She tugged at the looping drape of skirt at her feet and toed her sandals in the ground, then she slapped me once, and turned on her heels. When she opened the front door, a cage of light moved across the floor. It sprang away as her footsteps sounded outside. She left without a word. She was absolutely real to me then, no longer the Gypsy poet, the ideal Citizen, the new Soviet woman, something exotic to fal in love with.
