“Are you going far? ”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I'm not sure, Comrade.”
“Are there many of you? ”
“Just me.
“The first snow in a blizzard comes from nowhere,” says the woman.
“It's just me, only me.”
“If you're not tel ing me the truth I'l tel the troopers.”
“It's the truth.”
“I can swal ow hot rocks easier than I can the word of a Gypsy.”
The woman turns to the farmer with some silent gesture. He grins at Zoli, shuffles outside. A brief darkness until the door creaks open once more.
He stands under the frame, carrying a plate covered with a towel. He grins again, leans across, exchanging the plate for the shotgun. The woman sighs, lifts the towel from the plate, and spreads the food on the floor in front of Zoli: cheese, bread, salt, and five homemade biscuits. A smal dol op of yel ow jam sits on the side of the plate with some butter. The woman hesitates a moment, takes a knife from her dress pocket, and lays it sideways on the edge of the plate.
“You can't stay here,” she says, flattening out the edges of the tea towel with a picture of a cathedral on it. “Do you hear me? You cannot stay.”
The farmer lumbers outside once more and comes back carrying a wicker-bound wine jug. He sets the jug on the floor, stamps his boot, and yanks the dog by the rope-leash.
“It's just a little something,” says the woman. “Go ahead, eat. Drink. The milk is fresh.”
The farmer crosses the floor and reaches up for the lace and bread hanging from the ceiling, then looks across into the sink where Zoli's tooth sits in the metal drainhole.
“My son doesn't speak,” says the old woman. “He's mute. Do you understand?”
The farmer stares at Zoli, the grin splayed from ear to ear.
“He came home yesterday waving his arms. I didn't believe him, trying to tel me there's a woman out walking in the rain. But he was up early this morning, cooking. Supposed to be hunting goose but he's cooking breakfast instead. Burned the first four batches. Jesus of sweet heaven. He's never once cooked before, never in his life, not even for his mother. Cooking for a Gypsy. I slapped him. Look at the size of him. I slapped him. But there's one good thing I like about your people. You steal a chicken, you steal a chicken. The others, they come in, they steal al your chickens and don't even cal it stealing. I am sure you know what I mean. I'm too old for double-talk. I suppose they'l put me in the cold ground for it. You go ahead and eat now. There are no five-year plans on that bread.”
Zoli pul s the plate towards her. The edge of the tea towel rumples.
“Are you not hungry? ”
The woman rises from the floor and takes her son's elbow: “Let the woman eat in holy peace. Look at her. She wants to eat in peace.”
“I bow deeply before you, Comrade,” says Zoli.
The woman blanches: “I don't expect you to be here when we return.” No.
“Nor to ever return.” No.
“I wish you a good journey. You can take the knife, the jug. The towel if you like it.”
“I kiss your kind hands.”
“I would not have used them,” says the woman.
She guides her son towards the door of the hut and the dog fol ows, head bent low. They leave the door swinging open and the farmer turns slowly to look behind, his sloping walk, the tap of the gun against his leg. What curious destiny has brought him along the road, thinks Zoli, not once, but twice in his tal and lumbering silence?
They make their way towards the line of the trees and a gap in the stone wal , the farmer stil looking fondly over his shoulder.
He grins and extends his hand: in his palm rol s the white and dark of Zoli's gone tooth.
Zoli watches as mother and son become pale shapes against the land. She reaches out for one of the biscuits. It stil holds, at its center, a touch of warmth. She smears the jam with her finger. The milk runs cold against the back of her throat. The butter she eats on its own, in one go. She wraps the shard of mirror in her pocket, careful y swaddling the tip so it wil not pierce her, slides the knife into her rope belt, twisting it so that it hangs like a gewgaw. She folds the towel with its cathedral piercing a false blue sky. The plate she wil leave behind.
She turns to take a look at the smal hut—the laceless boot, the bent grass between floorboards, the scorch marks—and she touches her left breast. For the first time since judgment, Zoli feels a pulse of strength: she wil return now to the city and leave nothing behind, not even a trace.
As she moves out, across the stone wal , onto the tarmac, she has the sudden feeling that if a truck screams down the roadway now she wil undoubtedly be able to stand out of its way.
ZOLI SHAMBLES DOWN the footpath, in the shadows of the pines, under their tal, lamenting sway. She moves against the current of the river until she reaches the Red Army Bridge, wind-bitten and vapory in the morning.
