Let me go.
The younger one slams the empty cup down and leans across her, his breath smel ing, strangely, of fresh woodmint. So he knows the woods, she thinks, he wil not be easily fooled. She nudges the knifeblade back into her coatsleeve where it feels cool against the soft of her wrist.
“Conka,” she says, immediately regretting it.
“Conka?”
“Elena. I was with my people.”
“Elena now is it?”
“When the troopers came.”
The younger one chuckles: “Is that so?”
“The families were taken away. The last of us were driven to the city under the new laws. We were pushed along by dogs. My husband was forced to carry a large wooden box with lacquer patterns and al our belongings inside.”
She hesitates and searches their expressions—nothing.
“A huge lacquer box,” she says. “He dropped it on the road. The rain was beating down like a drunk. Everyone was slipping in the mud. The dogs, they had such sharp teeth, you should have seen them. They ripped us. They took a chunk from my mother's leg. The troopers hit us with their sticks. I stil have the marks. They let the leashes loose. My children got bitten. Eight children, I once had eleven. Al our belongings were in that box.
Al my jewelry, papers, everything, inside that box. Wrapped in old twine.”
She pauses again—only a slight twitch at the side of the younger's face.
“I've come now from the city. To get the box. Eight children. Three died. One stepped on an electric cable by the cypress lake. When the thaw came they were digging by mistake with metal shovels. Once there were eleven.”
“A whole team?” says the younger with a grin.
She turns away and stares at the older man who smooths out the hairs of his eyebrow with his knuckle.
“We have a roof now,” says Zoli. “Electric lights that come on al the time, water that runs. The new directives have been good to us. Good times are coming. The leaders have been good to us. Al I want is to find the box, that's al . Have you seen my things? ”
The older pushes himself wearily from the stove and sits down, carrying with him a bowl of kasha with smal pieces of lamb scattered in it.
“You're lying,” he says.
“A blue lacquer box with silver clasps,” she says.
“For a Gypsy you don't even lie very wel .”
Light crawls up and around the window—no curtains, she notices, no woman's hand in the cabin. She al ows the tip of her knife to press deeper into her cupped finger.
“What's your name?” says the younger again.
Elena.
“That's a lie.”
The older man leans in, serious and gray-eyed. “There was a man out in these parts riding a two-stroke Jawa. An Englishman. He was looking for you, says you've gone missing. Says he's been searching al over. We saw him by the forest road. He wants to take you to a hospital. He looked like he should've been in the hospital himself, driving around with a broken leg. Hadn't shaved in a while. Said your name is Zoli.”
He slides the bowl of kasha across the table, but she does not touch it.
“I real y need to find the box. It has so many precious things inside.”
“He said you were tal , with a lazy eye. He told us you'd be wearing a dark overcoat. That you might have a gold watch. Rol up your sleeve.”
“What?”
“Rol up your fucking sleeve,” says the younger.
He steps across and hikes her coat, wrist to elbow. The knife fal s with a clatter to the floor. He stamps on it, picks it up, tests the blade with his thumb, then turns to the older. “I told you. Last night. I fucking told you.”
The older leans in further to Zoli: “Do you know him?”
“Know who?”
“Don't play us for fools.”
“I know nothing about a watch,” says Zoli.
“He said it was his father's. A precious timepiece.”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“He asked for petrol for his motorbike. He didn't seem much of a threat. He spoke a funny Slovak. He tried to tel me he grew up here, but I know better. Is it true, then, what he says? How did you get a man's name?”
Zoli watches as the younger one cuts the hairs on his arm with the knife, whistling at the sharpness of the
