Zoli

and yel ows of the marsh floor. It rises to the top of the trees and shoulders against the last patches of light. She considers a moment that it is, in fact, more beautiful than she has ever created in words, that the darkness actual y restores the light. The trees more dark than the dark itself.

She bundles her belongings tight and rises up from between the logs. This is it. Take it now. Go. She taps her left breast, begins moving, hunched, careful y, deliberately. Windnoise in the grass. A shape in the distance catches her eye, another watch-tower, this one camouflaged with leaves and bushes and almost immediately she hears some dogs in the anonymous distance. She strains to hear what direction they are heading but it is hard to tel with the wind.

A high chorus, getting closer. Trained bloodhounds maybe. The sound of men's voices, joining the clamor. At a distant watchtower, two soldiers jump from the last rungs of the ladder to the ground, their rifles pointed at the sky, moving out at a trot. So this is it. I should just stand and raise my arms and have them cal the dogs off. Why gibber? Why beg? And yet there is something about their excitement, a tension to their voices, that makes her wonder. She crouches down into the grass. The headlights of a truck on the far road light up the marshland. A second truck, a third. The dogs only a short distance away now. The lights paint the grass silver, spectral.

It is then she sees a brown flash along the road. Ten or twelve of them. Antlered, majestic. Dogs snapping behind them. A shout of grim confidence from a soldier and then a yelp of joy.

Deer. A whole herd of them.

Sweep left, she whispers, sweep left.

She hears the soldiers whooping under the clamor of the dogs. Her fate, she realizes, is within the swing of a deer foot. Swing away from me, away.

The herd passes through the forest line behind her. Over her shoulder the soldiers fol ow, shouting.

She races forward and through a low ditch. Water sprays upwards and she skews a moment on the slick mud before gaining her footing once more. Beyond the ditch, a line of trees. A light sweeps the landscape. She ducks into the shelter of a single cypress tree, slides down behind it, pauses for a breath and looks about in terror before lurching onwards. Her wet shoes make sucking sounds against the earth. She punches her way through a brake of long grass. The thorns of a bush rip her hands. She hears another dog's barking and then a high yelp. Have they finished their chase? Cornered their animal?

Her breath wheens fast and uneven. Her lungs, scalded. I must get now to the lake. A quarter kilometer perhaps. To the water edge.

Zoli rol s her shoulders from her overcoat, and drops it on the ground. I wil not fil my pockets with water, no.

Four searchlights tilt and sweep across her. She drops to the soft earth, face in the dirt. The lights stencil the marshland. In the distance the hounds are being held back from the deer and the laughing voices of the soldiers carry through the night. The deer with its bel y split open, surely, the guts steaming on the ground.

Zoli ventures forward again, the bracing cold pul ing at her skin, her heart, her lungs tight.

The merest luck, she thinks, has preserved me.

Slovakia

2003

THE BOTTLES WERE EMPTY, the ashtrays ful. They had cheerfuly slapped his back, sung for him, even fed him the last of their haluski. They had gazed at pictures of his child and posed for their own, by the fire, standing tal and fixed. They had laughed at the sound of their own voices on the tape recorder. He even played it for them in slow mode. They had accepted al his money, except for fifty krowns in a hidden pocket. They'd played him like a harp, he thought, but he was not fazed; he even felt for a while that he had a bit of the Gypsy in himself, that he'd been inducted into their ways, a character in one of their elaborate anecdotes. They led him this way and that about Zoli, and the more krown notes he laid on the table, the more their stories loosened— she was born right here, lam her cousin, she wasn't a singer, she was seen last month in Presov, her caravan was sold to a museum in Brno, she played the guitar, she taught in university, she was killed in the war by the Hlinkas—and he felt like a man who'd been expertly and lengthily duped.

He promised Boshor that he'd come back when he discovered anything more about her, maybe the next week, or the one after, but he knew he'd never return. The young girl, Andela, picked up the china cups from the table and smiled at him as she backed away—she wore his wristwatch high on her arm. He had even, towards the end, watched the cigarette foil being used to languidly clean a gap in Boshor's teeth.

He tapped his pockets. Everything was intact. Car keys, tape recorder, wal et. Boshor shook his hand and grasped his arm in affection, pul ed him close. They almost touched cheeks.

Outside, the shadows lay gray on the settlement. The kids cheered when he pushed open the shack door. Robo was sitting on a cinder block, carving a piece of wood out of which had come the figure of a woman. The whittled chips lay in white patterns at his feet. Robo skimmed off the last bark edge and handed him the statue, leaned in and said: “Don't forget, mister, fifty krowns.” He smiled and put the statue in his pocket: “Just get me to the car.” The other kids pul ed at his jacket sleeve. He leaned down and mussed their hair. He felt happily torn by the desolation; he'd survived it, he was safe, secure, out in one piece. The bands of sweat at his waist and armpits had dried. He had even begun to fret that his car was pointed in the wrong direction, that he would have to reverse it al the way up the dirt road, or execute a three-point turn with al these little kids around.

“This way,” said Robo, “fol ow me.”

He moved through the muck and made signposts in his mind to come back to later, random thoughts, notes to scribble down in a journal: The children's clothes are strangely clean. No running water, no taps, no pylons. Electricity is pirated. A girl with eight piercings in her ears. Two huge rubber rings used as jewelry. Not many young men in their twenties or thirties—possibly in prison. Man in bright pink jacket. Chess pieces strung as a windchime. Old woman using broken television as a seat. Immaculate white cloths flapping on the washing line.

He was passing by the last of the shanties when Robo let go of his arm and moved back into the shadows. He felt immediately that he had been dropped.

A bare-chested man. Smal . Barefoot. A bottle scar on one cheek, almost a perfect circle. A tattooed teardrop on the other, beneath his eye. He held the engine of a motor scooter in one hand and his chest was slathered in fingerlines of grease. The journalist turned quickly to look for escape, but the tattooed man took his elbow and pul ed him towards a shack. “Come here, come here.” A curious high tinge to the voice. The tattooed man deepened