We silently set out along the val ey floor, the moonlight blue on the riverstones. We waded through a high meadow where the grass reached above my waist. He had instructed me that there were two types of troopers on either side of the border, and they were strung along the hil s at various intervals. The Italians, he said, hated him most of al . You know you could be arrested? he said. I replied that it was hardly a new prospect for me, I knew the difference between a door and a key. We stopped at the edge of a forest. You're ful of pepper, aren't you? he said. He shook his head and sighed, then looped a string around my waist which he tied to his own belt. He said he was sorry to have to treat me like a donkey but in the darkness I could get lost. The string was only long enough to stretch out and touch his shoulder. He was surprised that I kept pace with him and only once or twice did the string tighten around my waist. Halfway up he turned and raised his eyebrows and smiled at me.
His shirtfront pulsed, but I thought little of him yet, chonor-roeja, there was no skip yet in my heart for him.
The moon disappeared, the darkness was ful , and there seemed more star than sky. We stayed away from any of the paths or dirt roads that ran up the mountainside, and instead we kept to the trees, feeling the hard pul of our legs against the steep ground. He grew at ease with the silence between us and only once on the ascent did he turn quickly at a noise. He put his hand on my head and forced me to hunker low. Far off, in the trees, two flashlights shone beams at a steep ledge, the lights sweeping the rock. It struck me that we might have to climb, but we turned sideways, and went quietly through the forest, and away. The climb grew ever upwards until the trees stopped. A long run of rocky scree loomed in front of us.
Be careful with the rocks, he said, they're slippy. We went onwards, cresting the mountain, but, just over the top, he turned and said that the tough part was stil ahead of us, the carabinieri had a grudge against him, and they would like nothing more than his capture.
For the descent he untied the string and shifted the weight of the contraband on his back. The water grew louder the further down we went, fol owing the course of large gray boulders. Rain began to fal and I slipped in the mud. He lifted me. He said he knew that sooner or later my balance would become undone, but I had no idea what he meant.
Are you not scared of troopers? he asked.
I built the sentence slowly in my mind to lay the ful impact of it on him, as it was something Stanislaus had been fond of saying a long time ago, and I wanted to leave one good thing with this strange man, Enrico, and so I said in German: I would happily lick a cat's arse, my heart's friend, if it got the taste of troopers out of my mouth.
He reared back and laughed.
I stayed that night in the hut he had built. He had made latches on the door from the remnants of tires and the planks were stained with black tar.
The windows were smal . Only one piece of furniture looked out of place—a rol top desk crammed with papers, some of them watermarked. He gave me blankets and a carafe of cold mountain water, stacked a few provisions on the table, and said I was welcome to al of it, smoked meat, dried vegetables, matches, condensed milk, even a lantern. He left the hut, stil in the darkness, to complete whatever business he had in the vil age of Sappada and the door clicked behind him.
I had crossed yet another border and was now in Italy.
The sight of the bed fil ed me with happiness and I fel crosswise on it from one corner to the other. Outside, the river babbled in its fastness. I quickly fel asleep. I knew he had come back in, for I saw the mark of wet bootprints upon the floor. It must have been hours later, for the light was intense and yel ow, when I heard the rattle of his breath in a nearby chair. He mumbled some words in Italian to what he thought was my sleeping form and then he left again, shutting the door gently behind him.
Al of this is to tel you, chonorroeja, that the idea of going any further no longer pulsed in me. There is an old Romani saying that the river is not where it starts or ends, but it seemed that I had certainly come to the crest of something, I had thrown away the idea of Paris, and the shape of my walking had changed. I replaced the blankets, packed the food he had left me, kissed the table in thanks, then walked out of the hut. I fol owed a val ey road for five ful days. I could not help but bring my mind around to Enrico, how he had not questioned me about anything at al and yet it had not seemed a lack of curiosity or a dislike. The further I got from him, the more he came back to me. He once said to me, in later years, so much later, that the reason life is so strange is that we have simply no idea what is around the next corner, and it was an obvious idea but one most of us had learned to forget.
On a rainy day in the mountains, I heard the sound of rol ing tires. He pul ed up behind me in a ruined jeep, cal ed to me, and said perhaps I was a
little tired, and I said, yes, and he told me that I was welcome to get into the jeep for shelter. I said it hardly looked like shelter since there was no roof. He shrugged and said: You can always pretend. I looked out over the mountains, then walked across, got in the seat beside him. Dry, isn't it?
he said. We turned around in the road, with the rain lashing us sideways. I huddled down against the blowing heater. The road opened up before us and I suppose this is where my traveling story ends.
We went to Paoli's cafe where Paoli looked across the counter, shook his head, grinned, and told us to sit.
I asked Enrico why he had not asked me anything about being a Gypsy and he asked me why I had never asked him anything about not being one.
It was perhaps the most beautiful answer I have ever heard in my life.
We knew each other slowly, in terror and excitement, drew apart, stepped backwards. Sometimes I caught sight of him in the dim lamplight and he seemed closer to the shadows than he was to me. We clasped in an awkward embrace and sat for a long time without moving, but the distance grew shorter, unfolded, and the desire never wore itself out. It seemed to me that the world had tried me and final y showed me joy. For a long time we found in ourselves little to say and we learned to be together without speaking. The moment we lived in was enough. During the night he slept with my hair across him and
I watched his ribcage move up and down. The mornings came and he stepped to the stove, brought it to life. There was a spot of soot where he had touched my cheek. At night I told him of Petr, of my days with Swann and Stransky, of what had happened between us—he simply sat and listened until a sharp line of windowlight opened the morning.
When he left, sometimes for days on end, I would wait up without ever sleeping. I was not sheltered from despair, and there were times I wondered how in the world I could survive in such a place, days I was sure I would just walk off into the hil s, disappear, keep moving, to no particular place, or purpose, but then
