The Sinistra Zone

4. COCA MAVRODIN'S NAME

When it was announced that Colonel Puiu Borcan had been found on one of the windswept heights over Dobrin, I shook the dust from my quilted jacket and soaked my muddy rubber boots in the stream. Then I looked up Gábriel Dunka, the dwarf, to have him trim my hair a bit. Colonel Puiu Borcan had been forest commissioner for the Sinistra Zone, so it was only proper that I, who managed the wild fruit depot, should show up at his burial looking decent.

It soon turned out that all the fuss was in vain. The ceremony was not to be: Colonel Izolda Mavrodin, the newly appointed commander of the mountain infantry, had banned all public gatherings well in advance. While still on her way from Dobruja to her new post in this northern mountainous region, she’d sent word that Colonel Puiu Borcan was to stay up there on the mountaintop exactly at the spot where the fever had done him in, and that no one should dare even touch him. Presumably this meant not even if, by chance, badgers or foxes wandering that way were to close in on the colonel’s corpse.

So Colonel Borcan was succeeded at the mountain infantry in Dobrin by a woman. It was said that Mavrodin was but an alias, that her real name was Mahmudia, and that she didn’t mind being called Coca. Practically no one got any sleep in Dobrin City the night before her arrival, judging from the anxious whispers snaking their way through town. For a while, though, it seemed plausible that what I was hearing was instead the squealing of the track watchman’s clarinet by the tunnel or, say, late-migrating wild geese passing over the valley. As I sauntered through the yard in the middle of the night toward the outhouse — the denatured alcohol I downed every evening served to clear my bowels often enough — I noticed a yellowish fog looming in the dark beyond the village’s unlit houses. All the lights were on in the barracks, and the watchtower lights looked like huge tufts of cotton candy in the dank night. Screeching sounds also came from the barracks: the mountain infantrymen were no doubt busily polishing the hallway floors with pillows tied to their feet and scrubbing windows with damp newspapers.

Izolda Mavrodin arrived early the next morning in a Red Cross military jeep. Someone had fingered her nickname into the furry white film coating the peak of her cap, as well as onto the vehicle’s windshield and its mud flaps: Coca. The bitter smell of medicine — or of squashed bugs? — permeated the streets of Dobrin City as the jeep whizzed past. Having surged out in continuous waves as it billowed through the village, this odor collected like rainwater in roadside ditches and in yards.

That very day Coca Mavrodin-Mahmudia selected some fifteen to twenty villagers based on appearance alone; which is to say, they all looked virtually the same: long-necked, goose-headed, button-eyed, colorless youth. She had their frieze coats discarded, whereupon each was given a gray suit, a pair of black oxfords, and a silvery necktie. Locals wasted no time in dubbing their transformed neighbors “the gray ganders.” Not that there was time to train them, but they figured out on their own what they were to do; and from the start they proved adept at casting weighty stares at everyone wherever they went. Whenever they headed off somewhere as a team, their leather-soled shoes click-clacked against the wet pavement.

Wasting no time in making an introductory visit to pay my respects, I soon found myself standing before the new forest commissioner in my now dustless quilted jacket, my rinsed and freshly shined rubber boots.

But before she’d even finished looking me over, which she did thoroughly, she ordered me to leave her office.

In the days and weeks to come she left me messages here and there, scribbled little trifles. But whenever I then reported to her in person, out of breath, she would send me away once again. “Must be some mistake,” she’d say, claiming to not even know who I was, while at other times she’d say: “Let’s put that off for now, we’ll talk some other time.” I had no doubt she wanted only to test me, to get on my nerves, and that one day she would be ready to reveal her true intentions — whether openly or not. And then she would have her mountain infantrymen, her dogs, and her falcons search under every rock until I turned up.

I may have been getting on in years, but that didn’t stop me from flirting madly enough that fall with Aranka Westin, and not without cause for hope. When, as sometimes happened, she would be left unattended after a delivery, I’d go look her up. One fine morning the gray ganders found me there engaged in some serious kissing. Hardly had they arrived, and they were already taking me away.

The next stop was the office of Coca Mavrodin, who now announced that she’d been grappling long and hard with the question of what should become of me. The wild fruit depot had been shut down, she noted, and so my post as harvest coordinator had ceased. Since I hadn’t been born around here, anyway, but who knows where, it would be best if I soon left the Zone altogether.

“Strawberry picking, mushrooming, rambling in the woods — that sort of thing has seen its day,” said Coca Mavrodin in a subdued, colorless voice. “In fact, it’s been completely unnecessary for some time now.” After a pause she added, “But the biggest problem is that your papers are missing. You can’t stay here.”

To drive home her point, she now pulled a worn-looking gray file folder from her desk that bore the words ANDREI and BODOR in big, scrawled letters. My alias. She opened it up and showed me, as if to indicate that I didn’t exist, that it was empty. It couldn’t be ruled out, she said, that someone or other, figuring my papers were not needed, had burned them or thrown them out — or maybe the documents had self-destructed.

By jingling the sheet-metal dog tag that hung from my neck, I now showed her that Colonel Puiu Borcan had had me registered in the usual manner, so that if need be I could prove my identity. Those in Dobrin who worked in the woods wore such dog tags engraved with all of their personal data. Around here, that was what counted as real identification.

“If you were to stay here,” said Coca Mavrodin, “you’d need that one day. But now you won’t, as long as you’re alive and kicking.”

Short, hunched, and pallid, Coca Mavrodin-Mahmudia was buried deep in her greatcoat like some lurid nocturnal moth. Even her eyes were leathery: they didn’t so much as blink. And yet — as the stink of dead bugs steamed from her lusterless, feltlike hair and from the yellow tufts of cotton in her ears — her black nostrils flared at me.

“All the same,” I said, figuring it was worth a try, “if possible I’d like to stay, anyway. I’ll do anything. I’ve already applied for a job as signalman with the narrow-gauge railroad. Maybe we can still talk things over.”

“I’ve heard of your plans,” said the forest commissioner with a dismissive wave of her hand. “But once the snow falls, that rail line shuts down, and I’m not so sure I’ll be starting it up again come spring. Sooner or later you’d get into trouble here — come on, you don’t even have a name. Get out while you can, with your honor intact. Go while I let you.”

Her words were clear enough, so I took hold of my cap, cast her one or two malicious glances instead of a greeting, and spit out the open window on my way to the door. Coca Mavrodin’s voice reached me on the threshold.

“Stop right there. Go ahead and spit, I don’t care — but I thought you were a gentleman.”

“I am, and besides, I didn’t spit.”

“That’s different. Then I can ask you for a favor, after all. There’s a pass around here, The Baba Rotunda Pass. I’d like you to guide me there. I’m not exactly crazy about having these mountain infantrymen take me.” She turned around, chair and all, raising a finger to the topographic map on the wall. Searching out the high point where the main road began to somersault back downhill on the other side of the range, she added, “To be honest, I’ve never spent much time in this sort of terrain — I’m from down south. So it would be a relief if a civilian would show me the way, someone I won’t be seeing again in any case.”

“All right. I won’t refuse.”

The gray ganders sat beside each other on a bench by the entrance, sweat gathering in white welts on their black oxfords. Their button eyes sparkled in the bright autumn sunshine and the smell of cheap cologne.

“This here,” said Coca Mavrodin, pointing at me, “is the big bad bird. He’s promised to leave. Tomorrow morning you’re to accompany him to the border of the Zone. Wait there till he takes wing and flies away.”

The Red Cross jeep was waiting in front of the barracks. The rainwater swaying about in a tiny puddle on its canvas roof was speckled with blue, leeching from the fallen birch leaves that floated on top; this puddle also held a crow — a crow with upturned feet. In those days, birds would often drop right out of the sky.

Géza Kökény, the valiant bear-keeper of old, was basking in the sun at the front gate, puffing his Pope. As the smoke reached me, my nostrils caught the aroma of languishing thyme. In a salute of sorts he raised the fingers of his right hand to his forehead.

Winding its way up to the Baba Rotunda Pass in eight or nine zigzags was an old dirt road pockmarked with sparkling puddles and slashed here and there by water-filled ditches. Except for a single bus route that led toward Bukovina, it was used only by charcoal burners, forest rangers, and the mountain infantrymen of Dobrin. At the top, in addition to a few tiny farms scattered about some clearings, was the home of road worker Zoltán Marmorstein: a log cabin faded gray from wind and rain. There we stood facing the steep rock walls of Dobrin; the Kolinda forest loomed to the east, and the crags of Pop Ivan Mountain blazed weasel-red to the north.

This, then, was a sort of get-acquainted session, an initial joint reconnaissance mission. I went on ahead of Coca Mavrodin, bending back the branches to clear the way for her, kicking spruce cones off the path and clapping loudly to scare away the birds in plenty of time. A week or two earlier the mountain ash trees still held their clusters of fiery red berries, but by now only denuded branches remained: the waxwings, which feed on the berries, had arrived, driven here by the piercing winds up north.

To break the silence, I mentioned this bit of natural history trivia. At first Coca Mavrodin seemed not to notice. Only minutes later did she reply.

“So you’re a man of learning — I still don’t have any use for you,” she said. “A man shouldn’t give his mind over to fruit and birds. What the hell grows around here, anyway?”

“Blueberries and blackberries were my specialty,” I replied. “As you know, I delivered supplies to the nature reserve. The bears are partial to blackberries.”

“I’ve never seen a blueberry in my life, but you’ll show me one, all right? As for blackberries, we’ve got the trailing sort down in Dobruja, dewberries. We don’t get much snow, but all year round the hills and knolls are white with salt, and the dewberries trail all over those pale mounds, with their furry stems packed full of leering little berries.”

“Must be interesting.”

I wasn’t exactly in the mood for polite conversation. In fact I was terribly annoyed at being forced to leave. The couple of years I’d spent in the Sinistra Zone suddenly seemed in vain. I had hoped to help my adopted son flee once I found him; or, if he didn’t want to go, I would have taken Aranka Westin with me. And now along came this woman, Izolda Mahmudia, to banish me. I huffed and I puffed, spitting furiously.

“Say, Andrei, you don’t happen to have any idea what might have become of your papers, do you?”

“Yes I do,” I answered peevishly, “I believe they stayed in the big man’s pocket.”

“What big man’s?”

“In his, of course — the Colonel’s.” Lackadaisically I pointed ahead to the snow-covered peaks above Dobrin sparkling amid ragged drooping clouds: there Colonel Puiu Borcan rested on a lone mountaintop in eternal peace among flat green stones.

“That’s too bad. Don’t even think of rummaging through his pockets. They say he was done in by the contagion. I’m going to have a fire lit under him. And don’t call him ‘The Colonel’ anymore.”

Minutes later, flying low over a distant rolling meadow and bouncing repeatedly off its hillocks, came Colonel Puiu Borcan’s umbrella. In no time it had flitted on, passing right by the rock walls above Dobrin.

“I’ve never in my life seen such a big bat,” whispered Coca Mavrodin.

Past a spruce-covered bend along the road, beyond road worker Zoltán Marmorstein’s cabin, stood an alpine farmhouse; near this farmhouse was a barn, a hay shack, and a tiny wooden shed. Glistening black heaps of manure steamed on the rimy autumn meadow along the fence. Severin Spiridon, a mountain resident recognizable on sight, ambled along among the piles with pocketed hands, sometimes looking up in apparent alarm. Huge black birds, carrion crows, strutted along on the ground before him; a woolly, dappled dog followed behind.

Having been the first to notice the manure piles, the dog, its tail erect and swaying in the wind, promptly urinated in spurts. Severin Spiridon stopped, too, a hand half covering his eyes as he peered into the distance through the translucent wisps of steam rising from the manure. First he opened his jacket at the neck, then his trousers, and keeping one hand above his eyes, he, too, nervously relieved himself.

“Who’s that?” asked Coca Mavrodin.

“Severin Spiridon — You’ll meet him, Miss, he’s been with the mountain infantry for a while now.”

“Just between us, I don’t care for these mountain infantrymen. Each and every one of them is a cocky little bastard.”

Severin Spiridon had meanwhile circled his house and was now peering about with a pair of binoculars that he must have found hanging somewhere or other, for they hadn’t been on him before. No doubt he noticed Coca Mavrodin and me roaming those soggy paths, and, even from a distance, he surely recognized me.

“How the hell did your papers wind up in Colonel Borcan’s pocket?”

“It’s a bit embarrassing, but he figured I owed him something, so he kept my papers as collateral. Supposedly I owed him a fish that had been sent to him by god-knows-who.”

“It’s not good to be in debt to a colonel.”

Skirting well around the wet meadows to the south, we finally reached the edge of the boggy ground that stretched its bumpy way all the way to Severin Spiridon’s fence. By then, though, there was not a sign of life around the farmhouse, neither of the dappled dog nor his master. Coca Mavrodin went over squelching clumps of grass, straight toward the farm.

“Come on, let’s take a detour. I’d like to have a word with that man with the binoculars.”

But by then, of course, Severin Spiridon was nowhere to be seen. On arriving we found only his boots, placed neatly beside each other in the doorway. Barefoot tracks led through the mud toward the barn. The whining dog could be heard from behind the kitchen door.

“He’s hiding,” observed Coca Mavrodin. Proceeding to walk through the yard, well ahead of me, she added, “So we’ll just have to find him.”

There was no lock on the barn door, so Coca Mavrodin opened it. She disappeared into the darkness inside for thirty seconds at most, and by the time I got there she was back out, standing on the threshold. She didn’t even bat a dry, leathery eye.

“Got a knife?”

I promptly handed her my mushrooming knife, which I always had on me. She refused.

“I can’t reach up there; you do it. Cut him down nice and easy.”

Inside the barn, light from gaps in the ceiling — gaps formed by cracks in the roof’s ice-smashed tiles — shone through the darkness like glinting blades. There swayed the silhouette of Severin Spiridon, hanging from a rope, the binoculars still around his neck. He was barefoot, but the scent of rubber boots lingered above his limp feet.

Izolda Mavrodin urged me on.

“Hurry up. Before someone thinks I did this.”

I went into the barn, perched on the edge of the manger, and cut him down, like that. Severin Spiridon plopped onto the hay-covered floor. Through the thin rays of light I could see steam still coming from his mouth. Kneeling down beside him, I pinched his cheeks and pressed my lips to his. I puffed and inhaled again and again, giving it my all, until I felt him cough gently into my face. Once his eyelids started quivering, I fetched a pail of water, poured some over his face and neck, and left it there for him to find at hand.

All the while, Coca Mavrodin had been pacing back and forth out front.

“I asked you to cut him down. Not to go kissing him. How on earth did such a thing cross your mind?”

“I only gave it a try — ”

“But you revived him.”

Severin Spiridon’s dog was barking from behind the farmhouse door. Passing by the boots its master had removed, we veered back out to the trail and crossed the meadow to the solitary jeep. Brilliantly colored autumn bugs now covered the dead crow in the puddle on the canvas roof. Wispy clouds frizzed under the peaks above Dobrin, and the squealing of geese resounded like the curt sounds of a track watchman’s whistle.

“I’m going to have a smoke,” I said. “If you’re in a hurry, Miss, don’t wait around. I’ll be fine. I’ll get down on my own. I know the shortcuts.”

Coca Mavrodin sat behind the wheel, closed the door behind her, and rolled down her window.

“Do people around here often do this sort of thing?”

“They aren’t hooked on it just yet.”

“All I’ll say is, don’t you dare touch a dead man again.”

“If I can stay here, I promise. If not, I can’t be held responsible for my actions.”

“Get one thing through your head: a dead man’s job is to never move again.”

Often I found cigarette butts around the barracks, and I kept them in a little sheet-metal box in my pocket. Having now picked out a particularly fat one, I slipped it into my cigarette holder. The jeep didn’t start, so I lit up and kept puffing away while resting my elbows on the hood. From there I saw Severin Spiridon lying prostrate, his elbows on the threshold of the barn. His saliva still clung to my face.

“Odd, isn’t it, that he happened to do it just now?” grumbled Coca Mavrodin. “Precisely when we were coming this way. A bit odd, if you ask me.”

“Not really. He had to do it sometime.”

“Once he recovers, I’m going to interrogate him. I’ll ask him what the hell he was watching through those binoculars. Yes, he can give me a nice little explanation.”

“He’ll say he wasn’t watching anything. Or else just us. I know these types.”

Having turned the jeep around, Coca Mavrodin killed the engine and let the vehicle roll silently down the winding mountain road.

“Well,” she said, “I know these types, too. He’s just trying to get on my nerves.”

As the vehicle rolled down from the Baba Rotunda Pass over the pothole-pockmarked road, Coca Mavrodin kept turning the wheel with one hand, and with her other hand poking about in her ear. No doubt her ears were popping constantly. So she wasn’t lying: this was the first time she’d been on mountain roads. Once we finally stopped down below, she reached over me and opened my door herself.

“The gray ganders, as you people call them, will take you to the border in the morning. Now get going and forget all about this.”

“Too bad,” I said. “I was hoping you’d change your mind. I could kick myself over that business involving the fish — that’s the root of all my problems.”

“What kind of ‘fishy business’ are you talking about?”

“As I mentioned earlier, Colonel Borcan was looking for a fish and he thought I was hiding it from him.”

“A dead colonel is not a colonel.”

I spent the night — my last one in Dobrin City and the Sinistra Zone, it seemed — at Aranka Westin’s. She had a wooden tub fit for bathing. I filled it with warm water. Meanwhile I stirred up more than one shot — denatured alcohol, resin, and water — to get in the right frame of mind to tell her the truth: that within hours I’d be leaving for good. We then sipped away at those spirits, and by resting our feet on each other’s shoulders, we managed to squeeze into the tub.

In the middle of the night the gray ganders found me at Aranka Westin’s. Still a bit drunk, I lurched out to the jeep in underpants whose moist love splotches froze solid the moment I stepped outside. Coca Mavrodin-Mahmudia’s face shone through the brambly darkness like one of those faraway salt-white hills she’d spoken of. With the Sinistra River roaring in the background, she informed me with a shout that she’d had second thoughts: for a while, as long as she saw fit, I could stay on in Dobrin.

“The gray ganders will come up with a nice new name for you — or, what the hell, just keep the old one — it isn’t your real one, either.”

Coca Mavrodin was an enigmatic woman. A capricious soldier. It seemed that all that time she’d been toying with me: in fact, she’d wanted to keep me on. Years later, on visiting Dobrin, I heard that she had met with a cryptic end. Having dozed off in the woods, she was caught unprepared by a freezing rain, and, motionless, like a sleeping moth, she froze into a crystalline mass under the ice. Later the wind tipped over this block of ice, which broke to pieces and melted. Only a pile of rags remained — it smelled of dead bugs and yes, was pinned all over with colonel’s stars.