The Sinistra Zone

8. HAMZA PETRIKA'S LOVE

The two Hamza Petrikas worked on Doc Oleinek’s bear reserve in the Dobrin conservation area and impaled themselves on one of the last nights of autumn. A couple of days before, they’d been seen in the village: it was Revolution Day, and the game wardens had a holiday. They had been loitering about all afternoon in front of the knife-throwers’ tent, which was pitched on the bank of the Sinistra alongside those of the other showmen. Now, the Hamza Petrikas may have had their eyes trained on those glinting blades as they hit their target one after another, but the people standing were staring at them instead. No one had ever before seen two young men — blue skin, red eyes, feather grass hair — who looked so much alike. Albino twins, they so resembled each other that even their thick, bear-warden overalls creased at the very same places; and, judging by the way that steam issued from their nostrils simultaneously, they even breathed in sync. But to top it all off: the little sheet-metal dog tag hanging from their necks proclaimed that they both were called Hamza Petrika.

Only a few men who worked behind the barbed wire and plank fencing of the conversation area could enter the village by special permission, and each wore his name on a dog tag dangling from a chain around his neck. In the winter, even though they were inoculated now and again, these forest dwellers often fell victim to the recurring epidemic, and if one of them strayed off and stretched out in the brush, never to rise again, that inscribed tag came in very handy. The banks of the Sinistra were flanked by ancient wild forests, so the dead weren’t always found quickly.

There was only one clinic in the Dobrin forest district, and when news spread that Colonel Puiu Borcan had been felled by the Tungusic Flu, the doctor’s courtyard was overrun by lumberjacks, road workers, mushroom hunters, and, of course, bear wardens. Each demanded an inoculation. They waited there in front of the closed clinic for four or five days on end, sitting about on the verandah steps or on the rocks scattered about the yard; the luckier ones, though even they looked increasingly pale and sickly, got spots at the foot of the fence, which was painted all over with red crosses. From inside, the medical orderlies peered nervously out from behind gauze curtains. One of them — wearing a tattered, soiled white smock over pale green army trousers, and with sandals on his bare feet that revealed nails brown with dirt, long pointy toenails that resembled griffin claws — occasionally stepped out onto the threshold to call upon everyone waiting outside for patience. By way of excuse, he invariably said that the time for inoculations was not yet officially here, and yet late autumn was no doubt upon them: the silvery steam of all those men breathing in the yard hovered about in the bright sunshine.

Toward evening on the fourth or fifth day, along with the dispiriting lights of dusk, the gray ganders all at once arrived and told everyone to go home. These were Coca Mavrodin’s men: long-necked, button-eyed figures with light tufts of spider’s web hair around their ears, thin, transparent skin, and not a wrinkle on their faces. They really did look like geese.

The ganders announced that everyone should go on home in peace since this winter would be epidemic-free, and there would be no need for inoculations. After coaxing the medical orderlies out of the clinic, the gray ganders went inside and personally brought the boxes full of medicine out to the yard, stomping to bits every last one of them. All those glass vials crackling under their feet sent the sour vaccine smell wafting over the fences of nearby homes, descending onto the plum trees and stacks of hay in the yards, and mixing with the damp odor of forest mold.

This was good news: the game wardens dispersed along with all those other, not particularly sociable characters of the same stripe, all of them practically tiptoeing away, a bit embarrassed with relief. And yet the rustle of rubber boots treading along the dewy trails that led up the mountain slopes did not die down so fast. Everyone left except for Géza Kökény — he, of whom it was said that no illness could catch him — smoking his Pope there at the bottom of the steps.

I too now headed off along the dark main road, at the end of which loomed the lights of the train station. Before getting far from the clinic, though, I met up with Doc Oleinek, the chief bear warden, and one of the two Hamza Petrikas. Doc was my occasional drinking buddy, whom I recognized first on account of his smell as he trudged along in front of me — though not the smell of medicine (he was a doc in name alone, for he spent all his time tending to the bears). He had a wild, nauseating smell, like a bush pissed on for days, weeks, months. Sixty or seventy bears — or one hundred and sixty, one hundred and seventy? — were kept in abandoned mines and in a ramshackle old chapel in the conservation area, and were looked after by my friend and the albino twins.

Doc Oleinek offered to buy me a drink, and as we were making

our way toward the station along that soft, silent, dewy road, all at once I noticed the feather grass hair of one of the Hamza Petrikas lit up not far away. He’d of course been walking with Doc, though like some sort of toy poodle, slinking along behind at a proper distance. The other Hamza Petrika had evidently stayed behind in the woods, with the bears.

A narrow-gauge railway led to the reserve, and that’s how fodder was delivered to the bears. And until the first snowfall, those few men who worked there would go into Dobrin City on a handcar.

A hurricane lamp hung from the eaves of the loading platform, and a bunch of people were waiting under its hazy orb of yellow light. Every night on the branch line from Sinistra a train arrived that comprised two third-class passenger cars together with a freight car. Once a week, on Sunday nights, a load of denatured alcohol arrived with the other cargo, and a portion of that was distributed on the spot, though of course only to those authorized to receive it. Doc Oleinek fished the alcohol ration coupons out of his bag, pressed them into Hamza Petrika’s palm, and told him to go stand in line and redeem them as soon as the train pulled in.

Denatured alcohol — strained through bread, spongy mushrooms, or crushed blueberries — is the favorite drink up in these woods. If no blueberries or bolete mushrooms happen to be available, a bit of a sock will also do. Or a handful of earth.

From the other side of the main station a narrow-gauge railway led toward the conservation area, which meant having to make one’s way past the purple lights of the switches and over the dewy glow of the tracks. It wound its way along the plank fence of the lumberyard and out of the village. To render the frequent burglaries a bit harder to pull off, each plank had been sharpened at the top not long before, and in the mist of distant lights they now gave off a honeyed sparkle. Below them was the handcar, chained to the bumper that marked the end of the tracks. Doc Oleinek and I sat down on the handcar and watched for the evening train, whose rattling could already be heard as it made its way over distant bridges, its whistles resounding between the Sinistra Valley’s steep walls.

“They’ve postponed the epidemic,” observed Doc Oleinek.

“Yeah.”

“You believe that?”

“Why not.”

Whenever a strange mood got hold of me and I didn’t feel like talking, there was no shaking me out of it. This would have been the perfect opportunity to start firing away questions about things up in the conservation area — maybe he knew something about Béla Bundasian, my adopted son, that I would never find out otherwise — but it felt better to keep quiet.

Rather than forcing a conversation, Doc tucked himself into that bear smell of his. We were drinking buddies who plied our pastime in silence. Rare moments came along, though, when we’d exchange an indifferent, empty word or half-sentence, but for the most part we expressed companionship by clearing our throats. When Hamza Petrika could be heard approaching, however, the bottles knocking against each other in his satchel, the chief bear warden sprang up and ran to meet him.

“Listen here,” he said in a hushed, somewhat muffled but still almost warm tone of voice: “I’m letting you go — you can be on your way right this instant.”

“You’re joking.”

“No, I’m not. Before you know it, we’ll catch something from each other. You heard it with your own ears — there are no more inoculations. It’s best if we part ways, if everyone tends to his own affairs.”

“I couldn’t take a step without you, Doc. My brother and I want to stay with you forever. If you’re afraid, then we’ll hide away for a while and promise not to come near, and we’ll wait till you get over this.”

“No, I’ve made up my mind — but I promise I won’t report anything to the gray ganders until you’ve had a good head start.”

And Doc Oleinek, to drive his point home, took a bottle out of the satchel, the one that must have been meant for Hamza Petrika, and set it on the ground in front of him. Then he turned on his heel and got back up beside me on the handcar. From there he shouted this:

“Drink as much as you can, and then get lost. Come morning, once you’re out of sight, I’ll file a report.”

Hamza Petrika must have known this side of Doc Oleinek, for he no longer tried pleading with him: he sat down on the embankment and starting swigging. Doc too flicked the sheet-metal cap off his bottle, and we got down to drinking. There were neither mushrooms nor blueberries on hand that night, so we strained the alcohol through the cuff of his jacket.

A deep, damp, sticky silence descended on the valley, broken only now and again by the hooting of an owl from somewhere near all those boards stacked up beyond the fence or by a farm dog barking; later we could hear that three-car train roll slowly back out of the station and then away down the sloping track toward Sinistra. There were the occasional blubbering sobs of Hamza Petrika: amid rapid gurgles he sniffled loudly like an offended, squeamish little dog. Albinos, I thought to myself, must be weak-nerved beings who easily go mad.

Doc Oleinek asked me obligingly: “Doesn’t my smell bother you?” He no doubt hoped to break the silence that had perhaps ensued precisely on account of that smell. “Come on, be honest. I know I stink a little.”

“Not at all.”

“Oh, come on — I know I’ve had a few crazy incidents.”

“You smell totally fine.”

“Don’t try conning me. Women have ditched me, one after another. And they’ve told me, too, that it’s because I stink. I’m not saying I was so crazy about them, either. Anyway, then the twins were stationed with me.”

“There are lots of good things about twins.”

“That’s true. Twins are dainty. The three of us brought each other lots of joy — we lived up there like a happy little family. But that’s over now. Your health, that’s what counts.” Getting up from the handcar, he sounded practically relieved as he yelled over to Hamza Petrika, “You hear me?! And you know, there’s such a thing as good manners — you might at least thank me before heading on your way.”

But where, minutes ago, Hamza Petrika’s guttural, childlike sobs could be heard, only the stones of the embankment stirred. Where the albino bear warden had been, an opaque darkness hovered, a blackness that had no one within it, that was completely empty.

Doc Oleinek now walked over, kicking his feet about the area thick with trash and clumps of weeds living and dried-out. Along the way he happened to kick up an empty bottle and, finally, returned with a pair of rubber boots.

“His,” he grumbled, repeatedly taking deep sniffs. “But what came over him? Why’d he take them off? Where the fuck could he have gone barefoot?”

He sat back on the handcar, and we went on taking gulps of the denatured alcohol after straining it through the cuff of his jacket. After a while Doc lay back comfortably enough, and I too, in a bit of a stupor, stretched out on the plank seat. Then, all at once, we simultaneously noticed a single match flare out above the pile of wood boards beyond the fence, then the embers of a cigarette glowing, fading, glowing again. Like some mysterious black hole, Hamza Petrika’s silhouette was suddenly in the sky blocking out the stars. He was camped out up high, having a smoke.

“Hid yourself, huh,” Doc Oleinek shouted over to him. “We were getting awfully worried about what became of you — my friend here was even a bit offended at your leaving without having said good-bye.” And because Hamza Petrika did not reply, he quickly added, “And why didn’t you offer us something from your secret tobacco stash?”

“Because,” came Hamza Petrika’s curt rejoinder.

That one-word response sounded like a pocket watch splashing at night into a black silent stream. Before long the cigarette fell out of his hand into the weeds, flickering there like a firefly.

“Hmm.”

Doc Oleinek got up and went to look for the butt. On finding it, he slipped it into a cigarette holder, then the two of us kept passing it calmly back and forth until we’d smoked all there was to smoke.

“Yes indeed,” grumbled Doc, “these damn twins. That’s how they are. Tear them apart from each other for a couple of hours and they get into all kinds of trouble. Who the hell knows what to make of them?”

Indeed, Doc must have been a bit mystified, for while still sitting there on the edge of the handcar, he kept calling out to Hamza Petrika. Getting no reply, he placed the rubber boots on the seat and headed over to the fence. He walked up and down before finally grabbing one of the planks and shaking it in irritation: “Hey!”

And when, after a little while, he finally let it go, his fingers parted from the wood with a sort of sticky sound, as if from glue — or fresh blood.

Getting back on the handcar, Doc Oleinek gave a furious huff and spat out a big glob and then wiped his palms on the seat. He found the bottle and, now without a bit of caution, took a swig before extending it toward me.

“Take a good fast plug yourself,” he whispered. “Then let’s get out of here. I think the boy has impaled himself.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“What do you think? He looks for the hole in his ass, nudges the pointy end of the post inside, and — wham! — sits right down.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“Believe it or not, but come on, let’s get out of here.”

Freeing the handcar’s chain from the bumper, releasing the brakes, and grabbing the handle, Doc took off in no time. But Hamza Petrika stayed right there atop the fence, his silhouette blocking the stars while purple orbs of light glimmered below from the switches.

“It would be best if I take you along with me for a stretch,” said Doc. “We should stick together for a while.”

“Fine,” I said. “How about taking me down to my friend Colonel Jean Tomoioaga’s guard booth?

“Sure, and meanwhile we’ll guzzle down what’s left in the bottle. Or do you have a better idea?”

“Nothing comes to mind just now.”

“Same here — and let’s get as far away from here as possible.”

“But Doc, how do they get him off that fence?”

“They don’t,” Doc replied angrily. “Can’t be done. If you get hold of his feet, after all, you’d just wind up driving it in deeper.”

“I just wondered.”

“Don’t bother — it’s his business, and we don’t have the right to meddle. Don’t even think of it again. Though you can keep talking to some of them, by the way, for days afterward.”

Leaving the station, it took us some hard seesawing, as the tracks began their steep ascent, to roll our way out of the village. The screeching of the wheels shot right up the tracks, announcing our presence, and before we knew it, the barking of dogs undulated in waves all along the embankment and up the mountainside.

Along the way, I asked, “Does this means a position has opened up at your place?”

“Maybe even two.”

“I’d go to the woods with you,” I went on. “I could have a word with that lieutenant colonel, the medical orderly, about pulling some strings and maybe getting me an inoculation after all. If it’s okay with you, I’d gladly like to go. I’m not saying I know much about bears, but I could learn.”

“I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”

“But, all the same, maybe I could come?”

“We’ll see. For now, I’d like to be on my own for a while.”

I accompanied Doc Oleinek on the handcar as far as the entrance to the conservation area, where a crossing gate topped by a red lit hurricane lamp closed the tracks. In the guard’s room lived my old chess-playing pal, Colonel Jean Tomoioaga. Setting out, I’d counted on whiling away a bit of time at his place; drinking a bit, and that I’d amble back down to the village in the middle of the night on my own two feet.

The hurricane lamp soon found its way to the threshold, where Colonel Jean Tomoioaga switched its red lens to white, and then got out the chessboard. We played with ungainly, little home-made figures on a checkered shirt he laid out on the floor. The whole thing could be swept up in a moment — the mountain infantrymen did not take kindly to games.

In no particular hurry himself, Doc Oleinek also took a seat near the doorway and the lamp, watching us to line up the pieces, not in a mood to go on just yet.

“I see you’re going back on your own,” Jean Tomoioaga said to him. “Our friend Hamsa got a little extra leave?”

“Well, I let him go.”

From underneath his plank bed Jean Tomoioaga took out a bottle and set it on the floor in easy reach. Tossing about inside was the bluish-gray fluid of denatured alcohol filtered through wood coal — it’s said that coal is healthy.

“And when is he returning, if I may ask? You know I have to record every movement in my log.”

“If he comes, then he does, and you can write whatever you need to write. If he doesn’t come, you don’t have to write a thing.”

“You’re a character.”

Colonel Jean Tomoioaga and I were on our second or third game when, in front of the door, against the black velvet of the valley, Hamza Petrika’s feather grass hair flared up. Not the Hamza Petrika who’d impaled himself, but the other one. He stood by the open door, bloomy and glistening with little droplets of dew, without a trace of blood scent about him.

“Where is he?” he asked Doc Oleinek seriously.

“You can see for yourself that he’s not here.”

“I want to speak with my brother right away.”

“You can’t, not now.”

Hands in his pockets, he just stood there by the door and, glancing behind us, gazed around the little guard room.

“I see you brought his boots with you, Doc. So why should I ask where my brother’s feet wound up?” And he pointed a finger at me. “Say, is he going to fill our shoes by any chance?”

“The future will decide that,” said Doc. “But as long as you’re starting to catch on, listen up: you too can take off. You’re free, so get going. Somewhere, who knows where, your brother, Hamza Petrika, is waiting for you. I promised him that I wouldn’t have them start searching for you right away.”

Hamza Petrika sat down on the ground and ran his fingers through his hair, which was so feathery that his hand stayed empty. He spit into his palm, then smoothed down his hair. After that, he got up and stretched. His face suddenly smoothed out; he was calm.

“All right, Doc. I’m off; I’ll go pack up our things. But you promise not to come right after me.”

“If that’s what you want, fine. For how long? Will twenty minutes do? Or maybe a half-hour?”

“That’s exactly what I had in mind. That’s how long I’d like to be completely alone.”

“Okay, you’re all right — take your time.”

Without a word Hamza Petrika tucked his brother’s rubber boots under his arm and started back toward the bear reserve, letting out colossal farts on the way, as if his soul was fast departing his body. He’d gone only a few steps, though, when the murmur of the brook and the velvet darkness closed in behind him.

Doc Oleinek, not that he had a watch, waited generously. Surely twice as much time had passed as he’d promised when he began to stretch. Listlessly he slung the satchel full of bottles onto his shoulder and headed toward the handcar.

“Good seeing you.”

“Please,” I called after him, “think about it.”

“All right, all right, we’ll see.”

A bit later I headed off, too, ambling down along the embankment toward Dobrin City. Some people are soothed by walking on railroad ties, some are irritated, and others are driven to reflection. I simply got it into my head that on reaching the edge of the village, rather than heading for the Baba Rotunda Pass, I’d take a detour to the station, where perhaps I could exchange a few words with Hamza Petrika. What sort of words, I had no idea, but something was sure to come up. Nothing did come of this chitchat however, after all.

By daybreak I reached the station. The sky had started to turn yellow in the distance, above the purple contours of the pass, and with each step I waited for Hamza Petrika’s scarecrow silhouette to loom large against the sky. I went all along the fence but found him nowhere. Sitting in a row on the loading platform, dangling their legs and stretching their necks, were the gray ganders.

At the spot where Hamza Petrika had lit a cigarette the previous evening, half of one of the fence posts was missing, sawed off about waist high. A thick layer of fragrant sawdust covered the ground at its base. A sole competing smell was in the sharp early morning breeze — a bit metallic, a tad salty and a tad sweet, exactly like blood.

It was getting light, but I figured that rather than try to get some rest I’d go look up the lieutenant colonel who served as medical orderly — maybe he’d really do me a favor. Getting that inoculation was my big opportunity to settle into life as a bear warden.