Winter's End

On the evening of their own flight, a week before their friends followed, Milena and Bartolomeo got on a bus that had crossed the whole country and was now driving north. They wanted to get over the mountains as quickly as possible. What awaited them after that they had no idea, but anything would be better than falling into the hands of the Phalangists again.

Martha, Milena’s consoler, went with them as far as the road that skirted the hill, and they all waited in the drizzling rain for the bus to arrive. It was a monstrous, old bone-shaker with a square hood that made it look like an angry animal. The night was dark. As soon as she heard the engine, Martha planted herself fearlessly in the middle of the road and waved her arms to stop the bus. She pushed the two young people inside, and when the driver asked where they were going, she gave the name of a town one hundred miles farther north in the foothills of the mountains.

“That’s where they’re going, and here’s the money.”

The man glanced suspiciously at the long coats worn by boarding-school students, and asked cunningly, “So where do they come from?”

“Out of their mothers’ bellies, same as you,” replied Martha smartly. “Keep your eye on the road and leave them alone!”

The man did not reply but handed Bart the two tickets. Experience had taught him to avoid quarrelling with the consolers — you weren’t likely to win! He pressed a button on his dashboard, and the concertina pleats of the folding door closed with a shrill, screeching sound, forcing Martha off the step. She blew Milena a kiss from the roadside. Milena, still standing, blew a kiss back and then waved as long as she could while the bus carried her away, waved until night and the mist swallowed up the large form of her consoler.

“Good-bye, Martha,” Milena murmured.

They put the voluminous bag that Martha had given them in the luggage rack overhead and sat down side by side on a dirty, scuffed leather seat — he by the window, she on the aisle side. Bart was short of space for his long legs. There were no more than ten passengers scattered around the bus, some in front of them, some behind. Most were asleep under blankets with nothing but their hair showing. After taking a nasty look at his new passengers in the rearview mirror, the driver put out the dim lights inside the bus, and suddenly there was nothing but the yellow beam of the headlights in the night and the persistent snoring of the engine.

“So this is freedom?” whispered Milena.

“That’s right,” Bart agreed. “What do you think of it?”

“Wonderful! How about you?”

“I didn’t imagine it quite like this.” He smiled. “But I like it all the same. Anyway, let’s get some rest. We’ll be there in a few hours’ time, and we’ll need all our strength to get across the mountains as fast as we can.”

“You’re right.”

She leaned her head against her companion’s shoulder, and they tried to sleep. After half an hour, they had to admit that they weren’t going to manage. The bends and bumps in the road kept them awake, but so, most of all, did the turmoil in their minds. Milena sighed.

“Are you thinking of Catharina Pancek?” whispered Bart.

“Yes,” Milena confessed.

“Sorry you came?”

“Yes . . . no . . . oh, I don’t know. What about you? Are you thinking of whoever’s in detention instead of you?”

“Yes. Particularly because he’s the one who brought me my father’s letter.”

“What’s his name?”

“Basil.”

They fell silent, their hearts suddenly heavy with guilt. The driver lit a cigarette. There was nothing to be seen on either side of the road but lines of trees standing in the mist as if petrified.

“Did you notice how old this bus is?” said Milena after a while, scraping her fingernail over the dry, blackened leather of her seat. “Maybe our parents were in it too when they got away.”

“Maybe. Perhaps they even sat where we’re sitting now!”

“You’re laughing at me!”

“No, I’m not. My father doesn’t give any details in his letter. He just says he met your mother while they were on the run.”

“And he doesn’t say what happened to her?”

“No,” lied Bartolomeo, “he doesn’t.”

“Perhaps they both got across the mountains. Perhaps they’re still alive. . . .”

“I don’t know about that.”

“What does he say about her?”

“I’ve told you about ten times already, Milena. He says she sang beautifully, and everyone adored her.”

“Sang . . . adored. Was all that in the past tense in his letter?”

“Yes . . . no . . . I don’t remember.”

“Would you open it and look, please?”

Bartolomeo put his hand in his coat pocket and then changed his mind. “I won’t be able to read it. Too dark in here. Leave it till tomorrow.”

“Bart, are those words in the past tense in the letter?” Milena persisted.

He hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Yes. They’re in the past. But that doesn’t mean anything except that they were leaving this country. So it makes sense for him to have written in the past tense.”

The road wasn’t winding so much now. They fell asleep at last, leaning against each other. Milena had a very odd dream in which Old Ma Crackpot had brought a symphony orchestra into the classroom, but the musicians weren’t playing. Instead, they were sitting on the tables and making friendly conversation with the girls, who were delighted. The Tank and Miss Merlute, perched on the top rung of a ladder, were looking in through the window, their faces red with fury as they angrily tapped on the panes in protest. But no one took any notice of them except Old Ma Crackpot, who made gestures of powerless despair in their direction.

Milena woke up with a start. Two pale, washed-out eyes were staring at her from a few inches away. She realized that her head had slipped off Bart’s shoulder and was now hanging down over the aisle. The man on the next seat was scrutinizing her with frank interest. He wore a farm laborer’s jacket and pants, and his large, chapped hands rested on his knees. There was a cage containing two fat gray rabbits at his feet.

“Eva-Maria Bach,” he muttered in a thick voice. His flat face, which wore a blissful smile, suggested that he wasn’t quite right in the head.

“I’m sorry?” said Milena. “What did you say?”

“Eva-Maria Bach . . . that’s you, right?”

“No, I . . . Who do you mean?”

The man did not reply but nodded, looking satisfied, as if Milena had said yes to his question. Seeing that he was still staring at her as hard as ever, she turned away. Bartolomeo was asleep beside her, his head against the window. She dug her elbow into his ribs.

“Wake up, Bart. There’s a weirdo on my other side.”

The boy opened his eyes, leaned forward, and spoke to the man on the other side of the aisle. “What do you want?” he asked.

The man, still beaming, picked up the cage so that they could get a better view of his two rabbits.

“Never mind him; he’s a bit simple,” Bartolomeo whispered into Milena’s ear. They smiled at the man and agreed: yes, they were very handsome rabbits; he should be proud of them.

Day was dawning now, and they were close to the town. Patches of light fell on the countryside here and there. Farmhouses with slate roofs sometimes came into sight as they turned a bend. Soon they were going along an endless straight road full of potholes, but instead of trying to avoid them, the driver was driving as fast as the engine would go. The bus raced furiously on. Tuned between two channels, the radio was blaring out appalling music at full volume. Very soon the travelers, shaken like plums falling off a tree, were emerging from under their blankets one by one and beginning to get their things together.

“You don’t like music?” bawled the driver, laughing at his own joke.

“Yes, we do. That’s the trouble,” Milena murmured.

A few minutes later they had reached the suburbs of the town and then the bus station. The driver parked his vehicle beside a dozen others, all lined up by a building with flaking walls.

The place was deserted. It was bitterly cold. Milena put the hood of her coat up over her head. “Do you think that’s the café over there? We could get a hot drink before we start out.”

“It would be better not to let people see too much of us,” Bart suggested.

But the glazed door they were facing, with a pattern of a cup with a small spoon in it, did look as if it led to a café. They made for it. Inside, three men drinking white wine at the bar were half hidden by the smoke of their cigarettes. Bus drivers, perhaps. A fat man, the café manager, was sweeping the floor in a desultory way. Reassured, Milena and Bart opened the door and went to sit at a table by the opposite window. From there they could just make out the first hills, with the dark mass of the mountains beyond them.

“Yes?” asked the fat man, his three chins quivering.

“Two coffees, please,” said Bart.

They sipped slowly, holding the hot cups of coffee between the palms of their hands. Now that she felt a little warmer, Milena put her hood back, letting her luxuriant, blond hair tumble over her shoulders. One of the men at the bar immediately turned. He stared at her, and went on staring. A second man soon followed his example. There was nothing pleasant in the grins on their faces.

“What are they after, Bart? They keep on looking at me.”

“You’ll have to get used to it,” said Bart, jokingly. “Looking at you isn’t exactly a hardship, you know.”

At any other time Milena would have liked the compliment, but her uneasiness spoiled any pleasure she might have felt. “Stop it; it’s not that. It’s more as if something about me intrigues them.”

By now the three men were talking in low voices and openly looking her up and down.

“That’s enough,” said Bart firmly. “I don’t like this. Let’s go!”

Milena swallowed the last of her coffee, the sweetest mouthful at the end, and they both got to their feet, leaving some of the money that Martha had given them on the sticky tablecloth.

“Good-bye,” they said to the men as they went out.

“Good-bye,” one of them growled in return. Bartolomeo was just shutting the door when the man’s hoarse voice caught up with them, followed by a coarse laugh from his two companions. “Think she’d give us a song before she goes?”

Milena stopped dead. “Did you hear what he said?”

“I heard.”

She took hold of the collar of Bartolomeo’s coat, almost hanging on him. “Bart, you don’t understand!”

“What is there to understand?”

“They think I’m my mother! You can see they do! In the bus earlier, and now too . . .”

“A simpleton and three drunks, Milena! Come on. Please.”

She resisted him. “No, I’m going to ask those men! They must know. The one in the bus called me Bach. He said my name, do you hear? And a first name too. He said my mother’s name, Eva-Maria; I’m sure he did.”

“You may be right, but we can’t hang around here. They’ll be after us, remember. All it takes is for the manager of that café or one of his customers to make a phone call. So come on.”

He took her arm, and regretfully she let him lead her away.

The rain never stopped all morning. They walked on side by side through the drizzle, their steps in time with their breathing. The road went uphill, but they could see almost nothing of the plains they were leaving behind or the mountains ahead of them. Milena was feeling gloomy, and they didn’t talk much. A few cars slowed down as they caught up with them. They saw surprised faces and suspicious glances behind the windows.

“Let’s get off the road,” Bart said. “I’m sick of the way they’re staring at us.”

Late in the afternoon they caught up with a horse-drawn cart going up a stony path. A small, swarthy man was leading the horse by its halter. Milena, whose feet were beginning to feel sore in spite of her boots, put on her prettiest smile and asked, “Could you give us a lift?”

The farmer stopped, grudgingly, and let them step in over the side rail.

Inside the cart a woman of about sixty, wearing a coarse woolly cap on her head and a black apron, was sitting on a sack of potatoes. She greeted them with a smile, and then her small, deep blue eyes rested on Milena and stayed there, the intensity of her gaze at odds with the rest of her rather ordinary appearance.

“Do you . . . do you know me, ma’am?” Milena asked uneasily.

“Acourse I knows you,” the woman replied. Then, very quietly, she began to hum a tune with her mouth closed. Her voice was unsteady, and it was hard to follow the melody, but you could tell that as she sang, the woman was hearing another voice, a beautiful one, and was trying to imitate it.

Milena got goosebumps. “That . . . that’s very pretty. Where did you hear that tune?”

The woman ignored the question and went on humming dreamily. It was as if, looking at Milena, she were looking inside herself at the same time, seeing her own memories. She was concentrating on every note.

“Who sang that song?” Milena persisted when she had finished.

“Why, you!” the woman said. “We had your records at home, we did. A shame it were . . . Oh, it were a crying shame what happened.”

The cart stopped just then. The farmer unhooked the chain keeping the tailgate in place and flung it abruptly back. “You two get out! We’re here!”

“Wait a moment,” said Milena. “I just wanted to ask this lady —”

“There ain’t nowt to ask!” said the farmer, pushing the woman toward the house. “I never should’ve took you two up. You clear out of here, quick!”

They spent the next two nights in ruined houses. The walls protected them from the wind and the cold well enough to let them snatch a few hours’ sleep. As soon as they were up, they went on walking north. Hungry as they were, they tried to save their provisions as far as possible. They drank the icy water of mountain streams from their cupped hands.

At midmorning on the third day, the mist suddenly lifted, and they were amazed to see the unreal beauty of the landscape surrounding them. Green moorland stretched out ahead, sprinkled with gray rocks and small, sparkling lakes. Far away the snowy peaks of the mountains rose to the sky. Sharp air filled their lungs.

“Oh, my God!” exclaimed Milena. Words failed her and she couldn’t say any more.

“This is freedom,” Bartolomeo breathed. “What do you think of it now?”

“Oh — not bad!” she replied after a moment. “Let’s celebrate.”

She went up to a rock and sat down on it. When he was about to sit beside her, she pushed him away. “No, go farther off. Like that, yes.”

She straightened her back, put her hands on her knees, and took a deep breath.

“A poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree;

Sing willow, willow, willow!”

From the moment when she sang the first notes, the air around her seemed to be transfigured. Her pure voice spun invisible threads between earth and sky.

“With his hand in his bosom

And his head upon his knee;

O willow, willow, willow, willow!”

Milena sang effortlessly, her eyebrows drawn slightly together, her eyes closed. She didn’t open them until the last vibration of the last note had died away.

Bart, entranced, didn’t dare break the silence. His throat was tight with emotion.

“Did you like it?” asked Milena.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I liked it a lot. And I liked the little lines it gives you between the top of your nose and your forehead.”

“I know it does. They come as soon as I open my mouth to sing. I can’t seem to make them go away.”

He came over to her again and sat down on the rock beside her. “Where did you learn that song?”

“I feel as if I’ve always known it. I must have learned it when I was very small. From my mother, I suppose. I can understand that now. I know about twenty songs by heart, and I’ve always sung them to myself, first in the orphanage, then at the boarding school . . . always. I can sing them to myself in silence and hear them in my head. Sometimes I choose one and decide to sing it properly — I mean out loud.”

“What makes you decide to do that?”

“I don’t really know. The right moment. The right person.”

“I see — and was this time the right moment or the right person?”

“Take a guess!”

She took his hand as they started walking again. It was that evening that they decided not to go any farther.

The mountain refuge hut, in the shelter of a group of trees, stood just on the line reached by the first snows. The door was unlocked. The single room had a bunk bed pushed against the back wall, a huge fireplace, a table, two benches and a cupboard cobbled together out of rickety planks. They lit a fire and ate some of their provisions. Then they talked all night. They talked feverishly until they felt exhausted, and by the small hours of the morning, they had come to their decision.

Bart found a pair of rusty scissors in a drawer and sharpened them at length on a hard stone. Milena sat astride a wicker chair in front of the fire with her head facing the back of it and bent her neck, “Go on.”

Hesitantly, Bartolomeo slipped a heavy handful of blond hair between his fingers. “Are you sure? You won’t hold it against me later?”

“Look, I’m the one asking you to do it. We know we must go down again, and I don’t fancy having three-quarters of the population take me for a ghost. Go on, Bart.”

The first snip of the scissors gave them both a pang. After that Bart set to work as well as he could, sending locks of blond hair flying around them. Soon the feet of the chair were surrounded by a silky, golden carpet. When Milena had nothing left on her head but a short, untidy boyish haircut, he put the scissors down.

“All right?” he asked, going around to kneel down in front of her.

Milena’s face was covered with tears. “It’s hard,” she said sadly. “I’ve had long hair since I was four. About the age when I learned the songs. It’s as if you’d cut my arms off.”

“But your hair will grow again. Don’t cry.”

“What do I look like?”

“I don’t know . . . well, like Helen Dormann, maybe.”

She found the strength to laugh. Seeing her like that, her face tear-stained, her eyes reddened and her hair shorn, Bartolomeo Casal thought he had never seen such a beautiful woman in his life. A woman, he told himself, not a girl.

They took off their school coats, threw them on the fire, and watched them burn until there was nothing left but the charred buttons. Then they went out to the little lake nearby. It was perfectly circular, reflecting the deep green of the spruce trees surrounding it. The silence and calm were absolute.

“First to say ‘This is the first morning in the world’ has lost!” said Milena, laughing.

“This is the first morning in the world!” shouted Bart, and he raced for the bank. Stripping off his clothes quickly, he plunged into the icy water. He swam fast, churning up the water with his arms and legs.

“Come on! Come on in!” he called when he had reached the middle of the lake.

She hesitated, and then undressed too and went to the edge.

“Come on in!” called Bart again.

She couldn’t help it: she shouted out loud and flung herself into the water. It felt like having a thousand red-hot needles pierce her body. They met in the middle of the lake, choking, shaking with laughter, unable to utter a word.

When they were back on the bank again, the air seemed bitter cold. They ran to the refuge and piled the fire high with dry branches, all the logs that were left, and their own clothes, which they had carried back under their arms. The wood crackled, sending up sparks, and then the flames rose high. They pulled a mattress in front of the fireplace and slipped under the covers. Their skin, warm from the fire, was still cold in patches from the icy lake. Some drops of water were still running down Milena’s white back. They held each other close, kissed and embraced, amazed to find themselves here naked, body against body for the first time, without any fears at all.

Much later, when they woke up, the sun was high in the sky. They considered the clothes that Martha had packed in the bag for them. Bart’s pants were four inches too short, and they had to let the hems down to lengthen the legs. Milena was decked out in a dress that could have belonged to her grandmother and a black coat with a fur collar.

“Just look at me!” She laughed, pointing to her hair, which resembled a recently harvested wheatfield. But Bartolomeo’s eyes said, You could wear anything at all; nothing would make you ugly.

“Anyway,” he said out loud, “if any dog-men get up here, they’ll find themselves faced with quite a problem. Our trail ends in this mountain refuge. Sorry, gentlemen, but we’re on our way back down.”

The idea of escaping by crossing the mountains had soon seemed to them unbearable. Their own parents had fled in the past, but at least they had fought before they ran away. They had defied the Phalange. And some people were surely still ready to do the same. Like the woman in the horse-drawn cart who had said it was a shame. They had decided last night they had to find those people and join them. Brute force was obviously on the barbarians’ side, but how could they not believe that the precious memory of life before the Phalange didn’t still live on, lying low in people’s hearts? There must be embers that could be rekindled before darkness covered the world entirely. In their excited conversation at the refuge, Bart and Milena had worked out that there must be a link between the rekindling of that fire and Eva-Maria Bach’s voice. The barbarians had silenced it, and Bart knew how, but it now vibrated on in Milena’s throat. Perhaps anything was still possible.

And Milena, who had only just found her mother’s trail, couldn’t resign herself to giving up so quickly. Every step she took northward was a denial of her heart, a denial of her wish to know more about the woman who had been so like her.

What was more, they had said to each other, how could they leave Catharina Pancek and Basil behind them, imprisoned in detention cells? Their sacrifices called for something better than just hiding.

Bart couldn’t get the secrets revealed by Basil out of his mind. After all, the terrifying Van Vlyck was only a man, and an order from him would surely be enough to open the doors of all the boarding schools. They had to find the man and make him give that order. How? They had no idea, but at least they would have tried. They’d have fought back.

It was with this crazy hope that they had made up their minds: they would stop trying to escape and go to the capital city in the south of the country. Neither Bartolomeo nor Milena had ever been there.

They walked for a long way, came to the river, stole a small boat tied up to a dock, and let themselves be carried downstream, stopping only to sleep and stretch their legs. The great river seemed ready to protect them, offering them its soft murmuring and its slow waters. It cradled them.

“Sing,” Bartolomeo sometimes said, and Milena let the lines appear on the little patch of skin between her nose and her forehead for him.

In the middle of the third night, they passed under a bridge. The clear sky was sprinkled with stars. Bart recognized the four stone horsemen.

“Wake up, Milena! It’s our little town. Look, there’s your school!”

Milena, sleeping under a blanket at the bottom of the boat, put her chin above it and sat up to see better. “You’re right. It feels funny going under the bridge, when I’ve walked over it so often. Look, there are people crossing it now! They look like students from the schools with those coats. What on earth are they doing here at this time of night?”

Sure enough, two figures were hurrying toward the hill. The first seemed to be carrying something heavy on his back, perhaps a sack. The second, who was a little smaller, no doubt a girl, was following close behind. But as the current swept the boat on, they were unable to see any more.