Overhead, a jet trailed a string of smoke, white against the paleness of September. "We matched strides and talked of our books. Shadows ahead appeared briefly between the trees, a slender breeze blew, and a few leaves tumbled from the heights. To me, it looked for an instant as if ahead on the path Kivi and Blomma were playing in a patch of sun. The mirage passed too quickly, but the trick of light brought to mind the mystery behind their departure, and I told Speck of my brief vision of our missing friends. I asked her if she ever wondered whether they really wanted to be caught.
Speck stopped at the edge of cover before the exposed land that led to the mine's entrance. The loose shale at her feet shifted and crunched. A pale moon sat in a cloudless sky, and we were wary of the climb, watching the air for a plane that might discover us. She grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around so quickly that I feared imminent peril. Her eyes locked on mine.
"You don't understand, Aniday. Kivi and Blomma could not take it another moment. They were desperate for the other side. To be with those who live in the light and upper world, real family, real friends. Don't you ever want to run away, go back into the world as somebody's child? Or come away with me?"
Her questions poured out like sugar from a split sack. The past had eased its claims on me, and my nightmares of that world had stopped. Not until I sat down to write this book did the memories return, dusted and polished new again. But that morning, my life was there. With her. I looked into her eyes, but she seemed far away in thought, as if she could not see me before her but only a distant space and time alive in her imagination. I had fallen in love with her. And that moment, the words came falling, and confession moved to my lips. "Speck, I have something—"
"Wait. Listen."
The noise surrounded us: a low rumble from inside the hill, zigzagging along the ground to where we two stood, vibrating beneath our feet, then fanning out into the forest. In the next instant, a crack and tumble, muffled by the outer surface. The earth collapsed upon itself with a sigh. She squeezed my hand and dragged me, running at top speed, toward the entrance of the mine. A plume of dirt swirled from the fissure like a chimney gently smoking on a winter's night. Up close, acrid dust thickened and choked off breathing. We tried to fight through it but had to wait upwind until the fog dissipated. From inside, a reedy sound escaped from the crack to fade in the air. Before the soot settled, the first person emerged. A single hand gripped the rim of rock, then the other, and the head pushed through, the body shouldering into the open. In the wan light, we ran through the cloud to the prostrate body. Speck turned it over with her foot: Béka. Onions soon followed, wheezing and panting, and lay down beside him, her arm roped over his chest.
Speck leaned down to ask, "Is he dead?"
"Cave-in," Onions whispered.
"Are there any survivors?"
"I don't know." She brushed back Béka's dirty hair, away from his blinking eyes.
We forced ourselves into the mine's darkness. Speck felt around for the flint, struck it, and sparked the torches. The firelight reflected particles floating in the air, settling like sediment stirred in a glass. I called out to the others, and my heart beat wildly with hope when a voice replied: "Over here, over here." As if moving through a snowy nightmare, we followed the sound down the main tunnel, turning left into the chamber where most of the clan slept each night. Luchóg stood at the entranceway, fine silt clinging to his hair, skin, and clothes. His eyes shone clear and moist, and on his face tears had left wet trails in the dirt. His fingers, red and raw, shook violently as he waited for us. Ashes floated in the halo created by the torchlight. I could make out the broad back of Smaolach, who was facing a pile of rubble where our sleeping room once stood. At a frantic pace, he tossed stones to the side, trying to move the mountain bit by bit. I saw no one else. We sprang to his aid, lifting debris from the mound that ran to the ceiling.
"What happened?" Speck asked.
"They're trapped," Luchóg said. "Smaolach thinks he heard voices on the other side. The roof came down all at once. We'd be under there, too, if I hadn't the need for a smoke when I woke up this morning."
"Onions and Béka are already out. We saw them outside," I said.
"Are you there?" Speck asked the rock. "Hold on, we'll get you out."
We dug until there appeared an opening big enough for Smaolach to stick his arm through to the elbow. Energized, we pounced, clawing away stones until Luchóg shinnied through the space and disappeared. The three of us stopped and waited for a sound for what seemed like forever. Finally Speck shouted into the void, "Do you see anything, mouse?"
"Dig," he called. "I can hear breathing."
Without a word, Speck left abruptly, and Smaolach and I continued to enlarge the passageway. We could hear Luchóg on the other side, scrabbling through the tunnel like a small creature in the walls of a house. Every few minutes, he would murmur reassurance to someone, then exhort us to keep burrowing, and we desperately worked harder, muscles enflamed, our throats caked with dust. As suddenly as she had disappeared, Speck returned, another torch in hand to throw more light upon our work. Her face taut with anger, she reached up and tore at the stone. "Béka, that bastard," she said. "They've gone. No help to anyone but himself."
After much digging, we made the hole wide enough for me to crawl through the rubble. I nearly landed on my face, but Luchóg broke my fall. "Down here," he said softly, and we crouched together over the supine figure. Half buried under the ruins lay Chavisory, still and cold to the touch. Covered by ash, she looked like a ghost and her breath smelled mortally sour.
"She's alive." Luchóg spoke in a whisper. "But barely, and I think her legs are broken. I can't move these heavy ones by myself." He looked stricken with fear and fatigue. "You'll have to help me."
Stone by stone, we unburied her. Straining under the weight of the last debris, I asked him, "Have you seen Ragno and Zanzara? Did they get out okay?"
"Not a trace." He motioned back toward our sleeping quarters, now buried under a ton of earth. The boys must have been sleeping in when the roof collapsed, and I prayed that they had not stirred and went from sleep to death as easily as turning over in their bed. But we could not stop to think of them. The possibility of another collapse urged us on. Chavisory moaned when we removed the last rock off her left ankle, a greenstick fracture, the bones and skin raw and pulpy. Her foot flopped at a sickening angle when we lifted her, and the blood left a viscous slick on our hands. She cried out with every step and lost consciousness as we struggled up to the tunnel, half pulling, half pushing her through. When he saw her leg, bone piercing the skin, Smaolach turned and threw up into the corner. As we rested there before the final push, Speck asked, "Is anyone else alive?"
"I don't think so," I said.
She closed her eyes for a moment, then issued orders for our quick escape. The most difficult part involved the exit of the mine itself, and Chavisory awoke and screamed as she was pinched through. At that moment, I wished we had all been inside, asleep next to one another, all of us buried for good and out of our own private miseries. Exhausted, we placed her down gently on the hillside. None of us knew what to do or say or think. Inside another implosion shuddered, and the mine puffed out one last gasp like a dying dragon.
Spent and confused by grief, we waited for nightfall. None of us thought that the collapse might have been heard by the people in town or that it might possibly draw the humans to investigate. Luchóg spotted the dot of light first, a small fire burning down by the treeline. With no hesitation or discussion, the four of us picked up Chavisory, our arms linked in a gurney, and headed toward the light. Although worried that the fire might belong to strangers, we decided it would be better, in the end, to find help. We moved cautiously over the shale, causing more pain for poor Chavisory, yet hopeful that the fire would give us a place to stay out of the creeping cold for the night, somewhere we might tend her wounds.
The wind creaked through the bones of the treetops and shook the upper branches like clacking fingers. The fire had been built by Béka. He offered no apologies or explanations, just grunted like an old bear at our questions before shuffling off to be alone. Onions and Speck crafted a splint for Chavisory s broken ankle, binding it up with Luchóg’s jacket, and they covered her with fallen leaves and lay next to her all night to share the warmth from their bodies. Smaolach wandered off and returned much later with a gourd filled with water. We sat and stared at the fire, brushing the caked dirt from our hair and clothing, waiting for the sun to rise. In those quiet hours, we mourned the dead. Ragno and Zanzara were as gone as Kivi and Blomma and Igel.
In place of the prior morning's brilliant glow, a gentle rain crawled in and settled. Only the occasional whistle from a lonesome bird marked the passing time. Around midday, a fierce yell of pain punctuated the stillness. Chavisory awoke to her ordeal and cursed the rock, the mine, Béka, and us all. We could not silence her anguished cries until Speck took her hand and willed her through steadfastness to be quiet. The rest of us looked away from her, stealing glances at one another's faces, masks of weariness and sorrow. We were now seven. I had to count twice to believe it.
CHAPTER 27
Tess didn't need to be talked into sneaking across the border, and the very idea of transgression sent an erotic jolt into our honeymoon. The closer we got to Czechoslovakia, the livelier the sex became. On the day we mapped our secret passage to the other side, she kept me in bed until mid-morning. Her desires fed my own curiosity about my hidden heritage. I needed to know where I had come from, who I had been. Every step along the way brought the sensation of returning home. The landscape looked familiar and dreamlike, as if the trees, lakes, and hills lay embedded, but long dormant, in my senses. The architecture of stone and exposed timber was exactly as I had pictured, and at inns and cafes, the people we met bore familial traces in their sturdy bodies, fine chiseled features, clear blue eyes, and sweeping blonde hair. Their faces enticed me deeper into Bohemia. We decided to cross into the forbidden land at the village of Hohenberg, which sat on the German line.
Since it was first dedicated in 1222, the castle at the center of town had been destroyed and rebuilt several times, most recently after World War II. On a sunny Saturday, Tess and I had the place to ourselves except for a young German family with small children who followed us from building to building. They caught up to us outside, near the uneven white walls that ran along the city's rear border, a fortress against attack from the forest and the Eger River beyond.
"Pardon me," the mother said to Tess in English, "you are American, right? Would you a photograph take? Of my family, on my camera?"
I blanched at being so easily recognizable as Americans. Tess smiled at me, took off her backpack, and laid it on the ground. The family of six arranged themselves at the base of one of the original parapets. The children looked as if they could have been my brothers and sisters, and as they posed, the notion that I once was part of such a family lingered and then receded into ether. Tess took a few steps backward to squeeze them all into the frame, and the small children cried out, "Vorsicht, der Igel! Der Igel!" The boy, no more than five, ran straight at Tess with a mad expression in his blue eyes. He stopped at her feet, reached between her ankles to a small flower bed, and carefully scooped up something in his small hands.
"What do you have there?" Tess bent to meet his face.
He held out his hands and a hedgehog crawled out from his fingers. Everybody laughed at the minor drama of Tess nearly stepping on the prickly thing, but I could barely light a smoke due to the shakes. Igel. I had not heard that name in almost twenty years. All of them had names, not quite forgotten. I reached out to touch Tess to help put them out of mind.
After the family left, we followed the map to hiking trails behind the castle. Along one path, we came across a miniature cave, and in front, signs of an encampment, what looked to me like an abandoned ring. I led us away quickly, heading east and downhill through the black woods. Our trail spilled out to a two-lane road devoid of traffic. Around the bend, a sign saying EGER STEG pointed to a dirt road to the right, and we came upon mild rapids across a narrow river, no more than a wide but shallow stream. On the opposite bank lay the Czechoslovakian woods, and in the hills behind, Cheb. Not another soul was in sight, and perhaps because of the river or the rocks, no barbed-wire fence protected the border. Tess held my hand and we crossed.
The rocks above the waterline provided safe footing, but we had to watch our step. When we reached the Czech side, a thrill, sharp as a razor, went through me. We'd made it. Home, or as close to it as possible. At that instant, I was ready to convert—or revert—and lay claim to my identity. Tess and I had disguised ourselves as best we could that morning, affecting a European indifference to our hair and clothing, but I worried that others might see through the ruse. In hindsight, I should not have worried so, for 1968 was the year of the Prague Spring, that open window when Dubcek tried to bring "socialism with a human face" to the benighted Czechs and Slovaks. The Russian tanks would not roll in until August.
Tess loved the danger of our trespass and skulked along the leafy floor like an escaped prisoner. I tried to keep up with her, hold her hand, and assume an air of silent cunning. After a mile or so on our hike, an intermittent sprinkle fell through the green leaves, and then a shower began in earnest. The raindrops hit the canopy above and dripped down with a steady beat, but underneath that rhythm, an irregular sound of footsteps became audible. It was too dark to make out any figures, but I heard them marching through the brush, circling around, following us. I grabbed her arm and pushed on faster.
"Henry, do you hear that?" Tess s eyes darted about, and she turned her head from side to side. They kept on coming, and we began to run. She took one last look over her shoulder and screamed. Catching me by the elbow, Tess stopped our progress and wheeled me around to face our tormentors. They looked forlorn in the falling rain. Three cows, two brindles and one white, stared back at us, indifferently chewing their cuds.
