Adam Bodor - The Sinistra Zone

It was the coldest day of the year, but the door to the kitchen stayed wide open all the same, with only the rainbow-hued curtain of steam fluttering before it. From the cracked walls came the cold smell of mice along with the sound of plaster being scratched at and crumbling. The table was covered by a sticky tablecloth of waxed linen, with a nine-men’s morris board drawn in indelible pencil in the middle. Reaching in a pocket of her greatcoat, Colonel Coca Mavrodin produced the black and white pieces and lined them up on the edge of the table.

Returning from the sacristy, Father Pantelimon brought saddles — carrying two on his shoulders and dragging one behind him in the snow. Throwing them over the horses’ backs, he tightened the girth under their bellies. The bird shit that dotted the shoulder of his vinyl jacket sparkled like a colonel’s stars. As for the two colonels themselves, for the time being they just sat in silence at the kitchen table playing nine-men’s morris. The door was wide open all the while. Out in the bitter cold, the horses stamped their hooves while sparrows and crows occasionally landed on their fresh, steaming hot manure.

It was past noon by the time a snowmobile arrived through the snowdrifts with a great roar — the sort of fast, narrow contraption used by the Dobrin mountain infantry. This one was driven not by a soldier, however, but by a man in a quilted jacket, a lambskin cap, and rubber boots. On the threshold he left behind a saddlebag that, from the sound of it, was packed full of glass bottles. No sooner had he arrived than he turned the snowmobile around and drove off.

The bottles must have been corked in a hurry, for the scent of cheap rum flooded the kitchen in no time. Father Pantelimon poured equal amounts of the drink into two plastic containers, meanwhile asking the two men, who were helping him, not to so much as lick their fingers afterward.

The saddlebag, now bearing the plastic containers, wound up on the pommel of one of the saddles. Then all three — the two men and Colonel Coca Mavrodin — got on the horses. Chewing on a matchstick, the priest looked after them from the verandah of the parsonage as they rode the beasts out of the village on a narrow, well-trodden trail.

Coca Mavrodin asked her two men to proceed Indian file if possible, and always only on the right side of the trail, so as to cut a clearly visible groove through the snow. The Kolinda forest covered an amorphous, hulking beast of a mountain whose plateau-like summit sprawled out flat, far, and wide amid other, taller ranges. The Baba Rotunda Pass, though hardly an hour or two away, always seemed to hover in brownish wisps of fog on the eastern horizon. The forest covered even the top of the mountain, its slopes consequently featured not a lacework of snowy meadows but instead only a few odd rectangular clear cuts which shone brightly in the sun.

Not even by afternoon did the freeze let up. Half-frozen crows perched on rimy spruces, looking like enormous cones against the gray sky. Frigid water pearls took shape on Coca Mavrodin’s wool-felt greatcoat each time she exhaled, and whenever one of the horses broke wind, a comet of hot steam hissed forth from its behind.

The trail hardly ascended, and they had to follow the muffled babbling of the brook underneath the snow. Finally, though, they reached the basin, spread out completely flat, with the forest’s undulating spruce boughs closing in above — a still-narrow path led to an almost sizable clearing. And all around, an incessant bubbling murmur rang through the Kolinda forest; secret, subterranean streams broke the surface here and there.

In the middle of the clearing, with snowdrifts all around it, stood the retired forest rangers’ refuge. Like some sort of box full of secrets, its doors and windows were all boarded up. Even its tile roof was covered with freshly cut logs fastened with clamps to discourage anyone from trying to get in or out. And yet there was still life inside: tangled wisps of pale smoke hovered above the cracks in the tile roof, deliberate cracks that in these parts functioned as chimneys. Indeed, those within heard their steps approaching.

“Who goes there?” came the dull, hollow words from between the walls, as if from within a sealed box. “Who is it, and what do you want?”

“It’s only us,” declared Colonel Coca Mavrodin in her lusterless voice.

“Thank goodness. I recognize your voice, Miss. So you all came, after all, to let us out.”

“Not quite yet. There’s a little problem with your health, you know for a while longer. We can’t be too careful. The weather’s not too good, either — out here your colds would only get worse.”

“It’s good all the same that it’s you people. Feels good to hear a familiar voice.”

“Naturally it’s us. And we brought you folks a little drink. I’m not even sure if it’s a liqueur or rum. In a minute we’ll figure out how to get it inside. We’ve got an iron Pope, so it would be best if we managed to pour it in through that.”

“Liqueur or rum? Why, we thank you kindly in advance. Mr. Toni Waldhütter is here nudging me in the side, asking if the rum is Jamaican or Puerto Rican, because to him they’re not the same sort of thing. I’m glad the old man has his voice back, though of course his question is just a joke.”

“I understand, Mr. Toni Waldhütter — I too am picky about my drinks. Tell him he can taste it shortly. We’ve got Géza Hutira with us. He’s a clever, resourceful man. No doubt he’ll find a crack in the wall to stick the Pope in, and then in no time at all you can be drinking from the other end. It would be good if you hurry up and find a bowl to hold under the end of the Pope.”

“Thank you kindly. We’ve been getting a bit low on provisions, too, in fact — enough for two days at most.”

“Rest assured that you won’t be needing any more — divide that up between you.”

“Great — we’ll get by.”

At the edge of the clearing, just opposite the boarded-up house, were the three horses with their riders still mounted. Steam hovered all around them. Hoarfrost coated the riders’ hair, and the men’s beards and stubble. Even the yellow bits of cotton in Coca Mavrodin’s ears had turned white.

“What’s brewing here?” Géza Hutira whispered to Nikifor Tescovina.

“What do you think? Take a guess.”

“Come on, really, what’s up?”

“Leave me alone.”

“Feel free to ask questions,” Coca Mavrodin interrupted the two men. “I’ll answer them. One of the retired forest rangers fell ill with the flu. And so now they’re under quarantine.”

“I didn’t ask a thing, not a thing.”

Géza Hutira spit on his palm: he must have understood that he’d be the one to now give the retired forest rangers a drink. Getting off his horse, he removed the saddlebag containing two containers of rum from Coca Mavrodin’s pommel; tied beside them he saw the long iron Pope she’d mentioned. He searched out the crack in the house the voices came through, slid the Pope in until he felt someone grab hold at the other end, then heard the Pope clink against the bowl they placed underneath. Slowly he began to pour. The rum, having congealed along the way from the cold, flowed sluggishly, like crystallized honey.

Meanwhile Coca Mavrodin, as if on a weekend outing, dismounted and took some snacks out of her coat pocket. She spread newspaper on the crusted snow, anchoring its four corners with chunks of ice to keep the wind from blowing it away. After tearing at the half-frozen potatoes with her nails, she asked Nikifor Tescovina for his pocketknife, with which she then sliced the onions. Next, as if yielding her portion to the men, she got back up on her saddle, bent her head down on the horse’s neck, and seemed to doze off. Sunlight was fast fading from the clearing: twilight was approaching from the forest, and nighttime itself from the east.