One spring day I arrived by bicycle on Baba Rotunda Pass, and it was from there that I first glimpsed those imposing peaks at the foot of which I would later all but forget my life up to that point. The Sinistra basin reposed before me with its long, sharp shadows in the orange light of afternoon. Stands of willow and thinly scattered rows of houses loomed intermittently along the bends of the river at the bottom of the valley; shingled roofs glistened on distant, sun-bathed slopes; and furthest away, the icy peaks of Pop Ivan and Dobrin shimmered above black, forested collars of pine. Behind them, the icy green, foreign, northern sky.
There were no more roads from there. The nature reserve in whose vicinity I planned to lay low was presumably under the steep walls opposite. Somewhere deep in that wilderness lived Béla Bundasian, my adopted son. For years now, I'd been searching for him.
The main road, once it wound its way down from the pass, followed the railroad embankment for a while, then the double track suddenly disappeared into a tunnel, at whose entrance the watchman was playing his clarinet. Further on, toward the village, the embankment once again ran up alongside the road, and before long a local, narrow-gauge railway found its way there, too. Bicycling along, I arrived at the terminal of the Sinistra branch railway almost simultaneously with the train.
A shabby, one-story building stood by the end of the tracks. Hanging from the eaves was a painted wooden board featuring the name of the village, Dobrin. That was not all: someone had painted the following, with mud, on the wall directly below: City. It was spring, towards evening, when I arrived in Dobrin City.
Having propped my bike up against a railing, I waited for the mass of silent travellers, some in rubber boots, others wearing sandals, to pass by, figuring if someone seemed agreeable, I'd strike up a conversation. It was my first time in Dobrin.
Smoke stirred above the station, wood smoke, for the trains in these parts were wood-fuelled, and a few clouds even crept upward along the main street as if pulled along by the passengers now walking home. Leaning against the wall of the loading platform across the street was an olive-brown man who, blinking incessantly, eyed the openings that formed in the departing crowd. He wore a sleeveless, dirty white vest, stained army trousers, and sandals on his otherwise bare feet. I had no intent to greet him, but once the travellers had dispersed, he jumped off the ramp and ran directly over to me across the now empty space.
"I see," he said in a soft, oily voice, "you're looking for a place to stay."
"Something like that."
"Because I know a place."
This is how I met Nikifor Tescovina. His name was apparent from the start, as he wore it on a little tin plate dangling prominently on a chain about his neck. For his part, not only wasn't he interested in my name, but he fended off a handshake as well. Let's not force the issue of just who you are, he said, until Colonel Borcan calls on you in person. Yes, he added, the forest commissioner would decide on a name for me, among other things; for he commands the mountain infantry in Dobrin.
"And if you hadn't noticed, people here don't get about on bikes. You won't need it anymore either. Leave it here, someone will take it."
He was always one step ahead of me as we ambled through the village, which stretched out over the bottom of the valley. Sometimes he walked into a puddle to wash off the dust that got into the sandals around his bare feet. Summer had already arrived, the way he saw things, and yet hardly had the sun disappeared for the day behind the peaks to the west, and the puddles were encircled by a cuticle of ice. A cool evening breeze punctuated with the odor of pine buds blew off a narrow, weasel-shaped patch of snow glistening on the steep mountainside above the village, swinging to and fro the cut lines dangling from the electric poles along the main street in Dobrin City.
"Everything around here is the domain of the mountain infantry," Nikifor Tescovina explained in his soft, oily voice. "Same goes for the place where you'll live. Around here, they take care of the people."
"Up till now I saw them only in pictures," I replied, as softly as possible, "but I've heard the mountain infantrymen are decent, proper folk."
"Indeed they are. And make sure to tell them you lost your papers. Colonel Puiu Borcan will pretend as if he believes it, too."
"Come to think of it, my papers," I said with a start. "I stashed them in the frame of my bike, under the seat. I wouldn't mind going back to get them."
"Oh, leave it be. Your bike's gone by now, anyway. Forget they ever existed."
A dwarf sat beside the stream, which passed under a covered wooden bridge in white torrents toward the end of the village. He was soaking his feet. Before long, Nikifor Tescovina left the road into an alley that soon narrowed into a track and, making its way along the backwater, whose banks were all soggy and overgrown with weeds, passed between the village yards to a meadow. Looming at the far end of this meadow, beside a few pines, willows and black alders, was a building with a dented roof and made of coloured stones. From the looks of things it used to be a water mill, but the stream or the river had veered away, leaving it alone on the meadow. Birds nested in the broken windows as nightfall shimmered on the cracks of the shingled roof, like colour blades, they were, those cracks. The one-time furnishings--axles, grindstones, and the like--had been removed, and the meadow's evening fragrance now blew gently through huge, gaping holes in the wall.
Nikifor Tescovina passed through the hollow space between those walls straight to the first floor and stopped before a wide open, rickety door. Looming in a corner of the room beyond, which seemed to have been a storage area of sorts, a tool repository perhaps, was a berth of freshly torn pine branches.
"This," said Nikifor Tescovina, "is the place where you can lay low. No one's going to ask you a thing."
"How did you know I was coming?"
"Ever since you set foot in the Sinistra district Colonel Borcan has known of your every move. This region draws people like you. Those who follow the Sinistra upstream don't stop till they reach Dobrin."
"Whew, that's good to hear. So the colonel also knows I'm just a simple wayfarer."
"Of course he knows. By the way, simple wayfarer, what's it you aim to do? You seem like a versatile fellow."
"Well, I'm at home in the forest and know my trees, not to mention bushes. Let's say I know a thing or two about mushrooms and fruit: I've worked at food markets before. If need be, I can work at a timber yard or even as a bark stripper. Why, if it comes down to it I could even set traps."
"Doesn't sound bad. I'll speak with the colonel. But until he comes by in person, please don't leave this place. Don't even step outside, I mean."
"And if nature calls, if my digestion moves me, where might you allow me to go?"
"Best you just stick your backside out the window."
Nikifor Tescovina waved good-bye by putting a palm to his forehead. By the time he reached the far end of the meadow, where the village fences began, dusk had already swallowed him up. Leaning on the damaged window sill, I continued looking in his direction until an owl flew outside from behind me, with a great swishing of wings.
Days passed before Nikifor Tescovina deigned to show himself once more. Each morning I found a small bag hanging on the entrance bolt, and inside it there was always a bottle of water, a few congealed, boiled potatoes; onions, a handful of prunes, and a few hazelnuts. Those days of boiled potatoes and of prunes fused quickly together, as surely as the mist that passed fleetingly over the meadow; and from that point on, for a long while I had no idea whether it was Monday, Wednesday, or Saturday. The passing of time was signalled by the changing shape of the patches of snow on the mountainside above Dobrin.
One morning, though, there he was again, Nikifor Tescovina, seated on the threshold beside the dangling bag.
"I'm glad to see you've been sleeping so well," he said. "I've come by often enough, true, but let you be. Let the man get his rest, I thought. Meanwhile, though, Colonel Puiu Borcan and I got to talking about you."
"You don't mean to say he has time to deal with me?"
"Why, of course. He's the forest commissioner up here in Dobrin, right? He wants to see you, so he's going to come by soon. From the look of things, you can stay."
"If you've really settled things, I'll repay you someday. I'd like to make a successful go of it. And something tells me this is where my life is going to come full circle."
"That could well be. Colonel Borcan likes your line of thought. He reckons if your were serious in proposing to deal with wild fruit, something could be worked out. The gathered fruit could be stored in barrels and tubs here at the mill."
"My thoughts exactly."
"And you could sleep well meanwhile. The scent of the fermenting fruit will be a soporific."
"Why then, I'd be curious to know how the area is when it comes to mulberries. I was thinking mainly about cranberries and mulberries, you know."
"Hm, I'm not quite sure. And the truth be told, it all depends on the bears as well, what they want. They're going to eat what you harvest. They keep a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty, in the reserve. Yet another reason Colonel Borcan liked your idea."
All day long I leaned out the window, gazing at mountain peaks which seem ed by turns headstrong, by turns capricious, and all the while I waited for Colonel Borcan to show up. But for weeks on end only shadows--flocks of crows, clouds--made their way across the meadow that stretched far between Dobrin City and the Sinistra river. Spring rains came from the west, from the Sinistra, and the clouds, colliding with the steep walls of Mount Dobrin, rambled about for days amidst the icy summits. Light clouds would occasionally descend on the peaks from all sides, assuming the shape of the mountain range like a veil draped over a sculpture. When they lifted after several days, there stood Mount Dobrin once more, glistening white, while spring had taken hold all around. When Nikifor Tescovina arrived by chance toward night with the daily bag of food, we would sit on the tepid threshold amidst the scent of ivy rising from the backwater near the river.
"As you can see, you enjoy our complete confidence," Nikifor Tescovina kept saying. "Just you see, hardly anyone will ask where you came from. And don't you go telling anyone, either. If someone takes to badgering you with questions anyway, why then, lie."
"Hm. That's the way it will be. I'll get into the swing of things, I trust. Why, I'll say something different to everyone."
"Ah yes, you're getting to know the ropes. As for your name, forget it, just like that. I mean, if you so much as hear your name hissing somewhere nearby, don't even give a start. React to everything with a straight face, you hear."
A thick, opaque darkness descended on Dobrin after sunset, so that above the black contour of the houses light could be seen only in the distant windows of the barracks. Signals of light occasionally flashed from the watchtowers of the mountain infantry. Thunderbolts from Mount Dobrin loomed amidst the nighttime clouds, and their faraway murmur interwove with the hooting of owls down in the groves. The foggy, yellow light of dawn invariably saw me leaning out the window.
One day Nikifor Tescovina arrived with his little girl. Even from afar the child's short red hair gleamed through the fog like ripe rowan berries in autumn. They were near the mill by the time I noticed that the father was leading his daughter on a leash. A stone's throw from the entrance he tied her to a boundary demarcation stake, and entered the building alone.
That day Nikifor Tescovina brought a bottle of methylated spirits as well, along with a tin mug, and charcoal in a pot drilled full of tiny holes. He explained that, to render it drinkable, the alcohol had to be filtered through charcoal into another vessel. In the absence of charcoal, he said, tinder fungus or blueberries would also do the trick.
"It's going to make you puke at first, but you'll get used to it."
"No doubt."
Already he'd began to pour the liquid over the charcoal, holding the mug underneath and watching for the first drops.
"Soon you can get to work. The colonel has already ordered the tubs and buckets. He's also taken on the fruit gathering women. They're going to swarm around you, those women, but you watch out for yourself. Like I said before, keep that face straight no matter what."
"Lately I've done pretty well at self-discipline."
"Then make sure you act proper if you meet a man called Géza Kökény. He'll tell you he's not just anyone, but that his bust stands on the bank of the Sinistra. Well, don't you believe him."
"I won't hear him out."
"That's it. There, by the way, is my little girl, Bebe." With this he extended an open palm toward the meadow, where the red-haired child tied to the stake sat in the grass. "You'll get to know her. She's just eight, but from what I can see, she wants to leave me."
"Don't you let her."
"She's fallen in love with Géza Hutira."
"I don't know the man. Must be an alias."
"Hm, who knows. He's the meteorologist in the reserve. About your age, a good fifty. But his hair reaches the ground. He's got Bebe's heart, my little girl's, in his hands."
I'd already been staying in the abandoned water mill amongst voles, bats and barn owls for four, five, maybe six weeks when Colonel Puiu Borcan finally called on me in person. He came up here and brought me my new name. Winter returned that day for a couple of hours to the forests of the Sinistra district. An icy cloud descended even upon the blossoming meadow, a shimmering glassy mush veiled the knolls along the stream, and snowy mountainside clearings shone on the village below. I glimpsed the two approaching figures through drifting wisps of fog--one of them was my benefactor, Nikifor Tescovina. The other, a baggy-faced, big-eared man wearing an officer's greatcoat, adjusted his cap on his forehead as he approached. A big black umbrella swung from his hand. Although icy drops of vapor from the passing storm still permeated the air, the umbrella was closed, its sodden black fabric hanging limply downward like the wings of a sleeping bat. An enormous pair of binoculars swung from the neck of the forest commissioner.
Later, once I earned a measure of his respect, I, too, had the opportunity to peer through those binoculars. On one occasion I accompanied him up into the forest, and while he went into a thicket to relieve himself, he entrusted me with his umbrella and binoculars. It being Revolution Day, I knew the mountain infantrymen were playing shuttlecock down by the stream with the Dobrin railway workers. To this day I recall how that tiny snow-white birdie flashed back and forth above the tall, swaying, untrodden grass, two or three meters high.
Anyhow, those binoculars about his neck, the limp umbrella in his hand, Colonel Borcan came to a halt on the threshold. His expression was woeful, a tad clammy. The light of the distant snowy clearings glimmered through his earlobe, his hair frizzed in tufts out from underneath his hat, and drops of the now-passed freezing rain clung to the stubble on his chin.
"So you're the one."
"Me."
"And what's your name?"
"I dunno. Lost my papers."
"Fine, then. All's in order."
From his pocket he removed a glistening little tin tag, dangling from a watch chain. On it, freshly engraved: Andrei Bodor. My alias. He personally put it around my neck, fused the loose ends below my nape with tweezers, and no sooner had he done so than the metal began warming my skin. Andrei, that part of my new name, I especially liked.

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