Assignment - Mara Tirana (7 page)

“I see,” Adam said quietly.

“You see nothing. Americans have always been so safe, you cannot imagine what life holds for people like us. You always have enough to eat, everything. I can remember what it was like. You are smug and you believe the world is made to serve you.”

“That’s not true. That’s propaganda talking.” Adam looked at her curiously. “Why are you so angry with me?” 

“Because you have brought danger to my parents, and I do not think you are worth it.”

“Then why not call the police right now?”

“Because I hate Petar Medjan more than I despise you.” She turned away. She wore a woolen dress of simple design, although the tiled Russian-style stove in the room made the hut very warm. Her dark red hair was tied in a severe knot at the nape of her neck. There were lavender shadows under her cool brown eyes. “Do you want something to eat?” she asked abruptly. “There is only soup and black bread.”

“Yes.” He was suddenly hungry. “That will be fine.” He watched her move to the stove. The gray dress clung softly to her curved body, outlining the symmetry of her hips. Her back was straight and proud. She made him feel guilty, because he didn’t want to endanger anyone. Yet the danger she mentioned seemed academic; the hut was safe. Through the window he could see the wild mountainside she called Zara Dagh. The October sun was tinged with yellow. Adam sat up in the bed. There was an air of security here, as if the hut were a tiny fortress in a wilderness of savage things.

Lissa returned with a bowl of soup and bread. “Yes, you are better. I see it in the way you look at me.” Her smile this time touched her whole face, changing her expression dramatically.

“When will your brother Gija return?” he asked. She shrugged. “When God wills.”

“They’re looking for me, you know. They must know I came down somewhere near here.”

“Everyone looks for you,” Lissa said calmly. “The whole world speaks of you, though you are not the first to do what you did.”

“The first for my side,” he said.

“Yes. But a little late, as usual.”

“We’ll catch up. That’s why it’s so important to get back, with my instruments. Otherwise, it’s all to do over, with more lost time.” He paused. “And don’t needle me, Lissa. I only want to be friends.”

“I’m sorry. The old people have suffered so much, and you bring it back again. They are trapped here. In the village, because of Giurgiu’s politics, we are treated as if we might contaminate the people with something the authorities cannot permit in this country.” She paused. “You understand this with your mind, not with your heart.”

She had a quality of iron control, Adam thought, as he ate. But it was brittle, and she might snap and break if pushed too far, rather than bend and yield, and so survive. He finished the soup and watched the way the sunlight tangled in her dark red hair.

When she took the empty bowl and carried it outside, he saw through the doorway a small clearing, with neatly stacked cordwood, and a horse tethered to a pine tree. A path wound out of sight into the woods. He heard the creak of a hand pump as the girl washed the dishes, and then he threw back the blanket and looked at his injured leg. He wore only a pair of shorts. His body was mottled with bruises, but he had been bathed clean of the mud and blood which had clung to him when he had dragged himself from the wrecked capsule. His leg was still swollen, but the ache of infection had dramatically eased. For the first time, he began to hope he might get out of this alive.

When he looked up, Lissa was in the doorway staring at something out of sight. Tension was evident in the way she stood and looked.

“What is it, Lissa?”

“Nothing. Be quiet.”

“Where are my clothes?”

She did not look at him. “I washed them. They are in the cupboard by the bed—but you cannot walk yet.” “What do you see out there?” Adam asked.

“The old people are coming back. And it is too soon.” He sat up and his head swam with the effort. He had to hold onto the bed with his head lowered, waiting for nausea to pass. He broke out into a light sweat, then shivered in the mountain air that spilled through the doorway where Lissa stood. A deep-throated halloo came from the old man; but Lissa remained silent, waiting. Then she stepped out, deliberately closing the door after her. Adam sat up again, fighting his weakness, and pulled himself upright with a grip on the big wardrobe. His breath whistled in his throat. Then he was erect, clinging to the door handle, and he pulled his khaki uniform in a tumbled heap upon himself before he collapsed on the bed again.

Voices touched him from outside. He recognized the old man’s urgent rumble, the old woman’s thin reply. He listened for Lissa’s answer with an odd tension, remembering his grandmother’s language from the long-ago days in Pittsburgh.

“You are a fool, Jamak. Is he coming here?”

“Yes, Lissa, he is on the way. I spoke to him only for a moment. Then Jelenka and I took the Zara Dagh path and ran most of the way. But Medjan will be here soon.”

“Does he suspect anything?”

“You know his face. It is like black stone.”

The girl muttered: “He must know something, or he would not dare—”

“What will you do, Lissa?”

“Perhaps we should give him up,” she said.

“How can we do that now?”

“How? How?”. The girl’s voice lifted impatiently. “Would you kill us all for the American? What do we owe that man? We did not ask for him to fall on us from the sky. And he can bring the axe falling on our necks, if he is discovered here. We owe him nothing—nothing! Don’t you understand? Why should we help him? We must live and survive here. Would they help us in a reverse situation? I think not!”

The mother’s voice said gently: “Lissa, you cannot give him to Lieutenant Petar Medjan. You must not.”

“Can we hide him, then?”

The old man spoke. “In the bam, perhaps.”

“And if the barn is searched, and he is found?”

Their silence was an eloquent answer to the girl’s question. Adam stood up again, clung to the bedpost. It was easier now. He struggled into trousers, shirt, shoes. The argument went on outside, but it was quieter now, as if they were now aware that he might be listening. Only the adamant old man saved him, he thought. Yet he could find no anger or blame toward the girl. What was he to them? A foreigner. A deadly danger, dropped from the sky like a plague upon them. She was right, they owed him nothing.

He couldn’t put on his right shoe. His leg was too stiff to let him bend over. Then the door was opened hurriedly and the girl ran across the room toward him and knelt at his feet as he sat on the bed. Her red hair looked burnished in the late afternoon sunlight that came through the doorway. The wind felt cold, and smelled of the pine trees.

She spoke without looking up. “Did you hear it all?” 

“Part of it,” he admitted.

“The best thing you could do for us would be to surrender to the authorities now, without waiting any more. I love my parents. This danger is too much to ask them to risk. Put out your foot, please, so I can get your shoe on.”

“I won’t surrender myself,” Adam said. “Not while there is any chance I can get out, with the instruments.” “The only chance you have is with me, do you understand?”

“Yes. And I am grateful.”

“I do not do it for gratitude. I do it because Jamak is a stubborn, foolish, and gallant old man.”

“You’re not worried about yourself?” he asked.

She raised her head. Her face was lovely, like alabaster, hut cold and hostile in her gaze. “I have a price I may have to pay, to keep you safe. Petar Medjan wants me.”

“Now, look, I don’t ask—”

“Please. Don’t be foolish or blind. He is head of the police in Viajec. And he is my only friend, in a way. He is cruel and officious, and an ugly man, although strong. But because he wants me, he has lent his influence to allowing us all to live here in reasonable peace. Now and then, I must encourage him. But he is not eternally patient. Today he comes to claim something from me.”

“You don’t have to, for me,” Adam said. “I can hide in the woods.”

“With your leg? You would die in a few hours. Or be caught, and made to talk, which would be worse. Come, lean on me. We haven’t much time to hide you.”

He tried to take a few steps alone, ignoring her offer. Somehow he was angry with her now. The next moment he felt the pain again, and his pride collapsed in a wave of dizziness. The girl supported him as he stumbled out through the doorway into the clearing.

The sunlight was blinding. The cold, mountain air helped, and he sucked in a great, rasping lungful. The old couple stood staring at him, and Jamak started forward to help, but Lissa waved him back. Slowly, laboriously, Adam moved around the hut toward a stone barn in the rear.

The barn was not much larger than the hut, but he was happy to get out of the cutting wind as the girl guided him through the doorway. A cow stood in a stall and turned her head to stare at them with great, limpid eyes. There was a tiny hayloft, and a ladder going up, and Adam paused and looked at it and shook his head in dismay.

“I can’t make it.”

“You must,” the girl insisted. “Try.”

“My leg—”

“Medjan will shoot you on the spot, if you are found here. And perhaps all of us, as well. So get up there.”

Adam drew a deep breath and reached for the rungs of the crude ladder. By using the strength of his arms and shoulders, he hauled himself up step by step until he was able to roll over onto the edge of the wooden platform. He was drenched with sweat from the effort. The girl looked up at him anxiously.

“Cover yourself with straw, quickly. And make no sound!”

He nodded, unable to speak for the moment, and rolled away from the edge of the hayloft and lay, gasping, with the rafters of the barn roof only two feet overhead on the low platform.

They had been none too soon. Booted steps crunched on the gravel outside. He heard the girl turn swiftly to leave the bam, but it was too late. A man’s harsh voice rang out, echoing.

“Lissa? Are you there?”

The girl paused. Then Adam could see her as she moved out into the sunlight that spilled through the bam door. “I am here, Petar Medjan.”

“Ah, yes. I have just seen Jamak. He looks remarkably well, for a man who was as sick as you said.”

“The medicine works miracles,” Lissa said quietly.

“Miracles, indeed!” The man laughed thickly. “Well, I am happy to have been able to help, you see. You look well, Lissa.”

“I am well,” the girl said.

The man loomed suddenly in sight when Lissa moved again as if to leave the barn. He blocked the entrance like a heavy shadow, thick arms out-thrust to lean on the doorpost. His booted legs straddled the earth in a posture of absolute authority.

He was uniformed in the blue of the Internal Security Police, with polished boots and a holstered gun at his hip. He took off his visored cap and the sun shone on a strong face like carved rock, on thick black hair. The man had the physique of a bull, with massive shoulders, a thick chest, a booming voice. His eyes squinted into the interior shadows of the bam, lifted to consider the placid cow in its stall, then touched the ladder to the hayloft. Adam felt his heart lurch as Medjan’s glance swept upward. Too late now to draw farther back into the loose hay. The movement would be seen. He had to count on the shadows to hide him, more than anything else.

The security man’s glance swept on, dropped back to the slim figure of the girl who managed to convey an air of defiance as she faced him in the doorway.

“We missed you in Viajec this past night.”

“No one among the peasants was ill. I had no duties, and my father needed me.”

“Of course, of course, Lissa. Perhaps I should have said it was I who missed you.”

“Let us not talk about it. I am tired. I had little sleep.” “You never want to talk about it, Lissa. What is the matter? You know how I feel. I will not crawl or act the lover-dandy for you. I have been kind to you, have I not? Your family lives in peace here. Can I do more? Do I not make myself plain?”

“Please, Petar Medjan—”

“Come here, Lissa.”

“I must go back,” the girl said coldly.

“Come here!”

Without warning, his arm shot out and caught the girl and pulled her to him. She did not resist when he tangled thick fingers in her hair and yanked her head back so her face was upturned to his. Adam saw the lust on the man’s cruel, strong face. Medjan kissed her brutally, and he knew she was hurt by his embrace. He trembled. He did not want to watch the girl’s degradation, knowing it was because of him, knowing at last the full price she had to pay for his safety.

But he did not dare move or make a sound in the hayloft. He was crippled and helpless against the other’s strength and weapons. It would be suicide. It would be worse than useless—

Lissa still did not resist when Medjan fumbled at her clothing. For a moment the sound of his breathing rasped through the close air of the bam. Lissa stood limply, hands at her sides. The man muttered something, then suddenly straightened in frustration. The sunlight caught his pale eyes under his thick, angry brows. He shoved her aside and she tripped, stumbling, and caught herself.

“Agh! Not like this! Must I have you like this?”

“It is not the time, Medjan,” she said quietly.

“When is the time, then? You promise and promise—” 

“I never promised anything, Medjan.”

“With your eyes, with your manner, when you want something that only I, I, Petar Medjan, can get for you—oh, then you are sweet and pliant and presumably willing!” the man shouted. “You will be sorry for all this, Lissa! I am not a boy, to be played with, as you play with me!”

She was silent. Adam could see the rapid, uncertain lift of her breasts as she breathed. For a moment, the uniformed man and the girl stared at each other, the one angry and bull-like, uncertain about his next move—and the girl quietly waiting, trying to defeat him by not resisting. Then Medjan made an impatient sound and abruptly threw her to the floor of the bam. They were out of Adam’s narrow range of vision now; but he could hear the sounds Medjan made, the grunting, the slap of his hand on flesh, the girl’s stifled whimper, the rhythmic gasps of the big man, the sobs of satisfaction from him, the groan of pain from the girl.