The Lights of Skaro (2 page)

The
rokos
were Security. The word means ‘arm’ in Slavic, but it has a further connotation of a strong arm with a hard fist at the end of it. It was a good nickname for the bully boys. Everyone in the Republic, foreigners like ourselves included, used it naturally, without humor. There was nothing humorous about the
rokos.

They almost took us before we were out of sight of the column of smoke rising from the burning cornfield. I don’t think the fire attracted them, although it may have. They knew, by then, the general area in which we must be, and were quartering it like bird dogs working a field for a hidden brace of grouse.

All the
roko
cars had piercingly loud horns, which they used constantly in the cities as police cars use sirens in American cities. In the country, because there was so little traffic, horns weren’t necessary. We would have heard them coming in plenty of time if the horn had been going. As it was, the goats’ hooves clip-clopping on the packed earth of the road we followed made enough noise to drown out the noise of the approaching motor until the car came around a turn not more than an eighth of a mile ahead of us and bore down on us with the high speed at which they always travelled.

Cora wasn’t used to the
yashmak.
She hadn’t learned to tuck the end in properly at her neck. It had come undone and was dangling, exposing her face. It isn’t unusual for a Moslem peasant woman alone with her husband to walk with her face exposed, but it is completely out of character for her not to cover her face automatically and instinctively as soon as strangers come in sight. Cora didn’t do it. She started to. Then, with the
rokos
so close, she hesitated to make what seemed to her to be an obvious and clumsy attempt at concealment.

I yelled, “Cover your face!” I was beating the goats off to the side of the road, kicking up as much dust as I could. “They’re too close! They’ll see me! It’s better to—”

“Cover your face!” I roared. “Don’t argue! Quick!”

She did it, at the last minute. The
rokos
boomed by without turning their heads to look twice at a peasant woman making the normal gesture of modesty.

But it was too close. I saw that we would have to reach some kind of a working agreement on strategy and tactics if we were going to get far. I thought about it as we trudged along, with the single minaret of a small village lifting gradually ahead of us like a warning finger: Not too fast. Not too fast. Peasants don’t hurry milk goats.

In the southern part of the Republic, where the Turks were strongest, the size of a village could be guessed by the height and number of its minarets. Muezzins no longer called the faithful to prayers from the towers at sunrise and sunset, and the mosques beneath them, still technically places of public worship, were rarely attended. A Moslem citizen of the Republic made such prayers as he chose to make in privacy, where the ritual washing and other wastes of time could not be observed and the imposition of an additional work quota because of them was not a risk. The Party left the mosques alone. Their destruction or conversion would have antagonized already antagonistic peasants even further, and the minarets provided useful balconies for political speeches, as well as high points to hang public loud-speakers which blared music, propaganda, and pep talks without interruption from five in the morning until midnight, seven days a week, in every town and city in the country. Even in tiny, single-minaret villages like the one we approached, hour after plodding hour, behind our reluctant, bleating convoy.

The loudspeaker blare reached out to meet us as we followed a dung-cart into town. Its wheels, and the hooves of the lumbering oxen that drew it, stirred up a welcome cloud of dust to begrime our skin and clothing. I had no fear of going into a village at that point. We reached it only five or six hours after our thefts, too soon for the thefts to have been discovered for what they were. We were safe enough, for the moment. But we still had to arrive at a working agreement, for that and later moments which would be more dangerous.

In the screen of dust behind the dung-cart, I said, “From now on, it’s a matter of staying in character. Don’t forget you’re a Moslem woman. Keep your eyes down and your
yashmak
up. Don’t look any man in the face. Don’t walk in front of me unless I tell you to. Don’t—”

“Don’t lecture me!’ She pulled
the yashmak
higher across the bridge of her nose with an irritated jerk. “I’m not a child who has to be told when to wipe its chin!”

“That’s another point. Moslem women are inferior in the sight of Allah. They have to be told when to wipe their chins. And they don’t argue with their men, in public. If I tell you to do something, do it. With downcast eyes and an attitude of humble respect, if you can manage it. Save the debates until we’re alone.”

Her eyes were neither humble nor downcast. They blazed at me above the dusty cloth covering her face. She said,“Mine not to reason why, mine but to do or die. Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“That’s it. I didn’t invent the system. I don’t support it. But we have to recognize it, or give ourselves away. If we attract any attention by not acting the part, we’re finished.”

“And if you insist that I do something stupid, what then? Humbleness and downcast eyes?”

“I won’t ask you to do anything stupid.”

“I wish I had as much faith in it as you have!”

“It’s a matter of preserving my own skin as well as yours. If you lose, I lose. Another thing. When we talk at all, which shouldn’t be any more often than absolutely necessary, we’ve got to avoid English. It’s less risky to take a chance on being overheard and understood than being overheard and identified as foreigners.”

If she had an argument for that, she swallowed it. The wheels of the dung-cart were rattling on the paving stones at the beginning of the village street. We followed close behind.

There were no indications of a Security watch in the village, but I ran my hand over my face to smear dirt and sweat together when we lost the protection of the dung-cart’s cloud of dust. We passed it and went on to the tiny village square near the mosque, the goats following their noses to the water of the fountain in the square.

Except for the constant roar of the loudspeaker high on the minaret, and a painted wooden Red Star hung from a balcony below it, the village drowsed in the thin autumn sunlight as it must have drowsed in the days of Suleiman the Magnificent. A few skull-capped stall-keepers sat with folded hands by the wares they offered for sale, a few baggy-trousered peasant women peered at the goods over their veiling
yashmaks,
a few villagers went about their business. A cobbler, cross-legged in the shade of an awning, banged nails into a shoe. Across the square from where he sat, another awning was spread over a brazier on which an old woman was grilling
koftes.

The smell of the broiling meat was too much to resist. We hadn’t eaten since the evening of the night that had ended with our break. I told Cora to stay with the goats – they were already scampering eagerly for the fountain – and went over to the brazier, fumbling coins out of my pocket before I got there. We didn’t have much money, but there was nothing better than food to spend it on.

The old woman had a wooden tub full of
dolmas,
cool in their wrapping of pickled vine leaves when I pushed my dirty fingers into the brine and took a handful. She scolded me for it automatically, without anger. I held up four fingers at the
koftes
on the grill, then counted out her price with a wordless grumble in my throat, picked up the
koftes
by their skewers and walked away. She didn’t give me a second look.

We ate by the fountain, licking our greasy fingers afterwards and drinking side by side with the goats, now sucking at their second load of water. I stood in front of Cora when she dropped her
yashmak
to drink, ready to glare like a belligerent husband at any man who wandered near enough to look at her exposed face. Nobody was interested. We had the fountain to ourselves. We monopolized it long enough to sit with our backs to the well-curb and listen to the loudspeaker for a few minutes.

There was no news of a couple of American press correspondents fleeing from justice. Only a regular alternation of stirring music, a short pep talk urging increased productivity on the farms and touting the blessings of collectivization, music again, another pep talk about the enormous strides the Republic was making in building roads, more music. The blare never stopped for a moment.

I hadn’t expected any news about ourselves. Security worked in the dark as a matter of principle, because announced fugitives from justice could count on at least the tacit support of a large part of the peasant population, bitterly opposed to the government, the Party, collectivization, the
rokos,
and all other manifestations of the Great Liberation. But there was no news of any kind, even loaded news. That was unusual.

The loudspeaker system was one of the Party’s strongest weapons. It blanketed the whole country. Private radios, of which there had never been many in the Republic, had been either confiscated or taxed out of existence. They were too easy to tune to foreign broadcasting stations, too easy to shut off from domestic broadcasts. The newspapers were all controlled, printing only releases from the government news agency, but no city worker could be forced to read them if he chose not to, and the majority of the peasant population was illiterate as well as antagonistic. To overcome this, the loudspeakers functioned nineteen hours a day, interspersing the Party’s version of current events with its din of propaganda, political indoctrination, and music. The speakers could be shut off only by direct sabotage, by the local Party authorities, or by the control center at the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the capital. From this center the citizens of the Republic were wakened at dawn by the loud roll of the Red Army march, stimulated during the day with stirring music, put to sleep at midnight with a lullaby that was never necessary after the long hours of uninterrupted noise. Ordinarily some of the noise qualified as news, or a variety of news. Now there was none.

Cora said, “The shake-up must be a big one, to create a complete blackout. It’s a good sign.”

“Why is it a good sign?”

“Because the shake-up could extend even as far as Security. They may be too busy cleaning out their own stables to concentrate on us. For a while, at least.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

“I’m not counting on it. I’m hopeful.” She added bitterly, “There’s nothing wrong with being hopeful, is there?”

“Not if you can manage it.”

“I can manage it as easily as I can manage sour pessimism!”

“I’m not pessimistic. I’m realistic. Realistic enough to know that we’ve stayed here as long as we can, safely.” I stood up, feeling my joints creak. “Let’s go.”

She made no move to get up. She said, “I’m tired,” and put her head back against the well-curb, closing her eyes.”We can’t go on forever without rest. An hour or two here in the shade can’t be dangerous.”

It was worse even than panic. A few miles without challenge, a bite of food to eat, a drink of cool water, and she had forgotten to be afraid.

I was afraid enough for both of us. And I welcomed the spur of anger I felt at her taunt. I said, “Get up. Now. We’re leaving.”

She shook her head, still without opening her eyes. “No. Not for a while.”

I picked up my stick. I said, “Have you ever seen a peasant beat his woman? It’s an accepted form of discipline in this country when she doesn’t do what she’s told. Get up!”

She opened her eyes at that. In a voice of absolute incredulity she said, “You wouldn’t
dare!
I’d—I’d—”

Before she could think what it was she would do, I had shortened my grip on the stick and was lifting it to swing at her shoulders.

I didn’t have to bring it down. She scrambled to her feet. Her lace, as much as I could see of it above the
yashmak,
was flaming at first, then white under the dirt. She didn’t speak to me, or look at me, or acknowledge my existence for the rest of the afternoon. When we left the village, she stayed on her side of the goats, I stayed on mine. We plodded westward, mile after bone-wearying mile.

We were both stumbling with fatigue before we stopped for the night. We couldn’t sleep in a village or farmhouse without signing a house-book and producing identity papers we didn’t have, and it would invite suspicion to travel after nightfall even if we had had the strength to keep going. As soon as it was dark enough, we left the road for a bramble-grown ravine with a trickle of water running down it and a stand of dry grass among the brambles. The water and grass would keep the tired goats in the ravine, but to prevent them from grazing too tar up or down it I tore strips from my shirt and braided a rope to tie the wether. The ewes would stay near his bell.

When that was done, I milked one of the ewes into my skull-cap. It wasn’t as clean as it might be, but we had no other container.

While I was milking Cora said, “What can I do to help?”

They were her first words since the incident at the village, and they weren’t an overture for a restoration of diplomatic relations. She still hated me. But sagging as she was with fatigue, done in, dead on her feet, she had to keep up her end.

“Can you milk a goat?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter. Here.” I held the brimming skull-cap up to her. “Drink this. It won’t taste very good, but it’s all the food we have. We’re going to need all the energy we can get.”

“After you.”

It infuriated me beyond all reason. I was overtired and overstrained, no more than she was, but nevertheless, on the ragged edge of exhaustion. Her insistence on that small gesture of equality and independence made me boil over with senseless anger.

Hating her as much as she hated me, and with less reason I said, “There’s plenty of milk, more than we can possibly use. It’s convenient for me to sit here and strip this ewe dry while you’re drinking what you can hold. I’ll get my own later, from the next one. Furthermore, if you’ll drink yours now while there is still some light left, you can be gathering grass for a bed while I finish my own job. If we submitted the whole argument to a board of arbitration, they’d hold unanimously that the most practical procedure would be for you to drink first. Now
take
it!”