The Sojourn - Andrew Krivak [57]
I TRAVELED EAST—IN THE BROAD DIRECTION OF THE HOME I had once known, like some migratory bird following the compass of instinct—and came out of the mountains and hugged the forested roads that connected the small hamlets and villages that had once made up the lands of old Hungary. For weeks I trekked, and in late morning on a day when I had already been walking for several hours, I could see from one of those roads a run-down hut nestled deep in a hollow. Some kind of camp, I thought, or just a poor lodging left to crumble, yet from a distance I could see a hole in the roof and a bird’s nest in the eve. It hadn’t been occupied for some time, but I thought there still might be something to eat, or something of value, inside.
As I got closer, I could hear voices, men’s voices, laughing and cajoling, as if they were at a game, and speaking Hungarian, although it sounded drunken. I crept up to a front window and peered inside. There were two Honvéd soldiers, looking as though they had gone through worse than I, one sitting at a wooden table, legs crossed, drinking from a bottle, the other bare-assed and having his way with some desperate whore lying inert on the dirt floor.
I didn’t want this kind of trouble, but just as I ducked down to creep away, I heard the one at the table shout too loudly for the small space, “Give me a turn! Then I’m gonna gut the bitch.”
The other rolled off and slapped the girl in the face as he did so, and I could see plainly that she was just a girl. A Gypsy, it appeared, from her features, thirteen, fourteen maybe, at the most, and I could see that she was pregnant, and far along, by the looks of it. The man swaggered as he got up from the table, and she didn’t try to run or roll over or do anything. I thought she might be dead until I saw her hands reach down and touch her belly, big as a globe.
“That’s right, that’s right,” the man spit out as he pulled down his trousers. “Three Gypsies in one day, Emil, hey?” And his friend smiled with his teeth, sat down at the same table, and finished off whatever liquid swirled in that bottle.
They must have been drunk when they got there, because there was a carbine at the back of the hut, just out of arm’s reach of the girl, and another one propped against the wall next to the door. They wouldn’t have been so careless otherwise, or maybe they would have. From where I crouched, I was almost within arm’s reach of the closest weapon. Even if it wasn’t loaded, I figured, I could use the butt of it on the bastard sitting in the chair. I crept from the window to the door, pushed it open, grabbed the rifle, and quickly checked the bolt. One round left. The man at the table was rising, his eyes wide and teeth snarling. He looked bigger, and I suddenly wondered what it was I was trying to do. He came at me fast, too fast for that room, and I shot him point-blank in the neck, and he jerked back like he was on a rope and blood poured out of him in a flume, covering my head and face, so that I was blinded for a moment. That was when the other one jumped on me with his knife, the same kind of dagger we’d all carried in the trenches. I reached up as he was about to sink it into my chest and held his hand above my head with both arms. He was strong and I ... I wasn’t so much anymore. Slowly, slowly he brought the knife toward me, as if I was losing at a game of arm wrestling, though this game wasn’t for a drink of brandy. With one last gasp, I pushed his hand up as hard as I could and his whole body tensed, eyes squinting with pain and surprise, then he dropped the knife and crumpled on top of me.
The girl was standing over him, her hands bloodied, a knife in the dead man’s side, right below the rib cage and into the kidney. I got on my feet and said to her in Hungarian, “You’re safe now.”
She kicked the dead Honvéd and spat. “Gadjo.”
That’s what he was, just as I was. Gadjo. A non-Rom, no better than these same deserters who had raped and tried to kill her and her unborn