Quite suddenly, he opened his eyes.
He stared at them both.
‘Are you all right?’ Mick asked.
The man said nothing for a moment. He seemed not to understand.
Then:
‘English?’ he said. His accent was thick, but the question was quite clear.
‘Yes.’
‘I heard your voices. English.’
He frowned and winced.
‘Are you in pain?’ said Judd.
The man seemed to find this amusing.
‘Am I in pain?’ he repeated, his face screwed up in a mixture of agony and delight.
‘I shall die,’ he said, through gritted teeth.
‘No,’ said Mick, ‘you’re all right —‘
The man shook his head, his authority absolute.
‘I shall die,’ he said again, the voice full of determination, ‘I want to die.’
Judd crouched closer to him. His voice was weaker by the moment.
‘Tell us what to do,’ he said. The man had closed his eyes. Judd shook him awake, roughly.
‘Tell us,’ he said again, his show of compassion rapidly disappearing. ‘Tell us what this is all about.’
‘About?’ said the man, his eyes still closed. ‘It was a fall, that’s all. Just a fall . .
‘What fell?’
‘The city. Podujevo. My city.’
‘What did it fall from?’
‘Itself, of course.’
The man was explaining nothing; just answering one riddle with another.
‘Where were you going?’ Mick inquired, trying to sound as unagressive as possible.
‘After Popolac,’ said the man.
‘Popolac?’ said Judd.
Mick began to see some sense in the story.
‘Popolac is another city. Like Podujevo. Twin cities. They’re on the map —‘
‘Where’s the city now?’ said Judd.
Vaslav Jelovsek seemed to choose to tell the truth. There was a moment when he hovered between dying with a riddle on his lips, and living long enough to unburden his story. What did it matter if the tale was told now? There could never be another contest: all that was over.
‘They came to fight,’ he said, his voice now very soft, ‘Popolac and Podujevo. They come every ten years —‘
‘Fight?’ said Judd. ‘You mean all those people were slaughtered?’
Vaslav shook his head.
‘No, no. They fell. I told you.’
‘Well, how do they fight?’ Mick said.
‘Go into the hills,’ was the only reply.
Vaslav opened his eyes a little. The faces that loomed over him were exhausted and sick. They had suffered, these innocents. They deserved some explanation.
‘As giants,’ he said. ‘They fought as giants. They made a body out of their bodies, do you understand? The frame, the muscles, the bone, the eyes, nose, teeth all made of men and women.’
‘He’s delirious,’ said Judd.
‘You go into the hills,’ the man repeated. ‘See for yourselves how true it is.’
‘Even supposing —‘ Mick began.
Vaslav interrupted him, eager to be finished. ‘They were good at the game of giants. It took many centuries of practice: every ten years making the figure larger and larger. One always ambitious to be larger than the other. Ropes to tie them all together, flawlessly. Sinews . . ligaments . . . There was food in its belly . . . there were pipes from the loins, to take away the waste. The
best-sighted sat in the eye-sockets, the best voiced in the mouth and throat. You wouldn’t believe the engineering of it.’
‘I don’t,’ said Judd, and stood up.
‘It is the body of the state,’ said Vaslav, so softly his voice was barely above a whisper, ‘it is the shape of our lives.’
There was a silence. Small clouds passed over the road, soundlessly shedding their mass to the air.
‘It was a miracle,’ he said. It was as if he realized the true enormity of the fact for the first time. ‘It was a miracle.’
It was enough. Yes. It was quite enough.
His mouth closed, the words said, and he died.
Mick felt this death more acutely than the thousands they had fled from; or rather this death was the key to unlock the anguish he felt for them all.
Whether the man had chosen to tell a fantastic lie as he died, or whether this story was in some way true, Mick felt useless in the face of it. His imagination was too narrow to encompass the idea. His brain ached with the thought of it, and his compassion cracked under the weight of misery he felt.