Sleep well, Dragosaaaniiii. . .
And some ten minutes later down in the farmhouse, Use Kinkovsi got out of bed, went to her window and looked out. She thought it was the wind that woke her up, but there wasn’t the slightest breath of breeze. It made no difference, she had intended to wake up just before 1:00 a.m. anyway. Outside all was silvery moonlight – but in the guesthouse garret Boris Dragosani’s curtains were drawn tighter than she’d ever seen them. And his light was out.
The next day was Wednesday.
Dragosani ate a quick breakfast and drove off in his car before 8:30 a.m. He took the road which led him close to the hills in the shape of a cross. Down in a wide depression to the west of those hills lay the farm where he’d spent his childhood. New people had it now, for the last nine or ten years. Dragosani found a vantage point on a little-used track and looked at the place for a while. It no longer did anything for him. Maybe a very small lump in his throat – which was probably dust or pollen from the dry summer air.
Then he turned his back on the farm and looked at the hills. He knew exactly where to look. As if his eyes were the lenses of binoculars, they seemed to focus on the place, blowing it up large and with incredible clarity and detail. He could almost see beneath the green canopy of the trees to the tumbled slabs and the earth beneath. And if he tried hard enough, maybe even deeper than that.
He dragged his eyes away. It would be useless to go there anyway, before nightfall. Or late evening at the earliest.
And then he remembered another evening, when he had been a small boy …
After that first time when he was seven, it had been six months before he went to the place again. He had been out with his sledge, a dog bounding by his side. Bubba was a farm dog, really, but where Boris went he always had to be. There was a slope on the other side of the farm towards the village, a place where the kids snowballed and sledged each winter. Boris should be there, but he knew where there was a better run: the fire-break, of course. He also knew – as he had always known – that these hills were forbidden, and since the summer he had known why. People sometimes dreamed funny things there, things which stuck in their minds and came back in the night to bother them. That must be it. But knowing it didn’t stop him. Rather it drew him on.
Now, with the snow deep and crisp, the hills didn’t look so forbidding and the fire-break made for near-perfect sledging. Boris was good at it. He’d come here last winter, too, alone, and even the winter before that, when he was very small. But today he used the slope only once, and then half-way down he’d looked across to his right to see if he could pick out the spot under the trees. After that he left the sledge at the bottom of the hill, and he and Bubba had climbed up under the pines, stark black against the snow. He was going back to the tomb (he told himself) to satisfy himself that that was all it was: just the burial place of some old and long-forgotten landowner, and nothing more. That first time had been a bad dream, after he’d bumped his head when he was thrown from his cardboard cart. And anyway he now had Bubba for company and for his protection.
Or would have Bubba, except the dog gave a whining, worried bark as they approached the secret place and ran off. After that Boris saw him once through a break in the trees, down at the bottom of the slope near the sledge, wagging his tail nervously, in sporadic bursts, and offering up the occasional bark.
Then at last he was there and the place was just as he remembered it. If anything it was even darker, for snow on the higher branches shut out most of what little light would normally penetrate; and here where the winter had been kept out, the ground was black to eyes used to a white glare. Airless as ever, the place seemed; and what air there was, as before, seemed stirred by unseen shapes and presences. Oh, certainly, it was a place for bad dreams. Especially in the evening. And evening approached even now . . .