BETWEEN THE SEAS

“Wonderful place.“

Walter’s wife sighed.

“Wonderful people.”

Walter added.

They were talking about the sea-side resort in Intermarium where they were taking their summer holiday.  

Binka waved at them.  

“Hi Walter! Hi, honey!” and she kissed Walter’s wife. 

 “We didn’t see you yesterday on the beach,” Binka said. “Everything OK with  you?”

Walter and his wife had known Binka and her husband - Jose - for about a week, and they were good friends by now. 

“We went to that smaller beach on the western part of the peninsula.” Walter’s wife was proud of  their little adventure. 

A shadow flitted across Binka’s face. 

 “Is it recommended by TRIPDOTCOM?” She asked. 

“Of course it is in the TRIP,” Walter’s wife replied hastily, anxious not to be deemed too extravagant by their new friends. “Walter found it in the ‘Local&Alternative’ column on the main page.” 

“Take my hand and I’ll take you to the only places worth seeing. “ Walter cited complacently the moto of TRIPDOTCOM. 

“Don’t you think that these Salvador-Petrovs are a little snobbish?” Walter asked his wife. “Talking like only they know things that everybody should know.“

“What things?” 

“Things like what is advisable to do on a summer vacation in Intermarium, for example.”

“Certainly they cannot hold a candle to your knowledge of things, Walter,” said his wife prolonging the first syllable  of his name. “You and your source of information!” 

There was a short silence between husband and wife.  

“Anyway,” the wife broke the silence cheerfully. “Don’t you dare to speak ill of my new friends Binka and Jose. They are among the few who have pronounced my name correctly right from the start. You know how often I suffer. My name is Pulcheria, for God’s sake, not Folkeria! Not Valkyrie! Remember your fanciful colleagues we met last summer in London? They used to call me Bulgaria!” 

Walter laughed. 

“There is nothing so  bad in that,” Walter said philosophically. From what I’ve read, the Bulgarians are doing fine. Just like everybody else in the Union. But it’s not only what I’ve  read, you cantankerous woman! Haven’t we been to Bulgaria? Haven’t we seen with our own eyes?” 

They had. She agreed.

“Look what it says here about Intermarium!” Walter told his wife when she was nearly asleep and he was surfing through the pages of TRIPDOTCOM that wobbled over the screen of his tablet. 

“For the last year Intermarium was the fifth fastest developing economy in the Union. Phiew! They are three places ahead of us!” 

“The share of tourism in the GDP is 27 per cent. Well that’s pretty understandable, isn’t it?” 

“Seventeenth place on the anti-corruption ranking list. Twentieth place for freedom of speech. Not bad, not bad at all.“ 

“Isn’t life wonderful?” murmured Walter’s wife. 

“And how was the alternative beach?” Jose asked when he joined the trio. He had an impossibly intense tan for a person supposed to stay in the cloudy capital of the Union most of the year, mused Walter. His arms were impossibly long. They looked like the arms of a man capable of doing something mischievous with them, mused Walter’s wife. 

“The umbrella and a couple of beach beds cost exactly as much as on the main beach. Twenty bucks per day.” Walter answered Jose’s question. “I say, what’s so much local & alternative in it when the price is all the same?”

“The man who collected money for the umbrellas refused to give Walter a receipt, no matter how passionately he protested,” his wife remarked. 

“How did they understand each other at all?” Binka asked. “Most of the local people here don’t speak foreign languages.” 

“That comes from my dear Walter’s bag of surprises,” Walter’s wife explained. “Every time we book a trip on the DOTCOM, Walter does a crash course in the respective language.“

Binka whistled respectfully. 

“These are simple calculations.” Walter was absorbed in his own stream of thought. He raised his hands before his eyes and started folding his fingers one after the other, calculating. “Even if there were no more than ten couples on that beach yesterday, that makes ten times twenty, that is 200 bucks per day. Quite a neat sum! Tax-free income, mind you.” 

“It seems the umbrella man is making more money per day than you, yourself, Walter.“ 

But there was no malice in the remark Walter’s wife made. 

Walter didn’t respond; he looked furtively around to see if anyone else had heard that. Unfortunately, Jose seemed to have done so, as he winked sympathetically at Walter. “Sorry, old chap” – his smile seemed to say. 

“You see!” Binka pointed out. “That is what happens when you go places not recommended in TRIPDOTCOM!” 

Walter was about to reiterate that the beach was in the guide. Only it was in the ‘Local&Alternative’ column. Then Jose interrupted. 

“Isn’t it weird ? How everything we do and eat and talk and shit during a vacation is shaped by this bloody tourist guide? Not a few years ago we still read at least two guides before we made our plans for the summer, even three. I visited the sights recently. They are still on the net but not in the one and only tourist guide. In reality - they are like a Turkish cemetery. No one goes to them anymore.” 

“Yes, but the other guides were not edited by the users themselves,“ remarked Walter. “This is what makes all the difference in the world.”  

Walter stuck his chest out. 

“TRIPDOTCOM is written by casual tourists and holiday makers like us. We make the recommendations and the warnings. Nothing else matters but what the clients of TRIPDOTCOM say. In a way, this tourist guide is the most democratic institution in the world.“

“Ah, I would not put all my money on democracy,” drooled Binka and gingerly stifled a social yawn. “It is too fragile a thing. “

Jose pinched her cheek playfully. Walter bit his lower lip.

“That is what our enemies would like to see,” Walter preached.

“But there‘s nothing but a democratic future for our continent. History has ended here. Basta!”

“And it is not technology that puts us on top, not military power; not even our economic power. It is the social order of the Union that puts us on top. What line of development the other continents will choose – that is a black hole matter indeed. We, here, we are too strong to change, we are too good to change. We won’t change even if there’s the remotest chance of the other continents ganging up on us and eating us alive” Walter concluded.

“I absolutely agree with you, but plurality of informational sources is also part of the Union’s policy,” said Jose consensually, defending his initial position. “We’ll have to wait and see what our new commissioner would say on the problem,“ he concluded nonchalantly. 

Walter knew that Jose occupied a place so high in the hierarchy that the routine change of the Union commissioner responsible for his sector wouldn’t bother Jose in any way. Walter liked the way Jose pronounced “our new commissioner”. There was something intimate and at the same time very powerful in his casual parlance. How powerful the Union has become! How powerful and safe for nice talking people like Walter and Jose it has become. 

Only if it wasn’t for that wife of his! 

“Did you notice the contemptuous way she spoke about democracy?” Walter asked his wife. “That family enjoys their good fortune only because we have democracy here in the Union!” 

When history ends, it is quite natural to expect that there will be no more historical figures of significance. In other words - no more heroes. No more protagonists of the story. What place will Walter occupy in such a history? Surely, he has no place in such a story. And what place has Jose in that story? Jose doesn’t have any place either. Both Walter and Jose have two non-places in history. But why does it occur to Walter that Jose’s non-place is somehow more comfortable and cosier than Walter’s? 

“What are you planning,  Walter? Telling  them to their faces that they should be more respectful to democracy?” 

“Of course not. The Salvador-Petrovs are our friends.” 

“We must respect them,” sighed Walter’s wife. “We don’t have many friends to share our vacation time with.“ 

“That’s true,” Walter agreed. “However, the few friends we do have - we’ve got those via TRIPDOTCOM. It is a small international community dedicated to gourmet travel and leisure.”

Walter knew he was right but a little speck of unnamed anguish nestled in his heart and stayed there.

“Have you ever written something for TRIPDOTCOM, Walter?” Jose asked.

“No, but he should. At least once.” 

“Walter?” His wife proceeded. “Remember how desperately that restaurant owner ran after us the other day? He asked us to put in a positive comment on TRIPDOTCOM. He was literally begging us.” 

“He was not that desperate. Nobody has real fear in the Union nowadays. I mean that man won’t lose his daily bread if we decide not to give him a thumbs-up.“

“Talking about fear, have you noticed how many microbiological laboratories there are in the downtown?” Binka asked. “Their signs are everywhere - that much Intermarian I can read.” 

“I wonder if there is some kind of a dangerous local parasite that we know nothing of?” Binka concluded apprehensively.  

“TRIPDOTCOM would have informed us if there was such thing in this area,” Walter said complacently.

“That was very rude of you,” Walter reproached his wife, “asking me whether I have written in TRIPDOTCOM in front of  those people.“

But his wife would not give up so easily. 

“Well, maybe you should finally do this. It’s easy. Write about our own cute little city. Write about where people should go and where they shouldn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know very well what I mean.”

“No, but explain yourself.”

“Don’t shout at me!”

Then after a pause Walter said: “You are talking about myths.”

“Am I? Ask your local policeman about those myths! Because the no-go areas are not somewhere a thousand miles afar! They start a few blocks from your house!” 

“You are being unfair,” Walter said bitterly. “It is the area where my grandfather first settled down in the forties. We should be glad that we have such a nice house to live in.” 

His wife sighed. 

“Anyway, we will never be able to sell and move to a better part of town. With the real estate prices these days.”  

The following noon Walter’s wife announced: “At two o’ clock I am going to play tennis with the wife of that charming diplomat. Then there will be a ladies’ tea party. Dinner can start at eight.” 

This meant that Walter had at least six hours to spend on his own. 

He decided to do the most logical thing in this story: 

He would write for TRIPDOTCOM! 

For this purpose, he needed to go new places. He checked the tank indicator of his rented car – an excellent Volvo V90 painted in sky- blue, the colour of peace and the colour of the Union flag. The reservoir was almost full. Perfect. He could visit Lulda.

It was not mentioned in  TRIPDOTCOM; neither in the daily actualised online version, nor in the printed version of the tourist guide dating from some two years ago. It was easy to reach, though. Walter had studied the map. All he had to do was to take the highway, get off at exit 44 and travel 40 kilometres straight to the town of Lulda, or the village of Lulda or whatever Lulda was. 

The 44 exit was not a simple exit, but a compound one where more than two roads intersected. Therefore Walter had to drive down a serpentine side-road for quite some time. When he finally got off the highway, he involuntarily looked up. The gigantic metal constructions that supported the serpentine were black from the exhaust fumes and wait a minute! Were they rusty as well? 

Was the supporting structure actually safe? 

Walter remembered what he had read about Intermarium. Although the country was the fifth fastest developing Union country for the previous year, this country still lacked major progress in the struggle against corruption. Road-building companies. Ah, those road-building companies! Construction business. Ah, this construction business! Construction business and road-building companies smelt of something fishy in Walter’s Union country of birth. 

The Intermarians have to catch up on some issues, thought Walter when the car spoke to him. 

 “When possible, please make a U turn!” The navigation system said. 

He must have forgotten to turn the bloody thing off. Walter pressed a button.  

“When possible, please make a U turn!” The machine’s voice was authoritative as a mother’s voice telling you to zip up your jacket on a cloudy day. 

“I won’t,” said Walter loudly and grinned. 

“When possible, please make a U turn!” This time the electronic voice was hysterical as a wife sometimes gets. Walter’s fist landed on the little rectangular monitor. From then on, the car was silent. 

Walter could concentrate on the landscape. 

The view wasn’t beautiful.

The land was arid and barren. After Walter left the resort, gardening - the art the Intermarians were proud of - had vanished into thin air. 

“The land that stays green for 400 days in the year,” remembered Walter and made a mental note to write about that too. 

It took him more time than expected to get to Lulda along the road damaged by dozens of nasty holes. As if the Intermarians had spent all their resources to build the highway from the airport to the resort and then forgot about everything else…

When he finally got to Lulda, Walter decided that there would not be a new entry in the TRIPDOTCOM about the village. Walter drove for about five minutes around the village streets to convince himself entirely that there was nothing here; no seaside, no ancient town wall, no medieval castle, no charming streets, no colourful marketplace, no respectable-looking restaurants - just nothing. 

He got out his smart phone to take a picture and saw that the battery was dead. He pulled up on what looked like the village square to get out of the car and refresh himself. 

There was a man sitting on the ground in front of a house whose façade must have looked awfully painted even thirty years ago. There wasn’t a door behind the man’s back - just a hollow black rectangle. 

The man Walter saw looked so ugly that at first Walter refused to believe he was an Intermarian. Yes, so different was his face from the faces of even the most unpolished maintenance workers in the hotel that this difference looked wicked. The man was sitting on the pavement, his legs stretched out in front of him. His right hand was hammering onto a small metal object with a large and heavy stone. 

The man didn’t raise his eyes from the ground but somehow signalled that he had sensed the presence of Walter. He continued pounding onto whatever he was pounding with greater intensity. 

Walter himself wasn’t a handsome man. Walter’s wife had given up chasing beauty. Still, both their faces emitted a serene friendliness! That is why one felt oneself at peace and in safety with the Walters! 

A little girl ran out the dark, doorless entrance/exit of the house. The girl had beautiful hair. She wore a dirty yellow T shirt which her body had outgrown long ago - the T shirt barely covered the girl’s navel. From the navel down the girl was naked. 

The girl’s face talked about some recent or even actual distress; she held her right hand clenched in a fist in front of her mouth as a pre-language child would do. 

Walter froze. Having had a closer look at her face, her genitals and the shape of her shoulders, Walter could swear that this wasn’t a very small girl at all. She must have seen at least ten years go by.

“Get back to the house!” At that moment Walter got the chance to hear the stone-hammering man’s voice. It had a low, extremely displeasing timbre.

The girl didn’t seem to listen or perhaps she didn’t seem to understand what she was told.  

The man’s other hand – the one that wasn’t holding a stone - rocketed forward and slapped the girl’s bottom. 

The man seemed to be heavy handed. A loud, painful  slap was heard in the otherwise quiet village square of Lulda. The girl gave out a pitiful cry. 

“Get back to the house,” the man said evenly, self-confidently - as if he was quite sure the girl would not challenge his flinty voice again. 

The girl gave out another sharp cry of distress. It sounded almost inhuman. “She - retarded?” Walter asked himself, then reproached himself for his choice of words. 

“Listen, mister, you are not supposed to treat a child like that!” He said. Obviously, Walter was trying to turn himself into the hero of the story he had got himself into. 

The man raised his eyes and looked at him. There was no hate in his look at first - only immense derision. 

“She’s mine little girl.” He spat out those four words between his large front teeth. 

“And you think that necessarily justifies  you? Your girl seems to be in distress. Are fathers free to frighten their little girls like that?” 

The man muttered a muffled swear word, then rose and entered the house. The girl followed him.

Walter looked around  to find approval for his disapproving words in the eyes of some supporter but there was nobody around. However, as he was spinning around his axis, he caught sight of a house that housed a mini market on its ground floor. The shop looked like a tidy, open place.

The shop assistant seemed like a neat, small and sympathetic man. He looked at Walter through the thick lenses of his glasses and smiled a thin smile at him. Walter decided to buy something from here.  

Some of the shelves were covered with the same cheap souvenirs one could see everywhere in the resorts  in Intermarium; in fact - everywhere around the world. One of the kitsch objects, however, made Walter smile and brought immediate relief to his overstrained nerves. 

It was a ceramic children’s money box in the shape of a dice and the size of a man’s fist. Instead of the usual black dots, signifying the numbers from one to six, the money box was coloured blue, and golden stars were scattered on its six sides. Seeing the Union’s flag on this symbol of stability, prudence, and economic power made Walter feel at home.    

Then the shop-assistant spoke to him. 

“What’s your religion?” he asked. 

The question startled Walter, taking him aback with its unusualness, this self-same unusualness sounding almost friendly under the circumstances. 

“I am orthodox,” Walter said with dignity. 

“Is that a Jew?” 

“Christian orthodox,” Walter said, feeling remotely hurt. “I was brought up in an evangelical family, but after my marriage I decided to adopt my wife’s religion.” 

Walter had always been proud of his decision. 

The shop assistant snored- a hardly identifiable reaction. 

“And what is your religion?” Walter ventured. 

The man gave him a disapproving look. 

“I don’t speak of my religion lightly!” He told him instructively. 

“But why did you ask about my religion in the first place?” Walter wondered. 

“Because I am curious. I wonder which god would help you now. “ The shop assistant waved towards the shop window. 

A small mob had gathered around Walter’s car.

Obviously brought here by the ugly stone man, whom Wolter would call “the father” for lack of a more convenient appellation. 

The other five men managed to look more or less like “the father” . 

“Look at the cars those bastards drive!” “The father” shouted and kicked the driver’s door of the Volvo. 

The other men shouted too. 

“Yeah!”

“Yeah!”

“Bastards!”

“Tourists!”

“Tourists!” “The father” repeated as if that word nominated for him the most despicable crime doer in the history of mankind.

“This is a hired vehicle,” Walter said appeasingly. He had stopped five metres in front of the mob. “What is the problem?”

 “I must tear my ass to pay for the second hand shit I drive, and this faggot gets this car just for sucking somebody else’s cock!” “The father” explained.

A storm of short and sharp approving interjections followed. Walter sensed that among the voices there was a horrible shrill one that jutted out among the other voices like a piece of a window glass from a sandy beach. 

“All tourists are faggots!” And Walter now saw the owner of that shrill voice. He looked like an unevolved ape.

”I drive an old Opel Corsa back there at home,” Walter said quietly. “I still can’t get what the problem is.” 

The ape man shouted something unintelligible and Walter felt the strong desire to cover his ears. The voice sounded like someone rubbing sandpaper on glass. Then it dawned on Walter that the ape man wasn’t talking any more. He was scratching his car with something. There was already an ugly  white trail on the driver’s door.

“Look here, gentlemen, there may have been some misunderstanding, and I may have been the reason for it.” Walter tried to hold his voice steady. “So, just let me go in peace, and I will not press charges. I won’t tell anybody. The car is well insured, you know.” 

In answer to his plea, “the father” took a pen knife out of his pocket and unfolded it slowly. He stuck the blade into the front tyre up to the hilt. 

“You better run!” “The father” said quietly. 

“Nigger!” He added spitefully.

For a second Walter thought that he must indeed be in the whirlpool of some horrible misunderstanding. Nigger? Was the man really addressing him? Walter was not an African!

On the third second Walter’s instinct of a threatened animal made him stick his hand into his pocket and pull out his expired phone. 

“Police!” he said in a shaky but loud voice. “My name is Walter Prabhupaty. I am calling from the town square of the village of Lulda. There are six men here who are threatening to kill me. I have done absolutely nothing to them.”

That was what Walter said in the dead ear of his exhausted smartphone in his moment of brilliance. 

The men growled for some time then disappeared in the side streets. 

Now it was time for Walter to follow “the father”’s instruction. 

Run! 

But where? 

Now the desperateness of Walter’s situation struck him like a blow to the head. It was two o'clock in the afternoon - time for siesta. The shop assistant had closed his mini market behind Walter’s back. The afternoon sun struck him on his unprotected head. The dust in the dry air scratched the inside of his lungs. 

The little village of Lulda looked not just dead now. It looked like a lurking predator hunting for game. Everybody knew everybody here. It was only a question of time before “the father” and his friends got the idea that no patrol car was coming. Then they would get Walter and lynch him. So instinct told Walter to run away from Lulda. 

He ran. 

He ran in a direction opposite to the one that brought him into the village. He had forgotten how far it was to the next settlement. Was it four kilometres? Was it forty? Walter reached the end of the village and saw that the road out of the village passed through a flat, barren field. Not much of an advantage for a hunted man. But what other choice did he have?

Maybe half an hour later the road made a sharp turn and opened into the next settlement. Can it be that easy? Tears of joy rushed into Walter’s eyes. 

Through tears he could see that there was something very wrong with the design of this settlement. If one could speak about design at all. Nasty wooden huts and slums made out of cardboard and nylon were scattered on either side of the road. In the background, however, some three- and four-storey houses stuck out proudly, their walls freshly painted in pink or orange, their overall look - new and glitzy. Rivulets of dirty water flowed between the houses and the derelict slums. 

Without ever having seen a Roma borough live, Walter found himself in one. Soon the Roma people came as well. But they did not come to meet Walter or circle him or face him directly like the men from Lulda did. No, there were human faces peering between the boards of fences, from behind trees, from holes made in the nylon walls of the slums, all of them hardly visible. 

“Hallo!” Walter cried out, spinning around in every direction in the hope of making eye contact with at least one face. 

“Hallo there! Look here, I was attacked by some unknown men in Lulda. Could anybody give me a phone to call the police? Please!”

“You Syrian?”

The voices shouted back at him. Walter was perplexed. That afternoon the Intermarians were outdoing themselves in asking the most unexpected questions.

“No, I’m not Syrian,” Walter answered. 

“You Iranian?”

“No, I’m not!” Walter shouted in dismay. As a matter of fact his grandfather was a Pakistani, but what did it matter!? 

“You fall from the trucks?” The voices pressed him for answers. 

“What trucks!?” Walter shrieked. 

Then there was a silence, as if the voices were perplexed by Walter’s identity. This gave Walter the opportunity to explain his predicament once more. 

“I only want to make a phone call to ask for help!” Walter pleaded pitifully. There was another moment of silence, then a man’s bass voice boomed: “No refugees!” 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, no refugees!” 

More and more voices seemed to agree on that. 

Walter finally got it. Because of the colour of his skin and his dishevelled look after running in the heat, the Roma people thought him to be an immigrant smuggled into their country. 

“No, no!” Walter shouted at the top of his voice. “I am not a refugee. I am a citizen of the Union. Let me call the police and I’ll go away.”

The voices came back, ever more threatening. 

“Go away!”

“Go Hungary!”

“Don’t want police here!”

“Listen!” Walter was losing his voice. “I can pay!”

He brought out a hundred buck banknote from his wallet and waved it in the air. 

“Go away! No refugees!” 

The voices were completely united now. Then came the stones. One of them hit Walter on the hip, the other swished  past his ear. 

He had to run again. 

Two hours later when he was on the verge of utter exhaustion, when he was no longer running, but barely able to trudge his feet along the road, Walter heard the sound of a motor engine behind his back. He looked frantically to his left and his right but there was no place to hide. He decided he would meet his destiny standing on the road. When the vehicle came nearer, Walter saw that it was a bus. 

Walter waved his arms madly and shouted madly. The bus pulled over right at his feet. It looked like an intercity bus with only one door. This door opened for Walter and an amiable voice told him. 

“Hop in!” 

Walter’s blurred gaze fell on an old man at the wheel of the bus wearing a uniform shirt in a grey colour and short sleeves. 

“I can pay. I have money!” Walter wailed. 

“No need. Don’t worry,” the old man assured him. “This is not a regular course. I am driving my passengers to Culda. Be my guest!” 

“Culda is OK! Culda is perfect! ” Walter cried out. He didn’t know where Culda was, but it sounded like a big place with a lot of police stations and a thousand telephone boxes. 

“Take a seat.” The bus driver invited him in like a top-class waiter would invite a client into a top-class restaurant. 

Walter’s look glided along the corridor of the bus. All the seats seemed taken by quiet passengers, but conveniently, there was a single extra seat on the right side of the driver. He took it thankfully. 

At first sight the bus looked old but somehow decorously old. There was a trace of a sour sweet aroma in the air - some sort of a heavy oriental perfume, perhaps. And it was cold, very cold. 

Coldness, however, was the best thing for Walter, who had spent the last three hours unprotected under a Saharan sun. Threatened. Hunted. Now that he was safe he dreamed of sweet revenge for the hostile Roma people and those ruffians in Lulda. He threw a stealthy glance at the bus driver.   

The old man looked very brittle and very pale, no trace of menace whatsoever. Walter judged him to be a simple soul. After some consideration he decided not to tell the driver about his misfortune. He might have relatives and friends in Lulda and might well not share very warm feelings for tawny immigrants. 

“A long drive today?” He asked sympathetically.

“Ah!” The old man waved his hand complacently. “It is nothing. I am glad to serve. I was retired once. Good for nothing. They might have put me down as dead in the community register. I had to live a long time alone in my hut at the volcano’s edge,”

“The volcano?” 

“But it’s good for the soul, you know. Because you know what they say - man is made of earth, water, wind and fire.”

A simple soul with a poetic note.

Speaking of fire, Walter wouldn’t mind sitting in front of a nice fireplace right now, the logs inside crackling in orange flames. 

“Does it need to be so cool here?” Walter ventured. 

“They needed it like this.” The old driver threw a glance over his shoulders towards the passengers. Walter turned around to look at them too. On the seat behind him an old couple were sleeping, their mouths open. On the seat to his right, the head of a teenage girl rested on the breast of a teenage boy. Deep in their sleep too. 

“They are all sleeping,” commented Walter. “Are they tired?” He asked sympathetically. “Have they been on an excursion today?”

“They are just going on one.“ 

The older driver winked at Walter and this somehow made him uncomfortable.  

With each passing cold minute, he was getting more and more uneasy. 

“Air- conditioners can be very dangerous to sleeping people,” he remarked casually. “I remember dozing off in the office once with the AC on full blast. After that, I was stiff for more than a week.” 

“I am bloody freezing myself.” The old man agreed. “But I cannot turn it down. The heat will spoil their flesh.”

“Will spoil their flesh.” Walter acknowledged the old man’s poetic expression, not being entirely sure what he meant. 

“They putrefy quickly and start to stink.,” the old man explained complacently.

Walter sprang from his seat. He faced the corridor with the passengers, his jaw dropped in voiceless terror. The two couples on the front pairs of seats were sleeping quite silently indeed, quite immobile. Quite dead. 

Walter made a few shaky steps along the inside of the bus.  

Some of the eyes were closed; some gazed wildly; some had died quietly; some had died in pain.

At last Walter was able to give out a shriek.

“Wha’! What’s this!?” 

He turned his back to the dead passengers, but he was afraid to sit by the driver again.

“This,” the driver said emphatically, “this is the entire population of the village of Mirovane. The whole village was wiped out by the Puknitza in a single night. Poor souls. May God give them peace.”

“Wiped out by what?” Walter managed to ask. He slumped on his seat, suddenly devoid of strength.

“A local disease’s been around for some time. The epidemic subsides and then it breaks out again. Devil knows why.” 

The driver then threw a slightly reproachful side look at Walter. 

“Haven’t heard about it? You ain’t from these parts, ai you? Where do you all guys fall from?” 

Walter fixed a dull look ahead. 

The driver continued to rattle on. 

“My village was wiped out as well. But the Puknitza didn’t get me. I didn’t even suffer an hour of fever or a toothache. I don’t know whether it is my immunity or it is just the Puknitza saving a special kind of death for me.” 

“Anyway. I decided to make myself useful. I go to the big boss in the sanitation department and tell them you can use my services for free. It fitted in quite nicely that I was a bus driver before I got retired. With my old bus we can dispose of a larger number of bodies at once.” 

“How long has this been going on? Why wasn’t it broadcast on the media?” Walter asked in a hollow voice. 

“Wasn’t broadcast? Where do you guys get your news from?” 

“The news column of TRIPDOTCOM. The only news worth knowing” Walter quoted bitterly.

“Anyway. They’ve been raising quite a din on our TV. For a third year on the run.” 

The sheer span of time horrified Walter. 

“But don’t worry! They’ll get the knack of it.” The driver cheered him up. “They’ve got the knack of dealing with AIDS, let alone a simple disease like Puknitza. The other day one of our MPs said on the TV:  ‘If we don’t cope with the situation soon enough, this might threaten the Union’s integrity.’ Says he. And I know my own people, yes sir! When they start talking like that, they will take the matter seriously or they’ll get their asses kicked.“

The driver’s reassurance did not make Walter calm down at all. 

“Pull up!” He said. “I wanna get off.” 

The bus driver shook his head regretfully. 

“Oh no, I’m afraid you can’t.” 

“But, but I have a whole week from my holiday left!” Walter wept. 

 “Well, it is not your fault that you have entered a quarantine area, is it? Your bosses might give you another holiday. Now they’ll lock you up and observe you, and send your blood to the micro lab. Then if everything is OK with you, you might get a few more days on the beach.” 

The old man stepped on the accelerator. He grabbed the wheel. His eyes shone like the eyes of a madman. He shouted: “I am just obeying orders. Everybody jumps in, nobody gets off. That’s what the big boss says!” 

Edited by Tom Philips