With first light, their predicament becomes clear. Both of them are beaten, battered and tattered, and Zizek urgently needs a doctor. They have nothing left apart from the rum barrel, neither food nor water.
Zizek stops the cart by a small lake where they can wash and fill their water flasks. Fanny climbs down and crouches among the reeds. Zizek assumes she is urinating, but when she does not return, he walks over to check that she is alright. He finds her sitting on a rock, her dress rolled up almost to her knees, sharpening her knife on a smooth stone.
He approaches hesitantly, careful not to make a noise, assuming that Fanny is in a state of shock. He wants to say something, but his words argue with each other inside his head and he can’t get them out.
His failed attempt at speech is not lost on Fanny. For the first time, Zizek’s enormous body is showing signs of life. They’ve been riding together for two days and he has not yet said a single word.
“Why did you come with me, Zizek Breshov?” she asks in Polish, standing up to face him.
Zizek scratches his head, the gaze of his bright-coloured eyes lowered. He retreats. She chases after him and grabs hold of his arm, and he recoils like a child receiving a scolding.
“I am sorry, Zizek Breshov, I . . .” She can feel a sob crawling up her throat.
Zizek looks at her hand gripping his arm as if it were a thorn that had penetrated his flesh. He keeps quite still, as if the slightest movement would make the thorn scratch into his arm until it bleeds. And yet he does not want to pull away. He feels ants creep beneath his skin and march in a column up his spine, all the way to the nape of his neck. A raw, addictive pain paralyses his limbs, and the sudden thought of death comes to his mind. He is ready to die at this very moment, as her fingers are biting into his skin. He feels as if he has been kicked up in the air, and a few first words are launched out of his throat to bridge the distance.
“We must return to Motal.” He is suffocated by his own words. “I’m sorry, but if we stay here, they will find us.”
Fanny lets go of his arm and walks away. If he has waited so long just to say this, it would have been better if he had remained silent. She slashes at the stalks of oats and then goes to feed the horses.
Zizek knows he has made a mistake. His first words after dec-ades of silence, and they have not met with the desired reception. Perhaps it would have been better if he had never opened his mouth, what an idiot he was even to try. He had only wanted to avoid more trouble, now that they are left without food and are wanted for murder throughout the region. If they do not hurry back to Motal, they risk imminent arrest, or even ending up in the clutches of an angry mob. Fanny could return to her village, she could resume her normal life without arousing any suspicion, and all would be well. And then he looks up and sees that Fanny has unharnessed the young horse and is leading it towards him.
“Here, Zizek Breshov.” She hands him the reins. “Here you go; I will take the old one.”
Zizek cannot utter a word in response before she turns towards the veteran steed, which nervously shifts back and forth, rocking the cart and advising them that he has no intention of pulling all that weight on his own. Fanny tries to quash the dissent with a brandishing of the whip, and the horse punishes her for this insolence by shoving her straight into a muddy puddle.
Zizek rushes to help her up, failing to hide the beginnings of a smile at the sight of Fanny wallowing in the muck. She sees his scarred lips starting to twitch, and bursts out laughing.
“This is quite a horse indeed!” she says, imitating the voice of the gang leader, and they both collapse with the contagious laughter of madness and despair.
Fanny seizes Zizek’s hand and pulls herself out of the muddy embarrassment, and they sit together at the edge of the pond, which, at first light and from a distance, had struck them as a lake, and now, close up, reeks of swamp. They gaze out at the boggy plain, which resembles the surface of a burnt cake, and they peer at each other, their energy spent. When they had first set out on this journey, they could not have dreamt that by this point they would be in the middle of nowhere with three corpses to their credit. Zizek pulls out his snuff box and wipes his nose with his sleeve, and Fanny notices that the cut in his lip is deep and still oozing.
When they are under way again, he pours out two cups of rum and proposes a new plan, with the sudden excitement of one who has found a precious thing believed lost for ever.
“Baranavichy!”
“What?” Fanny says, taken aback.
“Baranavichy. I’m sorry, but I know the owner of a small inn there, perhaps you can stay there, just for a few nights, until they stop searching.” Zizek fires out his words at great speed, without pausing for breath, as if compelled by a need to make up for lost time. “In the meantime, you must burn the bloodstained uniform, please – do it quickly – and get yourself new clothes, of course.”
“Not ‘myself’, Zizek Breshov,” she corrects him. “Ourselves.”
“I’m sorry, but you must ride to the next village and rely on the villagers’ charity for food and clothes, there isn’t any other choice. Anyway, you won’t be able to linger there for more than an hour, any rumour about two killers wandering between towns will spread quickly, and this is why you can’t keep travelling at night. Your only option is to blend in, to pretend you have a family there, a father and daughter. If they ask questions, say nothing. And then go to the inn, you can stay there for a few nights, until they call off the search.”
“We can stay there, you mean,” she says. “I am not going anywhere without you.”
“Hurry, please,” he says, again ignoring her.
Fanny stares at him in amazement. The revival of Zizek’s speech is dazzling, but why won’t he include himself in the plans he is making for her? She doesn’t know. But his instructions sound reasonable, and so she answers his pleading gaze with a nod. Apparently petrified by the outpouring of his own words, Zizek lowers his eyes, reins in the horses, and gets to work. He gathers the uniform, coat and jacket and rolls them in thorny bracken he pulls up from the edge of the bog. He sets fire to this incriminating bundle and stokes the flames to ensure that his entire military past is incinerated. A whole life goes up in flames, and Zizek looks at Fanny, his face furrowed with anguish, like a man who has just lost everything he owns. He purses his lips with the intensity of a starved baby. Fanny takes his arm, still stunned by the verbal stream that just gushed from the man whom everyone considered the town fool, and together, caked in dried mud, they stand and watch the dying flames.