The next morning, as they were trying to say good-bye to Fer, who had been reading since dawn, a woman rushed by. She stopped, looked around, then noticed Nina and returned.
“I am looking for the Old Man,” said the Woman. “He is supposed to be here somewhere, hidden under nine blankets,” she added, annoyed.
“You must be a refugee, just like me,” said Nina.
The Woman looked perplexed that the Old Man wasn’t there, where she expected him to be.
“I must find him. He has to come with me.”
Nina noticed something unusual about her.
“Where are you going?”
“Far away.”
“To the sea!” Nina exclaimed naïvely. And she immediately imagined travelling with this woman, sharing advice, food, hopes, courage. We’ll make it together, she thought.
The Woman stepped back and gave her an ashen and bewildered stare.
“I am going farther than that, somewhere you haven’t been and you don’t want to get to yet.”
Nina pondered for a moment, but could not understand. There were so many places she had never been. But what was the place she wouldn’t want to go to yet? Since she was never good at resolving puzzles quickly — her mind worked slowly — she decided not to think about it any more. It would come to her, in a day or two: she would suddenly figure it out; it would seem so simple.
“You have to take the children to the sea. I will find you when the time comes.”
Behind her, there were seven open coffins made of furniture boards. A man was hastily digging shallow holes. Only one coffin was empty and the others contained shrunken bodies of old people who looked like children, unwashed, peaceful.
“The empty one is for him. They all died of hunger.”
The gravedigger, not ducking the bullets, just smiled at Nina and continued digging the last hole beside the empty coffin.
“Oh, that’s my husband. He helps me. With so many wars raging, I couldn’t do my job alone.”
Nina suddenly noticed that the woman’s face, a yellowish-grey colour, was terribly thin and sunken. Frightened, she hurried away.
After walking for a long time, Nina realized that the barbed wire was gone. She tried to guess which way to go but every direction looked the same. Scorched soil was everywhere around, not a tuft of grass. She was in the middle of a valley and could no longer see the city. The people had disappeared again.
In the distance, on top of a small hill, Nina saw something that looked like a small tree. She was determined to reach that hilltop and spend the night there. The shoes were still working their magic and she got there before the night fell.