K. said nothing.

“Won’t matter where you’re headed.” Fox smoked his cigarette right to the end and threw the butt onto the lawn. “It’s a whole other world there.”

The priest waded through the crowd and made for the buses. His beard was dishevelled, long grey hair protruded from under his skufia. He brandished his aspergillum ominously, as though it were a weapon. A skinny young man in a worn brown jacket walked on his right side carrying a bucket of holy water. To his left, a man in a stripy T-shirt held a baseball bat.

Fox thrust his hand into his pocket, took out some change and, as the group came level with them, threw the coins into the collection box carried by the man with the bat.

“All the best,” he said.

K. chuckled.

“So did you come to check on me or to gloat?”

Fox’s face soured.

“You’re right to be afraid. Easy enough to go to war. Hard to return.”

“Sure, you tell this guy, the one who came to ask if your wounded needed help, how easy it is to go to war.”

“So just help. If you get there.”

The priest sprinkled the trucks and prayed: “Lord lend refuge and deliver.”

The rally dispersed.

“Are you going to wait and make sure I get on the bus?”

“Sure. By the way, sit on the right if there’s a seat free.”

“So I’m in the sun?”

“I’m being serious. There is no-man’s land between Donetsk and Slovyansk. You never know who you are going to run into on the way. If there’s an ambush, they’ll be coming from the north. The left, that is.”

K. said nothing. He boarded the bus and sat at a window on the right, near the exit. He placed his backpack under the seat. A man standing beneath his window was performing a final farewell. Scruffy beyond his years, he hugged a chubby wife, his face weary from sorrow and hard work, their son in her arms. Two older girls next to her clutched her skirt. While all around were filing onto the bus, the five were meshed in an embrace: his arms, her shoulders, his neck, the children’s arms hugging waists and legs. Soldiers mounted the steps. The priest’s sprinkling caught everybody. The weeping grew louder and the children whimpered amid the last frenzied hugs, the kind that leave you exhausted. Men whispered to themselves, women’s tears rolled down flushed cheeks and onto rough fabric shoulders. And the family beneath the window kept rocking unsteadily, like boats out at sea. The men tried not to drag it out, got onboard and turned away from the windows, fighting back the tears. The hug finally dissolved, revealing moist faces, and the father got on the bus too. He sat next to K.

His skin was a pale, earthy hue. The cropped, grey hair on his head and jowls was flecked with black. He pressed his hand to the glass.

The woman pointed for the boy to see. It wasn’t sadness on her face, but a reproach. She determinedly held up her son.