Crossing the flat area, my face feels intensely cold as the wind comes up. I have to keep helplessly dashing tears from my face.

*

Faint cries of enervated surprise break our monotonous rattle; on the slope rising in an acute curve to the left a black piglet stands watching us sidelong. It soon trots away beneath the rise.

Now, as the slope levels a bit, a house is coming into view on the left side. It stands out, a peaked blue angle against the high arc of the horizon that no other thing breaks. The hill is all packed earth, and I can’t see a single stone or so much as a pebble on it, not a twig or blade of grass. This is the first house we’ve come across, and after bringing it a few dozen feet further out of the mist I see a dark activity flurry the air above it. The gaunt stone pipe of its chimney dribbles smoke into the fog. As I hold my gaze on the house I remember a line of verse, “an orphan fang in gums of clay.” Terrible. I wish I had forgotten it.

I can’t run. Where would I go? The land is barren, and I don’t know it. Makemin would shoot a deserter. What do I do?

The path will pass close to the house. Two or three black hogs are drowsing in a stone sty adjoining it. Makemin halts the column and beckons me to accompany him to the house. As we plod up to the door, he informs me I am to identify him to the occupants if any by the rank of brevet colonel. He is less peremptory with me than usual and I am ashamed of the idiot child of pride this stirs in me, as I imagine I have acquitted myself well in his eyes.

A confined, level spot has been cleared before the front of the house, which faces the path. Two windows with big shutters now shut, and another set of shut shutters directly over the sturdy-looking front door. By their regularity, I can tell these fittings are made of metal, not wood. The house is black brick with coal colored mortar, and a slate roof. Makemin raps noisily on the door with his knuckles, stands back and waits. After a moment, the upper half of the door is swung back by a lackadaisacal-looking woman with poached-egg eyes and her black hair is a little frizzled. Her sleepy face is sallow and vaguely made, but there’s something even sly in the way she takes us in, resting her forearms on the lower half of the door casually.

I greet her and reveal to her our amazing identities. Behind her, I can see a strangely inviting, limpid darkness, through which a fire sends flitting rays like the setting sun streaking thick and agitated clouds. Two old men are irrigating soup into their beards at a burnished wooden table with a single empty seat and a bowl waiting. Tin tram signs hang from the walls. Makemin asks me to ask her if she’s seen any men in black uniforms or groups of Yesegs pass this way. She addresses her response to me, her voice is caressing, shrill but quiet.