A Casual Sunday Tourist
Lazarus Trubman
As I get older, people and events disappear from my memory, but some, thank goodness, stay there forever. Like the story of a murder I never committed.
It was in 1980, a Sunday at the end of February or in the beginning of March. I was in the Army reserve and we were stationed in the vicinity of Orhey, a cloudless day. I had a weekend leave, but I didn’t take a bus to Chisinau to see my girlfriend. I wanted to be away from people, and went up into the Orhey Forest. I had spent the night in an abandoned hay barn; clear, starry night. Since it was really cold outside the barn, I slept longer than usual and was up and about way after the sunrise. I walked very quickly, deep into the forest, where there was still a lot of snow, and it was still crisp and hard.
I rested right before the path became quite steep, not a soul in sight. I breakfasted. I had a knife with me – that was why I didn’t want to be seen by anyone in the valley, a lone soldier with a knife. I had taken off my army sheepskin coat and hung it from the belt; every now and then I stopped and peered around to see if anyone was coming, a patrol with an officer perhaps. But I saw no one and I heard nothing either. Soft noise of the snow falling from the branches because of the light wind, nothing else.
Later, when the path reached the highest point, I felt tired; happy and tired. It was getting warmer, and after I put up my tourist tent, inside which I was out of the wind, I actually took off my sweaty shirt and rolled my soldier’s blouse into a pillow. Then I slept. I was really tired, I don’t know how long…
The man, who had suddenly spoken to me, a civilian, obviously Russian, didn’t want to disturb me, as he said, when he saw my amusement; but naturally I immediately sat up. He had evidently been here for some time; he had put down his rucksack not far away. He wanted to know, a pair of field-glasses to his face, how far the Orhey Forest reaches east and west. “You’re a soldier, you might know,” he said with a certain smile, and as I showed him what he wanted to know I soon noticed how well he knew the district. He was carrying a map in the approved manner, although, as we were told, maps were not allowed to be carried by civilians during military training in the area. A lot of soldiers here, yes… He was trying hard, I could see, to take my military uniform seriously. He offered me his field-glasses as he happened to have another pair. I saw through his field-glasses that he used my tracks. No one else came. He stayed for about an hour, and we chatted above all about the life of an army reservist and about the flora, of which he spoke in a tone of great appreciation. Not knowing why actually, I had an inhibition against looking him in the face, as though prepared for some tactless remark that embarrassed me in advance. He was very surprised indeed when it turned out that I knew a lot. And this is what got stuck in my memory better than anything else: the more fluently the conversation now went, the more urgently I waited for the moment when he would pick up his rucksack. That he would make it back to town before 4:00 p.m., he left me in no doubt. Now he picked up his rucksack, not without offering me an apple. I felt somewhat ashamed. An apple this deep in the forest was something. Finally, he disappeared between the trees with a cordial wave and wishing me a good time in the army…
For some reason I felt angry. I didn’t see him again until he reached the small treeless spot some two hundred yards below me, so that all I could see using the gifted field-glasses was his green hat. He slipped, but managed to steady himself; then he walked more carefully. I stood still until he disappeared behind the trees, a little man in the forest…
Back inside the tent, I fell asleep again, now for good…
When I woke up, probably because I was cold, I was dismayed by the thought: I could have stabbed him in the back with my military knife. I knew I didn’t do it. I hadn’t dreamed it either; I merely woke with the waking thought: a stab in the back as he bent down for his rucksack would have killed him instantly.
Then I ate his apple.
Of course, I am glad I didn’t do it. It would have been murder. I have never talked to anyone about it, not even to my close friends, although I didn’t do it. I saw no one far and wide. No eyewitnesses. Light wind and no listening ear. Next evening in the garrison, during the roll-call, I would have stepped into the back row, head to the right, hand on the seam, at attention, good and straight. Afterwards, I’d play some chess with my neighbour. No one would ever have noticed from looking at me, I don’t think…
Since then I have talked to a lot of murderers, at the university, during concerts and soccer games; you can’t tell by looking at them! When I had eaten his apple, I would’ve turned him on his back to look at his face, to make sure that he was dead…
I glanced at my wristwatch: time to go down. I picked up my belt, put on the sheepskin coat. The snow felt now much softer, the wind stopped. By the time I got out of the Orhey Forest I had actually forgotten the man already. I had thoroughly real worries which were more sensible to think about: begging with the beast of a sergeant-major, who would try to put me on guard duty again, but above all the profession that had been left home. My profession wasn’t soldiering…
I refused to think which hungry animal would’ve gotten to him first, and I didn’t know why I was worried about what hadn’t happened anyway.
Although I slowly became convinced that the man in the Orhey Forest was no harmless tourist, I said nothing about it. I was put on guard duty later in the evening, had hellish sunburn, fever. The guard duty was usually four hours long, so I had nothing to do but look and see whether a green hat suddenly came into my view. Naturally my belletristic hope was not fulfilled. I walked: fifty steps this way, fifty steps that…
Why was I suddenly remembering all this?
Because at that time, 1977, there really weren’t any fucking tourists!
In the following years, a lot of things happened. Real things. I never thought of it again, it was certainly no time, God knows, for imaginary murders, when, as I soon knew, there were enough of the other sort every day. So, I thought no more about it and never told anyone about that Sunday in the Orhey Forest; it was too ridiculous. And, after all, I didn’t do it. The hand of the law will not descend upon my shoulder.
So, forget it!
Not till much later, while reading a newspaper, did I suddenly think of it again. I read there, among other things, that the Moldavian government, with a nod from the Soviets, of course, had planned to build an underground labour camp in the Orhey Forest. The plans were ready, and it was safe to assume that such plans were not prepared without a thorough study of the terrain. Who reconnoitered the terrain around Orhey? Perhaps it was the man who, on Sunday in 1980, also made an excursion to the Orhey Forest, and whom I didn’t stab in the back…
I don’t know. I shall never find out who he was.
What for?
We just chatted the way people do in the middle of a night forest, two men who are the only ones for a few kilometres around. Without formalities, naturally, a handshake without introductions. Both of them have reached this point; both have the same wide panorama. Later I ate his apple and used his field-glasses to see him in the trees. Perhaps he was a good fellow; perhaps I actually met him again, without knowing it, many years later, dressed differently and so that with the best will in the world we couldn’t recognise each other again… Only sometimes I’m so uncertain. Suddenly. I know it’s ridiculous. Not to be able to forget an act one never performed is ridiculous. And I never tell anyone about it. And sometimes I completely forget him again…
Only his voice remains in my ear.
Only a lot of deaths.
I’m a college professor from a small town in the ancient land of Transylvania, who immigrated to the United States in 1990. In 2017, after twenty-two years of teaching Theory of Literature and Cyrillic languages, I retired to devote my time to writing.
Edited by Richard Horton/Bozhidar Ivanov