Men of Winter

Chapter V

'Seek for word of your lost father, even if nothing more than a traveler's tale.' — Odyssey 1

In the morning the landlord and his wife were at work serving breakfast for their lodgers with no hint of a change between them. He directed everyone to be seated with his usual reserved and requisite politeness, while his taciturn wife brought the meager fare from the kitchen. I had slept until past daybreak and did not hear my neighbor stir from her room. As with all couples, they must work things out themselves.

Breakfast was the northcountry's version of a potato pancake – mostly flour and a bit of shredded potato, served with a teaspoon of butter – and tea. Afterward, I set out for the Hotel Slopek, which I knew was near the rail station. The hotel was the site of a disturbance some months back, according to one of the reports at the news bureau. There were innumerable reports of disturbances, but the alleged perpetrator of the one at the Hotel Slopek sent three men to hospital.

It was a day much like the one before: sunny and cold with the promise of diminishing sun and increasing cold. I did not bother looking for a ride of some sort; it was not a long walk. En route I passed the brothel I happened across my first night. Of course it looked different in the light of day, much more like an accounting office or some such, which no doubt was its original purpose. It was quite close to my pension, and I thought about my foolish fear at being lost. Yet it was a city that inspired fear, or at least a lack of confidence in the world. The whole of the city, citizenry and all, seemed perched on the edge of some precipice, ready to topple into a black unknown. I imagined the snow and ice would quickly cover the spot where Iiloskova stood, leaving no trace of the once prosperous bastion of civilization.

It occurred to me that the army should allow its enemy to advance, allow it to march straight through the Great White Desert all the way to Iiloskova, unopposed. For surely when it arrived in the city and took stock of the place, its commanders would immediately give the signal to retreat. As they returned through the snow desert heaped with the dead, they would surely ask themselves what they had been fighting for all those years. The soldiers would return to their home country, put down rifle and bayonet, and take up the implements of farming, to try to scratch out a life amidst the frozen rock and earth.

It was a whimsical notion. Who could understand why armies engaged each other? I thought of the long-ago war in Troy – no doubt my conversation on the train sparked the recollection of such knowledge – fought over a woman. If two men can knock each other's brains out over a beautiful woman, why not two armies of men? I tried to imagine two armies of women clashing over a man but it was an impossible premise. If they did, it is certain the losers would get him.

The hotel was tall by Iiloskova standards and I saw its sharply pitched slate roof from some distance. Nearly all the buildings of the city had severely pitched roofs; it was not wise to allow snow and ice to accumulate. A winter storm could stave in a flat roof. Two men in black coats were shoveling and sweeping snow from the hotel's wide steps as I approached. They wore scarves around their mouths and noses, but their breath still came in puffs of smoke. The façade of the Hotel Slopek was cream-colored stucco, and there was a high pointed arch over its entrance. I went through the heavy doors and stamped the snow from my shoes.

The lobby of the hotel had a high ceiling, almost as high as the rail station's. Windows near the green-painted ceiling allowed in a copious amount of light, casting a verdant glow throughout the lobby area. It was similar to the light in a forest when a midday sun is shining through the leafy canopy. I breathed deeply, hoping the scent would be that of a forest, but of course it was the same stale, indoor smell I had encountered in all the buildings of Iiloskova. I also detected a whiff of pipe tobacco and at the far end of the lobby, in a crushed velvet chair, was a bald man in an old-style black suit having a smoke.