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causes that are lost. Exactly as if trying to redeem doubt with disinterested love. The loneliness of a liberated mind is as great as the sky over Transylvania. Such a mind wanders like cattle in search of shade or a watering place.
    In the end, however, he did return to Răinari. Before the house in which he was born stands his bust. The house is the color of a faded rose. The wall facing the street has two windows with shutters. The facade is done with a cornice and pilasters. The bust itself is on a low pedestal, Cioran's face rendered realistically and unskillfully. A folk artist might have done it, imitating refined art. The work is "small, modest, and without qualities" aside from its resemblance to the original, but it suits this village square. Every day, herds of cows and sheep pass it, leaving behind their warmth and smell. Neither the wide world nor Paris left any mark on that face. It is sad and tired. Such men sit in the pub next to the barber and in the store-shed under the grapevine. Everything looks as if someone here had made his dream come true, granted his final wish.
    "Acel blestemat, acel splendid Ră inari."

Our Leader
    B U T T H A T ' S W H A T it's like: any moment you take the wrong turn, stumble, get lost— geography's no help—and forget the objective eye. Nothing is as it first appears; splinters of meaning lurk everywhere, and your mind catches on them like pants on barbed wire. You can't simply write, for example, that we crossed the border at Siret at night on foot, and the Romanian guards, who kept in check the entire passageway and five buses carrying dozens of tons of contraband, let us through with a gruff but friendly laugh. On the other side, there was only the night. We waited for something to come from Ukraine and take us, but nothing came, no old Lada, no Dacia. It's strange finding yourself in a foreign land when the only scenery is the dark. Off to a side, crawling shadows beyond the glass, so we went in their direction, because at that hour a man is like a moth, drawn to any light. In the border tavern, two guys sat at a small table playing a game resembling dominoes. We ordered coffee. The bartender made it in a saucepan on a hot plate. It was good, strong. Hearing us speak Polish, he tried too, but we understood only
babka
( "grandmother") and
Wrocław.
We asked about the bus or whatever, but he spread his arms and said something like "dimineaŢă tîrg in Suceava." In that blue, breath-humid light I drank Bihor palinka for the first time. It was worse than any Hungarian brandy, but it warmed, and I wanted something more than coffee since this fellow had a grandmother in Wrocław.
    We went back to the road, but nothing had changed. A glow above the border; the darkness to the south, like India ink drying. An hour before dawn, cars began to assemble in front of the tavern. They stopped and waited for those buses that had been imprisoned between barriers; they were waiting for merchandise. A Dacia arrived, its tail scraping the asphalt. Four men inside. The driver got out and said, "Suceava zece dolar." He grabbed our knapsacks, threw them on the roof of the car, and tried tying them down. I asked him how the hell he thought this could work, pointing at the guys packed inside. He smiled and patted his knees: we'd fit somehow, one on top of the other. He was in a wonderful mood, and you could smell the drink on him. M. shouted no, she didn't care to end up a statistic without seeing even a little of verdant Bukovina. So we untied the cords and pulled our stuff down. The driver made a sad face and said, "Cinci dolar." M. replied, "Eu nu merg"; then we were alone in the cold wind blowing from Chernivtsi.
    When the sky had turned to dark blue, a red Passat Kombi drove up and a man said, "Cincisprezece dolar," and we didn't object, because this conveyance was empty, spacious, and warm.
Cincisprezece
is not much for fifty kilometers after a sleepless night. We took