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off like a bat out of hell. Ahead of us, mist. The man chattered, mixing Romanian, Russian, and German. He attempted Polish. He had done Europe, including Warsaw. He said he would take us, then come back here, because the buses with the goods would be let through eventually, and the wheeling and dealing would start up just past the barriers. They always let the buses in, and he would fill his Passat to the top with bicycle wheels, tires, boxes of laundry detergent, chocolate bars, earflap hats in the middle of summer because they were cheaper now, and all the other riches of the Ukrainian land. He would take us, then return, and go back again to Suceava, to the big market not far from a factory that stank of sulfuric acid, a field covered with tented booths to the horizon. He went on and on, and in his headlights now and then we saw the gleaming eyes of horses pulling unseen wagons with sleeping drivers. He talked, but I kept dozing off. T. turned and remarked, "Look at that steering wheel." Again we passed a mysterious vehicle, and the man made a full half-turn of the wheel before the car responded. Our speedometer was broken, but I was certain he had the gas pedal to the floor. So I opened my eyes and listened to the map of Europe: Berlin, Frankfurt, Kiev, Budapest, Vienna ...
    Suceava was a shadow in ultramarine. We tore across a viaduct. The main station was under repair, so we went to Gara Suceava Nord, wanting to continue south, without stopping, along the Siret River and turn west only around Adjud, leave Moldova, and get to Transylvania. That was our plan. To keep going and sleep on the trains, which would all come at our convenience and take us where we wanted to go.
    Gara Suceava Nord was as big as a mountainside and dark. Like entering a cave. The yellow light barely dispersed the gloom. We made our way through a crowd. A crowd at four in the morning is a curious thing: a meeting in a madhouse. Those who stood or moved had their eyes open but seemed asleep, under a spell, the effect of that insomniac light, which trickled out from who knows where. It could have come from the ceiling, from the walls, or maybe from people's bodies. Not enough of it, in any case, for us to believe in the reality of all these tableaux vivants, in fitful slow motion, in the belly of the station. Someone here wasn't real: either we or they.
    At any rate, there were no trains heading south at that hour, and we didn't have the strength to wait. We went outside. Taxis in a row, their drivers chatting and smoking. Mainly Dacias, and two ancient Mercedes. Instead of going by rail, I thought we could take a car across the Petru Vodă Pass, the Bicaz Gorge, the Bicaz and Bucin Passes, in this way crossing the main ridge of the Carpathians to reach at last the heart of Transylvania. But the keepers of meters went wide-eyed when they heard "Tîrgu Mureş," and they shook their heads when they heard "Sighiş oara." It was only three hundred kilometers, we said, but they opened their arms and kicked the tires of their automobiles, because they didn't believe that any of them could climb so high and return in one piece. Only one, who drove an old green boxy Mercedes, put his hands in his pockets, spat, and said, "Două sute dolar." We realized then that they took us for lunatics.
    A young, slender boy said he would drive us to a hotel, so we could sleep. Like children, we let ourselves be packed into a red Dacia. We were powerless. Hotel Socim, we said. He didn't advise that. But we were stupidly stubborn, thinking the kid wanted to fleece us. He smiled, as if to say, "Lord Jesus has forsaken you," but he helped us with our bags and drove us into the dawning city. He took what was on the meter, no more, and promised that if we phoned, he would come for us.
    And what an awakening that was on Jean Bart Street 24 ... The ceiling so low, it was hard to sit on the bed. To be safe, I didn't get up, only listened to one big truck after another