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nodded, and he stood aside while his mother spoke hesitantly to old women before finally introducing him to Zuzanny Wichowska and Elwira Lisiewicz and Halina Grzybowska. He removed his hat for each woman, and though they gave him timid smiles, they did not offer their hands.
    On each woman’s forehead was a fading black stain. Yesterday, he realized, had been Ash Wednesday.
    His mother’s shop was a narrow, nameless place two doors down from the butcher’s. She unlocked the door and opened the curtains to let in light. Shelves packed with canned foods and liquor bottles grew to the ceiling, and under the glass counter lay sausages and cheese. She showed him the back room filled with boxes her young assistant had yet to unpack, then made coffee on an electric coil. While they drank, a tall sixty-year-old man in a faded smock appeared with pallets of bread, the ash on his forehead sweated almost completely away. Mother asked how his wife, Ewa, was, then introduced him to Brano as Zygmunt. Brano shook his hand while she signed the invoice.
    “You’re enjoying Bóbrka?”
    “Just arrived last night.”
    “Different,” said Zygmunt.
    “Bóbrka?”
    “Different from the Capital.” He glanced at Brano’s polished shoes. “A big man in the Capital is just another man in Bóbrka.”
    “The reverse is true as well.”
    “It may be,” he said, taking the invoice from Iwona Sev. “And that might be why I’m still in Bóbrka.” He touched the brim of his hat before he left.
    Brano said he would go for a walk.
    “To register with the Militia?”
    “Of course.”
    “You’re as predictable as a villager, Brani.”
    Without his mother as an intermediary, there was nothing to connect Brano to the ashed villagers who gave him cursory glances; there were no words to be said. He walked along the main road that branched out from the church, past yards with chickens and self-satisfied dogs, to where a single white Škoda was parked outside the Militia station, a small but austere concrete box with a tin roof and its Militia sign propped in the window. The interior was dim and simple: a gray, scratched desk, a chair on each side, and an empty bulletin board. A portrait of General Secretary Pankov in a crisp fedora hung over the desk. Brano waited until a voice cursed from the back room.
    “Hello?”
    The voice silenced.
    “Hello?”
    The far door opened and a wrinkled uniform appeared: a young man with black, greasy bangs swept over an ashless forehead. His sunken eyes were dark, his lips wide and without expression. “Yes? Need something?”
    “I’m here to register.”
    “Register?” He moved to his desk and sat down.
    “I’m from the Capital. I’m staying here now.”
    The man motioned to the opposite chair and removed a stack of papers from a drawer. He went through them, pulling one out, then shaking his head and returning it to the stack and trying another until he found the form he needed. He turned it around for Brano. “Here you go.”
    Brano took a pen from a holder on the desk. “This is for foreigners. I need form AE-342.”
    The militiaman flushed. “Yes, yes. How about that?” He returned to the stack. “Here, of course. AE-342.”
    While Brano filled it out the militiaman eyed him, the only sound the pen tip scratching paper. Brano passed it over and watched him read. The hawk on his blue Militia shoulder patch was dirty. Then Brano handed over his internal passport, and the militiaman’s lip twitched at the sight of the Ministry hawk on the red cover.
    “Uh, it says here you work at the Pidkora factory.”
    “That’s true.”
    “But your passport—”
    “Former employer. 1 haven’t had a chance to change my documents.”
    The militiaman cleared his throat. “Well, Comrade Sev, it’s good to have visitors in Bóbrka. I’m Captain Tadeusz Rasko.” He stuck out his hand and Brano took it, rising imperceptibly. “How long will you be with us?”
    “A week, I think. But my foreman is very