Spring 2024 - Recrudescence

“Mrs. Vogel Doesn’t Need a Visa”

II.

A long line of vehicles perambulated toward the border, soon slowing to the point where a quarter of an hour was needed to advance just a few metres. Interruptions in the forward flow sometimes grew especially long, with the column not budging from place for as long as forty minutes. Both ahead and behind Ernst, people got out of cars and buses, smoked, chatted briefly, some looking over with interest at the outsider, but no one tried to make conversation. The darkness was cut only by the headlights, and it was chilly and damp. A drizzle of rain turned into snow. Finally, after two hours of driving at a snail’s pace, Ernst saw the flags, first the Polish, and then behind it, in the distance, the Ukrainian. But getting to them was tortuously slow. Ernst’s thermos bottle was empty, and the sandwiches he had prepared for the road were finished. But more than hunger, he was fixed on the need to use a restroom, the vicinity of which was uncertain. So he had to meet necessity in simple fashion, by the side of the road. He was not the only one to do this. At close to ten o’clock in the evening, after a period of nearly three hours, during which he had managed to transit a kilometre of road, Ernst stepped out of his car at the building of the Polish passport control. After opening his passport, a Polish border guard with white gloves looked across at him, and then toward his car, with an interest that was more genuinely human than professional. He did not ask a thing, simply put a stamp in the passport and said something in Polish, smiling faintly. He probably had wished Ernst a pleasant journey. In their last telephone conversation, Zoriana had said that she would come to meet Ernst at the border, together with her cousin, who owned a car. She said that finding the way to her town without help, a one-and-a-half-hour drive, was something their esteemed guest was not likely to manage. But there must be street signs! Ernst had exclaimed with astonishment. At this, Zoriana had only laughed. Now he saw that she was right. They had planned to

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