It was still winter where we were. Truly, we had descended into the Promised Land; starving, gaunt, in filthy clothes; the landscape below like a blurry watercolor, but green, with a caressing air and a glassy sky.
That April . . . the last remnants of snow trickled down the hillsides. The smell in the air was indescribable, unique, the breath of spring awakening that so clearly marks those few days apart from the rest of the year.
Up until then we had been in the mountains. Ten disparate, unrelated humans in a hole underground, animals scenting danger, clustered together in a shivering bunch. Men and women of varying opinions, temperaments, personalities—and all around us Death. I was going on seventeen (the year that old ladies most fondly remember: dance parties, the first love notes), and even if young people do endure hardship more easily, there were moments when all I wanted was for it to be over. I didn’t care how. I couldn’t imagine ever being able to LIVE again. Had it ever really been possible? It was just a beguiling fiction.
—from “Sol Maggiore (G Major)” by Zuzana and Karel Tausinger, a translation in progress from the story collection Píseň pro Den smíření (1971; Song for the Day of Atonement)
Photo: Chabenec peak (1,955 meters), Low Tatras, Slovakia