The record-player raged on, for miles around nothing else existed. And then, just like in an adventure film, the gates were suddenly bathed in blue light and silently opened wide, and an enormous truck slid into the yard like a vast ship lit up with constellations of signal lamps. It stopped and dipped its headlights, which died slowly as if some forest monster were giving up the ghost. Driver Voldemar thrust his head out of the window and started shouting something, mouth wide, and kept it up, straining away, his eyes fierce, then spat and dived back into the cab, came out again and chalked "Pepper!!!" on his door upside down. At this, Pepper realized the truck had come for him, seized hold of his suitcase and ran across the yard, fearing to look back, fearful of hearing shots behind him. He made hard work of scrambling up the two steps into a cab the size of a room and while he got his suitcase settled, then himself a dug-out cigarette, Voldemar kept talking, purple in the face, his voice straining, gesticulating and pushing Pepper's shoulder with the palm of his hand. Only when the record-player stopped suddenly did Pepper at last hear his voice: Voldemar wasn't saying anything in particular, he was just swearing violently.
The truck had not succeeded in passing the gates, when Pepper fell asleep, as if someone had placed an ether mask over his face.
The village was very strange. When they emerged from the forest and saw it below in the dip, the silence stunned them. It was so quiet that their joy was dampened. The village was triangular in shape and the sizeable clearing on which it stood was similarly three-sided - a wide clay outcrop without a single bush or blade of grass, as if it had been burned off and then stamped down, completely black and sheltered from the sky by the interlacing tops of mighty trees.
"I don't like this village," announced Nava. "It'll likely be hard to beg a bite to eat there. They're not likely to have food if they haven't even got fields, just bare clay. They're likely hunters, trapping and eating animals, makes you sick to think..."
"Perhaps we've landed up at Funny Village?" inquired Kandid. "Perhaps it's Clay Clearing?"
"How can it be Funny Village? Funny Village is just an ordinary village, like our village only funny folk live there. But here, the quiet and nobody to be seen, no kids, they might be in bed, mind... And why's there nobody about, Dummy? Let's not go into that village, I don't like it at all..."
The sun was setting, and the village below was sinking into shadow. It had the air of being very empty but not deserted, not abandoned, simply empty, unreal, as if it were not a village at all but some sort of stage scenery. Yes, thought Kandid, probably we shouldn't go there, only my feet are hurting and I'd give a lot for a roof over my head. And something to eat. And the night's coming on... We've been wandering around the forest all day, even Nava's weary, hanging on to my arm, not letting go. "All right," he said hesitantly, "let's not go."
"Not go, not go," said Nava, "just when I want to eat? How long can I last without eating? I've had nothing since morning ... and your robbers ... that made me mighty hungry. No, let's go down there, have a bite and if we don't like it, we'll leave straight away. The night's going to be warm, no rain ... let's go, what're you standing there for?"
As soon as they reached the edge of the village someone called them. Alongside the first house, on the gray earth sat a gray man, practically naked. It was hard to pick him out in the twilight, he almost merged with the earth and Kandid was only able to make out his silhouette against the background of a whitewashed wall.
"Where are you going?" asked the man in a feeble voice.
"We're going to spend the night here and in the morning we have to go to New Village. We've lost our way, we ran away from some robbers and lost the way."
"You came here yourselves, then?" said the man weakly. "You've done well then, good people... You come in, come in, there's lots of work to be done and hardly any people left now..." He could hardly bring the words out, as if he were nodding off. "And the work must be done, it's just got to be, got to be..." "Will you give us something to eat?" asked Kandid. "Just now we've got ..." The man spoke some words that struck Kandid as familiar, except that he knew he'd never heard them before. "It's good that a boy's come, because a boy ..." He started talking strange, incomprehensible words again.
Nava tugged at Kandid, but he tore his arm away in annoyance."I can't understand you," he said to the man, trying to get a better look at him at least. "Just tell me whether you've got food by you or not."
"Now if there were three..." said the man.
Nava dragged Kandid off to one side by main force.
"Is he ill?" said Kandid angrily. "Did you understand what he was saying?"
