First Day

Somewhere west of Timișoara, in early September, Miklós Dragic appeared like a man who had walked through fire and was changed by it. Thick-boned and wiry, he had the build of someone who labors with his hands: farm work, demolition, small tasks that keep him alive. His shoulders were slightly stooped, not from defeat but from the slow weight of memory. A long scar curved across one forearm, hidden beneath the faded ink of an old prison tattoo, something Cyrillic or Romani, now unreadable. His skin was rough, sun-browned, and wind-chafed, with the texture of rawhide. Deep lines marked his face, especially around the eyes, which were hooded and shadowed yet startlingly alive. They had an uncanny, knowing gleam that made him seem like a man who’d seen both beauty and horror and now carries them both in silence.

His hair, shoulder-length and unkempt, was silver threaded with ash-black strands, swept back carelessly, as though grooming no longer mattered. A peppered beard hugged his face, not full but enough to frame a mouth that rarely smiled, except in moments of unguarded recognition. He dressed like a drifter monk: layered shawls, wool or linen shirts, rough trousers belt with leather cords. Around his neck hung a strange collection of charms: nails, bones, coins, fragments of wax, rosaries knotted with hair. Some Catholic, some older. Each told a story he never shared. His boots were cracked and mended with wire. He carried the air of someone who had walked so far he no longer remembered where he began.

The road shimmered in the late heat, rippling like water, but there was no water. Only dust, distance, and the hum of insects thick in the ditches. Miklós walked with the collar of his shirt dark with sweat, the soles of his boots faintly sucking at the tar, and the weight of the satchel across his back like a question without an answer. He kept his thumb out at intervals, hoping for a ride, though he knew he looked like a man scorched by life, cloaked in rags and memory, which often made drivers hesitate. Still, he tried, not from optimism but because he had learned that even silence must ask.

He had long since given up hope for shade. The wind-bent, gaunt trees here were sparse. He passed wheat fields and burned grass, old farmsteads built low to the ground, with bricks blackened by time and neglect. Rusted fences. Torn netting. White sheets fluttering on laundry lines like small ghost flags.
Somewhere behind him lay a history. Somewhere ahead, Vienna waited. The task had been given to his father, who passed it down to him, just as Esme received her great work from the mothers before her. A task and a mark that would never heal. Their mission in this world, handed down from the teacher and holy man Kasian Treu, was at last to be completed.

He stuck to smaller roads unknown to GPS and freight, where hitchhiking still mattered and people might slow down for a man in a worn coat and tired eyes. He slept in culverts, empty bus stops, and once in a barn with a one-eyed goat that watched him through the night. He lit no fires, ate little, drank from spigots and roadside shrines. In the mornings, he washed his face in dew and moved on quietly.

In the silence, the voices returned. “The veil never lifted.”

 

The words were ancient; they were not Esme’s, nor even his mother’s. They carried an ancient cadence, spoken by someone long gone. Maybe a priest at the edge of an altar. Maybe a border guard with gentle eyes, shaking his head as he said, “No, no, you go now,” his voice heavy with fatigue. Or perhaps the voice came from deeper inside, a blood whisper passed down.

Another voice said, “You cannot bring it with you.”

And yet, he carried much in his battered satchel: the scorched paper, the prayer beads darkened by palm sweat, a fragment of fresco copied in wax crayon from a convent wall before it was painted over, and the harmonica he no longer played. There was also the tin of balm Esme had given him years ago when she commanded him to wander: for the road, for the blisters, for the bees. He kept his beloved copy of Homo Viator  with marginal notes in Hungarian. 

“I began this journey long ago,” he said to the sky, “with a beekeeper and an artist. She betrayed me, and I betrayed him. I go now to set matters aright. I am a knight on a special quest. I am the janitor of God.”
 

Second Day
That night, he slept outdoors. Disliking the modern neatness of machine-tied hay bales stacked like bread, he searched in vain for a true haystack to curl within. Finding none, he settled in a patch of thick underbrush near a dry creek bed, where a trickle of brackish water wound through the middle. He curled up like an animal returning to its instinct. The air was mild, and no blanket was needed. He gnawed on a piece of hard cheese and drank from the stream. After relieving himself, a modest contribution to the soil, he lay back with his rucksack as a pillow, the stars hidden behind clouds. He slept peacefully, untroubled by dreams.

The next day, a man in a battered Škoda picked him up just outside Arad. They shared sunflower seeds and silence. The driver asked if he was a pilgrim. Miklós answered in a rough voice, “Aren’t we all?” The driver, clearly recognizing the congestion in Miklós’s voice, focused solely on the road and said no more.
He watched the land roll past the window: long stretches of flat land interrupted by sudden towers, grain silos, electrical pylons, and Orthodox steeples. Small villages hunched in the dust, each more worn than the last. Women with strong calves in headscarves, men smoking in doorways, children barefoot and staring. He kept clearing his throat and spitting into a stained handkerchief.

Though the region now fell within the Schengen Zone, not all crossings were unguarded. At the third roadside pull-over, once a customs station now staffed by volunteers in reflective vests, he got out before they could see him. Some instinct or memory warned him. He slipped into the woods, took the long way around, and walked another five miles through corn and ragweed. A fever began behind his ribs, slow and smoky.

Miklós, hunched beneath a crooked birch, looked up. His eyes were rimmed red with dust and illness. He spoke to the insect-thick air. “I have crossed too many borders in the wrong direction. I once broke open something that was not mine to touch. There are names I have spoken that cling to the throat. Some would stop me with their forms, and machines that scan for anomalies in blood, breath, and aura.”

“I walk to pass between. I walk because I must not be seen.”

Third Day
By the time he reached the foothills, the heat had broken. Gray mist rolled in, and the wind strengthened, carrying scents of horses, garlic, and decay. The villages here were nearly empty, some still scarred from wars no one mentioned. Windows patched with cardboard, crucifixes draped in red string, and tin hearts.

He passed an old woman carrying a basket of chestnuts, and she made the sign of the cross at him, warding off the evil eye. Her eyes were milky, but her gesture was sharp. He bowed and said, “Bog da vas blagoslovi, gospođo, neka vas Gospod sačuva čitavu”—May God bless you, lady; may the Lord keep you whole. Then he kept walking.

Finally, miracle of miracles, there was a cart. A real one, not the sentimental image on postcards, but a working rig pulled by a gray donkey and driven by a sallow-faced farmer in a corduroy cap. The cart was piled high with cabbage and burlap sacks of onions. Miklós raised his hand, and the man slowed down, watching him closely, as though he had been robbed before. Yet something in Miklós’ demeanor, or in his refusal to beg, earned him passage.

He climbed in and sat quietly on a sack. The cart creaked forward. The donkey wheezed. For two hours, he rode, wrapped in the smell of onions and a sense of relief. Somewhere along the third mile, Miklós began to cry. Not theatrically, but with slow, silent tears that sank into the folds of his face. The sharp scent of onions either masked their presence or added to it. Was it grief, relief, or shame? It was hard to tell, even for him.

The tears came like condensation, inevitable from the pressure within. He did not sob or shake. He only let it pass through him like rain through a cracked cistern.

Farmer Johann kept his eyes on the road, his posture unchanged, either unaware or unwilling to know. And Miklós, alone with his tears, rode onward.

As they neared a road leading to a modern village with a roundabout, a billboard for Lidl, and the shadow of a cell tower, the driver grunted and pointed. “Off here.” Miklós nodded. He stepped down into the mist, returning to an age of wires and simple shelters. Austria could not be far.

He spotted a small outbuilding near the roundabout, something between a tool shed and a livestock shelter, perhaps once used for hay forks. In Eastern Europe, such buildings still linger. Summoning the last of his strength, he slipped behind it and found a corner lined with dry manure and clean straw. Curling around his satchel like a dog around a bone, he let his body fall into sleep. The tears were gone, leaving grief behind, but even grief requires rest.

That Night
Something in his left shoulder ached with memory. He thought of the woman in Senta with the inked cross above her waistband. He thought of the bees. He thought of Esme’s hand on his cheek the night they chose to forget each other. Then, sharply, the image of Anselm appeared: bare-chested, his mouth still stained with wine. That wild night in Williamsburg, the three of them tangled in incense, ecstasy, and paint. The closeness had been unbearable, and the fire afterward changed everything.

“Vienna,” he whispered to no one. “I am coming empty. I am coming with nothing but what cannot be seen.”

Fourth Day: The Last Ride
The final stretch into Vienna was in the back of a livestock truck, a rattling steel box with peeling white letters that once read something like AGROTRANS. Inside was chaos: chickens flapping and clawing in the crates and filth. Miklós climbed in through the rear flap with help from a teenage Roma boy who grinned and shouted something about Budapest, though the truck was not headed there. The border flew past in a blur of fumes and motion. At a rest stop, the boy handed him half a meat pastry and winked. Then the road went on.

By the time they reached the outskirts of Vienna, Miklós reeked of rust, bird droppings, and old blood. The truck unloaded its cargo near a warehouse far from the airport. He nodded in thanks to the boy and limped away.

It took three buses, a wrong transfer, and nearly collapsing beside a vending machine before he reached the airport perimeter. Each step grew heavier. His hips ached, his stomach churned, and his boots, which had carried him from Banat to this moment, were splitting again at the seams. Still, he kept going, not because he was strong, but because he had gone too far to stop.

He dragged himself past blinking screens and sterile signage:

"NICHT HIER SITZEN"—Do not sit here.
 

"BITTE NICHT BERÜHREN"—Please do not touch.
 

"SICHERHEITSBEREICH – KEIN ZUTRITT"—Security Zone – No Entry.
 

"BITTE HALTEN SIE DEN ABSTAND"—Please maintain distance.
 

"WIR DANKEN FÜR IHR VERSTÄNDNIS"—We thank you for your understanding.
 

He avoided the camera’s gaze. He did not belong there, and everyone knew it. Some passersby wrinkled their noses or gave him space, clutching their luggage tighter. A young woman in a blazer glanced at him with a mix of pity and disgust, then looked away, ashamed. An older man, perhaps a janitor or a priest, nodded faintly as if recognizing him, but said nothing. Most did what the modern world does best: pretended not to see.

He moved through like a ghost, no one was paid enough to stop him.

He needed water, warmth, and solitude for the next part of his journey. Beyond the glass doors of the transit hotel lounge, behind a cluster of humming vending machines, he found the restrooms. A soft voice called from the reception desk, asking if he needed a room. He shook his head and kept walking.
Inside the restroom, beneath blinking fluorescent lights, the transformation started. He took off the rags of the road: the clothes stiff with grime and memories, the cracked boots, the rope belt, the salt-stained shawl. One by one, they fell away, each piece shedding years, scars, and the burden of exile.
With soap and hot water, he washed carefully and slowly, almost as if performing a ritual, as though preparing for both a burial and a birth. He did not shave completely but trimmed the overgrowth, revealing a face that was leaner than he remembered, gaunt and haunted. He scrubbed his hands raw, then brushed and parted his hair neatly. The streak of white showed like a banner.

A quiet attendant with a discreet expression who Miklós paid in cash earlier appeared, and laid out folded clothes like an offering: blue jeans, desert boots, a chambray shirt, a blazer with leather elbow patches, and most improbably, a silk cravat. Miklós dons them like vestments.

​

He emerged not as a new man but as the one the American Dream has always feared: the mad monk cleaned up for customs. He paused before the mirror and saw a mendicant dressed in denim and suede, a heretic in exile now dressed like a lecturer in myth or phenomenology, ready to slip sacrilege between the lines.

As he crossed the Vienna terminal, children gazed with unguarded curiosity. Women glanced, wondering. Clerics turned away too quickly. He bought a coffee and sipped it slowly, thinking of Anselm’s children. He did not hate them; hatred would have been too simple. Years earlier, Anselm had written letters and sent photographs, greeting him as an art colleague and suggesting they rekindle their friendship. He remembered the children from those images, but he had also dreamed of them. It was a skill he had learned from Esme: the dream-travel to visit other minds. Beautiful Liesl was wounded, hungry, and proud. Moira, pale and strange, had something in her even then. And the boy who spoke in systems, of course, could be trouble.

Still, Miklós was not coming for the children. He was coming because something had opened, and they were close to it.

He boarded the flight to Newark with no luggage except for a satchel. The steward barely glanced at him. The woman next to him clutched her purse tightly. Miklós fastened his seatbelt and stared at the tray table.
 

In that heartbeat before takeoff, he thought in Hungarian: Mi a faszt csinálok én?