Tears had their way with her, prideful, joyful at her son's
new estate, sometimes bitterly salt at the life in the naked his eyes
must look upon.
Once, during the recital of the defendant, Sara almost seemed to bleed
her tears, so poignantly terrible they came, scorching her eyes of a
pain too exquisite to be analyzed, yet too excruciating to be endured.
III
Venture back, will you, to the ice and red of that Russian dawn when on
the snow the footsteps that led toward the horizon were the color of
blood, and one woman, who could not keep her eyes ahead, moaned as
she fled, prayed, and even screamed to return to her dead in the
bullet-riddled horse trough.
Toward the noon of that day, a gray one that smelled charred, a fugitive
group from a distant village that was still burning faltered, as it too
fled toward the horizon, in the blackened village of Vodna, because a
litter had to be fashioned for an old man whose feet were frozen, and a
mother, whose baby had perished at her breast, would bury her dead.
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