The translucency of the veil. All those things you can barely make out behind it. Then, slowly, very slowly, the movement. And the way it rises hesitantly. It arches upward. It separates. It begins to expose the nakedness. To see what it saw. To feel what it felt. All the time. Really all the time. This must have been visible when the captain violated specific orders and let him come up on deck. Just as it appeared behind the strange dance of the tulle curtain. It shouldn’t move. Because what is revealed on the other side of the veil, which flutters calmly, is an absolutely calm water surface. Calmness. Serenity. That’s how the world looked to Denta when they took him out into the spring chill, on the deck of the old barge. Like a miracle of calm, even peace. As if there was, once again, hope for humanity.
But of course, he didn’t think that way. Not consciously at least. Perhaps that thought existed within him, but not in those words. Besides, he was very young. He was ten years old, and the river stretched out completely calm before him. It was as if a thin, incredibly thin layer of ice still covered the water’s surface, and the old barge cut through it like a razor’s edge. Silently. On both sides of the river stretched a barren and desolate landscape, the landscape that had appeared in so many windows over the past days. Only windows. First the windows from the train, then the windows from the barracks, and then the portholes from the ship. If you could call this thing a ship.