Tess dido be talked into sneaking across the border, and the very idea ressio aic jolt into our honeymoon. The closer we got to Czechoslovakia, the livelier the sex became. On the day ed our secret passage to the other side, she kept me in bed until mid-m. Her desires fed my own curiosity about my hiddeage. I o know where I had e from, who I had been. Every step along the way brought the sensation of returning home. The landscape looked familiar and dreamlike, as if the trees, lakes, and hills lay embedded, but long dormant, in my sehe architecture of stone and exposed timber was exactly as I had pictured, and at inns and cafes, the people we met bore familial traces in their sturdy bodies, fine chiseled features, clear blue eyes, and sweeping blonde hair. Their faces enticed me deeper into Bohemia. We decided to cross into the forbidden land at the village of Hohenberg, which sat on the German line.
Si was first dedicated in 1222, the castle at the ter of town had beeroyed and rebuilt several times, most retly after World War II. On a sunny Saturday, Tess and I had the place to ourselves except for a young German family with small children who followed us from building to building. They caught up to us outside, he uneven white walls that ran along the citys rear border, a fortress against attack from the forest and the Eger River beyond.
"Pardohe mother said to Tess in English, "you are Ameri, right? Would you a photograph take? Of my family, on my camera?"
I bla being so easily reizable as Ameris. Tess smiled at me, took off her backpack, and laid it on the ground. The family of six arrahemselves at the base of one of the inal parapets. The children looked as if they could have been my brothers and sisters, and as they posed, the notion that I once art of such a family lingered and then receded iher. Tess took a few steps backward to squeeze them all into the frame, and the small children cried out, "Vorsicht, der Igel! Der Igel!" The boy, no more than five, ran straight at Tess with a mad expression in his blue eyes. He stopped at her feet, reached between her ao a small flower bed, and carefully scooped up something in his small hands.
"What do you have there?" Tess bent to meet his face.
He held out his hands and a hedgehog crawled out from his fingers. Everybody laughed at the minor drama of Tess nearly stepping on the prickly thing, but I could barely light a smoke due to the shakes. Igel. I had not heard that name in almost twenty years. All of them had names, not quite fotten. I reached out to touch Tess to help put them out of mind.
After the family left, we followed the map to hiking trails behind the castle. Along oh, we came across a miniature cave, and in front, signs of an encampment, what looked to me like an abandoned ring. I led us away quickly, headi and downhill through the black woods. Our trail spilled out to a two-lane road devoid of traffic. Around the bend, a sign saying EGER STEG poio a dirt road to the right, and we came upon mild rapids across a narrow river, no more than a wide but shallow stream. On the opposite bank lay the Czechoslovakian woods, and in the hills behind, Cheb. Not another soul was in sight, and perhaps because of the river or the rocks, no barbed-wire fence protected the border. Tess held my hand and we crossed.
The rocks above the waterline provided safe footing, but we had to watch our step. When we reached the Czech side, a thrill, sharp as