Trapped together in the van for three days with a dying battery, Mathis and Léna are forced into unbearable proximity. Léna discovers Iris's existence by reading Mathis's secret notebook, revealing the deceased twin sister he's carried within him for fifteen years. Unable to resist, she turns on her phone and receives a voice message from Viktor threatening her with intimate details. Mathis then understands she's fleeing something far more dangerous than a marriage. When the battery is finally recharged and Anca calls to warn them that men are looking for her, they realize that staying apart puts everyone in danger. Mathis chooses to leave with Léna, abandoning his refuge of fifteen years. They flee together in the van while a helicopter tracks them from the sky.
Dawn arrives like a broken promise—a gray light, almost dirty, filtering through the frosted windows of the van. The cold has transformed the night's condensation into lace of ice, drawing fractal patterns that resemble veins, roots, paths leading nowhere.
Mathis hasn't slept. Not really. He's slept in short cycles for fifteen years—twenty minutes, then he wakes at the slightest sound, muscles tense, mind on alert. It's a habit acquired in the wild, this animal vigilance that keeps the body on guard even in sleep. He's curled against the metal wall of the van, knees drawn up, back curved in a posture that evokes those wounded animals he sometimes photographs, the ones who know they must stay still to survive.
His notebook rests on his thighs. Fifteen years of methodical notes—temperatures, observation hours, pack behaviors, seasonal migrations. But also, in the margins, scrawled in smaller, tighter handwriting, as if he wanted to hide them even from himself: fragments of sentences addressed to Iris. "Today, a lynx. You would have loved its eyes. You always said my eyes looked like a lynx's. I don't see the resemblance." Words that never became letters, because you don't send mail to the dead.
Léna wakes abruptly, with that violent start of people who no longer know where they are. Her eyes sweep the confined space, land on Mathis. A fraction of a second where she doesn't recognize him, where he sees pure fear in her gaze. Then memory returns, and with it, another form of fear—duller, more lasting.
They look at each other. No hello, no smile. Just this mutual recognition of two animals sharing a burrow too small.
Léna moves toward the back door, her hand on the handle.
—No.
The word comes out sharper than Mathis intended. Léna freezes.
—I need air.
—Too risky.
—We're in the middle of nowhere.
—Exactly.
Their gazes collide. Mathis sees the frustration rising in Léna's eyes, that claustrophobia beginning to claw at the inside of her skull. But he also knows that outside, in that apparently empty vastness, eyes can watch. Lenses can zoom. Helicopters can trace patient circles.
Léna releases the handle. Notices the bag of provisions under the bench. She opens it, and her face closes.
—This is all?
Stale bread. A piece of cheese wrapped in newspaper. Three apples. Two bottles of water.
—I travel alone, usually.
The sentence floats between them, heavy with unspoken reproaches. You weren't planned. You're not wanted. You complicate everything.
Léna closes the bag without a word. Mathis reopens his notebook. Takes his pen. Begins to write, eyes lowered, ostentatiously focused. It's a technique he's mastered: disappearing without leaving the room. Becoming invisible through indifference.
But Léna can't stand the silence.
—What are you writing?
No response.
—Observations about bears? Wolves?
Mathis draws a line. Then another. His handwriting is tight, almost illegible.
Léna is bored. She rummages in her pockets, finds a pen. Begins to scribble on a piece of paper—architectural sketches, lines that become buildings, then castles, then prisons. She draws without thinking, just to occupy her hands. Mathis watches her from the corner of his eye, notices how she transforms anxiety into lines, how each stroke is a silent scream.
Toward noon, hunger begins to make itself felt—a dull pain that hollows the stomach and sharpens the nerves. Mathis shares the stale bread and cheese reluctantly, cutting tiny portions with his Swiss Army knife. Léna chews slowly, making each bite last, aware that this might be all she'll have today.
She tries to create conversation, asking questions about his photography, his past, his plans. Mathis responds in monosyllables. Yes. No. Maybe. Words that say nothing, that open onto nothing.
The afternoon stretches. Léna notices that Mathis regularly pulls out a small portable solar panel from under the bench—a charger he places against the window to catch the last rays of this gray day. She understands then: the battery isn't dead, it's just weak. They're waiting for it to recharge enough to start. He could have said so. He chose to let the silence speak instead.
—How much longer?
—Tomorrow morning, maybe. If the sun comes back.
Léna feels a dull rage rising in her. Being prisoner to the silence of a man who refuses to communicate. But she also refuses. Two walls facing each other.
The evening of the first day, Léna can't stand it anymore. She takes her phone from her pocket, looks at it. She knows she shouldn't. She knows that phones are traceable, that Viktor probably has contacts who can locate her signal in seconds. But she needs to know. Needs to check that the outside world still exists, that her mother has responded to her last message, that somewhere, someone is waiting for her.
Her hand trembles as she turns it on—just one minute, just to check. The screen illuminates like an open wound. Forty-three messages. Twelve missed calls. All from Viktor, except the last three from an unknown number.
She listens to the last voicemail. Without thinking, she presses speakerphone.
Viktor's voice fills the van like toxic gas—calm, almost affectionate:
"Léna, my heart, I know you're afraid. I understand. But you can't stay hidden forever. The Carpathians are vast, but not infinite. I have people everywhere. And when I find you—and I will find you—we'll talk. Just you and me. Like before."
A pause. The sound of a helicopter in the background of the message.
"I spoke to your mother this morning. She's very worried. She gave me something that belongs to you. Your old wedding ring. Your grandmother's. I'm keeping it for you."
Léna turns off the phone, hands trembling. She knows it's a lie—her mother would never give up the ring—but it's a lie that has exactly the right weight to paralyze her. Viktor knows how to hurt without leaving traces.
Mathis watches her face decompose. For the first time, he understands that she's not just fleeing a marriage—she's fleeing someone dangerous. And that someone is actively hunting them.
Outside, a dull sound. Like a branch breaking, or a heavy weight crashing into the snow. Mathis freezes, alert. But the silence returns, thick as cotton.
—The helicopter, Léna whispers.
—Not close enough to see us yet. The forest cover is dense.
But Mathis stands, turns off the van's lamp. They remain in the growing darkness, motionless, listening to the sky.
Second day. Mathis takes out the solar panel earlier, repositions it several times to catch every available ray. Léna watches him, finally understanding that there's no miracle—just patience and planning. She wonders how many times he's had to wait like this, immobilized by a weak battery, unable to move forward.
She also notices details she'd missed: a photo tucked in the inner pocket of his jacket, a woman who has the same eyes as him. The same slightly absent expression, as if she were observing something no one else could see. Léna says nothing, but she notes it.
The silence becomes unbearable—a physical weight crushing the chest. Léna begins to search through the van, finding notebooks stacked under the bench. Years of notes. She opens one at random.
"June 27, 2010—Tatras. Iris said I was too serious. That I looked at the world like a problem to solve instead of a beauty to live. She was right, of course. She was always right."
Léna closes the notebook. She doesn't read further. It's too intimate, too painful. But she's understood. The name she glimpsed on the first page—Iris—it's not a lost love. It's something deeper.
She puts the notebook back in its place without a word. Mathis watches her, recognizing her gesture—she could have continued reading, she chose to respect his privacy.
The evening of the second day, it's Léna who breaks the silence.
—Anca. You trusted her?
Mathis looks at her, surprised she knows that name.
—Yes.
—Why?
He thinks for a long time before answering.
—Because she doesn't ask questions. She observes. She understands that some people need silence to exist.
Léna nods. She understands that too.
—I'm afraid he'll find her. That he'll use Anca to locate us.
—Anca knows how to hide. She's spent her life observing without being seen.
But Mathis says this without conviction. He also knows that no one is truly safe from someone who has infinite resources and an obsession.
Third day. The battery has enough charge to start—Mathis checked at dawn. But he hasn't started the engine. Léna notices that he folds the solar panel slowly, as if postponing the inevitable.
—We can leave now, she says.
—Yes.
But he doesn't move. He looks out the window, toward the trees surrounding them, toward this forest that has been his sanctuary for fifteen years.
—Where do you want to go?
Léna hesitates.
—Anca. She can help us.
Mathis takes out his phone—an old model without internet connection, just for emergency calls. He calls Anca. It rings for a long time. Then she answers, her voice tense.
—Mathis. Don't come here.
Mathis's heart stops.
—Why?
—Men. Yesterday. They were looking for a woman. They had a photo. They asked if I'd seen you. I said no, but they didn't believe me. They searched my studio. They left marks. Warnings.
Mathis closes his eyes.
—They know you're with someone, Anca continues. They know.
The line cuts.
Mathis looks at Léna. She heard. She knows what it means.
—So where do we go?
Mathis starts the van. The engine coughs, then roars—alive, finally. He engages the vehicle onto the forest road, away from beaten paths, away from everything.
—Further. Always further. Until we find a place where he can't follow us.
—Does that exist?
Mathis doesn't answer. He doesn't know. But he knows he can't let her go alone. Not now. Not after these three days where silence finally spoke.
In the rearview mirror, very far behind them, a black dot traces circles in the gray sky. The helicopter. Still there. Still patient.
On the passenger seat, Mathis's notebook slides from his pocket, opens to a recent page. A line scrawled last night, while Léna slept:
"Iris, I'm afraid to start living again. Because living means risking loss again. But maybe that's what being alive is. Accepting that everything can be lost. And continuing anyway."
And below, another line, written hastily this morning:
"Her name is Léna. I don't yet know if this is a beginning or an end. But for the first time in fifteen years, I want to find out."
