The Shadow Land

by Elizabeth Kostova

  Bobby folded his arms. “Yes, of course he is hungry. He’s a street dog.”

  The dog backed away, wolfing his treat, and sat down at the foot of a tree, next to the sidewalk. He gulped and tossed his head, then set his front feet together and stared at Alexandra, giver of bread. There was a laminated piece of paper stapled to the tree just at eye level. The dog sat erect beneath it, gazing at them. They looked, and Alexandra saw that the Cyrillic letters printed on the paper were familiar to her, as was the black-and-white photocopied face. Bobby leaned close, despite the dog, who didn’t move.

  “Yes,” he said.

  It was the full name, STOYAN DIMITROV LAZAROV, 1915–2006, and some other printed words, which Bobby read for her: ONE YEAR, IN SORROWFUL MEMORY, PASSED AWAY JUNE 12, 2006, AGED 91. The man in the photocopied image had deep-sunk eyes, a long narrow nose, black hair, black sideburns, a look of the 1970s. Certainly it was not the image of a very old man. It was also not one of the photographs from the house they’d just toured, but Alexandra already knew that face—serious, intense.

  “Oh,” said Alexandra. “So he did live in Bovech. He must have been the man with the violin, but much older here, you see? And he was born—” She paused. “During the First World War. But why is his picture on a tree?” She remembered now having seen other such black-and-white sheets on walls and gates in some of the towns they had passed through; she’d assumed, vaguely, that they were advertisements for something.

  “This is a nekrolog,” Bobby told her. “You put it up when someone dies, and then you put up other nekrolozi on their death anniversaries.”

  “We don’t have these at home,” Alexandra said.

  He touched the paper. It had faded and wrinkled, even under the lamination. “There are two things here not right.”

  She found herself staring at Bobby’s profile. He was different from anyone she’d ever met, and not because he was Bulgarian. “What?”

  “First thing—that is what was wrong at the door to their house. This should have been on the door, or on the gate in front, not only here in the town. When we were there, I couldn’t think exactly what was missing. A house with a recent dead family person would always have a nekrolog on the door.”

  “Maybe the family removed it so the house would look better to sell.”

  “Maybe. But lots of houses are sold with nekrolozi on the door, because they have become empty.”

  Alexandra glanced down at the dog. He was still sitting politely near their feet, and Bobby seemed to have forgotten him.

  “What is the second thing wrong?” she asked.

  “Can you tell me?”

  She pondered. “How would I know?”

  “Think about it. See the dates.”

  “Well, it says he died in 2006.” She looked at Bobby. “That’s two years ago. This paper has been here for almost a year, if it’s for a one-year anniversary.”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh,” Alexandra said. “You mean, why was he not buried sooner—or his ashes, rather?”

  “Why?” said Bobby. “Yes—why.”

  “Sometimes in the U.S. you hear about people keeping ashes in their houses until they decide where to bury them. Or they even keep them forever.” In fact, I might have voted for that, given the choice, she thought, although she couldn’t imagine her parents approving, and there hadn’t been any choices.

  “We have cremation here, too. But often we bury people. My grandparents were all buried, no ashes, in the communist times.” Bobby combed his lank hair back with his fingers. “I think that is because we are an Orthodox culture, in our heart. The Orthodox Church believes that people need their bodies later on, when Jesus comes back to find everyone who was good. Then you will need your whole body to get up and come back to life so you can live in it again, in the new heaven on the earth.”

  “I see,” Alexandra said. She couldn’t tell whether he believed this himself or was just explaining. If this were all true, by some chance, a person who’d somehow killed her own brother would probably not be getting back up to live in a new heaven. She suddenly felt tears prickling behind her eyes and hoped Bobby wouldn’t notice. But he was pondering their original question.

  “Why was Stoyan Lazarov not buried?” he said. “Well—his ashes not buried?”

  “Maybe they were saving up for the funeral.” Alexandra cleared her throat. “When I met them they didn’t look very—prosperous, and we saw how simple their house is.”

  He shook his head. “A funeral is a funeral. You must find a way to do it even without enough money. And the house is very decent, not poor. There is even a third problem. Who is the other old man?”

  “The other?” Alexandra said.

  “Yes, you know—you met an old man who had these ashes with him, but Stoyan Lazarov was old when he died, too, in 2006. He was ninety-one, as it says here. He could not have been the other old man’s son.”

  “I see what you mean,” said Alexandra.

  “Maybe he was the brother of that old man. Yes—that would be possible, with their ages.”

  Bobby fished out his cell phone and took a couple of pictures of the nekrolog. The dog turned around suddenly—which caused them both to jump back—and put his front paws on the tree. He raised his nose to the blurred poster, as if acknowledging their interest. Then he sat again.

  “It seems this is a good-luck dog,” Bobby said. He squatted down and looked the animal over carefully. “Smart. And he appears to be healthy, like you said, but if he had a home he might wear a thing on his neck. What do you call that? I forget the word—like on a shirt.”

  “A collar,” said Alexandra.

  “A collar,” he agreed. He put one hand out, palm up. The dog sniffed it briefly, then settled back, courteous, collected. The eyes in the dog’s dark face were oddly human—a cliché, Alexandra thought, but in this case true.

  “I think you are right—he is friendly and calm,” Bobby said. “And he found for us this nekrolog.” To Alexandra’s surprise, he reached out slowly and stroked the dog’s head.

  She took this as her own permission. Leaning over, she scratched the dog behind his ears, rubbed his neck, worked the skin on his back with fingers long-practiced from her childhood pets. The dog leaned against her and his ropy strong tail thumped her sneakers. His coat was clean and smooth, only his paws dusty. She hadn’t been able to make anybody this happy in a long time.

  Bobby laughed. “You are a funny one,” he said. “And he likes you best.”

  They walked on to the taxi and Alexandra looked back a couple of times—to her sorrow, and secret pleasure, the dog was following them again. But when she turned to say goodbye, Bobby opened the back door and the dog jumped in as if he’d been living there all his life.

  “What if he belongs to someone?” she said, although she could hardly believe her luck.

  “I don’t think that he does. Not anymore.” The dog settled himself and Bobby closed the door, mindful of a tail. Alexandra got into the front without speaking and glanced into the back seat just once, in love. Bobby started the engine.

  They were well up the street before she realized she had forgotten to look back a last time at Stoyan Lazarov’s house: 1915–2006.

  The highway toward Plovdiv rolled out between fields. On every horizon Alexandra saw mountains, some of which were blue and very distant, beyond a great plain. Others were closer and rubbed with darkness like long smudges of soot. The sun was dropping: midafternoon already. Bobby tapped the steering wheel with his thumbs; he seemed to be pondering something, and after a silence he spoke to her. “It will be evening by the time we return to Sofia, even if we find the Lazarovi quickly. Would you like to stay in Plovdiv? It is a beautiful city.”

  Alexandra’s heart jumped into the back of her throat. Here it was, the inevitable proposition, the conversation a young man always had to have with a new young woman. What if he did have an unmentioned girlfriend back in Sofia? Almost as bad a prospect, what if he didn’t? She
searched for words that would sound clear, firmly rejecting, but not ungrateful. After all, he’d been driving her around for two days now without laying a hand on her.

  “I’m not sure.” She straightened her seat belt. “Couldn’t we just go back to Sofia?”

  “Certainly,” he said, as if they were discussing nothing important. “But then we will arrive there rather late. I thought you might be tired.”

  “I’m already paying for that room in Sofia,” she said. “If I get—I mean if we get, if we each get hotel rooms in Plovdiv—”

  This sounded terrible, and she stopped. It was all too complicated; in fact, it was becoming ridiculous. Why didn’t she know when to give up? The scar on her arm began to twitch and she scratched it viciously through her sleeve.

  But Bobby was looking surprised. “I didn’t mean hotel rooms,” he said. “That would be very expensive. My aunt lives in Gorchovo, which is about half an hour east of Plovdiv, and we could stay with her.”

  It was Alexandra’s turn to be startled, and also a little ashamed. “But she doesn’t know me.”

  Bobby smiled. “That does not matter,” he said. “I am her favorite nephew and she will be very glad to see me and to meet you. I will explain to her—except the part about the police, I think. And maybe not the part about the ashes.”

  “Shouldn’t you call her first?”

  He scratched the back of his head. “Her phone often does not work. I always try to make her fix it. In any case, she will enjoy this more—if we surprise her.”

  Alexandra’s doubts returned in a dark flock. What if there was no aunt, in reality? How could she know where he was taking her? To an empty house or apartment somewhere?

  But Bobby didn’t seem triumphant, only pleased to have settled a practical matter. “She is very nice and she cooks very well. My cousins left home a long time ago, and her husband is dead, so she likes me to visit whenever I can. When I was little, she spoiled us all, especially me. She still spoils me. In fact, she gave me this coin—” He pointed at the charm dangling from his rearview mirror, the woman with her knot of hair. “Athena. She says it is to help me remember always to be wise when I drive.”

  “Did you live near her, growing up?”

  “No, I lived in Sofia, but I went to her for the summers, when my parents were too busy for me.” A cloud had crossed his face; he drew down the visor to shade his eyes, as if blinded by sun instead.

  “I have an aunt like that, too,” Alexandra said, to distract him, and to distract herself from the questions on the tip of her tongue. (Why were your parents too busy for you?) “My aunt lives on a big lake in the state of Georgia, and my brother and I would go visit her for a few weeks every summer. We loved it there, because she let us do all kinds of things our parents wouldn’t, like go fishing alone out in the middle of the lake.”

  “Your brother decided not to come to Bulgaria?” He smiled over at her and she saw that the road was curving along a river now. A lane of packed dirt ran beside it. An old man in a cap was bicycling there with heavily filled plastic bags tied to his handlebars. Lines of low, pollarded trees clung to the road ahead of him; afternoon sun caught the leaves in their shorn crowns.

  “My brother is dead,” she said. She had tried many versions of her announcement, over the years, and had finally settled on the simplest one. “He died twelve years ago.”

  “I’m very sorry.” Bobby shook his head. She had the impression that he wanted to raise a hand to touch her shoulder but had stopped himself, although she hadn’t seen any movement.

  “Yes,” she made herself say. “He was—he always wanted to travel. He would have liked seeing Bulgaria.” She didn’t add that he had wanted to come here, or why; that was too private.

  “Was he older or younger?”

  “Older. Two years older. He was a wonderful boy,” she added, without having meant to. Was he still a boy, on the other side of death, or now a man? She pictured Jack sitting in the back seat of the taxi, leaning forward to laugh with this total stranger, comparing their tastes in music, maybe murmuring something just to her: Didn’t I tell you this would be fantastic?

  “I’m sorry.” Bobby seemed slumped into himself, and then he shifted his wiry frame behind the wheel, straightened his neck and shoulders. He pointed with one ear to the back seat. “So—what shall we name him?”

  Alexandra had forgotten the dog for a few minutes, and she turned to check on him, relieved to talk about something else. He was asleep with his spine wedged against the seat back, his head and legs limp, one eye half-closed in his velvet face. He looked inexpressibly vulnerable to her, riding along with them to a destination he could not even inquire about.

  “What about your aunt?” she said. “Will she mind having a dog there?”

  “He can sleep in the backyard. I don’t think she will be unhappy about him. But he must have a name.”

  “Maybe he once did,” Alexandra mused. She braided her hair over one shoulder, a habit with her when she was thinking. “But we’ll never know it, I guess.”

  “Then he needs a new one.”

  “What do you call dogs in Bulgaria?”

  Bobby considered. “Well, people used to call them Sharo,” he said. “That is ‘Spot.’ ”

  “Oh, he needs a more interesting name than that,” she said. “He’s an interesting boy.” She reached toward the dog’s dusty paws, then decided not to startle him in his sleep.

  “How about Prah?” Bobby suggested.

  “You told me that means ‘ashes,’ ” Alexandra said indignantly. “That’s a little sick, isn’t it?”

  “You’re a good student.” He glanced at her. “Good memory.”

  “No, give him a nice name.” She left off her braiding and looked around the long sunlit plain, the distant willows. “How do you say ‘hope’?”

  “Nadezhda,” Bobby told her. “But that’s feminine, and it actually is a girl’s name. Also the name of a big complex in Sofia where some of my friends live.”

  “How about Stoyan?” she said.

  He laughed. “That is even more sick,” he said. “But—all right. It’s a good name for a dog because it means ‘enduring,’ if that is the right word in English, and this dog is very enduring.”

  “No, he’s endearing,” said Alexandra, and this time she rubbed the dog’s bony foreleg. He woke and raised his head, rolling one eye dreamily. Then he lay back, stretched longer across the seat, and fell asleep again.

  “We could call him Stoycho,” Bobby suggested. “That would be kind of like Stoyan, but different, so it might sound more respectful. You can also say stoy to a dog—then it means stay.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Stoy, Stoycho! See? He listens.”

  “All right.” Alexandra raised a hand. “I christen thee Stoycho.”

  —

  PLOVDIV APPEARED UNDER WHAT was already late afternoon light, reddish, tawny, rising from the plain in shapes that looked half ancient and half science fiction, thought Alexandra, ravished. It was much larger than the other cities they’d passed; it unfolded on a series of escarpments and tumbled into urban valleys—a riot of distant houses, old churches, walls, trees, and on the outskirts more groups of high-rise apartment buildings.

  “Do you like it?” Bobby grinned and drummed his steering wheel. “Plovdiv is very interesting, very old. It was a Greek city, called Philippopolis, for Philip the Second of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great.” He glanced over at her. “Some people used to think that Alexander belongs to us, you know, because he came from here. But now we let the Macedonians and the Greeks fight about him. Everybody loves Alexander. Your namesake.”

  “Thank you,” said Alexandra.

  Bobby adjusted his visor against the sky. “There is even a Roman theater on one of the hills—Plovdiv is built on seven hills, like ancient Rome. I think now we will go directly to my aunt’s town, because it will soon be sunset. It is very nearby. Tomorrow morning we can go in to Plovdiv to see the Lazarovi and you
can also view a little of the old city, okay?”

  Alexandra did not think she could disagree—it was his aunt and his car. He took an exit swiftly, and a shiny black SUV cut him off, its tires screaming, and sped ahead. “Cover your ears, Bird,” he told her. “I need to do some swearing.”

  “If it’s in Bulgarian, it doesn’t matter,” she said. He swore a blue streak and she listened with interest. “What did you say?” she asked when he’d finished.

  “I said to that driver that a cat should eat the organs of his mother.”

  “Really?”

  He laughed. “No—of course not. I said the usual stupid things, just like in English.”

  The exit took them away from the vision of the city on its ancient hills, and they rolled south toward a small town. At the edge of the town, they passed a wall that stood right on the road; the wall was covered with graffiti, and along the top of it sat a row of Roma children, waving and shoving each other. They were deeply tanned, dressed in a hodgepodge of clothing; the smallest of them appeared to be only four or five. The wall was at least ten feet high and Alexandra felt a schoolteacher’s surge of anxiety that one of them would fall off into the traffic. Bobby shook his head, but he raised a hand and waved, too.

  Alexandra was pleased to see that the center of his aunt’s town was old, and filled with freshly green trees. The effect was only partly ruined by a huge concrete building on the main square, with Cyrillic letters falling off the front. Bolted above the letters was a rusty metal sculpture of a girl at least twenty feet tall, in a long dress and long braids, her feet missing. As in Bovech, people here seemed to be moving slowly, now on their way back from work or errands, carrying plastic shopping bags. A truckload of men passed them, one of them taking off his cap to scratch the top of his head, and a ring of elderly people in dark jackets and sweaters stood outside the concrete building with its gap-toothed metal slogans. Alexandra saw an old man touch an old woman’s shoulder as if to remind her that they should be leaving; the old woman turned to kiss another old woman on each cheek.