The Historian

by Elisabeth Kostova

  “Baba Yanka’s house was a very small one, barely a cottage, and it leaned heavily against a little barn. She herself had made her way to her front door to see what was going on; my first glimpse of her was the bright spot of her red-flowered head scarf, then her striped bodice and apron. She peered out, looking at us, and some of the other villagers shouted her name, which made her nod her head rapidly. The skin of her face was mahogany, her nose and chin sharp, her eyes-as we came nearer and nearer-apparently brown but lost in folds of wrinkles.

  “Ranov called out something to her-I could only hope it wasn’t anything commanding or disrespectful-and after staring at us for a few minutes, she shut the wooden door. We waited quietly outside, and when it opened again I saw she was not as tiny as I’d imagined; she came solidly up to Helen’s shoulder and her eyes were merry in a cautious face. She kissed Brother Ivan’s hand and we shook hands with her, which seemed at first to confuse her. Then she shooed us into the house as if we’d been a pack of runaway chickens.

  “Her house was very poor inside, but clean, and I noticed with a twinge of sympathy that she’d ornamented it with a vase of fresh wildflowers, which sat on the scratched, scrubbed table. Helen’s mother’s house had been a mansion compared to this neat, broken-down room with a ladder to the second floor nailed against one wall. I wondered how long Baba Yanka would be able to navigate the ladder, but she was moving around the room with so much energy that it slowly dawned on me that she was not actually old. I whispered this to Helen and Helen nodded. ‘Fifty, perhaps,’ she whispered back.

  “This hit me with fresh force. My own mother, in Boston, was fifty-two, and she could have been this woman’s granddaughter. Baba Yanka’s hands were as gnarled as her feet were light; I watched her bring out cloth-covered dishes and set glasses before us and wondered what she’d done with those hands all her life to make them look like that. Felled trees, perhaps, chopped firewood, harvested crops, worked in cold and heat. She stole a glance or two at us as she worked, each glance accompanied by a quick smile, and finally poured us a beverage-something white and thick-which Ranov downed at once, nodding to her and wiping off his mouth with his handkerchief. I followed suit, but it almost killed me; the stuff was lukewarm and tasted distinctly of barnyard floor. I tried not to gag visibly while Baba Yanka twinkled at me. Helen drank hers with dignity and Baba Yanka patted her hand. ‘Sheep’s milk blended with water,’ Helen told me. ‘Think of it as a milk shake.’

  “‘I will ask her now if she will sing,’ Ranov told us. ‘That is what you want, is it not?’ He conferred for a moment with Brother Ivan, who turned on Baba Yanka. The woman shrank back, nodding desperately. No, she would not sing; clearly, she didn’t want to. She gestured at us and put her hands under her apron. But Brother Ivan was persistent.

  “‘We will ask her to sing whatever she wants to sing first,’ Ranov explained. ‘Then you may ask her about the song that interests you.’

  “Baba Yanka appeared to have resigned herself, and I wondered if her whole protest had been a ritual of modesty, because she was already smiling again. She sighed, then drew her shoulders up under her worn, red-flowered blouse. She looked at us without guile and opened her mouth. The sound that came out was astonishing; first of all it was astonishingly loud, so that the glasses all but rattled on the table and the people outside the open door-half the village seemed to have gathered-stuck their heads in. It vibrated from the walls and under our feet and made her strings of onions and peppers sway above the battered stove. I took Helen’s hand, secretly. First one note shook us, and then another, each long and slow, each a wail of deprivation and hopelessness. I remembered the maiden who leaped from a high cliff rather than be taken into the pasha’s harem and wondered if this was a similar text. But strangely enough, Baba Yanka smiled with every note, breathing in huge sections of air, beaming at us. We listened in stunned silence until she suddenly ceased; the last note seemed to go on and on in the tiny house.

  “‘Please ask her to tell us the words,’ Helen said.

  “With some apparent struggle-which didn’t diminish her smile-Baba Yanka recited the words of the song, and Ranov translated.

  The hero lay dying at the top of the green mountain.

  The hero lay dying with nine wounds in his side.

  O, you falcon, fly to him and tell him his men are safe,

  Safe in the mountains, all his men.

  The hero had nine wounds in his side,

  But it was the tenth that killed him.

  “Baba Yanka clarified some point with Ranov when she was done, beaming still and shaking a finger at him. I had the feeling she would spank him and send him to bed without supper if he did anything wrong in her house. ‘Ask her how old the song is,’ Helen prompted him, ‘and where she learned it.’

  “Ranov put the question and Baba Yanka burst into peals of laughter, gesturing over her shoulder, waving her hands. Ranov actually grinned. ‘She says it is as old as the mountains and not even her great-grandmother knew how old that was. She learned it from her great-grandmother, who lived to be ninety-three.’

  “Next Baba Yanka had questions for us. When she fixed her eyes on us, I saw that they were wonderful eyes, almond shaped under the weathering of sun and wind, and golden brown, almost amber, made brighter by the red of her kerchief. She nodded, apparently in disbelief, when we told her we were from America.

  “‘Amerika?’She appeared to ponder this. ‘That must be beyond the mountain.’

  “‘She’s a very ignorant old woman,’ Ranov amended. ‘The government is doing its best to raise the standard of education here. It is an important priority.’

  “Helen had gotten out a piece of paper and now she took the old woman’s hand. ‘Ask her if she knows a song like this-you will have to translate it for her. ”The dragon came down our valley. He burned the crops and took the maidens.“’ Ranov passed this on to Baba Yanka. She listened attentively for a moment, and suddenly her face contracted with fear and displeasure; she drew back in her wooden chair and crossed herself quickly.‘Ne!’ she said vehemently, withdrawing her hand from Helen’s.‘Ne, ne.’

  “Ranov shrugged. ‘You understand. She doesn’t know it.’

  “‘Clearly she does,’ I said quietly. ‘Ask her why she is afraid to tell us about it.’

  “This time the old woman looked stern. ‘She won’t talk about it,’ Ranov said.

  “‘Tell her we will give her a reward.’ Ranov’s eyebrows went up again, but he put the offer to Baba Yanka. ‘She says we must shut the door.’ He got up and quietly closed the doors and wooden shutters, blocking out the spectators in the street. ‘Now she will sing.’

  “There couldn’t have been a greater contrast between Baba Yanka’s performance of the first song and her performance of this one. She seemed to shrink in her chair, huddling down in the seat and looking at the floor. Her jolly smile was gone, and her amber eyes fixed on our feet. The melody that came out of her was certainly a melancholy one, although the last line of the verse seemed to me to end on a defiant note. Ranov translated carefully. Why, I wondered again, was he being so helpful?

  The dragon came down our valley.

  He burned the crops and took the maidens.

  He frightened the Turkish infidel and protected our villages.

  His breath dried up the rivers and we walked across them.

  Now we must defend ourselves.

  The dragon was our protector,

  But now we defend ourselves against him.

  “‘Well,’ Ranov said. ‘Is that what you wanted to hear?’

  “‘Yes.’ Helen patted Baba Yanka’s hand and the old woman broke out in a scolding voice. ‘Ask her where this one is from and why she fears it,’ Helen requested.

  “Ranov needed a few minutes to sort through Baba Yanka’s reproaches. ‘She learned this song in secret from her great-grandmother, who told her never to sing it after dark. The song is an unlucky song. It sounds lucky but it is unlucky. They do not
sing it here except on Saint George’s Day. That is the only day you can sing it safely, without bringing bad luck. She hopes you have not made her cow die in this way, or worse.’

  “Helen smiled. ‘Tell her I have a reward for her, a gift that takes away all bad luck and puts good luck in its place.’ She opened Baba Yanka’s worn hand and put a silver medallion in it. ‘This belongs to a very devout and wise man and he sends it to you for your protection. It shows Sveti Ivan Rilski, a great Bulgarian saint.’ I realized that this must be the little object Stoichev had put into Helen’s hand. Baba Yanka looked at it for a moment, turning it on her rough palm, then raised it to her lips and kissed it. She tucked it into some secret compartment in her apron.‘Blagodarya,’ she said. She kissed Helen’s hand, too, and sat fondling it as if she had found a long-lost daughter. Helen turned to Ranov again. ‘Please just ask her if she knows what the song means and where it came from. And why do they sing it on Saint George’s Day?’

  “Baba Yanka shrugged at this. ‘The song means nothing. It is just an unlucky old song. My great-grandmother told me that some people believed it came from a monastery. But that is not possible, because monks do not sing such songs-they sing the praises of God. We sing it on Saint George’s Day because it invites Sveti Georgi to kill the dragon and end his torture of the people.’

  “‘What monastery?’ I cried. ‘Ask her if she knows of a monastery called Sveti Georgi, one that disappeared a long time ago.’

  “But Baba Yanka only nodded-no-and clicked her tongue. ‘There is no monastery here. The monastery is at Bachkovo. We have only the church, where I will sing with my sister this afternoon.’

  “I groaned and made Ranov try one more time. This time he clicked his tongue too. ‘She says she knows of no monastery. There has never been a monastery here.’

  “‘When is Saint George’s Day?’ I asked.

  “‘On May sixth.’ Ranov stared me down. ‘You have missed it by several weeks.’

  “I was silent, but in the meantime Baba Yanka had cheered up again. She shook our hands and kissed Helen and made us promise to hear her singing that afternoon-‘It is much better with my sister. She sings the second voice.’

  “We told her we would be there. She insisted on giving us some lunch, which she had been preparing when we came in; it was potatoes and a kind of gruel, and more of the sheep’s milk, which I thought I might be able to get used to if I stayed a few months. We ate as gratefully as we could, praising her cooking, until Ranov told us we should go back to the church if we wanted to see the beginning of the service. Baba Yanka parted from us reluctantly, squeezing our hands and arms and patting Helen’s cheeks.

  “The fire next to the church had almost burned down now, although a few logs still flamed on top of the coals, pale in the bright afternoon sun. The villagers were already beginning to gather near the church, even before its bells began to ring. The bells rang and rang in the small stone tower at its peak, and then the young priest came to the door. He was dressed in red and gold now, with a long embroidered cape over his robes and a black shawl draped over his hat. He carried a smoking censer on a gold chain, which he swung in three directions outside the church door.

  “The people gathered there-women dressed like Baba Yanka in stripes and flowers or in black from head to toe, and men in rough brown woolen vests and trousers, with white shirts tied or buttoned at their necks-fell back as the priest emerged. He came out among them, blessing them with the sign of the cross, and some of them bowed their heads or bent over in front of him. Behind him came an older man, dressed like a monk in plain black, whom I took to be his assistant. This man held an icon in his arms, which was draped with purple silk. I got a quick glimpse of it-a stiff, pale, dark-eyed visage. This must be Sveti Petko, I thought. The villagers followed the icon silently around the edge of the church in a streaming mass, many of them walking with canes or leaning on the arms of the younger ones. Baba Yanka found us and took my arm proudly, as if to show her neighbors what good connections she had. Everyone stared at us; it occurred to me that we were getting at least as much attention as the icon.

  “The two priests led us in silence around the back of the church and along the other side, where we could see the fire ring at a short distance and smell the smoke that rose from it. The flames were dying down, unattended, the last great logs and branches already a deep orange, all of it settling into a mass of coals. We made this procession three times around the church, and then the priest halted again at the church porch and began to chant. Sometimes his elderly assistant answered him, and sometimes the congregation murmured a response, crossing themselves or bowing. Baba Yanka had let go of my arm, but she stayed close to us. Helen was watching everything with a keen interest, I saw, and so was Ranov.

  “At the end of this outdoor ceremony, we followed the congregation into the church, which was dark as a tomb after the brilliance of the fields and groves. It was a small church, but the interior had a kind of exquisite scale the bigger churches we’d seen couldn’t boast. The young priest had put the icon of Sveti Petko in a place of honor near the front, propped on a carved podium. I noticed Brother Ivan bowing before the altar. As usual, there were no pews; the people stood or knelt on the cold stone floor, and a few old women prostrated themselves in the center of the church. The side walls contained niches that were frescoed or housed icons, and in one of them yawned a dark opening that I thought must go down to the crypt. It was easy to imagine centuries of peasant worship here and in the older church that had stood here before this one.

  “After what seemed like an eternity, the chanting ceased. The people bowed once more and began to drift out of the church, some of them stopping here and there to kiss icons or to light candles, which they placed in the iron candelabra near the entrance. The church bells began to ring and we followed the villagers outdoors again, where the sun and breeze and brilliant fields smote us without warning. A long table had been set out under some trees, and women were already uncovering dishes there and pouring something from ceramic pitchers. Then I saw there was a second fire pit on this side of the church, a small one, where a spitted lamb hung. Two men were cranking it around and around over the coals and the smell brought a primitive watering to my mouth. Baba Yanka filled our plates for us herself and took us to a blanket away from the crowd. There we met her sister, who looked just like her except taller and thinner, and we all gorged on the good food. Even Ranov, folding his legs in their city suit carefully on the woven blanket, seemed almost content. Other villagers stopped by to greet us and to ask Baba Yanka and her sister when they would be singing, an attention they waved away with the dignity of opera stars.

  “When the lamb had been completely devoured and the women were scraping the dishes over a wooden bucket, I noticed that three men had brought out musical instruments and were preparing to play. One of them had the oddest instrument I had ever seen up close-a bag made of cleaned white animal skin with wooden pipes sticking out of it. It was clearly a kind of bagpipe, and Ranov told us that it was an ancient instrument in Bulgaria, thegaida, made of the skin of a goat. The old man who cradled it in his arms gradually blew it up like a great balloon; this process took a good ten minutes and he was bright red before he’d finished. He nestled it under his arm and puffed into one of the pipes and everyone cheered and applauded. It had the sound of an animal, too, a loud bleat, a shriek or squawk, and Helen laughed. ‘You know,’ she told me, ‘there is a bagpipe in every herding culture in the world.’

  “Then the old man began to play, and after a moment his friends joined him, one on a long wooden flute, whose voice swirled around us in a fluid ribbon, and the other beating a soft skin drum with a padded stick. Some of the women jumped up and formed a line, and a man with a white handkerchief, as we’d seen at Stoichev’s, led them around the meadow. The people too old and infirm to dance sat smiling with their terrible teeth and empty gums, or patted the ground beside them, or tapped their canes.

  “Baba Yanka
and her sister stayed quietly where they were, as if their moment had not come. They waited until the flute player began to call for them, gesturing and smiling, and then until their audience joined the call, and then they feigned some reluctance, and finally they got up and went, hand in hand, to stand next to the musicians. Everyone fell quiet, and thegaida played a little introduction. The two old women began to sing, their arms twined around each other’s waists now, and the sound they made-a stomach-churning harmony, harsh and beautiful-seemed to come from one body. The sound of thegaida grew up around it, and then the three voices, the voices of the two women and the goat, rose together and spread over us like the groaning of the earth itself. Helen’s eyes were suddenly suffused with tears, which was so unlike her that I put my arm around her in front of everyone.

  “After the women had sung five or six songs, with cheers in between from the crowd, everyone rose-at what signal, I couldn’t tell, until I saw the priest approaching again. He carried the icon of Sveti Petko, now draped in red velvet, and behind him came two boys, each dressed in a dark robe and each carrying an icon completely covered in white silk. This procession made its way around to the other side of the church, the musicians walking behind it playing a somber melody, and halted between the church and the great fire ring. The fire had burned down completely now; only a circle of coals remained, infernally red and deep. Wisps of smoke rose up from it now and then as if something underneath were alive and breathing. The priest and his helpers stood by the church wall, holding their treasures in front of them.

  “At last the musicians struck up a new tune-lively but somber at the same time, I thought-and one by one the villagers who could dance, or at least walk, fell into a long snaking line that made its way slowly around the fire. As the line wound around in front of the church, Baba Yanka and another woman-not her sister, this time, but an even more weather-beaten woman whose clouded eyes looked nearly blind-came forward and bowed to the priest and to the icons. They took their shoes and socks off and set them carefully by the church steps, kissed Sveti Petko’s forbidding face, and received the priest’s blessing. The priest’s young helpers gave an icon to each woman, pulling off the silk covers. The music surged higher; thegaida player was sweating profusely, his face scarlet, his cheeks enormous.