East of the West

by Miroslav Penkov

  Somehow, without firing a single shot, Peyo limps away. His blood is gushing out. He collapses outside a house, conscious long enough to feel two hands pull him inside.

  We sit. It seems that a long time passes without any sound. I go through my drawer until I find an old pack of Arda from the days when I still smoked. I push the window open and light a cigarette and once again no one protests. The taste is awful—stale and damp. When I’m finished I light a second. I watch my wife’s reflection in the glass. I wonder if I have brought up things that should be left buried. But I want to read the end. I know she wants to hear it.

  The Turks have butchered all the komiti, some defiant peasants have sheltered Peyo, but his wound is going septic. I see him clearly now, in my own bed, writing hectically, trying to lock all these events onto paper while he still has some strength. His eyes are black, shiny with fever, and his lips glisten with the fat from the rooster soup the peasants have fed him. But no soup can help. He is kissing death in the mouth.

  I turn the final page and read what appears to be a rebel song.

  I got no father, I got no mother,

  Father to scorn me,

  Mother to mourn me,

  My father—the mountain.

  My mother—the shotgun.

  “That’s it,” I say, “there’s no more writing.”

  Pavel jumps off his cot to grab his apple. He polishes it on his shirt and takes a bite. He offers some to his mother, to Nora, to me. But neither of us speaks.

  Then a nurse knocks on the door. “You have a visitor,” she says.

  •

  Quiet, we sit, while out in the yard Buryana is talking to her husband, deciding their life. I can’t see them from here—they’ve moved away from the window, under the trees.

  “Why can’t I talk to father?” Pavel asks. He sets the half-eaten apple on the ledge and picks up the booklet. “I’ll memorize this poem for school, then. I’m bored.”

  “Pavka, stay with your grandma. I’ll be right back.”

  I limp as fast as I can down the hallway and I’m close to the exit when Buryana walks in. She wipes her cheeks. “It’s finished,” she says. “He’s moved out of the apartment. Which is good news for you, I guess. Four in a room …” She fakes a laugh and I hold her in my arms, for the first time in many years. I kiss her forehead, eyes and nose.

  “Go back to your child.”

  Her husband is still sitting on a bench, face in his palms. I startle him, sitting down. I’m old, I think to myself. I’m ancient. When I speak, the young ones listen. But what do you say to a man whose love for a woman is stronger than the love for his own son, for his own blood? Nothing will make this man regret.

  I lean back on the bench and cross my legs, regardless of how much pain this brings me. I smooth the creases of my pants.

  “ ‘I got no father,’ ” I say, “ ‘I got no mother. Father to scorn me, Mother to mourn me. My father—the mountain. My mother—the shotgun.’ ” He’s puzzled, I can tell, biting his lip. Blood rushes to his face. These words make little sense to him, old rebel words of loyalty and courage, and yet they clasp his windpipe in a fist.

  •

  Once Buryana and Pavel are gone, I tell Nora all that’s happened. I spare her nothing. There should be no secrets between us now.

  “She is a strong woman,” I say, “our daughter. She’ll be all right.” I don’t know what else to say. I look at the little booklet on my desk, while with effort Nora pushes herself off the bed. Her hip gives a pop, the springs a creak. I rush to help her, but she shakes her head. No, no, she wants to say. I can do this myself. Let me, myself. She picks the booklet up, and in an instant it is alive. Its dusty body trembles from the touch. A sparrow, which shakes its feathers free of dew. A man’s heart, which beats itself to life again. A hand she leads away, ungracious, horrible, horrific. I watch her drag her withered foot across the room and lay the booklet in its box. She lowers the box in a drawer and slides the drawer shut. Her face is calm. Farewell, old boy, it says, old love.

  I wonder if the rebel’s grave is still there, in that Macedonian village. And if we went there, would we find it? An empty plan starts to take shape. What if I pulled some strings? There are one or two old comrades who can help us out. What if they loaned us a car, stamped our passports? We’ll take Buryana and Pavel with us.

  I lower the half-eaten apple from the ledge and flip it in my hand. How calm your face, Nora, I want to say, how even your breaths. Teach me to breathe like you. To wave my palm and turn the raging surf to glass.

  Instead I call her name. Slowly, she limps over and eases down beside me. “I’ve never told you this,” I say. “We never buried Brother. That was a lie. We never took him off the rope. I’d heard rumors, stories from people in our mountain, of how when mothers recognized their gunned-down children the tsarists pulled them aside and shot them on the spot. And so I told Mother, ‘I beseech you in your daughters’ blood, keep walking. Don’t say a word.’ And Mother was so shocked then she stood before my brother and didn’t even reach to touch his feet. We walked right past.”

  I know that this will never be, but still I say, “Let’s go to Macedonia. Let’s find the grave. I’ll borrow a car.” I want to say more, but I don’t. She watches me. She takes my hand and now my hand, too, trembles with hers. I see in the apple the marks of Pavel’s teeth and, in the brown flesh, a tiny tooth. I show it to Nora and it takes her eyes a moment to recognize what it is they see. Or so I think.

  But then she nods without surprise, as if this is just what she expected. Isn’t it good to be so young, she wants to tell me, that you can lose a tooth and not even notice?

  EAST OF THE WEST

  It takes me thirty years, and the loss of those I love, to finally arrive in Beograd. Now I’m pacing outside my cousin’s apartment, flowers in one hand and a bar of chocolate in the other, rehearsing the simple question I want to ask her. A moment ago, a Serbian cabdriver spat on me and I take time to wipe the spot on my shirt. I count to eleven.

  Vera, I repeat once more in my head, will you marry me?

  •

  I first met Vera in the summer of 1970, when I was six. At that time my folks and I lived on the Bulgarian side of the river, in the village of Bulgarsko Selo, while she and her folks made home on the other bank, in Srbsko. A long time ago these two villages had been one—that of Staro Selo—but after the great wars Bulgaria had lost land and that land had been given to the Serbs. The river, splitting the village in two hamlets, had served as a boundary: what lay east of the river stayed in Bulgaria and what lay west belonged to Serbia.

  Because of the unusual predicament the two villages were in, our people had managed to secure permission from both countries to hold, once every five years, a major reunion, called the sbor. This was done officially so we wouldn’t forget our roots. In reality, though, the reunion was just another excuse for everyone to eat lots of grilled meat and drink lots of rakia. A man had to eat until he felt sick from eating and he had to drink until he no longer cared if he felt sick from eating. The summer of 1970, the reunion was going to be in Srbsko, which meant we had to cross the river first.

  •

  This is how we cross:

  Booming noise and balls of smoke above the water. Mihalaky is coming down the river on his boat. The boat is glorious. Not a boat really, but a raft with a motor. Mihalaky has taken the seat of an old Moskvich, the Russian car with the engine of a tank, and he has nailed that seat to the floor of the raft and upholstered the seat with goat skin. Hair out. Black and white spots, with brown. He sits on his throne, calm, terrible. He sucks on a pipe with an ebony mouthpiece and his long white hair flows behind him like a flag.

  On the banks are our people. Waiting. My father is holding a white lamb under one arm and on his shoulder he is balancing a demijohn of grape rakia. His shining eyes are fixed on the boat. He licks his lips. Beside him rests a wooden cask, stuffed with white cheese. My uncle is sitting on the cask, count
ing Bulgarian money.

  “I hope they have deutsche marks to sell,” he says.

  “They always do,” my father tells him.

  My mother is behind them, holding two sacks. One is full of terlitsi—booties she has been knitting for some months, gifts for our folks on the other side. The second sack is zipped up and I can’t see what’s inside, but I know. Flasks of rose oil, lipstick and mascara. She will sell them or trade them for other kinds of perfumes or lipsticks or mascara. Next to her is my sister, Elitsa, pressing to her chest a small teddy bear stuffed with money. She’s been saving. She wants to buy jeans.

  “Levis,” she says. “Like the rock star.”

  My sister knows a lot about the West.

  I’m standing between Grandma and Grandpa. Grandma is wearing her most beautiful costume—a traditional dress she got from her own Grandma that she will one day give to my sister. Motley-patterned apron, white hemp shirt, embroidery. On her ears, her most precious ornament—the silver earrings.

  Grandpa is twisting his mustache.

  “The little bastard,” he’s saying, “he better pay now. He better.”

  He is referring to his cousin, Uncle Radko, who owes him money on account of a football bet. Uncle Radko had taken his sheep by the cliffs, where the river narrowed, and seeing Grandpa herding his animals on the opposite bluff, shouted, “I bet your Bulgars will lose in London!” and Grandpa shouted back, “You wanna put some money on it?” And that’s how the bet was made, thirty years ago.

  There are nearly a hundred of us on the bank, and it takes Mihalaky a day to get us all across the river. No customs—the men pay some money to the guards and all is good. When the last person sets his foot in Srbsko, the moon is bright in the sky and the air smells of grilled pork and foaming wine.

  Eating, drinking, dancing. All night long. In the morning everyone has passed out in the meadow. There are only two souls not drunk or sleeping. One of them is me and the other one, going through the pockets of my folks, is my cousin Vera.

  •

  Two things I found remarkable about my cousin: her jeans and her sneakers. Aside from that, she was a scrawny girl—a pale, round face and fragile shoulders with skin peeling from the sun. Her hair was long, I think, or was it my sister’s hair that grew down to her waist? I forget. But I do recall the first thing that my cousin ever said to me:

  “Let go of my hair,” she said, “or I’ll punch you in the mouth.”

  I didn’t let go because I had to stop her from stealing, so, as promised, she punched me. Only she wasn’t very accurate and her fist landed on my nose, crushing it like a Plain Biscuit. I spent the rest of the sbor with tape on my face, sneezing blood, and now I am forever marked with an ugly snoot. Which is why everyone, except my mother, calls me Nose.

  •

  Five summers slipped by. I went to school in the village and in the afternoons I helped Father with the fields. Father drove an MTZ-50, a tractor made in Minsk. He’d put me on his lap and make me hold the steering wheel and the steering wheel would shake and twitch in my hands as the tractor ploughed diagonally, leaving terribly distorted lines behind.

  “My arms hurt,” I’d say. “This wheel is too hard.”

  “Nose,” Father would say, “quit whining. You’re not holding a wheel. You’re holding life by the throat. So get your shit together and learn how to choke the bastard, because the bastard already knows how to choke you.”

  Mother worked as a teacher in the school. This was awkward for me, because I could never call her “Mother” in class and because she always knew if I’d done my homework or not. But I had access to her files and could steal exams and sell them to the kids for cash.

  The year of the new sbor, 1975, our geography teacher retired and Mother found herself teaching his classes as well. This gave me more exams to sell and I made good money. I had a goal in mind. I went to my sister, Elitsa, having first rubbed my eyes hard so they would appear filled with tears, and with my most humble and vulnerable voice I asked her, “How much for your jeans?”

  “Nose,” she said, “I love you, but I’ll wear these jeans until the day I die.”

  I tried to look heartbreaking, but she didn’t budge. Instead, she advised me:

  “Ask cousin Vera for a pair. You’ll pay her at the sbor.” Then from a jar in her night stand Elitsa took out a ten-lev bill and stuffed it in my pocket. “Get some nice ones,” she said.

  Two months before it was time for the reunion, I went to the river. I yelled until a boy showed up and I asked him to call my cousin. She came an hour later.

  “What do you want, Nose?”

  “Levis!” I yelled.

  “You better have the money!” she yelled back.

  •

  Mihalaky came in smoke and roar. And with him came the West. My cousin Vera stepped out of the boat and everything on her screamed, We live better than you, we have more stuff, stuff you can’t have and never will. She wore white leather shoes with little flowers on them, which she explained was called an Adidas. She had jeans. And her shirt said things in English.

  “What does it say?”

  “The name of a music group. They have this song that goes ‘Smooook na dar voooto.’ You heard it?”

  “Of course I have.” But she knew better.

  After lunch, the grown-ups danced around the fire, then played drunk soccer. Elitsa was absent for most of the time, and finally when she returned, her lips were burning red and her eyes shone like I’d never seen them before. She pulled me aside and whispered in my ear:

  “Promise not to tell.” Then she pointed at a dark-haired boy from Srbsko, skinny and with a long neck, who was just joining the soccer game. “Boban and I kissed in the forest. It was so great,” she said, and her voice flickered. She nudged me in the ribs, and stuck a finger at cousin Vera, who sat by the fire, yawning and raking the embers up with a stick.

  “Come on, Nose, be a man. Take her to the woods.”

  And she laughed so loud, even the deaf old grandmas turned to look at us.

  I scurried away, disgusted and ashamed, but finally I had to approach Vera. I asked her if she had my jeans, then took out the money and began to count it.

  “Not here, you fool,” she said, and slapped me on the hand with the smoldering stick.

  We walked through the village until we reached the old bridge, which stood solitary in the middle of the road. Yellow grass grew between each stone, and the riverbed was dry and fissured.

  We hid under the bridge and completed the swap. Thirty levs for a pair of jeans. Best deal I’d ever made.

  “You wanna go for a walk?” Vera said after she had counted the bills twice. She rubbed them on her face, the way our fathers did, and stuffed them in her pocket.

  We picked mushrooms in the woods while she told me things about her school and complained about a Serbian boy who always pestered her.

  “I can teach him a lesson,” I said. “Next time I come there, you just show him to me.”

  “Yeah, Nose, like you know how to fight.”

  And then, just like that, she hit me in the nose. Crushed it, once more, like a biscuit.

  “Why did you do that?”

  She shrugged. I made a fist to smack her back, but how do you hit a girl? Or how, for that matter, will hitting another person in the face stop the blood gushing from your own nose? I tried to suck it up and act like the pain was easy to ignore.

  She took me by the hand and dragged me toward the river.

  “I like you, Nose,” she said. “Let’s go wash your face.”

  •

  We lay on the banks and chewed thyme leaves.

  “Nose,” my cousin said, “you know what they told us in school?”

  She rolled over and I did the same to look her in the eyes. They were very dark, shaped like apricot kernels. Her face was all speckled and she had a tiny spot on her upper lip, delicate, hard to notice, that got redder when she was nervous or angry. The spot was red now.


  “You look like a mouse,” I told her.

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Our history teacher,” she said, “told us we were all Serbs. You know. Like, a hundred percent.”

  “Well, you talk funny,” I said. “I mean you talk Serbianish.”

  “So, you think I’m a Serb?”

  “Where do you live?” I asked her.

  “You know where I live.”

  “But do you live in Serbia or in Bulgaria?”

  Her eyes darkened and she held them shut for a long time. I knew she was sad. And I liked it. She had nice shoes, and jeans, and could listen to bands from the West, but I owned something that had been taken away from her forever.

  “The only Bulgarian here is me,” I told her.

  She got up and stared at the river. “Let’s swim to the drowned church,” she said.

  “I don’t want to get shot.”

  “Get shot? Who cares for churches in no-man’s-water? Besides, I’ve swum there before.” She stood up, took her shirt off and jumped in. The murky current rippled around her shoulders and they glistened, smooth, round pebbles the river had polished for ages. Yet her skin was soft, I could imagine. I almost reached to touch it.

  We swam the river slowly, staying along the bank. I caught a small chub under a rock, but Vera made me let it go. Finally we saw the cross sticking up above the water, massive, with rusty feet and arms that caught the evening sun.

  We all knew well the story of the drowned church. Back in the day, before the Balkan Wars, a rich man lived east of the river. He had no offspring and no wife, so when he lay down dying he called his servant with a final wish: to build, with his money, a village church. The church was built, west of the river, and the peasants hired from afar a young zograf, a master of icons. The master painted for two years and there he met a girl and fell in love with her and married her and they, too, lived west of the river, near the church.