Stork Mountain

by Miroslav Penkov

  My boys died yesteryear, teacher. The plague took them. We lost three girls. My son. My little daughter. Typhus. Measles. Malaria. Grippe. And all across the hills—in meadows amid the thick oak forests—little hamlets with their huts burned down in long-gone wars. Wreckage and rubble. Old trenches now filling up with earth, like jaws closing slowly, and the bones of the dead still showing white among the wild vines, the thorns, and the nettles.

  The list said fifty children in the upper hamlets. Of those fifty, eleven were still living.

  “Don’t go farther up the slope, teacher,” a mother told them outside her lonely hut. She’d lost her five children and her husband. “The plague is still alive up there.” The Pope held a crucifix to her chapped lips. “Where were you yesteryear, Father?” she said, but not with any accusation. “I buried them alone under the oak tree.”

  “I’ll go to sanctify their bones,” the Pope told her, and she shrugged.

  “Sanctify me. I dug the graves.”

  They left her sitting outside the hut, petting in her lap a rug of goat hair, her eyes locked onto a great, invisible-for-them abyss. Once they’d lost her from sight, the Pope broke down in tears. “Who’ll dig her grave?” he said. And then, “I’m going to the upper houses.”

  So up they went. One hut to another. Beautiful children there. Rosy cheeks and black eyes, burning. Typhus. Made the dying look so handsome. And awfully thirsty. There was a well some five hundred meters from one hut—or rather, a hole in the ground—but it had been a while since last the family had had the strength to draw water. So Grandpa filled a bucket and the Pope brought the gourd from mouth to mouth—four children, their parents, and an old grandma, all of them quaffing like wild beasts.

  “You’re a Christian priest,” the father whispered.

  “And you’re dying,” the Pope told him. “Gather your family. Step outside into the sunlight.”

  He baptized them into Christ, pouring water on their heads from the gourd. On parting, he gifted them a small icon of the Holy Virgin. The old woman was the first to kiss it.

  “I was a little tiny girl,” she said, “the first time they baptized me. Allah have mercy. And the Virgin.”

  SEVEN

  SO WHAT if the children of Klisura were romping wild things? So what if he taught classes in the cherry orchard and had to bring the barber to shear not just their heads, but also his because of head lice? So what if the fleas chewed him to the bone and anything he ate in those early weeks gave him diarrhea? The Party had meant to break him, so to hell with the Party. That’s what Grandpa told himself each night in the mayor’s house, where he was lodging. If the mayor could sleep on a rug on the floor, so could Grandpa. If bread and water were good enough for the mayor, then they were good enough for my grandfather. Where did the Party think Grandpa had slept when he was little? What did they think his meals had comprised in those days when two of his brothers were wasted in the famine? And his own grandfather in the Balkan War. Punish him! To teach children, who, wild as they were, kissed his hand? Who, when he told them stories of khans and tsars and rebels, watched him as though it were a mountain of sweets they were watching? Who memorized fairy tales and poems as easily as the lark learns singsong? He enjoyed himself, my grandfather. He was even grateful. That is, until the Greeks came to the village and walked in the fire.

  * * *

  It was raining that night. June 2. The mayor always went to bed right after sunset, but that night he lit a lantern and took it out on the terrace. Grandpa didn’t ask him why, only sat beside him, and they smoked, saying nothing. Rain fell in buckets, but every time it lightened the mayor sent a whistle into the darkness. He’d get up from his chair and pace about and curse the downpour. “You’ll catch a cold out here,” he’d say. But Grandpa refused to leave him. Instead, he rolled new cigarettes and they sat silent. They must have gone through an entire pouch of tobacco that night.

  Then, just after midnight, the dark sent back a whistle—somewhere across the hill yonder. The rain picked up. A proper storm was raging, but out on the terrace the two men remained, waiting. Grandpa was first to hear it—the noise of feet splashing in the mud—and when a bolt of lightning flashed he saw them: pitch-black figures, in a thin file. The mayor sprinted to the gates and held them open and one by one the figures trickled into the courtyard. Grandpa lit more lamps inside the house while outside by the well the newcomers washed their feet with pails of water. Grandpa’s head was spinning, not just from the tobacco but from the stench these people brought in. One by one the hoods were lowered and the room grew brighter, each wet face reflecting the light of the oil lamps. One by one they sat on the floor, muddy despite the washing. Men and women and children—twelve of them, Grandpa counted. But the thirteenth wasn’t sitting yet. The mayor pulled out a dagger from his sash and slashed the rope with which the thirteenth man had fixed to his back a bundle. Inside the bundle, Grandpa found out later, were three sacred icons. But those he didn’t see until the following day.

  No one spoke and quickly the heads were drooping, the eyes were flittering, closing. Every now and then a boy let out a cough in the corner. Wrapped in a thick cloak, with only his face showing, thin and ashen, he sat away from the others and shivered. “Go to your room,” the mayor told Grandpa, but Grandpa couldn’t leave them. To see these men, the way their eyes burned, the knives in their sashes, the cudgels they propped like rifles against the wall, it set his blood on fire.

  They all slept on the floor that night, together. All throughout, the sick boy coughed in the corner and his teeth chattered. Grandpa took pity on him and brewed him some mint tisane, but the boy only sank deeper into his cloak, not looking up for even a moment. Maybe it was this cloak that confused Grandpa, for the next day, without it, he realized the boy was no boy really. Her name was Lenio and she was blazing with awful fear. Tomorrow, for the first time in her life, she was to face the fire. But no one knew yet if Saint Constantine would lead her through it or if he’d let her get burned.

  EIGHT

  JUNE 3, GRANDPA HAD GATHERED, was the feast day of Klisura, a celebration of its patron saints, Constantine and Elena. And seeing how the parents of his students were growing ever curious to learn the kind of tricks he taught their children, he decided to stage a little performance. The cherry orchard overflowed with guests that morning. His students recited all thirty letters of the alphabet and counted to one hundred, named the seven days of the week, the twelve months of the year. A song was sung, two poems chanted. So wild were the applause and whistles at the end that ripe cherries fell to the ground and sweet fragrance chased away the smell of garlic, onions, and sweat.

  “Ashkolsun, my boy,” the mayor bellowed, and his bear paw slapped Grandpa on the back, then on the shoulder. Among the spectators Grandpa had noticed the strange guests from last night—or rather, just the men, all dressed in black, and only their jackets and their sashes the color of dirty blood.

  When he awakened with the sunrise that morning, Grandpa had found the mayor’s house empty—how he hadn’t heard the guests rising, he couldn’t say really. Later the Pope told him that the mayor had brought all of his thirteen guests to church before the rooster had crowed even once. “They woke me up at such an ungodly hour and forced me to hold a service. Three straight hours.”

  Now in the cherry orchard, the mayor introduced Grandpa to the Greeks—for that’s what they were no matter that their village lay in Turkey.

  The tallest one, whose mustache was freshly waxed and coiled upward like the horns of a wild ram, was Captain Vangelis. His single eyebrow was an eagle’s wing, his eyes the color of frozen ashes. Beside him were his three sons—the oldest, Kostantinos, who wore a black headband wound so that the band’s tassels fell on either side of his face like clenched fists; Demetrios, whose hair reached all the way down to his shoulders; and Yannis, who smiled at Grandpa and said in Bulgarian, “You’ve taught them well, teacher.”

  There was another captain—Elias—an old m
an the strength of whose hair was all gathered in his mustache so that his head shone like a boiled egg. And his two sons—the older one, Giorgios, who walked with a bad limp; and Michalis, no older than eighteen, whose smooth face betrayed his young age.

  “You’ve taught them well,” Elias repeated, but Captain Vangelis only shook his great head. He fixed Grandpa with his eyes and his jaw creaked before he spoke in his own language.

  “He says it’s a shame to teach in an orchard,” said Yannis, the kindest of his sons.

  “I say, if caves were good enough for the early teachers,” Grandpa answered, “a cherry orchard is good enough for me and my students.” He was referring to days long gone, when the Ottomans did not allow the raya to study. When people learned how to read and write in hiding.

  The men nodded, but not Captain Vangelis.

  “He says you have Turks among your students.”

  “And I say, are they really?”

  “Why do you teach the Muslims?”

  “I teach children who don’t know how to read and write yet.”

  Grandpa knew well what the captain was doing. It was the same thing the leader of the kalushari had done a long time back, digging up that pit on the village square and filling it with bursting fire to see which boys would tumble in and which would cross it. Grandpa hadn’t fallen in the pit back then, and now too he had no intention of falling. So he stood his ground, and soon Captain Vangelis too was nodding and putting his bony hand on Grandpa’s shoulder.

  “You teach them well,” the captain said in broken Bulgarian. “But orchard is not a school.” Then to the mayor he spoke, still in Bulgarian, so Grandpa would understand him. “All right. He may come.”

  NINE

  THE FIRST ONE WAS AN ICON of the Theotokos, the All Holy Virgin Mary, birth-giver to God. An icon of Eleusa or Tender Mercy; the same kind as the one the Pope had given the family they had baptized in the upper hamlets. As for the other two icons, the Pope had never seen their likeness. On one, Saint Constantine had taken a giant leap and was hanging in midair. His bare feet were cast in gold. His hands in silver. On the other, his mother, Saint Elena, was also leaping, the ends of her purple robe billowing around her like the outstretched wings of a large bird. All three icons were dressed in red cloth cases, and short wooden handles hung from their bottoms, like tails.

  “That’s heresy,” the Pope told Grandpa later. But there in the church, surrounded by the seven Greeks, the mayor, and Grandpa, the Pope dared say nothing. He blessed the icons and chanted, and slowly the church filled up with people.

  After the service they took the icons to the shack below the walnut. Back in those days, a path cut through the forest and made the walk from the village short and easy. Back in those days, walnuts weighed down the tree’s branches. And in their nests, among the leafage, the black storks called sharply and clacked their bills, as if to greet both people and icons. When the mayor pushed the door of the shack open, three women, black like the storks, sprang to their feet, crying.

  Welcome, welcome, Saint Kosta, and from their voices the hairs on Grandpa’s back bristled. Two of the women were Greek—Grandpa recognized them from last night. The third one was a local grandma. They said she was a hundred years old, but she looked at least twice that. Her name was Baba Vida.

  At first Grandpa couldn’t see too well. A tiny, glassless window below the roof let in some light and then a fire was bursting in the hearth—thick oak logs the women had fixed upright. The heat was a grabbing, choking fist. The smell of frankincense was swelling and mixing with the stench of men. The walls seemed to be closing in.

  Yet Grandpa was breathing in thirsty gulps. His head was turning and deep within him the kalushari of his youth banged their cudgels. Vassilko put down the candelabra he was carrying and from the embers of the altar lamp that the mayor brandished, Baba Vida stole flame to light three candles. The space brightened. In the deep end of the shack Grandpa saw a makeshift iconostasis, upon which the mayor arranged the holy icons, purifying each one over the smoke of his lamp, crossing himself, and paying obeisance. Strings of gold and silver coins, Turkish, from the days of janissaries and rebels. White and red damask roses. Fresh shoots from the walnut tree. The women adorned the icons, hands shaking, mumbling prayers. But no one seemed as tensed as Baba Vida. Grandpa could hear the noise her gums made slapping against each other, or maybe it was her bare feet on the wood floor he was hearing. And while this happened, people shuffled in and out of the shrine. Some brought kerchiefs and towels, some little bottles of oils and incense, which Baba Vida took with a thank-you. “Here now, buy a candle,” she’d say, and the visitors dropped their coins in a chest in the corner, crossed themselves before the icons, and hurried out to make room for others.

  Only one girl lingered before the image of the Holy Virgin. Her body trembling, she kissed the icon’s corner. But when she came to Saint Constantine, she pulled back, as if the heat of a furnace had stung her. “Lenio!” Captain Vangelis barked from the side, and Grandpa felt the air his lips spat out lash his ears like a bullwhip. Right away he recognized her. The sick boy from the night before. But dressed in a nice dress. And two braids of black hair falling down from under her white kerchief. What hair! Make a rope of it, tie down two oxen, and watch them struggle to break free. Grandpa’s heart flittered. But she was a child still—fourteen, he guessed, no older.

  Terrified was Lenio when Baba Vida swooped her hand gently and led her to Saint Constantine’s image. Terrified, she kissed his icon as though it were a diseased corpse she was kissing. But then she crossed herself three times and kissed the icon of Saint Elena, and when she turned to face the men, her eyes shone and she was smiling.

  It was at that moment the pipers came in. And the drummer. Up on one wall Grandpa had seen a giant drum hanging, and on a nail beside it, coiled like an adder, a piece of hemp rope.

  “Faster with the drum!” Baba Vida scolded, and Grandpa’s heart too pounded faster to catch up with the beating. The two bagpipes came to screaming.

  Narrow walls, a low ceiling. The heat boiling with the stink of incense. The men’s faces gleaming, their sweat like liquid fire. Their hands on the hilts of their knives in the sashes. And the Greek women, taking quick steps around, crying “Vah, vah, vah!” like owls. The whites of their eyes flashing under the twitching eyelids and their arms flapping as though to take flight.

  “Faster with the drum,” Baba Vida commanded, and Grandpa could tell, by the way she was shaking, how much she wanted to do what the Greek women were doing. And yet she was too old.

  In the corner Lenio too was watching the women. At once, her voice rang out like a gunshot. Her arms flapped and her bare feet smacked the floor. Faster the drum was beating. Louder the bagpipes. From the outside, two local women rushed in. They too were dancing. The Greek men joined them, howling. The women seized the icons and the music followed them out in the open. They all danced a horo around the walnut, the mayor waving a red kerchief in the lead, their feet black with mud from the rains of last night. The crowd clapped and cheered.

  At last, the dance returned them to the shrine. The icons were rested on the shelf; the music grew quiet and then drowned in silence. Only the women spoke in whispers. And Grandpa was surprised to see that Lenio too was speaking with Baba Vida, the murmur of her voice as light as the rain that had begun to drizzle.

  They said of Baba Vida that she could see what hadn’t come to pass yet. And sure enough that day in the shack she pulled Grandpa to one side. “Teacher, don’t do it,” she whispered. “Unless you aim to wrestle Saint Kosta.” But Grandpa aimed to wrestle no one. Though, strictly speaking, he told me later, before the saint there came Lenio’s brothers. And then her father, Captain Vangelis, whom people also called the Wild Ram.

  TEN

  THE DAY WAS HEAVY WITH RITUAL. As for its meaning, no one understood it fully. “Who knows what it all means, you book rat,” the mayor said, and slammed his paw on Grandpa’s back. “I do as the
old vekilin taught me.” That’s what the mayor was—vekilin of the Klisuran nestinari; which is to say, a caretaker, the bridge between them and the people’s world.

  After the shack, they visited a spring in the forest, hedged in and roofed over, the ayazmo of Saint Constantine. There the priest was waiting for the service. “I heard there is a big lunch after,” he whispered in Grandpa’s ear, and let people kiss the cross and his right hand.

  A fat ram was waiting in the churchyard. The mayor tied it down with the rope from the shack and slaughtered the animal kurban—the slaughtering hole also sacred, it too Saint Kosta’s. Most of the meat they gave as alms throughout the village—the rest was taken to the shrine and cast in a cauldron over the fire. There by the shrine the mayor slaughtered one more ram and a white lamb. The parents of sick children had given them kurban, hoping the saint would bring a cure. As was the custom, they let the blood seep into the roots of the walnut; then they marched to the mayor’s house and ate the big lunch.

  * * *

  Around five in the evening, outside the shack and under the walnut, an enormous pile of oak wood was set ablaze. Sparks and flames and black smoke carried up to the gray sky.

  “It’ll hold,” Baba Vida said of the rain that still drizzled. “Saint Kosta will hold it.”

  At around a quarter to eight the rain picked up. The ground turned muddier and puddles pooled where the feet of the nestinari had sunk earlier that day. But the wood still burned with a tall flame, and a wave of relief spread through the crowd of spectators. Saint Kosta had willed it, and Baba Vida had seen it: despite the rain, there would be dancing.

  It had grown dark when two men began to rake the fire with long sticks, to push the still burning stumps to one side and spread the embers in a circle. The drum was pounding faster and faster, the bagpipes were screeching, and up in the branches the black storks were crying something fierce. Yet a hush spread through the crowd when three young men stepped out of the shack with the sacred icons. Even the storks grew quiet. After the icons floated Baba Vida, Lenio and the women, Captain Vangelis and his sons, and Captain Elias and his.