Stork Mountain

by Miroslav Penkov

  “God have mercy,” the Pope repeated. And up they went, into the mountain.

  EIGHTEEN

  AND SO WE DRANK, Grandpa and I. And so we got drunk on ghosts and days long gone. The more he told me of the nestinari, the more his head turned. The more he remembered Lenio, the hungrier the fire that engulfed his brain boomed. As for me, did I not own a head that turns? To think of nothing but Elif and hear nothing but Grandpa’s story, daytime in waking and at night in my sleep? Lenio and Elif. Myself and Grandpa. With every word the borders crumbled; the territories of our hearts expanded, overlapped, and merged into one. Grandpa’s longing was my own. My own sadness had become his. And that vanished youthful courage of his now flowed alive in my bloodstream, reckless, savage, impossible to weather.

  I hadn’t cut my hair since first setting foot in Klisura. In three weeks we hadn’t shaved. Besides the sweat, we stank of onions and cheese. In short, we looked the part: the old captain with the stroke-eaten brain. The boy smacked stupid with love. The saint stork with the broken wing. A company of rebels.

  “Grandpa,” I cried one evening on the terrace. “We can’t admit defeat like this.” Elif had been taken away. The imam had begun to demolish our houses. What else was left for us to lose?

  He knew exactly what I would ask him. And I in turn knew he would not deny me. But all the same, I sang it loudly, as if a rebel song.

  “You have to help me steal Elif.”

  PART

  FIVE

  ONE

  IN MY DREAMS, I am two meters tall. My shirt is white like bones, and two bloodred kerchiefs flap on my chest like wings. Bolts of silver lightning embroider my britches; clumps of brass bells adorn my boots. Two daggers nestle in my sash and in my hand I grip a cudgel. A damask rose rests behind my ear. A sprig of wild geranium sits between my teeth. I smell of rose oil and like a man, of sweat. At my feet, the earth is singing. Wherever I pass, the air comes to a boil.

  In my dreams, I need no ladders. A single leap is all it takes to climb the wall. A single push to throw the window open. “Good evening,” I tell Elif, my breath pine needles. “I’ve come to steal you.” Her face turns yogurt-pale. She wants to be taken, I can tell, but not like this, without a fight. She splinters a chair against my skull. She kicks me in the shin. And when I lay my palm to silence any screaming, she sinks her teeth down to the bone.

  It’s then she swoons. It’s then I throw her on my shoulder and carry her off into the night. There are no complications in my dreams. No repercussions.

  But this is not my dreams.

  All day a warm wind blew from Turkey. All day the window frames of the abandoned houses rattled, the hedges howled, and empty tin cans rolled through our yard. Even at dusk, the wind persisted. Saint Kosta had tired of chasing the cans. Perched in his corner on the terrace, he watched us cast die after die and wait for sunset. When a half-moon rose above the Strandjan hills, we filled two small glasses with rakia and downed them, bottoms up.

  The plan—if you could call it that—was very simple: Grandpa would ask to see the imam and while the two talked business in the living room, I’d climb through Elif’s window. This was as far ahead as we had thought it out.

  We locked Saint Kosta in the yard and made for the Muslim hamlet. We carried our own ladder—Grandpa in the lead, and I ten feet behind. But by the time we were crossing the bridge Saint Kosta had already caught up with us. Most likely he’d jumped the fence, which only strengthened my suspicion—his wing wasn’t really broken. He was pretending; whatever the reason, he refused to fly.

  As planned, we chucked the ladder over the imam’s fence. As planned, Grandpa let himself in through the yard gate and knocked on the front door of the house. We didn’t plan for Elif’s mother to answer and tell Grandpa that, quite predictably, the imam had gone to the mosque for the evening prayer. We didn’t plan for half of the ladder rungs to snap after the throw.

  It soon became apparent—the window was out of reach. And so, in much less heroic fashion, I started chucking pebbles at the glass. The hinges creaked; the curtains flapped. A blue figure took shape in the night and only after Elif’s voice echoed, so sweet and sad, did I understand how much I’d missed her. Nothing else mattered in this moment—selling land or keeping land. I felt that I had crossed the ocean, arrived here in Klisura, for no other reason than to be with her.

  And only after her voice echoed did I realize how utterly absurd this situation was. The dream that Grandpa’s stories had concocted, a dream we had both dreamed as one, was suddenly reduced to ash. I was once more awake.

  “What are you doing here?” she said.

  “I’ve come to steal you.”

  “As if I were a bus? Go home. You’re drunk.”

  I wasn’t drunk. It had been just a tiny glass. She was no bus, I said, and I asked her to help me up.

  “Three weeks,” she said. “Not once did you come to seek me out. To see if I was still alive.”

  “Damn it, Elif. I mean it.”

  But did I really? I wasn’t sure and she could sense that.

  “Go home, American. Get a shave. Take a shower. Sober up.”

  The hell I would. I spoke with resolution, hoping that a firmness of the voice would convince not just Elif, but also me—this was no joke. It only seemed to be.

  But even when I told her that I wasn’t leaving I could see: for her, I’d left already.

  “Marry me!” I said in desperation. My voice dipped, so I repeated, I shouted it again.

  “Do you mean it?” she said, and I said, yes I meant it, I meant it with all my heart.

  “You are a cruel man,” she said. “It’s all a game to you. Go home.”

  TWO

  I CRIED A GREAT DEAL that night. I knew tears did not become a real man, but I wasn’t a real man after all. I knew I was upsetting Grandpa, but honestly I couldn’t help it. Over and over, I kept reliving the humiliation under Elif’s window. Going there to steal her, as if she were the village bus. Then asking her to be my wife.

  At last, unable to sleep, I went out to splash some water on my eyes. The sun was still behind the mountain; a mist was rolling through the yard. And by the well, Elif was waiting. She cradled a rucksack in her lap and on her face her father’s slap still burned scarlet. She didn’t wear a headscarf.

  “Did you mean it?” she asked so quietly I thought I had imagined it. And when she said it, all doubt, embarrassment, and fear dissolved before the simple truth.

  I held her tightly and she gasped for air.

  “Let go, you loon!”

  And then she kissed me. For the first time a real kiss. Not a stolen one, not one of demonstration before her father or the world. I kissed her back. I felt so dizzy, so weak with joy, I filled the bucket from the well and dumped it on my head. To wash the night away. To start anew. I splashed a bucket on her head. Her short hair was dripping rivers, there in the courtyard by the well.

  “You idiot,” she cried. But she was laughing.

  It was then that I heard Grandpa call me from the terrace. Saint Kosta clacked his bill. What room was there for words, I asked them, for reasons and for explanations? What time was there to waste with plans? Wasn’t it obvious to all who cared to see?

  Elif and I were getting married.

  THREE

  WE GOT ENGAGED in the yard that morning, Grandpa and Saint Kosta standing witness. I filled a gourd with well water and brought it to Elif’s lips so she might drink. She held the gourd to mine so I might drink. I broke a piece of bread and fed her; she broke a piece and fed me. We were making it all up, of course. A silly ritual to seal a promise that was anything but silly. We gave bread to Grandpa, then to the stork. Elif cried and laughed, and so did I. Grandpa kissed us on the forehead.

  I said, “Let’s go. This very minute. We’ll sign in the Civil Office in Burgas.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t get married as I am. I want to be another girl. You understand? A brand-new girl.”

  At f
irst the bus driver refused to take us. Without a word, we climbed inside the bus and left him with the ticket money. We sat together holding hands. Every now and then, I lifted hers and kissed it. Every now and then, she leaned her face on my shoulder. We watched the Strandja out the window—the trees astir with morning wind, the skies perfectly clear. And in the glass our own image watched us back, ghostly thin, transparent, foreign. It was as if some other boy, some other girl were holding hands, floating across the world with each turn of the bus. Now on a distant slope, now in a treetop, now up in a corner of the sky, the boy and the girl sat together, beautiful, serene.

  “Look at them,” I told Elif.

  “That’s us,” she said, and kissed me.

  By noon we were in Burgas. Seeing the courthouse crowded as it was gave me a proper fright. The noise and stench of human bodies turned my head. I’d grown unaccustomed to their presence. But wherever we went, the crowd parted at our feet; when we sat down on a bench to wait our turn, the others waiting scattered.

  “You look like a mountain rebel, a haidut,” Elif said, and tugged on a tress of my oily hair. “And smell like one.” And I suppose I did, and was.

  At last, it was our turn to stand at the counter.

  “I want to change my name,” Elif said to the clerk who hid behind it. The woman nodded lightly. Her glasses slid down to the tip of her pointy nose so she could have a better look—first at Elif and then at me.

  “What’s wrong with your current name?” she said.

  “I no longer like it.”

  “You need a better reason.”

  “I have a hundred better reasons. My father—”

  “Poor child,” the woman said, and slid a stack of papers across the counter. “I can’t afford to listen to a hundred reasons.” She tapped the papers with a nail, the red polish of which had all but flaked away. “Write them down. Let the court decide.”

  We took the papers to the side. A long time Elif chewed on the black pen. A few times she began to write, only to scratch it all away.

  “Don’t think too much,” I told her. “The first thing that comes to your mind—write that.”

  I’m tired of my Turkish name, she wrote. I’m tired of people calling me kaduna. Of my professors grading my exams more harshly. I’m tired of wearing headscarves and going to the mosque, of my father treating me as though I were a stock animal, like a sheep, or maybe a goat. I am a woman. My own. I was born in Bulgaria and I want a name to prove it.

  “Elena,” she said to herself, and turned to me. “You like it?”

  But before I could answer, she was already writing on the form.

  We asked the clerk how long until a decision. She took the forms with a disgusted laugh. We may as well have asked her for the winning numbers to the lotto.

  “It will be ready when it is,” she said, and waved us off the line.

  FOUR

  “LOOK HERE,” I told Elif outside the courthouse, and showed her what Grandpa had given me that morning. One whole pension. An engagement gift. “Look here,” she said, and took the roll her mother had given her in secret—a year’s worth of savings.

  “We shouldn’t spend it all,” I said.

  “It would be very stupid if we did.”

  To save money we bought a pair of scissors. But it didn’t feel right, her cutting my hair on a bench in the park. “Listen,” I told her. “We’re saving on a barber. How expensive could it be, really, to find a more secluded place?”

  So we found a hotel and rented a room, a first time for Elif. The floor, the curtains, the wallpaper—everything stank of bleach and cigarettes. The TV refused to work, but there was an AC unit and that’s what got Elif excited. She turned it all the way up and stood underneath the icy stream. I hugged her and, eyes closed, listened to the buzz of the AC, to her breathing, which grew sharper, more intense. It was a rush to feel her skin break out in goose bumps, to feel her shiver in my arms.

  “You smell like feet,” she cried, and broke loose from my grip.

  She cut my hair in the bathroom and laughed a great deal in the end, though I didn’t think the result was that bad or funny. When I stepped out of the shower, she threw a bag of clothes at my chest. She’d gone out shopping: a new T-shirt, pants, and flip-flops.

  “Get dressed,” she said, only her head peeking through the doorway. “Let’s go before the sun has set.”

  I found her in the hotel bar, rolling an empty glass between her palms.

  “It’s fairly cheap,” she said, and slid a shot of vodka across the counter. “For courage.”

  “Am I that scary?” I took the shot and asked where she would like to go.

  A walk up and down the main street would be nice, she said. With the sun setting. She’d always wanted to do it, but never had.

  “Never?”

  “Not once. And you?”

  I nodded yes. I ordered us two more shots.

  Outside, the sun was setting. The tops of buildings and of trees burned red with light, yet down below we walked in shadows. We made our way through waves of tourists. Obnoxious music blared from every café, each trying to outshout the next, and floating above all this—the stench of frying fish. Elif too was speaking loudly. She was laughing and waving about, but the more we walked, the more her grip tightened on my forearm. And the more we walked, the more chaotic the world grew around us. It wasn’t that the world scared us, loud as it was. It was the other way around—the world sensed our fear and spun into chaos. Or maybe it was just the vodka talking.

  “Enough with this,” Elif chirped at last. “I’m starving.”

  “There is a restaurant in the hotel.”

  “It’s probably expensive.”

  “Is it really?”

  It was. And very empty, which we liked. We sat at a table in one corner, and it was some time before the waiter saw us.

  “Order in English,” Elif said. “Ask for the English menu. Quickly!”

  “That slimy bastard,” she said after the waiter had brought us the new menus. “Did you see how nice he became as soon as you spoke? What’s this?” she said, and jabbed a finger at the menu.

  “Mackerel. But they’ve spelled it wrong.”

  “For this much money, you’d think they’d learn to spell.”

  We ordered a bottle of white wine to go with the mackerel.

  “How do you spell ‘mackerel’?” Elif said. “Maybe you can teach me?”

  “There isn’t all that much to learn.”

  We ate the fish in silence. It wasn’t good, but we didn’t care. The wine was better. We were finishing the bottle when an old woman appeared by our table. Her white hair disheveled, her clothes devoid of color, worn out, she’d snuck in from the street to sell us flowers.

  “A rose for the lady?” she said, and stuck at me a basket full of somewhat withered things. None of them were roses. Not all of them were flowers. Frightened, Elif shook her head. Was this woman real, or an apparition? A shadow that had followed us from Klisura, to hold us to account?

  But then the woman smiled softly and we knew she hadn’t come to judge us.

  Don’t be afraid, she was saying, without any words. I bring you flowers.

  It was then that the toady waiter grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her to the side. “I told you once already,” he hissed. “Don’t come back.”

  “Wait,” I said in English. “How much for the entire basket?”

  “You paid too much,” Elif said once the woman had taken my money and been escorted back into the street. But by the way she cradled the basket in her lap I knew she was pleased.

  “Dessert?” she said, suddenly animated. “What does this say?”

  “Cognac.”

  In Bulgarian, forgetting ourselves, we asked the waiter if we could take a bottle to our room.

  “I knew you weren’t English,” he said. “Go across the street. Buy yourselves a bottle there. It’s cheaper.”

  “We don’t care if it’s cheaper,” I sai
d. So he brought us the bottle and we paid, and tipped him way too much and took the cognac and the flowers into the elevator.

  “You know,” Elif said, “until today, I’d never ridden in an elevator.”

  “Let’s ride in it then.”

  We punched the last floor and the elevator raced up. We punched the ground floor and we flew back down. We took sips from the cognac, sitting on the floor, her head on my shoulder and only my hand stretching for the buttons. A few times other guests climbed in and we offered, politely, to press their floor for them. We offered them cognac. “It’s like the walnut tree,” I said, “up in the stork nest,” but she hushed me with the bottle.

  “Don’t talk of that. Drink up.”

  At last, we tired of postponing.

  Back in the room, we sat down on the bed, in blue darkness, not bothering to turn the lights on.

  “Don’t be afraid,” I said.

  “I’m not.” She told me to look the other way. I heard the blankets rustle and when I turned around, she was in bed, the sheet pulled up to her chin. Her lips, her cheeks had grown red from the drink and that red stood out against the white of the sheet like drops of blood against the snow of winter.

  I told her to close her eyes and while she kept them shut I took my clothes off and slipped under the blankets. We lay like this, one beside the other, not touching. The heat of her hand stung me when she took mine. She guided my fingers against the insides of her forearms, thighs, legs.

  “I’m hideous,” she said. “All scars.”

  What could I tell her when for me she was as pretty as a girl could be?

  I dived under the sheet. I kissed her scars—her forearms, thighs, and legs. When I reemerged she was crying. “I’m so afraid,” she said. She sought my hand again and locked her fingers around my wrist like a cuff. “Don’t run away.”

  FIVE

  PERUN, THE GREAT GOD OF THE SLAVS, was boiling with fury. Lada, the goddess of youth and beauty, his most beloved daughter, had run away. Blind wrath split his skull in half. An avalanche of fire rolled down his mountain and scorched all in its wake. He called his sons, his other daughters, but no one dared stand before him. Only one goddess was not afraid. For her, Perun’s wailing was but a gentle song. She crawled out of the swamp that contained her and when she settled into her sled—a wild ram’s rib cage drawn forth by frogs and snakes and carp—she rushed to meet Perun.