Stork Mountain

by Miroslav Penkov

  It had all started with Grandpa, still a teacher in Pleven. He liked to tell his students stories. Of his days as a partisan fighter. Of how he’d hid in a dugout and how, dizzy with hunger, he’d raided the sheep pens, the dairy farms with his comrades. But word got around and the principal called him to his office. “The regional governor has heard of your stories. He doesn’t like them.”

  “What’s not to like?” Grandpa asked him.

  “What, what! You can’t be telling our children the partisans were thieving food.”

  “But we were thieving,” Grandpa said, laughing. “You were thieving, the regional governor was thieving.”

  “Sure we were. But that’s not the point. The point is the regional wants to set an example.”

  “All right,” Grandpa said. “I’ll talk to him myself.”

  A huge office. A secretary. Freshly lacquered paneling on the walls. A massive desk. Behind the desk—Grandpa’s cousin, the regional governor.

  “Listen, cousin,” Grandpa told him. “What’s this talk I hear, you want to punish me?”

  “You’re dirtying the Party’s name,” the regional said. “We’re cousins and people are watching. I can’t be giving you preferential treatment. I need to maintain a clean face.”

  So Grandpa told him, “You weren’t worried for your face in the dugout. And when that boy with the kalushari fell with a dagger in his chest, it wasn’t for your face you worried.”

  The regional turned as pale as fresh cheese. “Leave!” he shouted. “Out of my office!”

  The next day, the principal summoned Grandpa again. “Pack your bags. You’re leaving for Klisura.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then Belene. The work camp.”

  Well, devil take it. Grandpa didn’t want to end up food for pigs in a work camp. With great shame he consented. He would indoctrinate the Muslims in that distant village if that’s what the Party demanded.

  All this I’d heard from the imam already. But it was different to hear it from my grandfather.

  “They’d forced the priest too, by the way,” he said. “Let’s make that clear. God rest his bones, he was a decent man. God rest the mayor’s too.”

  One morning, they found the mayor in his office. He’d shot himself in the heart with a pistol from before the Balkan War. Right by the boxes with new passports, which had just arrived from town. He’d written them a note. I leave this pistol to the teacher. I leave my soul to the priest. He can claim it when he comes to Hell. The teacher can have the pistol now.

  “You want to see it?” Grandpa said.

  I kept still, very quiet. Saint Kosta stretched at my feet and followed Grandpa with his gray eyes. Soon the old man returned from his room, a yellowish bundle in hand.

  He laid the bundle gently before us and the other bundle, the black one, up in the stork nest, returned to me as if from a great distance. For the first time in many days, I felt a sting.

  Here was the ancient pistol. It had belonged to Captain Kosta once. A braid of hair, thick as rope, black as tar, entwined its barrel like a serpent.

  There was no need to ask whose hair this was.

  FOUR

  AND SO, TWO YEARS AFTER Grandpa had stolen Lenio from the Greeks, the Greeks were coming back to dance across the fire. As caretaker of the nestinari, Grandpa was bound to meet them in Klisura. But Lenio was not.

  “You and the baby,” Grandpa told her the day little Kostadin turned one, “will stay in Burgas for a week. We’ll rent a room in a hotel. I’ll take you there and when the dancing here is over I’ll come to get you.”

  For a long time Lenio said nothing. She rocked the baby on her knee; she kissed his forehead again and again. So Grandpa went on talking until at last he knew he’d failed. No matter how much he begged her, she wouldn’t leave Klisura.

  “Stay still at least!” he barked. She wouldn’t. And when he touched her cheek he found out why: a whole week before the dancing she was already burning with the nestinari fever.

  “I’m not,” she cried, and kept on rocking in her chair.

  They had a fight. If not of herself, Grandpa cried, she should think of the baby. To hell with ritual and dance, he’d take the baby to Burgas himself!

  Now it was Lenio’s turn to plead. True, her father was a wild man, but he was a man nonetheless. And so were her brothers. Hadn’t they met Grandpa in their village? Hadn’t they treated him with kindness and respect?

  She’d disgraced herself, that too was true. She’d lost her bond to kin and blood. But her bond to the saints remained. And if she couldn’t walk the fire, at least she could be close to those who did.

  “Lock us up in the house,” she said. “I won’t go out for a week. But let me hear the bagpipes singing, the holy drum. And only when my father leaves Klisura, you let me out.”

  It’s here that Grandpa held her and the baby. Or so I see them when I close my eyes. He smothers them with kisses and Lenio is laughing, tickled by his prickly beard. The baby giggles.

  “Let go!” she cries at last in jest. But Grandpa holds them tightly. He kisses them again and then again.

  At least I know I would.

  FIVE

  I SEE THEM with merciless clarity—Captain Vangelis and his sons, coming down the mountain, like black storks. I see the bundle with the icons, roped across the captain’s back, the mud on his sons’ tired faces. I see the knives in their sashes, the ends of their mustaches curved up themselves like knives. With every step their musk grows thicker; the air is heating up and nearing a boil.

  I know they too can see me. The jaws of time have closed. The great abyss has been erased and nothing stands between us. When they face my grandfather at the gates of the mayor’s house, it’s me they’re facing. When Grandpa bids them welcome, it’s I who really speaks.

  “Welcome, welcome, Captain Vangelis,” I tell him in Greek. “We’ve lived another year.”

  “May Saint Kosta give you health, vekilin,” the captain says, and grabs my arm firmly, all the way up by the elbow.

  “Come in,” I tell his sons, Captain Elias and his kin, the women, some of whom I’ve never met before. In the yard they wash their feet. Muddy water flows into the roots of the unkempt vine. Then, dinner on the terrace.

  They’ve heard the awful news of course, but no one asks until I speak. “The mayor died a manly death,” I lie. “By his own hand. He didn’t wait for old age to make a mockery of him.”

  “Tomorrow,” Captain Vangelis tells me, “you’ll take us to his grave.”

  “That I will do,” I say, and I refill the glasses with rakia. “There is more stew,” I tell one of the women who’s already emptied her bowl. “There is banitsa. There is bread.”

  “Teacher, your Greek is very good,” one of the captain’s sons tells me, and for the first time I can sense spite in his voice.

  “But it’s a woman’s Greek,” another says.

  This is as far as they will go. No one asks about Lenio: if she is well, if she is somewhere near. Yet I can sense that there is more to come.

  That night I leave the nestinari in the mayor’s house. Back in the school, Lenio is pacing circles, the baby in her arms. She doesn’t see me right away and for a time I watch her, hidden. She carries the child the way she would an icon across the coals; her steps are just as frantic, her face illuminated and just as streaked with sweat.

  “They have arrived,” I say at last. She startles and when she looks at me her eyes are muddy.

  “It’s time,” she says, “to bolt the door.”

  SIX

  FOR THREE DAYS the Greeks rested. For three days Lenio and the baby remained locked up in the house, a giant log bolting the front door on the outside. Each morning one of the Greek women called to Grandpa in secret. Each morning, she gave him some of the food she’d cooked and kissed his hands.

  “Aunt Eleni,” Lenio guessed with the first bite. She knew the way her auntie’s dolma tasted.

  And only when she at
e, with an appetite Grandpa had never seen in her before, was the gloom lifted from Lenio’s face. Else she sat by the window, rocked the child, and stared vacantly across the yard, the roofs, the Strandjan hills.

  She was safe inside the school. And would be safe even when the nestinari started dancing. She’d hear their drum, the screeching of their pipes. Her heart would take a leap and she would cry just like an owl. She would be dancing, but away from them. And when they ate their meal in the konak she too would eat her meal. In safety.

  This is the ending I would like to give: the night has passed; the sun has risen. And soon the Greeks all vanish up the hills. Only then does Grandpa roll away the log. Only then does Lenio step out of her prison, the baby cooing against her chest.

  Alas. This ending isn’t hers.

  SEVEN

  JUNE 3. The feast day of Saint Constantine and Saint Elena. Early, early, Grandpa and the nestinari awoke Father Dionysus. Early, early, he blessed the icons in the church, and then the village boys, Vassilko in their lead, carried them to the walnut. The konak, the spring of Saint Constantine, the spring of Saint Elena. The ritual was followed step by step. Then the konak again. Back to the church, where Grandpa slaughtered a ram kurban.

  Two carts of wood were set on fire beneath the ancient walnut tree. The crowd gathered. The sun went down. And in the dark the nestinari danced. At last the dance was finished. Quiet, exhausted, the nestinari ate their meal inside the shack. Outside, the crowd dispersed and it was time for Grandpa too to go back home.

  At the threshold he bid the Greeks goodnight. He promised to meet them at the mayor’s house at sunrise. They’d go to his grave once more and then—the road and the mountain.

  “Till morning,” Captain Vangelis said, too tired to raise himself from the floor.

  “Till morning,” Grandpa answered. He picked up the candelabra, the icon lamp, and hurried to return them to the church.

  Father Dionysus was sitting on the church steps.

  “So it’s over, this godlessness of yours?”

  Tired, Grandpa sat down by his side. The Pope offered him a smoke and Grandpa lit up.

  “I’m tired, brother,” Grandpa said. He knew he should be going home to Lenio as quickly as he could and yet his feet were brittle iron thrown into the furnace—the soles, the tendons, every little bone had caught aflame. His shoulders were on fire; his back was breaking. So just a little rest, he thought, and he’d be going home.

  “I’m tired. Dear God,” he said again. “What are we doing, brother? We’ve ruined half of Klisura. Changing these people’s names.”

  “Dear God,” the Pope agreed, and he too lit up. “Have mercy on us all.”

  They sat like this. The night grew very dark around them. Thick clouds had swallowed up the moon. A little rest, Grandpa kept thinking, a little rest and I’ll be on my way.

  And then a dog started barking far away. And after that a closer dog, and then one closer still. The priest stood up. He pushed the door open and soft light spilled out from inside the church. It was in this light that they saw Vassilko, out of breath, covered in dust, weeds and dry leaves tangled in his hair.

  “Breathe, damn it,” Grandpa cried, and helped him to his feet.

  For a long time Vassilko couldn’t say a word. Stuttering, he reached into the bosom of his shirt; stuttering, he pulled out a piece of rope and lashed it across Grandpa’s hands. Of course, this wasn’t rope. It was a braid of human hair.

  EIGHT

  “MY DADDY has a hundred white sheep,” she sometimes told my grandpa. “There isn’t a bachelor in the village who wouldn’t want me as his wife. Yet, here I am, at your threshold, a jar of yogurt in my hands.”

  Each day at the threshold Grandpa scooped up yogurt from the jar. He knew full well he’d have to come to a decision soon. Take the girl and the hundred white sheep, or push away the jar, before her heart had shattered.

  He led her on. Day after day.

  And in the end, is there a force darker than a woman with a broken heart?

  NINE

  LENIO, BEAUTIFUL LENIO. Lend me your eyes so I may see all that you’re seeing. Lend me your lips and your ears. How rosy the cheeks of the baby. How soft his skin when we kiss him. Is this his heart beating or is it yours I can hear? Or is it my heart that won’t stop knocking?

  A fist. Yes, a fist is slamming the front door. And a voice is calling.

  Mina. The shepherd’s daughter. I can smell her, stinking of wet fleece. I’ve seen how she watches him, how she turns crimson when he steps near. I’ve seen how she watches you and turns green with venom. Saint Kosta never chose her. The teacher never chose her. What does she want, the spinster?

  “Lenio, beautiful Lenio, come out without fear. Your father has gone to the mayor’s house and your brothers have followed. But the coals are still glowing under the old tree. No one will see you. No one will hurt you. Dance in the fire. I’ll stay here and care for the baby.”

  Across the yard Lenio runs, out of the house gates. Up the road, through the bushes. Her feet burning, they don’t touch the ground even. When she steps in the river, the water hisses. The air is hissing as she swims through it.

  There, under the walnut, some embers still glisten. But when your feet touch them, they will all wake up in fire. Wade in the coals, Lenio, fear nothing. A giant is coming to meet you. He steps out of the dark shack, there, can you see him? Tall, terrible, handsome. Hold his hand, don’t let go.

  The fire in the coals turns liquid, turns to blood, dark and flaming. Spilling from your chest, from my chest. Flowing out of you and into me, out of me and into you. Both ways, both directions. Hold the hand, Lenio, don’t let the hand go.

  Your father’s hand, the saint’s hand. My hand, Lenio. Hold it.

  TEN

  THE DANCE WAS FINISHED, the crowd dispersed. The nestinari had retreated to their shack, but soon they too would be going. Their vekilin, the village teacher, had already left to take the candelabra back to the church. Even the storks had grown quiet up in their nests. Wind whistled in the branches of the walnut; thick clouds blanketed the moon, and on the riverbank, Vassilko lay in hiding. Once the Greeks had left the shack there would be no one there to see him. Alone in all the world, he’d plunge himself into the embers, invincible, barefooted. So what if whole patches of the embers were turning black; others still glistened. But he would have to enter soon. Why were the Greeks not leaving?

  And as he lay, Vassilko heard twigs snapping, the rustling of grass. The splash of water. Who’s that wading through the river, crossing the meadow, running toward the tree? Those braids swaying, Vassilko can’t mistake them. It’s Lenio, the teacher’s girl. Trampling on the coals! She’ll put them out!

  He gets up, dashes through the stream. If she can dance, he’ll dance with her. And then he freezes. Someone has walked out of the nestinari shack—a terrifying giant. Captain Vangelis. There’s no mistaking the way he walks—as though he hates the earth and wants to hurt it with every footfall.

  And who is that behind the captain—his eldest son? And after him—his other two?

  One with the dark, Vassilko watches. But what he sees he doesn’t really understand. Why is Lenio prancing across the embers like this? Why is she running from one brother to another, bumping into one, falling down, then bumping into the next like a moth that shuffles inside a circle of shining lights?

  Up in the branches the storks are waking. Is it the noise of their wings he hears, the rustle of running feet, or the boom of his own blood? The wind picks up some ash and slams it in Vassilko’s face. He blinks, he fights to see.

  Was this a cry? The girl? A stork?

  He wants to yell. Get back! I see you! A single word and he will save the girl. But he is too afraid. He’s seen their knives and so he watches, not even fifteen feet away.

  The girl has fallen to the ground. She lies, unmoving. One brother shakes another by the shoulders. Captain Vangelis pulls madly on his hair. They look as if they too ar
e just awaking from some awful dream.

  “Quick, run!” the captain calls. Timid light pours out of the shack and Vassilko hears voices. Women are crying. He sees them swooping on the men. What have you done! In a daze, he nears the Greek girl. There she lies in the ashes, in the glimmering coals.

  “Lenio,” he whispers, and shakes her. Not a muscle moves.

  Beside himself, he pulls out his knife, cuts clean a rope of hair. The teacher. I must get the teacher.

  “You there!” he hears the captain yelling.

  And so he runs. The braid so hot inside his shirt. Vassilko, my sweet Vassilko, Lenio coos in his ear. Sweetly, sweetly, the way her tresses brush against his chest.

  ELEVEN

  “WHEN WE ARRIVED at the meadow,” Grandpa said, lighting up, “the clouds had parted and we could see better.”

  The door of the shack was thrown open, the shack itself empty. Not a soul left, just the storks overhead crying something fierce. And the embers under the walnut tree, cold ashes, but scattered so you could tell someone had wrestled in them.

  “Look!” Father Dionysus said, and in the light of the oil lamp they saw an imprint in the ash, like from a body. The body was gone, but when the Pope brought the lamp closer what glimmered was a pool of blood. Blood had turned the ash to a cold sludge, awfully sticky.

  How long Grandpa knelt there, he couldn’t tell me. A minute. A thousand years. But when he came to, he understood what had happened. If they wanted to stop the Greeks, there was one way for them now—up the hills, across the border.

  And Grandpa had just grabbed the Pope’s cassock and he was just telling him that they should go in pursuit, when a woman’s cry reached them. Out of the dark came Mina, her hair messy, her lip bloodied. She’d guessed that Grandpa might be in the nestinari shack and that’s how she’d found him.