Stork Mountain

by Miroslav Penkov

  That’s how we saw them: swimming through the yard amid his whistles. I recognized their knives, the icons roped to the back of the one who led them. And then, as quickly as they’d come, they disappeared, returned once more into the shapes of our stretched-out shadows.

  “We’d better keep the window open just a crack,” Grandpa said. “We’d better let some fresh air in.”

  We sat down on the beds, my back to his. I could feel the room turning—the heat of the furnace leaking out, and the night flowing in, rich, intoxicating. I called for Saint Kosta, but he burrowed deeper in his blanket.

  “We’ve got the nestinari fever, haven’t we?” I said at last.

  “Or maybe we’re just pretending,” Grandpa answered.

  “I’d say we’re doing a terrific job.”

  “Yes, quite convincing.”

  “Grandpa.” I turned around to face him. “You think we ought to go along?”

  “Why are you asking me?” he said, and nodded at the stork.

  SEVENTEEN

  THE NIGHT BEFORE the big uprising, Transfiguration eve, 1903, Captain Kosta gathered his men around the fire. “Tomorrow,” he told them, “we meet the Turks in battle. I’ve taught you how to shoot your rifles and how to wield your knives. But should you find yourself out of bullets, should your blades dull in too many Turkish skulls, don’t stop your fighting. Find a burning fire and throw yourself into its flame.”

  Then the captain threw a handful of gunpowder in a wooden bowl and filled the bowl with wine. He mixed the two with his dagger and walked the circle, from one man to the next, so each might drink. Their hearts filled up with courage. Their blood with gunpowder.

  “Grandpa,” I said. I sat at the edge of his bed and shook him awake. It was still dark outside, the sun at least an hour from rising.

  He didn’t know right away what it was I’d laid in his palm. He looked it over in the glimmer of the lantern. A little matchbox. Inside there was a pinch of soil, our land returned, the pinch he’d sent me in the mail so many years back. I’d brought it here with me, yet had been too ashamed to show him.

  “We have no holy wine to drink,” I said. I filled a jar with water, dropped in the soil. The two mixed slowly, thread by thread, as if a root were branching off in all directions.

  “But this should do.”

  In one gulp each we drank our earth, our great-grandfathers, our dead. And we were ready for the fire.

  EIGHTEEN

  EVERY YEAR, for thirteen hundred years, the nestinari dance. Come spring, come June, come the feast of Saint Constantine, the feast of Saint Elena, they build tall fires, three cartloads of wood torched and burned to embers. And then, barefooted, they take the saint’s invisible and holy hand and plunge into the living coals. The drum beats wildly, the bagpipes screech. Sickness and worry, happiness and bliss—the fire consumes them all. Here in the Strandja Mountains, where the nestinari dance, the fire leaves nothing.

  So what then if spring was still a long ways off? So what if we didn’t have a drum and bagpipes? Our mandolin rang like a bell. Our backgammon board rose a mighty ruckus. And who needed icons when we had the saint himself, glorious, though limping and with a broken wing, dressed in a red wool jacket, leading our way?

  Forgive us, Saint Kosta, we must tear down your shack. Allow our ax to split these beams; allow us to pile them up under the walnut tree and torch them.

  The flames loomed tall, the tips of their tongues black from the lamp oil we’d used as an igniter. A gust of wind took up the smoke and dragged it through the walnut branches. I watched it changing shapes and rising higher, free of anything to hold it back, dissolving into the bone-white sky.

  When the flame from the oil began to die down, Grandpa pulled a stack of papers out of his shirt—the unsent letters he’d written me for years, the pages on which he’d copied Captain Kosta’s journal, the count he’d kept of all the casualties across the Strandja in all the recent wars. The flame swallowed them and fattened up and soon the beams were burning steady.

  It had begun to snow, flakes like descending storks, landing on my head, my shoulders, one by one pressing me down. Grandpa too must have felt their weight. “You want to hear something amusing?” he said. “I’m starting to suspect our stork might be female.”

  “Female?” I cried. “How do we know?”

  “Well, that’s the thing. We have no way of knowing.”

  I thought about this for a little while, watching the stork prance through the meadow. Saint Kosta could very well be Saint Elena then?

  “You want to hear another funny thing?” Grandpa said, suddenly encouraged. He took the ax and started raking the beams. Sparks flew in our faces, but I didn’t even feel their heat.

  “I heard it in the Pasha Café last week,” he said, “while you were sitting home, heartbroken. Well, rumor has it it’s all one giant scheme.”

  “What is?” I said.

  “The turbines. They build them and they let them sit. This way they launder the construction money.”

  “The hell they do. What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying the turbines might never turn. According to the rumor.”

  I took some time to think this over too. All that fighting, kicking, screaming had been for nothing then?

  “You think?” said Grandpa, and kept on raking.

  “But maybe the rumor has it wrong?”

  “And maybe the stork isn’t really female?”

  It’s here I started laughing. And Grandpa too began to laugh. But in the end our laughter also vanished and quietly we faced the flame.

  “Saint Kosta,” Grandpa started. “I’ve come to tell you…”

  He shook his great, snow-covered head. There was no need for words. Gently, he pulled out that yellowed bundle from his shirt, untied it, and took out Lenio’s braid. The fire flowed like a stream between us, faster when Grandpa let it have the braid, and when I cast Elif’s locks in, more turbulent still.

  “Look, Grandpa!” I wanted to say, but I knew he too could see them. Rising within us and with the smoke—Captain Kosta, the endless chain of suffering Strandjans, the girls we loved—finally free from our grip, liberated through the fire.

  I felt light. I felt light-headed. How I wanted to throw myself into the flame and let it free me too.

  “Not yet, my boy,” I heard Grandpa saying. “The embers aren’t ready yet.”

  Or maybe it was my own voice I could hear? Or was it Lenio’s? Elif’s? The voice of Captain Kosta, Murad the Godlike One’s, Nazar Aga’s? I couldn’t really tell. Nor did it matter. The nominalia is never ending. Like a river, like wind, like flame, it always changes in its shape. But underneath that shape it’s always water flowing, it’s always air, always fire.

  NINETEEN

  WHEREVER THE GODDESS LADA WANDERED, Attila followed, buried within the tresses of her hair. With each day, his weight grew greater. It drank away her beauty. It drained her strength. Her sisters begged her to forget him; her brothers ordered her to let him go. And yet, she longed to see his face once more, to hear his whisper. If only she could pry the coffin open and kiss his lips.

  “You’ll never bring him back this way,” she heard a voice say, as rotten as the throat from which it slithered. Starost, the goddess of old age, had left her swamp and now her deathly fingers were brushing Lada’s cheeks.

  “Your uncle Veles loves you,” Starost said. “Go to the netherworld and ask his help.”

  That Veles loved her was something Lada knew. More than a few times, heart filled with fright, she had thought of bowing at his feet and begging for Attila back. And yet it wasn’t fright that stopped her.

  “I don’t know how to find the path to his world,” she said, ashamed. “My eyes have never seen it.”

  How wickedly Starost smiled. How ugly she grew.

  “Mine have.”

  * * *

  Down the path Lada stumbled, her eyes the eyes of Old Age. All she saw were shadows, but shadows were enou
gh to mark the way, like crumbs. Through the falls of all-purging fire the goddess plunged and then the Death Winds took her, the way a great river takes a tiny leaf. Like this she flowed through the nether, toward the One Tree.

  A single tree grows at the underworld’s navel, colossal, eternal, its branches alive with wind. As dirty blood must be renewed in the heart’s chambers, so must the souls of men flow through the great tree. One by one the souls rush through the branches. One by one the branches catch them and strip them of their faces. There they remain, these masks, for all eternity, like fruit, while faceless the souls rejoin the rushing winds. The winds of life now.

  Gently Veles plucked a face; gently he wore it as his own. And with his lips, Attila kissed Lada back.

  “I’ve come for you,” she said, and sought his hand. She was surprised to see him pull away.

  “What I was once is gone,” he said. “Only this mask remains. And I am not a mask.”

  Perhaps she understood that he was right. And yet, how could she let him go?

  * * *

  Wherever Lada wandered, Attila followed, rotting within the tresses of her hair. She heard him, begging her to be forgotten, his voice unshakable, incessant. Months turned to years, years into decades, but he remained. In vain, her sisters tried to console her. In vain, her brothers attempted to cut the hair and set her free. Weak of sight, tormented of hearing, she guarded Attila and his triple coffin the way the lamya guards a golden apple. Her gold was grief. The grief consumed her. It drove her mad.

  * * *

  Mad, Lada roamed fields and forests, tortured by Attila’s cries. Whatever she passed, spring with the stench of rot devoured it. Crops grew tall in winter; orchards bloomed under heavy snows. But once Lada had moved along, all blossom withered. Famine swept the people up and in their anger it was Lada’s father, the god Perun, they blamed. Their sacrificial fires turned to ash and soon Perun was weakened too. No longer could he force his daughter back into his mountain. No longer could he control all other gods.

  Impudent Starost leapt out of her swamp, stood before Lada.

  “My child,” she croaked. “I’ll help you drown his voice in silence. Give me your hearing and I will give you mine.”

  * * *

  With the eyes of Old Age and with Old Age’s ears, Lada was roaming the mountain. All that she heard were shadows—voices like water rushing, trapped beneath thick ice. But even in the trap of shadows, Attila’s cries kept ringing loud.

  Until one day Lada caught a whisper. The call of some old god, almost forgotten, a god whom Old Age had taken long before. And following the whisper, she came upon a temple in the mountains. There in the temple the maenads danced.

  How beautiful their madness seemed to Lada, to worship a god so few remembered now. How furious their dance. And in the sweetness of their wine it was some distant lightness that Lada managed to recall. The more she drank, the thicker her thirst grew, the faster she forgot her father. The more fiercely she spun, the deeper Attila sank within her heart.

  * * *

  The wick crackles, the flame bends, and our shadows sway across the wall and ceiling. I am a boy and Grandpa is a grandpa, though Old Age is still a long ways off from him. The year is 1991. The month is maybe January. Tonight, the power won’t be coming back for one more hour. It’s much too soon for bed, so here we are: around the candle, in the kitchen. My father leafing through a paper in the gloom, my mother mending one of my socks. And Grandpa telling me a story.

  “So dark!” my mother says. “All these stories you tell him. So unhappy.”

  “If you ask me, not dark enough,” my father says, and rustles the pages of his paper. “It’s good for him to hear unhappy tales.”

  “It’s bad for me,” my mother says, and keeps on talking. The candle flickers with her breath and our shadows stir again. Mine conquers her and Grandpa’s shadows, it swallows Father’s up. And then it’s me and Grandpa by the candle. And no one else. No grumpy parents, no power outages, no lines for milk and bread, no mobs demanding revolutions. Elif hasn’t come to pass yet. The storks haven’t come to pass, nor have the turbines. Even America is still a premonition, coiled within my father’s restless gut.

  I am a boy and Grandpa is a grandpa. Between us stands a candle, not the ocean.

  “Tell me, Grandpa, what happened to Lada?”

  “Why, see it for yourself. Look into the flame. Watch the stories that its current drags. Beautiful Lada, blind and deaf, she has long forgotten Attila. But his body remains, buried in her hair. And so his spirit knows no rest.”

  And sure enough, I see them, inside the flame. A face floating in a mountain creek, turning and tossing like a fish, mouth opening and closing. Lada has dipped her blistered feet to cool them and soon the face has tangled in her toes. It bites her as she peels it off and brings it to the surface. Let go of me! it cries. A handsome, dear face. It begs to be forgotten. Demands to be allowed to rest.

  I see the goddess, stumbling down a dark path, following the trail of shadows. Tooth, nail, ax, and saber. All was in vain. No god, no mortal man could cut the tresses of her hair. So now she stands before the nether lord again and begs his help. “Release them for a day,” she asks, and as before he has no strength to turn her down.

  Like wild water the horde of Huns ascended. A hundred horses with their riders, a thousand. Then a hundred thousand. Hooves of gold, long dead, now crossed and then re-crossed the tresses, and split them, one by one.

  How heavy the ropes of hair fell at Lada’s feet. How light she felt now.

  “They buried Attila’s coffin in the mountain,” Grandpa says. “Below the stones among which danced the maenads.”

  “What happened to Attila’s Huns?” I ask. My fingers clasp the table tighter.

  Death has tricked them once before, but now it’s they who have Him cheated. Goddess, they cry, we’ve tasted sun and birdsong once again. Don’t give us back to Veles!

  “She pitied them the way a mother pities,” Grandpa says. “But even a loving mother holds no cure for death.”

  I’ll let them go, said the nether lord when Lada begged him. But in their place, you’ll have to stay with me.

  “She turned Attila’s Huns to birds of white plume,” Grandpa says.

  “Like eagles?”

  “Sure. Why not. Or maybe, more like storks. And then the maenads pulled her limb from limb so she might join her uncle in the dark.”

  “What happened to the maenads, then?”

  “Well. What do you think ought to happen?”

  “She turned them into birds as well.”

  “Why not. She is a goddess after all.”

  “Black birds. Like storks.”

  “Sounds good to me. And then each spring,” he says, “the netherworld is opened so Lada may ascend. And after her, the stork flocks follow.”

  “Wherever trees and flowers bloom.”

  “But in their flight,” he says, “they always come back to the mountain. To that one place where Attila rests.”

  “And no one knows all this?” I say. “No one remembers?”

  “Except maybe the storks, you know. And maybe the mountain.”

  “And you and I,” I say.

  “And you and I.”

  The tiny flame of the candle dances. My parents are fighting once again. We must get out of this town, my father says. Go where exactly? asks my mother. But Grandpa and I no longer hear their fight. Eyes closed, we dream. And who’s to say what happens when our eyes flick open? And who’s to say we’re not still there, around that kitchen table, dreaming?

  ALSO BY MIROSLAV PENKOV

  East of the West

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  It is important to stress that this story is a fiction and that certain locations (Klisura—not to be confused with the historical town of the same name—and Kostitsa and Byal Kamak), certain characters (most notably Captain Kosta), and certain legends (most notably those of the goddess Lada and Attila) are also fictional.
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  I have attempted to remain truthful in my portrayal of the rituals and mysteries of the nestinari. Mihail Arnaudov’s Ochertsi po balgarskiya folklor was especially useful, as were my visits to the villages of Balgari and Kosti, the last two Bulgarian villages where the nestinari still dance. The volumes in Dimitar Marinov’s series Zhiva Starina were particularly helpful in my study of the kalushari (călușari).

  I am deeply indebted to:

  Emily Bell.

  Nicole Aragi. Duvall Osteen.

  Devon Mazzone, Amber Hoover, Abby Kagan, Scott Auerbach, Brian Gittis, and everyone at FSG for their continued support.

  David Holdeman, Jack Peters, Diana Holt, Kevin Yanowski. Herbert Holl and Meredith Buie. The University of North Texas Institute for the Advancement of the Arts. My friends at UNT, colleagues and students alike.

  Michael Ondaatje, for his kindness, wisdom, and generosity.

  Jill Morrison and the entire staff of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative.

  Sorche Fairbank. Carole Welch. Lisa Silverman. Kyle Minor. Raina Joines.

  Boris Nikolaev. Hristo Stankushev. Ivan Chernev.

  Isihia. Most of this book was written with their musical composition Ipostas playing in the background.

  My wife, for her patience and encouragement.

  My parents, for their love and support.

  Thank you, kind reader, for reading.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Miroslav Penkov was born in 1982 in Bulgaria. He moved to the United States in 2001 and completed an MFA in creative writing at the University of Arkansas. His stories have won the 2012 BBC International Short Story Award and The Southern Review’s Eudora Welty Prize and have appeared in A Public Space, Granta, One Story, The Best American Short Stories 2008, The PEN / O. Henry Prize Stories 2012, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2013. Published in more than a dozen countries, East of the West was a finalist for the 2012 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and the Steven Turner Award for Best Work of First Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters. In 2014–2015, Penkov was mentored by Michael Ondaatje as part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. He teaches creative writing at the University of North Texas, where he is the editor-in-chief of The American Literary Review. You can sign up for email updates here.