Stork Mountain (2 page)

“Are you touching my wife?” her husband barked, and jumped up, ready to fight me.

“She's cut,” I mumbled. “Look, she's bleeding.” My tongue felt limp, unresponsive, but I kept babbling until the man understood me. He pulled back the sleeve and we saw the girl's wrist, slashed open.

“Sweet mother,” the man said, “I feel dizzy.” He stumbled back and collapsed against the wall of the station. The peasants flocked around the girl like vultures. One slapped her face; another told her to wake up. Her eyes flicked open—as black and shiny as the blood flowing—and she gave us a sweet smile.

“I feel like a feather.”

“We need to stop the bleeding,” I heard myself saying. I pulled off the headscarf and wrapped it around the girl's wrist, then showed an old man where to press it, not to let go. In a daze I sprinted to retrieve my backpack, sand still lashing through the broken windows, though no longer as harshly.

“Are you a doctor?” someone asked, so I said no, I wasn't. But I carried a first aid kit, knew how to dress wounds. I kept babbling, drunk on the sound of my language or on the adrenaline maybe.

Once I'd tied the makeshift bandage the girl's eyes opened.

“I could do with some water.”

I brought my bottle to her lips and she drank a few small sips.

“Stay away from my wife, you hear me?” Her husband had sprung up to his feet once more, but when he saw the blood pool his face twisted and he sat back down.

“Mouse heart,” a woman's voice whispered, and the peasants burst out laughing. Even the girl giggled.

“What kind of a man fears blood?” someone mumbled.

“How does he slay
kurban
, then?”

The man rose again with great effort. He pushed through the crowd, scooped his wife up, and, leaving a trail of bloody steps in the sand, carried her to the other side of the station. He laid her down on the floor and in his spite began to remove her bandage.

“Another man touching my wife,” he said, fuming. “And you fools are laughing.” In the end he threw away the bandage and wrapped the scarf around his wife's wrist.

“Mouse heart, am I?”

I looked about. But the others only shrugged and crept back to the benches. Even Red Mustache didn't seem too bothered.

For some time I watched the blood-soaked bandage on the floor, where it gathered black sand. I watched the man pressing his wife's wound, his eyes fixed on the stripped beams of the ceiling. Then I picked up my backpack and hurried to the most distant corner.

Outside, sand hung in midair like a dry mist, but the worst of the storm had passed us. I leaned my head against the wall, closed my eyes, and listened. The sand whooshing, whispering, drumming against the roof and the empty panes of the windows. What in the world was I doing back in this country, chasing after a man I hadn't seen in fifteen years? A man I hadn't spoken to in the last three. My flesh and blood. My childhood hero. A man who'd vanished without a word even.

I pulled out the tourist map I'd bought in Sofia that morning and spread it before me. There, in the southeast corner of Bulgaria, spilled the Strandja Mountains. There was the delta of the Veleka River, the coast of the Black Sea. There loomed Turkey and the border, like the bottom of a maiden's skirt, a capricious maiden who teases her suitors, lifts the hem to show one of them her ankle, then hides it and shows it to another—Greece, Bulgaria, then Turkey, like this for thirteen hundred years. And there on the hem, in the hills of the Strandja, written on the map in a font different from that of all other villages around it, was nestled Klisura. It was to Klisura I was now headed. It was in Klisura that my grandfather was hiding.

I folded up the map and returned it to my backpack. Behind the barricade the woman in black was calm now. Her husband had treated a few other men to his tobacco, and thin strings of smoke rose to the ceiling. The man in the leather jacket kept pressing his wife's wrist, his face paler than hers, which was now flushed and sweaty. She spoke to him sweetly, her voice small, distant, her head lolled on his shoulder. And twenty miles to the south, in Klisura, at this very moment, my grandfather ate lunch or pulled a bucket from the well, read a book or readied himself for his afternoon nap. Not suspecting that his grandson was coming near. To call him to account for his hurtful disappearance? I only wished my reasons for returning were this noble and this pure.

 

TWO

OUR MOTHERS COULD DO IT ALL
—each one was certified to be a tailor, a cook, a doctor, a mechanic. Our fathers were trained to wage war, to build schools and bridges, herd sheep, plow fields. Each one could go to the Olympics at only the shortest notice—lift weights, run a marathon, all in the same day. My grandfather earned two medals—gold and silver, both from the same competition. And he was sixty. Yes, triple jump. I'd show you the medals but Grandpa thought them worthless trinkets. He'd tossed them in the trash.

Our scientists had established a lunar colony, a base on Mars. Our schools operated their own cosmodromes and each child was taught to pilot his own space rocket. To graduate from first grade, a student was expected to orbit Earth. What was it like? Fantastic. The first few times.

Your Legos built you castles and ours built us guns. Each morning in school, before we drank our milk, we lined up in neat rows, pulled out the AKs from our bags, took them apart and put them back together in under forty seconds' time. Our land was most fertile—strawberries the size of apples and apples the size of melons. The melons as big as cars. Our cars were tanks. They heated up with sunlight in the day and shone at night, like thousands of heroic suns. The sun would never set on our Homeland.

Until it did. Yes, I remember. I was old enough. The earth trembled, the skies grew dark, and nothing was the same again. The winter stretched for years. The lines for bread and cheese—for days. Release the dogs! Throw out the cats! Who could afford to keep a pet? Small children, old men and women would vanish from the lines—snatched by the vicious packs and torn apart. Then it was our turn to flood the streets. Where once there had been mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers now spilled a faceless mob.

We were living with my grandpa at the time. Yes, the Olympic medalist. He was also a history teacher, so he managed to stay employed. But Father lost his job and wanted out. He said, we either leave or perish. They woke me up one night and made me pack a suitcase. No, no, they said, no AKs, no grenades—just clothes and shoes. I could hear the mob chanting outside our apartment complex, ravenous, hateful, and the dogs howling, so we used a secret passageway, underground, to reach the cosmodrome at school.

Grandpa picked me up, kissed me on my forehead, and fastened my seat belt in the rocket seat. One day, I'll come for you, I told him. My mother counted: ten, nine, eight … My father pressed the button and the engines roared. The rocket shook, took off. From high above, I saw a thousand other rockets fleeing, their engines like blooming peonies in the dark.

You don't know what a peony is. Well, what flowers do you weave into your wreaths and garlands? For celebrating May 24, of course. The day of the Cyrillic alphabet? The Cyrillic …
А
,
б
,
в
 …

Yes, it seems to me now that I learned my English through telling lies. Then again, lies have always been more charming than the truth.

 

THREE

THE BUS ARRIVED
with great Bulgarian punctuality—an hour and twenty minutes late. I must have dozed off, because when its horn echoed through the station I started and didn't know right away where I was. The young husband and his injured girl still sat in their corner, her head resting against his shoulder, her eyes closed. Red Mustache and his wife still hid behind the barricade. But most other peasants had left—on an earlier bus, which I'd missed somehow.

I picked up my backpack and sprinted for the door.

“Hey, funny talker,” Red Mustache called. “Give us a hand, will you?”

Outside, the bus sounded its horn again. I could read its sign well, scribbled on a checkered sheet in blue pen.

“To Klisura, is it?” the young husband asked, while I struggled to pick up the old couple's sacks and baskets.

“Yes, sir,” I mumbled. “I think so.”

On his shoulder his girl let out a giggle.

“You go to sleep,” he told her, “that's not our bus,” and covered her face with his thick palm. She laughed again and I could see her eyes, watching me, between the gaps of his fingers.

And then we were outside—me and the old couple. The bus's headlights cast thick yellow ropes through the sand that hung in the air; its wipers fought to keep the grains away, but for some reason, its doors remained closed for us.

Sand pricked my face and filled my mouth with every breath. I hesitated, then kicked the door. And then again, until it opened. I let the old ones climb in first, then followed.

“A vandal, eh!” the driver said, and clicked his tongue. “A door-kicker.” I paid my fare and dropped off the bags with their owners. “You take care of yourself,” I told Red Mustache, and he showed me his swollen gums, on which glistened grains of sand.

“You
are
a funny talker.”

There were very few other people in the bus, but even so I walked all the way to the backseat.

“Next stop,” the driver announced, and I could see that he was looking at me in the rearview mirror, “Klisura.”

I tousled my hair, dusted off the collar of my jacket. Sand flew around me and fell in dunes at my feet. Then, as if something made me, I turned around and looked out the back window. And this is how I saw him.

A black figure in the red. A giant with flapping wings.

The bus began to move. The giant waved, his wings flapped, he fell behind and vanished in the fog.

“Stop,” I shouted. I ran all the way to the front. “Open the doors.”

The driver stopped the bus. “Are you,” he said slowly, “speaking in English?” I realized what I'd done in my excitement. “A man,” I said in Bulgarian. “Behind the bus.”

At that moment a fist slammed on the doors. A black figure filled the small window, a Bedouin who'd wrapped a shirt, the color of red wine, around his face. He grumbled and I recognized a few words only,
mother
,
yours
, enough to catch the gist.

“Another vandal, by the looks of it,” the driver said, and apathetically pressed the necessary button. The doors flew open and a sheet of sand hurled itself upon us.

“Klisura?” the Bedouin asked from the threshold. The black wings flapped madly on his chest and I realized that he was holding a hen, or maybe a chicken, whose head had been covered over with a tarpaulin pouch.

“Buy a ticket and I'll tell you,” the driver said, but waved him in.

With the doors closed, the man stood motionless, catching his breath. Sand seeped from his elbows as he held the hen to his chest, from the hen's wings when they flapped.

“You're usually two hours late,” he said to the driver.

“Consider it a miracle,” the driver said, and rubbed his thumb against his index finger.

The man turned to face me. “My boy, hold this,” he said, and shoved the hen in my direction. I jumped back, startled. Someone laughed behind me. Not wanting to appear a coward, I seized the chicken, which screamed and slapped me with its wings.

“It's fine if you're scared,” the man said, not letting go, and something mocking rang in his voice. I yanked the bird out of his grip. A victorious pleasure—now I'll show him—washed over me and then, when the chicken dug its talons into my forearm, a blinding pain.

“He didn't get you with his claws now, did he?” the man said, and his eyes sparkled.

“Can't feel a thing,” I lied.

“That sleeve's turning red,” the driver noticed. He snatched the money the man had offered him and counted it twice. I was ready to pass out a little, when finally the man took back his hen.

The floor, seats, windows, and ceiling buzzed and we started rattling down the road. From the backseat I watched the man up front, no longer a glorious Bedouin, unwrap the shirt around his face with one hand and hold the chicken with the other. Layer after layer fell, like a mummy unbandaged, to finally reveal his wrinkled skin, his bony, hollowed cheeks, his sharp and pointy chin.

A heaviness settled in my stomach as though I'd drunk too much cold water too quickly. I had been certain of it all along and all along, it seemed, I had been wrong. This man was not my grandfather.

 

FOUR

I WAS EIGHT WHEN COMMUNISM
FELL
in Bulgaria. 1989. My parents and I lived in Grandpa's apartment, crammed like broilers, because we had no money to rent, let alone buy, our own place. Father and Grandpa fought constantly. Mother wept and threatened divorce. At first they tried to spare me, but then, it's difficult to yell discreetly in a coop.

At least we weren't hungry. My grandfather was too well connected for hunger to keep us in its fist. The butcher, the baker, the fruit-and-vegetable seller—they had all been his students once.

“Wake up,” Grandpa would whisper at my bedside, already bundled up in his thinned-out, moth-eaten coat. I'd beg him to let me sleep. The sun was still an hour from rising and it was Sunday.

“I got a tip from an old student.” He'd shove the netted sack in my hand. “Delivery in fifteen minutes.”

We walked the dark streets like thieves. The snow crunched under our boots, the frost bit our faces. No light in any window, and not a soul. Not even the dogs were out this early. The scarf on my mouth was solid ice by the time we reached the butcher's.

“
Dobrutro, drugaryo uchitel!
” the butcher would say in greeting and rush us in through the back door, lest anyone see us. “Good morning, comrade teacher!” He'd give me a playful pinch, and for a long time the trail of blood he'd smeared would burn my frozen cheek. The carcasses of two or three freshly slaughtered pigs would hang among a forest of empty hooks. The butcher would strop the knife on his belt. “For you, comrade teacher, only the best.”