The Shadow Land

by Elizabeth Kostova

  “The changes?” Alexandra was still eating her salad, which was good.

  “In 1989, when our communist dictator was deposed. And our change to democracy, the next year—or at least to a new kind of capitalism,” he said. “First we had the Turks, then we had the Russians, and now we have Coca-Cola.” She got the sense that none of these things had worked out very well, in his opinion. “We have not solved our other problems, either.”

  “Yes, I read about 1989,” she said. “I didn’t know what you called it, except the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

  “That fell far away from here,” Bobby said. “Maybe too far away. I have always thought it was strange that Ronald Reagan congratulated himself about the end of the Wall, and then the governments on our side of the Wall congratulated themselves also. Actually, it was all to the credit of Pink Floyd. They built The Wall and they made it fall down one little piece at a time.”

  Alexandra had no idea what he meant, but she saw it was partly a joke—partly—and smiled. He had become so talkative that she thought she could ask him again the thing that weighed most on her, after the urn itself.

  “Back there, in the monastery,” she said, carefully. “Our getting locked in. You said it wasn’t an accident, so who do you think would do that?”

  Bobby sighed. “I told you—I don’t know, but I didn’t like it. You lock someone in if you don’t want them to leave. That’s why I wanted us to leave right away. Or maybe somebody just wished to scare us.”

  Alexandra was still puzzled. “But if somebody tried to keep us there, for some reason, wouldn’t they follow us afterward?” She glanced around the restaurant, as Bobby had been doing since they sat down. Maybe, she thought, anyone who had grown up under communism had some natural paranoia. Apparently it was contagious, too.

  “No one followed us—and they would not look for us here,” he said. “It is well hidden from the road—and they would expect that we will drive fast back to Sofia, probably. And I don’t think that they were watching for us to leave, because they must have believed that we were somewhere else in the monastery.”

  Alexandra wanted to ask him if he thought the police could be following him still because of the demonstrations he had been in, but now he was staring at the television set in the corner; she saw that a Bulgarian news program had come on.

  “Shh,” he said, not very gently.

  It was hard for her to hear even the unintelligible language over the sound of the rushing stream outside. Men and women with news cameras and microphones were moving rapidly around a broad-shouldered man in a suit. The man had a wide, pale, elderly face dominated by a brown beard and mustache. His curly chestnut hair reached almost to his shoulders—a mane, but tight and neat, and somehow not natural. Alexandra thought it must be dyed, since it was chestnut, not gray. He looked harassed, turned away, then turned back to say something. He raised a hand to the cameras, got hastily into a limousine. A woman at a news desk was talking now, with a photo behind her of a ravaged mountainside and construction machinery—front loaders and bulldozers, trucks tipping dirt onto piles. She smiled dismissively and set aside a piece of paper. This was followed by an ad that even Alexandra could understand was for laundry detergent; it showed a mother transforming dirty little shirts into objects white as snow for her twin babies. A blissful vision of the Alps, and the mother gazing upward, completely happy for the first time in her life.

  “What was it?” Alexandra asked.

  Bobby picked up his coffee again. “A story about Kurilkov. He is our Minister of Roads, a very powerful man. With the Minister of the Interior, he is opening some old mines I told you about—the thing that we were demonstrating against, you know—and he had a press conference about them today.”

  Alexandra watched the disgust flicker across Bobby’s face. “So these mines are an environmental problem?”

  “There is that. A lot of water pollution and poisoning of land. Also, people are saying that Kurilkov received bribes from some companies to reopen the mines, and they will have a share of the profit, but he denies this in the press. The mines are in a rough area in our central mountains, not good roads—they must build new roads to support the project, and Kurilkov will give approval for this.”

  Alexandra thought of the demonstrations at home—mountaintop removal, minimum wage, the nuclear plant proposed for a river valley downstate. “Isn’t there anyone who can stop him? Somebody else in government?”

  “Nobody dares to tell him no in the government because he is very rich and popular. And also maybe because people are afraid of his connections and his reputation for—I don’t know how to say. He is very correct and clean and very hard on anyone who opposes him. They always lose their positions, in the end. He calls himself the Bear.” Bobby shook his head, thoughtful, displeased.

  “Why don’t other politicians get rid of him, then?”

  Bobby shrugged. “Many people think he will be the prime minister of Bulgaria someday, so they want to stay on his good side. His whole career is built on the idea that he cannot be corrupted, like the others, although he was once in our communist-era parliament, long time ago. He even wears his hair that special way, to show he is somehow different. If people oppose him, he accuses them of being corrupt themselves.” Bobby tapped his spoon on the table. “He calls it the ‘new purity,’ in his campaigns. No one is certain about him, but no one can prove anything against him, either. And he is like magic, for some people, who love the idea of a Bear to protect them. This is our system, Alexandra.”

  Alexandra felt that she had waded into deep waters, and she was too tired to consider much more. One thing was clear to her: Bobby was like the people she’d grown up with—her parents, her aunts and uncles and professors, all of them talking about history and politics. It made her feel strangely at home with him.

  The waiter, who hadn’t smiled at them a single time, now came through the long empty room to bring their check. Alexandra grabbed it and told Bobby that it was hers.

  His face fell. “You are a visitor here—a guest,” he said. She remembered with a little shock that she wasn’t a guest at all, but a passenger in his taxi. “I will pay it myself,” he said. He pushed her bills gently away and counted out several from his own wallet, weighting them with coins in the middle of the table. She sat frozen, wondering if she should protest. What did it mean? Would she owe him something later?

  But he smiled at her, a normal, pleasant smile. “You’ve had your first Bulgarian meal, and it was not such a bad one, was it?”

  By the time they reached Sofia, the streets were thronged with evening traffic, people escaping in masses at the end of the workday. Her hostel turned out to be an old apartment building painted entirely light blue and sporting a little café in the garden.

  Then Alexandra discovered that she was already asleep and Bobby was shaking her awake, with the door to the cab open and her arm wagging back and forth. She gasped out loud.

  “Do you want me to carry you upstairs?” he said.

  “No, no. Please.” She began to collect her bags, realizing all over again that she would have to take the urn with her.

  He lifted her suitcase out of the trunk. “I will bring this for you.”

  She followed him into the blue building and leaned against the counter while he coaxed her passport out of her and gave it to a girl with green hair and purple earrings. “This is a nice place,” he said encouragingly. “You will like it here. They have lectures and readings sometimes, too, in the courtyard.”

  Alexandra looked at the room key in her hand. She remembered vaguely that keys opened doors. Bobby had somehow put her luggage upstairs in her room already and then come back down. She appreciated his not trying to enter a hostel room with her, even just to drop off her luggage; she found she could no longer recall whether he was an old friend, a criminal, or simply another total stranger.

  “I need to pay you,” she said, opening her wallet.

  “You are incredibly tired.�
�� He gave her shoulder an unexpected squeeze, which she found she didn’t mind. “And you said you need to go to another town tomorrow—Bovech, right? All right, thirty leva for part of today, to make you feel better.” He took the bills from her limp hand and counted them carefully, showing her the amount. “It is not so far to Bovech. Eight o’clock tomorrow morning, okay?”

  She was suddenly afraid to see him go. “Do you have a cell number? I don’t have a phone yet, but—”

  Bobby wrote it down for her, with his full name in Latin letters. “You should go to sleep as soon as you can. Here is a bottle of water for your room, in case you want the mineral kind.” He had thought even of that, apparently. He looked at her for a minute, his head tilted to one side. “See you tomorrow. Eight o’clock. Don’t forget.”

  She wasn’t likely to forget, unless she never woke up, which she thought a possibility.

  But lying alone in her first Bulgarian bed—a narrow twin with rough, very clean white sheets and a plaid blanket—she could not sleep, at first. Her luggage was ranged at the edge of the locked room she had longed for, only her suitcase open where it had disgorged pajamas and toothpaste. She had pulled down the shades and closed the curtains because it was still light outside. There was a weird electricity in the room—a low hum of life that drifted toward her from the bag in the corner, the polished urn. She was frightened, but she liked this new country—at least, she was glad she had not stayed home. Once she became drowsy, she forced herself to stay awake as long as she could, wishing not to be alone with a man whose life had completely fled, or with memories she couldn’t begin to imagine.

  Then sleep reached her, a sucking undertow, and she went over backward.

  —

  IN THE MORNING, Bobby was already sitting in the garden café when she entered it with the bag in her arms. Alexandra viewed him with some self-consciousness, because she had been so dazed when he’d last seen her. She felt now all the comforts of her long sleep and a shower, clean clothes. She had also been able to send her parents an email: Safely in Sofia. It’s beautiful here, with a lot of interesting old buildings. Taking a day trip today with some colleagues. She’d expanded Bobby into both a colleague and a group so that they wouldn’t worry further. She had sent the English Institute a message, too, to let them know she’d arrived and would be ready to teach in late June, as planned.

  Bobby stood up politely when she approached. He wore a different denim jacket, this one black with ragged cuffs, and a pair of ironed khakis, and he looked shaved and combed. He was shorter than she remembered, thinner of limb, his hair longer, his elbows cocked out.

  “How are you this morning?” he said. “We can have breakfast. I hope you are hungry—again.”

  She smiled and sat down opposite him. There was a tree just above their table and no one else in the garden. The girl with green hair came out to take their order, except that this morning her hair was purple and her earrings red. Bobby said something that resulted in their being brought two cups of tea. Each cup had a small saucer over the top to keep it warm, with a slice of lemon, a packet of sugar, and a plastic stirrer resting neatly on top of that, a degree of ceremony that held Alexandra’s newly recovered attention for several minutes. Bobby brushed the table clean with a paper napkin from his pocket and arranged the plates of cheese-toast that followed their tea. He gave Alexandra his second piece of toast and an extra slice of cucumber. “How did you sleep?”

  Alexandra considered. “I slept well—very well—except now I remember this howling noise that I couldn’t quite wake up for.” She had heard it in her dreams, through the window, and wondered if it was the crying of a baby, or a woman screaming. Then she’d startled to it again and realized it must be cats on the streets below, shrieking at each other. “Alley cats,” she said. In heat, probably.

  Bobby speared a slice of tomato. “Are you ready for another trip?”

  “Yes. I think I should get this over with. I mean, I want to return the urn as soon as possible—I won’t be able to think about anything else until I do.”

  “I understand.” He put an avalanche of sugar into his tea. “It is lucky that the police had an address to give to you. Probably the people went home to wait for some news, so they will be very happy to see you.”

  “I hope so.” Alexandra felt a stab of real, wide-awake curiosity about what she and Bobby might find in that small town—what kind of house the old people lived in, and perhaps the middle-aged man with them. Or maybe he lived just up the street with his own family. Unless the ashes did mean that he had lost his only son. Maybe he was a widower, too, and was now terribly alone. Chewing her toast, she imagined again their gratitude, their surprise. The old woman might cry a little, and press Alexandra’s hand between her swollen ones. The tall man, with an arm around each of his frail parents, would ask her what they could possibly do for her in return. He would drive her back to Velin Monastery with them, and they would all light a candle together in the church, for Stoyan Lazarov. Then the tall man would kiss her cheek, and ask quietly if he could come to Sofia to take her out to dinner, as a thank-you. But perhaps he couldn’t afford that, or wouldn’t think of it. Probably he wouldn’t let her pay for a meal, either, like Bobby. She put her hand to her cheek, to protect the sensation there.

  “Alexandra?” Bobby ran a hand through his hair, moving it fruitlessly out of his eyes, and she saw a shrewd, canine glance—he was like one of those surprising blue-eyed Siberian huskies in National Geographic. “Miss Boyd,” he added, as if trying out the rest of her name. “You said Boyd, right? Alexandra—are you Russian?”

  She laughed. “No. My parents just liked old-fashioned names. And Boyd is English, I mean English from England.”

  “Boyd,” he said. “It sounds like Bird, and you are a little like a bird. Shall I call you that?”

  “I guess so,” she said, but she wasn’t sure she liked it—was this too familiar of him? Bobby stood up. “Come on, Bird. You’ve finished your breakfast, I think?”

  This time she climbed into the front seat of the taxi and put the bag between her feet, noticing again the medallion that hung from his rearview mirror. He pulled adroitly into the street, wending his way among parked cars; many were actually parked on the sidewalk, their rear ends sticking out into traffic. She had registered for a week at the hostel, enough time for her to explore the city; then she could think about some other destinations, find a train to the Black Sea coast with her bathing suit and a good book, begin her month of wandering. It would have to be cheap, cheaper than hiring taxis to small towns every day, but at least the hostel itself was not expensive, and it seemed clean and secure.

  “How long will it take us to get to Bovech?” she asked him.

  “Not very long. Two hours, if the traffic is good.”

  They turned onto a boulevard lined with sooty façades, shops, a window full of high-heeled sandals. The traffic did not look good to Alexandra, but Bobby was whistling, adjusting his mirror as if pleased with the state of things. She studied the moles at the corner of his mouth. There was something attractive about him, she saw now—maybe his restlessness. “I feel guilty for taking so much of your time.”

  “Stop,” he said cheerfully. “It is a pleasure for me. My life is mostly boring. I’d rather help you figure out how to return the bag. In my own life, I have less to figure out, right now.”

  “I doubt that,” she said. “What do you do, besides drive this cab and go to environmental demonstrations?”

  He regarded her for a moment. “Well, I go to a lot of demonstrations, not only environmental ones. It is time for us to have our country back. In my generation, we must take it back ourselves, for people to have better jobs, more normal cultural life, to act really part of Europe instead of feeling like—lost souls.” He buckled his seat belt.

  “But you still haven’t told me what you do all day,” Alexandra said. “Although I know you drive thirty-five hours a week.”

  He frowned. “No—now I
am telling you what I believe all day, not what I do. Okay, when I’m not driving, I organize lectures and write petitions, and I help to edit a magazine about politics and literature. I meet with friends almost every day. I go running, for exercise, but I also like a challenge. I have a plan of running on every street in Sofia before I die.”

  “Really?” she said. “Even though you have to drive every street already?” She wondered if he also met with a girlfriend almost every day, but maybe he didn’t have one.

  “You are a smart girl.” He was silent a moment, smiling again, shifting gears. Alexandra wondered if she should say, Don’t call me a girl. Or, perhaps, You have no idea what stupid things I’ve done. And one terrible thing.

  But he was shaking his head. “No, I don’t feel tired of Sofia. I want to see every street on foot, not only in my car. Sofia is for me like my skin, my own shell. I have already run on about twenty-five percent of the streets in the whole city. Maybe you will think that is not much, but some of them are very long and the city is very big. I keep a map of where I have run. I started three years ago.”

  “I’m impressed,” she said. “When do you run? At four in the morning?”

  “Sometimes.” He smiled. “But usually I have other things to do at four in the morning.”

  A girlfriend, after all. That might explain his gentlemanly reserve. He was obviously a private person, except about his political beliefs. She had begun to wonder, too, what kind of life he had that he could abandon so easily to drive a stranger around the countryside. Didn’t anyone need to know where he was?