The Shadow Land

by Elizabeth Kostova

  The moon stood just above the peaks in front of her and the mountains lay around the horizon in a ring, black matter against a liquid sky. She found an outcropping of stones near the center of the hilltop and sat down on them as comfortably as she could manage. They were cold against her clothes. Stoycho sniffed the stones and sat down next to her, then stretched out in the grass as if she’d told him to. She could see the dark reflection of his eyes in the moonlight. The silence from the village behind her was eclipsed only by the enormous silence of the forests on the slopes; the moon had already fallen toward the highest peak and she saw where it would set—very soon. She waited without moving until the swollen lower rim of light touched the edge of the ridge and silhouetted something broken there, perhaps trees or jagged rock. The light moved faster, slipping away. She tried not to breathe. At the last second, the upper edge of the moon became very bright and disappeared in a rush, swallowed by the mountain.

  Then Alexandra felt something behind her, the lightest touch on the back of her head, and realized with a start of horror that she and Stoycho were not alone. She whirled around on the rock. Directly behind her, opposite the moon and reaching over the massy shadow of mountains, she saw an infinitesimal bright gleam: the sun, rising in the instant the moon had set. The earliest ray of it had touched her across a great distance. This sliver quickened and pulsed and pulled up above the ridges, and then she remembered to stop looking directly into it. Stoycho moved beside her, raising his head to watch. Alexandra was trembling, because she had seen the end and the beginning. And the sun had reached out and found her, stroked her, chosen her.

  Just before noon, they left Baba Yana sitting by her door and walked to the big new house. The road branched off below the church and ran up over the shoulder of the fields. The big house sat on a rise by itself, mostly out of sight of the village but looking down on it nonetheless. Alexandra disliked the house as soon as it came into view—it was much too large for the landscape, where buildings were supposed to sprout up out of the stones as if they belonged there. This one loomed—huge but relentlessly traditional, giant Tudor beams crisscrossing it, balconies jutting off the façade, ten thousand folksy new slates slathered over the roof, an actual tower rising at one end. You could have put twenty of Baba Yana’s little dwelling inside it. For a moment, Alexandra wondered what Stoyan would have felt toward this excrescence—had he known about it? After all, he had rebuilt her house with his own hands. This one was the work of bulldozers and cranes.

  The wall around the big house was punctuated in the middle with a pair of enormous wooden gates—like the ones she’d seen at Velin Monastery, but four or five centuries newer. An electric doorbell glowed at one side; Bobby rang this and they waited. Alexandra missed Stoycho, whom they’d left in Baba Yana’s yard for extra protection. He’d pulled wildly on his rope, straining after them and barking, until they had to walk away. She wished he were here, against her knee, listening with his crooked ear to the footsteps on the other side of the wall.

  A moment later, a smaller door in the gate swung open and a burly young man in Rhodope costume stepped out. He looked like the dancers in Alexandra’s guidebook, except that he was not happy. He wore wide shirtsleeves, a brown woolen vest, and pantaloons trimmed with black braid; at his belt hung a canteen of metal worked in patterns, along with what Alexandra felt sure was a real knife in a leather sheath. A cap of curly black sheepskin teetered on his head, and below his baggy pants she could see wool stockings wound with bands of leather. He was shod in elaborate leather shoes that turned up a little at the toes. The clothing itself could have been beautiful, but it was brand new, like the house, and this brand-new man wore it despondently, his arms huge in the linen sleeves. Alexandra noted his face with surprise; he looked much younger than she was, a rosy teenager. He nodded, shyly, although he could have killed either of them with a single blow, and turned to lead them up the stone walk to the front of the house. Alexandra gave Bobby a careful glance, but he was watching the door in the gate shut automatically behind them.

  Inside, their escort took them through a gargantuan stone-flagged front hall and into a side chamber and gestured for them to wait on a bench, then bowed and left them. Bobby shot her a look that told her not to speak—how did she understand him so easily? They waited in a silence that seemed to fill the whole house, Bobby gazing around, memorizing something; Alexandra thought he must be looking for clues that Kurilkov owned it. This chamber, like the front hall, was surreally clean, as if the dirt roads of the village below did not exist. Alexandra took her cue from Bobby, sitting straight and still, but when their host entered the room, she stood up with an exclamation of surprise.

  It was the Wizard of Oz, the chief from the Sofia police station with the large bald head—she knew him at once. He was dressed very differently now, in a pale green shirt untucked over silky trousers. He held a hand out to Alexandra.

  “So nice to see you again,” he said, smiling as if her shock pleased him. “Alexandra—Boyd, yes?” His hand was warm and friendly and his face relaxed: a professional on vacation.

  “It’s nice to see you, too,” she said. “But—is this your house?” She felt a little surge of anger at the trick, and a larger wave of fear—why was he here? And why did he remember her so well?

  “Oh, no.” He laughed. “You are making me feel good. I am only a guest, like you.”

  She wanted to ask point-blank whether it was true that the house belonged to Kurilkov, but the Wizard had already turned to Bobby, as if noticing him for the first time.

  “This is my friend Asparuh Iliev,” Alexandra said, in what she hoped was a collected voice.

  “Asparuh Iliev.” He made a statement of it, shaking hands warmly again. “Very pleased.”

  Alexandra looked at Bobby, to see what he thought of this man. Bobby’s face was a study in decorum and he bowed as he shook hands. But he had overdone it, that moment of irony; Alexandra was absolutely sure that he had met the Wizard before. That they knew each other at a glance, in fact. Then she realized Bobby must have recognized the Wizard from her description, and probably the name on his business card, before that. Did he know the chief personally? What if the Wizard himself had put Bobby in jail after the demonstration he’d told her about? Neither man said anything about a previous meeting, however. Alexandra trusted her intuition heavily, back home; here, it was like a compass whose needle swung around without bearing.

  “Will you come into the dining room?” The Wizard gestured courteously to Alexandra. “I believe our lunch is ready.”

  They followed him, although at each of several doors he stopped and ushered them carefully ahead of him. The dining room was a baronial horror, three stories high, with interior balconies and a fireplace big enough to roast a whole lion. The walls were hung with tattered flags and rugs, each giving Alexandra a sense of priceless history that didn’t belong in such a place. It was like walking into a spanking new mansion in her home town and seeing it decorated with precious ragged flags—DON’T TREAD ON ME or JOIN, OR DIE. Here, she couldn’t read the meaning of anything, apart from the fact that it had all cost a fearsome amount of money. One end of the acre-long table was set for three.

  The Wizard saw them to their places and then sat down at the head, between them. He unfurled a huge red napkin and leaned back as if content. “So you have come to see our mountains,” he observed mildly. “This is the best possible village to see them. I believe that we have the most beautiful views, in fact.”

  “It really is lovely,” she said. A spirit of rebellion was creeping through her veins. “And you arrived on Tuesday?” That would have been two days ago.

  She saw something like appreciation, but tightly controlled, flicker across Bobby’s face.

  “Tuesday?” The Wizard looked surprised. “Oh, no. I have just come yesterday, like you. Why do you ask?”

  Alexandra smiled. “Well, because we met in Sofia on Monday, so I thought Tuesday would have been the earliest you
could come here.”

  He smiled in return. She noticed that his eye wasn’t twitching this time, possibly because he was away from his desk. He said, “I have only very short vacations, in my kind of work. This is the nicest place I know for a few days of rest.”

  A young man dressed in black came in, carrying a tray of dishes. He began to set plates of salad and bowls of soup in front of them, and little glasses of something clear. The Wizard raised his glass and toasted them—they raised their rakiya in return, although Alexandra noticed that Bobby set his down without taking even a sip, and she followed suit. She thought it would be better not to have any alcohol in her system for this conversation.

  “Bon appétit,” the Wizard said. “A special thing—this is tripe soup.”

  Alexandra tried to remember what tripe actually was—a kind of fish, or an organ meat? Or a collective noun, like offal? She concentrated on the fish idea. Bobby had not said a single word and she began to doubt that he would talk at all. The Wizard commenced to eat, delicately and with enjoyment, indicating that they should pick up their spoons. “Alexandra—so, your travels brought you to this beautiful place. And you were able to return something to somebody on the way—the remains of a person—to his family? As you told me. That was a welcome gift, yes?”

  She considered for a hazardous second. “Yes, it was very satisfying,” she said. “You can imagine. They were terribly relieved.”

  The Wizard put down his spoon, but Bobby kept eating, in silence. She didn’t like the way Bobby’s shoulders looked so straight—Bird! What were you thinking?

  But the Wizard was gazing at her with interest. “How lucky that you found that family. Did the address I gave to you—you remember—did it help?”

  “Very much,” Alexandra said. “I was so grateful. Bovech really wasn’t very far from Sofia, so it was easy.”

  “And how strange that you found them at home. You know, I thought later that I should have sent someone to help you, so I checked, also. Lyubenovi—no, Lazarovi, was it? And they had not lived there in at least three months. But maybe they returned after my officer visited? What day were you there?”

  “Tuesday,” she said, this time truthfully.

  “Oh, before my man. He went there yesterday. He found things very quiet.”

  Alexandra imagined a police officer talking with the pretty neighbor next door, who must have told him about their visit. And searching the house—would he have discovered the lonely undershirts in the bedroom drawer, the tin box with the stained coils of fabric inside? There was a little silence, during which Alexandra sat very still. She didn’t dare to pick up her spoon, in case it rattled in her hand. She remembered the pleasant-faced policeman taking Bobby’s papers back to his car on that half-collapsed bridge. But how could those papers have connected them with a search for Vera Lazarova? Another memory came to her, as she looked down at the pinkish-gray soup, which had something floating in it. She had gone straight from the front door of the police station to Bobby’s taxi, just up the block, and gotten into it, in plain view. In plain view, no doubt, of a security camera. She hadn’t thought of that before.

  The Wizard smiled at her, as if she’d simply made a mistake, which she knew she had. “So you couldn’t find the Lazarovi, either, actually. Or maybe you found them somewhere else. Is that what you mean?”

  “No—you’re right,” Alexandra said. “I guess I only wished very badly that I had found them. Wishful thinking.” She wondered if the neighbor woman in Bovech had given the police officer Irina’s address in Plovdiv. Had the Wizard looked for them there, too? Had he seen them going in and out of the museum courtyard? Or had he found Irina and Vera’s connection to Gorno some other way? Why was he here at all? That was the important question.

  The Wizard seemed to be reflecting. “Yes, of course you were sad. But I’m sure that you will find them, and I can help you if you wish.”

  Alexandra wished less than ever, so she said nothing.

  For the first time, he turned to Bobby. “And you are showing her our country very well—maybe some things she would never see alone?”

  Bobby inclined his head over his soup. The Wizard seemed unperturbed by Bobby’s silence, and this made Alexandra’s compass needle swing forcibly into place: they knew and hated each other.

  The man in black came in, cleared their bowls quietly away, and dished out something with meat and vegetables. She wished more and more that she could jump up and run out of the house—at one moment, she felt she might actually do it.

  The Wizard had set his fork down and leaned back, elbows propped on the arms of his shiny new medieval chair.

  “You know, when we met, I immediately had the impression that you are a very intelligent young woman,” he said to Alexandra. “Also, you have a big heart. And a very good ethical sense. I did not think that you had such interesting friends already, however.” He gestured toward Bobby, who was eating with stolid concentration. “One of our greatest young poets ever, a prizewinner.”

  Alexandra stared at Bobby. His mouth looked pinched, but he remained silent, chewing politely.

  “Are you a poet?” she asked aloud, without even wanting to. His room at Irina Georgieva’s, strewn with paper, and his tales of rising early, not only to run.

  “Oh, a very good poet. And a famous one,” the Wizard said. The way he uttered the word “poet” made Alexandra wonder what else he knew about Bobby.

  The Wizard tapped the table with large fingers. “Didn’t he tell you? Last year he received our big Bulgarian prize, which is normally for old men. I don’t read poetry, but the newspapers say he is quite special. He publishes in the newspapers, too, you know—poetry and many of his opinions, also. I would say he has very good contacts with some of the papers. But the prize is real, the real thing.” The Wizard paused, as if to resume eating. “He even gave up a good job for his poems. He drives a taxi, but of course he is better than the rest of the taxi drivers. As a poet, anyway. Do you read poetry, Alexandra?”

  Alexandra had spent five days with Bobby, almost every waking hour. She had watched him with interest, and increasingly with affection, and she prayed now that he would not stand up and punch the Wizard in the nose. A bad movie, that would be, armed guards erupting from the passages, the Wizard bleeding down the front of his pale-green shirt, and certainly another arrest. But Bobby was quietly examining his knife, which was not sharp, and Alexandra felt suddenly that he would always prevail over anything and anyone less than he was. He wasn’t better than the other taxi drivers; he was better than everyone.

  “I do read poetry,” she said quickly. “Very often. In English, of course. British and American poets, and sometimes translations.” She put down her fork, not looking at Bobby. “Actually, I’m trying to read all the work of every great poet in the English language, and some from other languages, too. It’s taking a long time.”

  She stopped, breathed—why was she saying this, here, except to distract them? “Last year, I read all of Walt Whitman, Gerard Manley Hopkins, W. B. Yeats, and Dylan Thomas. And Czesław Miłosz, and a lot of Auden, although I’m not finished.” Alexandra slowed as she crossed the finish line, thinking of the public library and her ragged anthologies. “I brought Emily Dickinson to Bulgaria,” she added. “She took up a lot of room in my bag.”

  The Wizard fixed her with startled eyes. Bobby raised his face, smiling. Alexandra met Bobby’s gaze, which was blue and full of suppressed admiration, and felt something fill a long-empty cavity just under her ribs. She picked up her fork again and ate. Bobby was in trouble with her for this, though—hiding his vocation when they’d had such personal conversations already. Was he genuinely that modest, she wondered, or somehow ashamed of his calling? She doubted she would ever confess to him that she’d wanted to be a writer herself.

  “Very interesting,” said the Wizard, after a moment. She wondered if he recognized some of those names—maybe he had studied literature at university, too. But he merely cut a large
bite of his meat. “The two of you must have a lot to talk about.”

  “We do,” said Alexandra firmly, and Bobby returned to his meal, still smiling a little.

  During dessert—which the Wizard explained was called kompot, a stew of fruits in syrup—the Wizard talked in a genial flow about the most beautiful places to see in Bulgaria, villages she must not miss because they had been preserved from the old days, and famous monasteries. When coffee came in on the tray of the black-clothed man, she felt a rush of boldness. “If you are a guest here, who owns the house?”

  The Wizard put his hands together, praying horizontally, in that gesture she’d observed when he’d been behind his desk at the police station. “Well, this is not known to the public, because it is officially said that a certain businessman from Plovdiv owns it. But that is for privacy. In fact, it belongs to a friend of mine, a minister in the government. You have probably not heard of him, because you have been here only a few days, but I assure you he is very important. His name is Mikhail Kurilkov—our Minister of Roads, a man of great integrity. And power.”

  Alexandra felt a jolt of blood to her head. It was true, then. She stole a look at Bobby, whose shoulders were straighter than ever. He sipped his coffee and turned his eyes here and there, apparently more interested in the room than in the ridiculous talk; but she sensed that the same shock had traveled through him, too.