The Shadow Land

by Elizabeth Kostova

  Stoyan felt the presence of something out of sight, as if he stood among dark trees—as if he had heard the crack of a twig. “The other day?”

  “Well?”

  It was true. He had said to two of the cellists, in a misanthropic private moment, that not everyone with permission to sit in the concertmaster’s chair would use the position so arrogantly. Earlier that same day, Gishev had leaned over in the middle of a movement—Beethoven—and pointed to their shared score, as if Stoyan had lost his place. Which he certainly hadn’t. And later Stoyan had been smoking with the cellists and had said this thing, bitterly, implying Velizar’s vanity and perhaps unworthiness. But who had repeated it to the conductor? And why would anyone bother? The whole orchestra knew already, with the accuracy of Byzantine courtiers, who resented whom.

  Samokovski cleared his throat, harshly. “And is it also true that Comrade Gishev has spoken disrespectfully of his conductor, and of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria?”

  There was motionless silence among the ranks of musicians. Stoyan knew, and knew that everyone else knew, that the first part of the accusation, at least, was true.

  “Well? Comrade? Did Gishev speak this way or did he not? Or should I perhaps ask what you have said about me yourself?”

  Everyone sat frozen. Stoyan felt his mouth dry to starch inside. He held his violin upright on his lap, to keep his hands from trembling. He hadn’t felt like this since childhood, answering his father’s stern questions about a broken lamp. But that had not been deadly. He thought of Vera. Then he realized, as if he’d never seen it so clearly before, that if Gishev fell from favor, he, Stoyan, would ascend immediately to the position of concertmaster. Once he was there, he would certainly prove himself, even to the conductor. Would it hurt Gishev to take a little fall, for once? In their quartet rehearsals, too, Gishev could be unbearable.

  “Yes,” he said faintly.

  “Yes, which?” The conductor seemed to be trembling himself, perhaps with rage.

  “Yes, Comrade Gishev said—something about you.” The statement tumbled into a leaden silence. Another of the violists shifted uneasily, next to him.

  Stoyan was already beginning to regret his words. He cleared his throat. “But he meant no harm, I’m sure.” He tried more strongly: “What harm could he possibly mean?”

  As if in answer to Samokovski’s question, Velizar Gishev himself appeared at the far end of the hall, hurrying and yet oddly bowed down in the gloaming of the theater. They all stared at this figure, which was full of a new meaning no one could quite read. At first Stoyan was relieved—perhaps now the questioning would end. But his heart pounded; had Gishev heard his betrayal, a moment before?

  Gishev nodded curtly to them all and said something too muted for anyone to understand. He settled himself in the empty first chair and opened his violin, brought his bow down on the A string with vicious force. The musicians began to tune again, everyone bleakly sober.

  Stoyan, second chair, enemy of his neighbor, noted with shock the man’s shaking hands and drooping shoulders, the way arrogance had been stripped from him like an overcoat too warm for the day. He observed for the first time how shabby Gishev’s black leather shoes had become, although they were neatly tied and polished and his socks pulled gaiter-tight above them. He noticed the wrists of Gishev’s suit-jacket sleeves, which someone had fitted with narrow black velvet bands, presumably in order to stop their fraying, the perfect work of a tailor or perhaps of loving hands at home. It had been a long time since Stoyan had examined his rival this closely. He averted his eyes as he fought to steady his own A, then glanced at him again. He studied Comrade Gishev’s white shirt cuffs and the outline of a bony elbow. Anything to keep his eyes on the first violinist and at the same time to avoid seeing the violet welt blossoming along Gishev’s cheekbone.

  They played Mozart for an hour, stopping, starting, repeating passages, the wellspring of notes bubbling as good as new out of the worn pages. If only Gishev’s eyes would stop looking so reddened, the edge of his face so haggard whenever he raised it to see the score. If only the silver upswell of the second movement could erase that bruise from everyone’s averted gaze.

  When the rehearsal ended—a last echo and rap, the conductor turning away—Gishev left the hall quickly, without a word. Stoyan packed up with clumsy fingers; he took off his jacket and folded it over his arm again, remembering the warmth outside. He walked back through the same streets: sycamore leaves curling brown and yellow, smooth cobbles under his feet, a dog sunning itself on a patch of grass, a pretty woman with a red band around her hat—politics or fashion?—crossing at the corner. He remembered the day he’d arrived in Sofia from Vienna, the friendliness of people on his walk from the station, the man in the bakery who’d persuaded him to play, his own urge to show off in front of the customers, especially Vera. What had become of that country? It seemed to him a place from his distant travels—a brief stop in some other world.

  She was cooking his lunch when he arrived at the apartment; he smelled it at the door. As had become a habit with him these last months, he wondered at the moment he took off his shoes why they didn’t have any children. Since his recovery from his weeks of service in the war, he’d had more of these patterns of thought than ever: this one with the shoes and the question about children; another rumination about his paternal grandmother and her last illness whenever he began to play any piece in A minor, as if that had been the key of her decline; yet another when he found himself at the edge of a curb, waiting to cross a street. That last habitual thought had to do with a small broken stove that they had inherited from one of Vera’s cousins and that sat in pieces on their balcony; it was slightly larger than the one they were currently using. He knew he might never get to this repair, but for some reason he pictured it whenever he stood waiting at the curb for cars or militia trucks or horses pulling a cart to pass safely by.

  Now, slipping off his shoes by the apartment door, he thought of the many times they had made love in their lumpy bed without producing the voices of children as he came in the front door: “Tatko! Tatko’s home! Did you bring me—?”

  He could hear her opening the oven door, in the kitchen, and when he went in he could see the ties of her apron first, her slim backside under the cotton of her dress, her legs with the heavy-seamed stockings below them. She was twenty-seven, and he knew she wondered if it would one day be too late for her. She dressed neatly even at home, often with a bow at the nape of her neck, always wearing stockings with her house-slippers, as if she had never completely escaped her school uniform. He had gotten glimpses of some of his friends’ wives, slovenly at home and dressed up in the street. This proof of her natural elegance, her education, increased his pride in Vera.

  When she heard him come in, she turned from the oven and set down her dish, then put her arms around his neck. He could feel their unnatural warmth against his skin. He kissed her lips and her nose. What a strange thing, to live with a woman. He had lived for years with his mother, of course, but she had never seemed like a woman to him; she had never been anything but his mother, with her heavy corseted figure, comforting but androgynous.

  He washed his hands at the kitchen basin and dried them on the towel she offered, sat down at the table beside their one window, which was open today to the sounds of the courtyard below. She served him and then herself bowls of the steaming soup and a heel of bread. There was little meat these days, but he liked the smell of potatoes, greens, the broth made from whatever bones she could save for it. At some point they would go to his grandfather’s village to see if his aunt and uncle there had received any meat for winter, trade something, soap or old sweaters. His aunt would give them pickled cabbage and onions from her garden. He wondered if there was an omnibus running out there this fall.

  While they ate, he told Vera about the strange events that had taken place at the morning’s rehearsal. He found himself lowering his voice as he spoke, leaving out the worst of his own cowar
dice and the bruise on Velizar’s cheek. As soon as he’d begun the story, he wished he hadn’t. Vera sat back from her soup and pulled her braid over one shoulder, fiddling with the ends of the hair. He watched her perfect forehead wrinkle and saw around her luminous eyes that puckering that seemed to affect everyone these days—worry, uncertainty. He could almost call it fear, when he saw it in her.

  She shook her head. “You mustn’t feel responsible, dear. He was bound to get in trouble with Samokovski sooner or later.”

  “I’d like to tell him I didn’t mean anything by it.” Stoyan made a grand show of eating his soup, to please her. “He knows I admire his playing, even if I sometimes find him—” He’d almost said an ass.

  “You’ll see him at the quartet tonight, right? You can always tell him then.” She drew a soothing finger over his arm, where he had rolled his sleeves back to eat. He wanted to stand and lift her from the chair, put his face in the side of her hair, kiss her neck and chew her braid. He took another spoonful and patted his lips with his handkerchief.

  “I suppose I could simply drop by and speak to him. He’s home for lunch, I’m sure.”

  She was clearing up the meal already. “I’m going to my mother’s this afternoon. If you’re out, would you get some extra bread?” Neither of them said the obvious: if there is any left.

  “Certainly, darling.” He went to the daybed beside the stove, lay down, and covered his face with the newspaper he found there, all the warped headlines he’d read in the morning. She washed up their few dishes in silence and then he felt her move the paper a little and kiss him on the forehead. He kept his eyes closed, pretending to sleep. He knew her routine; she would change her dress in the bedroom they had arranged in a corner of the parlor, behind a sheet hung on nails, brush her hair, dust her neck with the last of her round box of perfumed powder, straighten the seams of her dark stockings.

  He heard her pull the door quietly shut behind her, and then he lay there a while longer, trying to fall asleep. Her presence was even more palpable when she was out of the apartment; he felt her in the kitchen, her rounded long thighs under her dress, the firm snap of her movements as she wiped the table or chopped vegetables. He lived with her mystery right next to him, and something of the dislocation of that mystery eased for him when she wasn’t actually there. He loved to look around the apartment and see her sweater and apron, hung on separate nails.

  Sleep didn’t come; finally he got up, put on his shoes, and locked the door behind him. Then, not wanting to go empty-handed, he unlocked it again and went back into the front room. He took from among the music scores his most precious possession—something he had bought in Prague years before—and put it in his bag. He didn’t intend to lend it to Velizar, but he would show it to him as a peace offering, tell him the story of buying it. Perhaps together they could copy it, arrange it for their quartet. It might be time, in fact, for it to be played again. Velizar would be fascinated; he would understand better than anyone, damn him, its significance; he would understand, too, that this confidence was an act of sympathy. Stoyan had already decided not to ask about the bruise on Velizar’s face. He thought of confessing to what he’d said, and then thought better of that, as well. He would just show Velizar this wonderful piece and confer with him about it. That would straighten things out; it would be the work of a few minutes.

  The streets were full of early afternoon somnolence, the air heavy, the sky clouding over now, children at home for their naps. The grandparents would be sleeping nearby on kitchen divans or horsehair sofas that had been pulled from the rubble after the bombings. He remembered suddenly the day five years ago when Soviet tanks had rolled into Sofia, the cheering, the guns, the flowers. Now it was all listlessness, the young policemen bored and leaning against walls with their guns at their belts—a quiet time between two and four, sacrosanct to the city. Bells rang somewhere in the center, perhaps from the Russian church. Stoyan didn’t want to wait a minute longer than necessary to set things straight with Gishev. He crossed an old square, passing two fountains, now dry, and a bed of yellow and white flowers, then a dog leashed to a lamppost, relic of a more prosperous age, like any pet—careful, beast, someone might make you into soup. He nodded to the dog and it quivered but sat obediently on. He found the right street, a shady lane of houses from the end of the last century, their garlanded cornices beginning to crack and peel. The street seemed very long, quiet.

  Like most of the other houses, Velizar’s was four stories. Velizar and his family lived on the first floor, which they had to themselves because it was so narrow. It was a familiar enough place; he and Vera had been here twice for supper after orchestra concerts, and he had come here several winters ago on a regular basis to practice with their quartet. Stoyan knew that when he was invited in, he would recognize the parquet floor, the shabby antique armoire, perhaps even Velizar’s black orchestra jacket hanging in the front hall. He had met Velizar’s wife on several of these occasions, a little, dark woman with considerable beauty looking out of haggard eyes. Velizar had two sons, one of whom was young enough to live at home still.

  At the door Stoyan paused; to his surprise it stood slightly open and there was a sound of movement somewhere inside. He braced himself to encounter Velizar on the doorstep, with no warning to either of them, then turned the brass key that rang the old-fashioned doorbell. Because the door was ajar, he could hear the screech of the bell through the front rooms.

  There was no answer, and after a moment he knocked on the door itself. He pushed the door farther ajar and called quietly in. He thought of going away again—or perhaps he could simply leave the score on the kitchen table. Velizar would understand at once whom it was from. But he knew he would never leave it anywhere, would never part with it for even an hour. He stepped inside and went through the tiny hall into the kitchen, from which he would be able to tell whether they might be in the garden.

  There was a moment of complete unreality, and he actually turned his head away and looked back into the hall, because he could not register what he was seeing. Velizar Gishev was in the kitchen, but he lay on the floor on what looked like a red blanket; his wife lay next to him, and their son lay beside her with his legs thrown awkwardly apart. The blanket had soaked into their clothes. There was a gun beside Velizar’s hand, just clear of the spreading red, an old gun of the sort people’s great-grandfathers left behind, to be displayed in a parlor cabinet. Except that since the Revolution no one was allowed to have one, even without bullets, even to display. Stoyan saw again that velvet edge on the cuff of Velizar’s jacket, except that now it rested next to a gun. Velizar’s face was twisted in a snarl, much more expressive than the sardonic expression he often wore in rehearsals, and there seemed to be a dark hole at the top of his forehead. Stoyan found he could not look at that hole for more than an infinitesimal beat. He saw a spray of something red against Mrs. Gisheva’s cheek and throat, and across the boy’s oddly hollowed skull and calm white face. She had shut her eyes; her men—the one middle-aged and the other very young—had left theirs open, examining the ceiling.

  Then Stoyan saw that the back door stood ajar, too, and there were two figures moving in the tiny walled garden. An acrid smell rose all around him. He felt he should go away, leave at once, but he hovered at the edge of the kitchen, where the seep of blood did not reach his feet; he found himself looking down at his shoes to see what that meant. The people in the garden wore uniforms, and they were leaving the garden through a gate. When Stoyan took a step back, one of them turned quickly and looked at him through the kitchen window. He knew the face, a neighborhood militia volunteer, but couldn’t remember his name. Stoyan met his eyes through the window—the thinning hair, the narrow head; he saw the man recognize him at the same moment. Or had he imagined that? Maybe the man had not even seen him? Then they were gone, the gate shut behind them.

  Stoyan backed farther away, next to the table. An arrest in broad daylight, Velizar with his old-fashioned liberat
or’s gun, long hidden in a drawer. The neighbors home but unwilling to investigate—perhaps not the first time there had been shots in this neighborhood, with so many arrests taking place these days. No one in the streets. Three shots, maybe both uniformed figures aiming at once, drawing their guns quickly in self-defense or simply to murder. They had not quite remembered to shut the front door to the house. Somehow shooting without much noise. How? And many minutes before, since he hadn’t heard the shots himself, when he’d turned into the street. The uniformed men must have been conferring in the garden when he came in, with their guns back in their holsters. People were arrested and tried and sometimes shot, or they disappeared; they were not shot in their houses, so Velizar had surely resisted and been killed on the spot for it. And left there—it would look like two murders and a suicide, a family crime.

  Stoyan turned and hurried from the house, leaving the door still open, listening for steps behind him. He ran for a moment, then forced himself to slow down, trying to calm his breathing. It had begun to rain, the misty fine rain of early autumn. He tucked the bag that contained his treasure inside his jacket and watched the pavement as he walked. He felt that getting the rhythm of his feet correct was very important; if anyone watched at all, they would see him putting one shoe forward in a normal way, and then the other. It was like being on stage: you brought your mind fully to bear on your bow and fingers, on anything but the silence of the audience, and you kept it there until the music itself took over.

  Suddenly he thought of Vera—what was he going to tell her? Nothing, of course. That would be safest for her. But he had always told her everything.

  He understood, then, that his punishment was already beginning, and that it would take many forms. It was already beginning, and it was only just beginning.

  By the time Angelov stopped speaking, the last sun had moved off the windows of the studio, leaving his face in shadow. Alexandra’s hands were numb where she had sat on them. She had been watching the artist’s lower teeth; the tops were ground off so that an interior brown marrow showed in each, a horrifying but also fascinating sight. When he smiled, she forgot this spectacle completely and saw only his eyes, liquid in that broken-down room. And Stoyan had stood looking at three bodies on a kitchen floor.