The Shadow Land

by Elizabeth Kostova

  Suddenly, they ordered us all to our feet and I understood we’d been kneeling not to be killed but so that we wouldn’t run away while they were counting us. For some reason, this sent a spiral of hope through my gnawing belly, and I silently promised Vera that I would return.

  “March, you criminals!” shouted one of the guards. “March forward! Stay together! Anyone who steps out of line or slows down will be shot! Understand? Understand?” We moved forward, heavily, rapidly, even the injured men. I kept my broken finger well away from the flailing hands of the fellow beside me. The drunk from the cell in Sofia and my companion with the swollen feet were both farther ahead in the line, and I hoped someone would help them walk. A man stumbled a few rows in front of me and at once we all stumbled, which brought a curse from the nearest guard. I decided not to look around anymore, not at the guards’ faces and not at the cliffs with that beautiful last light draining off them. I could hear the little river rushing past, just under the sound of our feet in the dust. We turned up a side road and left the river behind, all that water we could have drunk in one mass of thirst. Now it was dim, almost twilight, steep woods closing in along the sides of the road. We marched, gasping, for at least five kilometers, and someone must have straggled, because the men with guns shouted and threatened behind us.

  Then the road opened out again and we saw buildings, a big fence and a rough gate, a guardhouse set on scaffolding. There were more men there, with guns and uniforms, and a tall alert shepherd dog hovering near them. They opened the gate and we marched through it with pathetic ardor. Before my part of the line went in, I could see the words over the gate: GLORIOUSLY FORWARD TO THE FUTURE, and another sign at the side that read HAIL TO THE SOVIET COMMUNIST PARTY. I wondered if this was a Russian camp, but the sign was in Bulgarian and the men shutting the gates behind us were speaking Bulgarian. There were no prisoners visible inside, only the open doorways of the wooden buildings, like dark squared mouths. They lined us up again, this time in rows facing forward. A man in front of me buckled suddenly and fell over. The men beside him tried to haul him to his feet.

  “Leave him alone!” cried one of the officers. “Do you want to be punished, too?” And the standing men let go. After a moment, the man who’d fallen crawled to his knees and stood again, trembling.

  The officer who had spoken planted himself in front of us, where we could all see him. He had an assistant stationed at each side, but they didn’t wear the same neat uniform as he did; these other two men were slovenly, in ordinary clothes caked with mud; one of them carried a heavy wooden club and looked stooped over, as if he’d beaten himself up. The officer said, “Welcome to your new home of Zelenets. You are here for a purpose. It is your duty and your privilege to work toward your own rehabilitation. Are there any questions?”

  A man near the front suddenly spoke up. His voice was firm, half-pleading, and it came out loud in the silence. “Comrade, we haven’t eaten since yesterday or the day before.”

  The officer turned and stiffened. Apparently, he hadn’t expected any response. “You’re hungry?”

  “Yes, comrade.” This time, I recognized the prisoner who had spoken up. He had helped me support the fellow with wounded feet, as we all boarded the train. He was a man with a fine big head and broad shoulders, the body of someone accustomed to working hard with his hands and arms.

  The officer stopped in front of him. “Step out here and we will discuss this,” he said. For the first time, I could see the officer’s face. He was about forty, tall and fit in the uniform—perhaps a professional soldier, before this, decorated in the war. I wondered if running this place had been his reward for serving the Revolution as the war ended. His hair was invisible under his cap, but his face looked clean-shaven and his eyes were large and greenish, like the cap. He made a quick gesture and the two men in old clothes suddenly grabbed the big-headed prisoner who’d spoken. The younger of these two was a mere boy, but tall and strong, with a head of curly light hair. He held the prisoner fast by one arm. The other man raised his club and brought it down with unbelievable swiftness against the prisoner’s shoulder. The prisoner fell forward with a scream and the stooping little man brought his club ferociously down again, this time onto the prisoner’s big head. The sound was unreal, sickening—the splitting of bone and a thud into the dirt.

  Four or five of us lunged forward without thinking, trying to reach our companion, to pull him to some kind of safety. The club struck another man on the side of the arm and made him stagger, the officer shouted, the young blond guard in his grubby clothes pulled out a metal stick, other guards came running. We fell back. That was it: instant death or possible survival. This was what our officer had meant when he’d asked if anyone had questions. The injured prisoner—crumpled now into the ground and twitching—was our instructor. In a minute or two he grew still, and a couple of guards came to drag his body away. I watched, nearly fainting with shock and anger, then tried not to look anymore.

  At the center of Yambol, Alexandra was surprised to see a couple of beautifully restored buildings from the Ottoman period; they stretched upward, cool and arching, on the old square—a mosque built of rosy variegated stones and an ancient market building that now housed dress shops. The café was nearby, but they still had half an hour before they could meet Miss Radeva. Bobby bought a kilo of cherries from a fruit stand and ate them out of the plastic bag. Stoycho panted in the heavy sun and Alexandra begged in sign language for a bowl of water for him from a little grocery store. “Voda, molya,” Bobby coached her.

  Their most important errand, which Alexandra never forgot, was a spontaneous one. On the square stood a domed church; they tied Stoycho under a tree and stepped in, out of the heat. Bobby went to a kiosk in the entrance to buy candles.

  “Look what piles of them they have today,” he told Alexandra. “It must be a holiday. For the celebration of Kiril and Metodii, maybe, which is very soon. That’s a big one, to celebrate our alphabet. Also to celebrate teaching and literature. Just the right day for you.”

  “And for you,” Alexandra said, smiling at him. He put his coins into the trough at the kiosk window and a woman in a blue dress handed them out four candles. Bobby gave Alexandra two of them and they walked together into the apse, hand in hand for a moment—the way she might have with Jack, Alexandra thought, if he’d been here.

  But as they were leaving the church, a figure at the end of the steps turned and came toward them with a weirdly uneven gait. Stoycho, tied up nearby, got to his feet, watching. Alexandra drew back, shading her eyes in the glare, but Bobby stepped forward. The figure was an elderly woman, her back bent almost parallel to the ground, her head covered with a scarf that left her face a tunnel of darkness. Over one arm she had hung a pile of crocheted doilies and over the other several heavy old necklaces. She couldn’t raise her head far enough to look at them, but she held out her arms and said something in a soft, cracked voice.

  “Is she selling these things?” Alexandra asked.

  “I think so,” said Bobby. “I can’t quite understand her. They probably belonged to her family. I guess she has nothing else left.”

  With great effort, the woman held her arms higher, closer to their faces. A smell like rotting vegetables rose off her clothing.

  “Shouldn’t we buy something?” Alexandra whispered.

  “I could give her a few coins,” Bobby said doubtfully.

  “She’s not begging,” said Alexandra.

  The woman stood near them with terrible patience, not even lowering her arms, which trembled. She didn’t speak again, as if she now knew that they wouldn’t understand.

  “I’ll buy you a necklace,” Bobby said suddenly.

  They were strange and beautiful, tarnished brass, with large reddish beads that looked like carnelian. One of them had a row of old coins fastened to it.

  “Oh, please don’t,” she said. “They might be expensive.”

  “I’m sure they’re not, and I want to.” He
spoke to the old woman. They seemed to come to an agreement; Bobby pulled several bills from his pocket.

  “You choose,” he told Alexandra.

  She hesitated. “I’d rather you chose,” she said. She was afraid the old woman must be exhausted just from holding them up, and she wished they could see her face, could know if the woman was pleased about the sale or sad about losing something that might be an heirloom. Surely whatever Bobby had offered was a pittance for such a treasure. Perhaps, Alexandra thought, they shouldn’t even buy one—she shouldn’t take it out of Bulgaria.

  Bobby reached down and drew the second necklace gently off the woman’s sleeve, threading it over her misshapen hand. She lowered her arms at once and put the rest of her wares into a deep pocket. Alexandra thought she might limp away, but she stood looking at their feet from the darkness inside her scarf. Bobby handed Alexandra the necklace. It was surprisingly weighty, clean but discolored with age, with ornate links of silvery brass, globes of amber like honey, and a pendant of softly red carnelian set in more brass. It had an Eastern look, Byzantine, like the inside of the church itself—an aesthetic long predating this world of cars and cell phones. Maybe, she thought with a twinge of wonder, it really was from Ottoman times, which would make it at least a hundred and thirty years old.

  “You never know, here,” Bobby muttered when she asked him. “People sell all kinds of stuff. It could be imported from India.”

  The old woman raised her hand and waved a finger at them. She said something, but slowly, for the children to comprehend.

  “She says not India.” Bobby shook his head. “From her village, very old. Her great-grandmother.”

  “I hope that’s not true,” Alexandra murmured, but the brass was already warming sweetly in her hand. Bobby unclasped it and put it around her neck, where it descended to her breastbone.

  “Thank you, Bobby,” she said. Stoycho was whining for them now. The necklace hung heavy on her heart.

  “Come on,” said Bobby. “Let’s go to the café. We can tie Stoycho just outside.”

  —

  A FEW MINUTES LATER Miss Radeva appeared, walking lightly toward their table. Alexandra wished they could have seen the inside of her apartment at the housing complex; she imagined it very simple, entirely furnished in white, a swan’s nest. Miss Radeva smiled briefly at them as she sat down. She seemed a little tired now, with the first signs of age around her eyes. Alexandra thought this gave her the air of a saint in an icon, weary from the persistent evil of the world, although it would have made most people look merely run-down. Miss Radeva had braided her long hair into a complicated knot at the back of her head. What would it have been like, Alexandra wondered, to grow up with some peerless older sister, so that when Jack was gone they could have comforted each other, traveled together?

  Bobby was scanning the café, which was only half full, and ordering coffee for all of them. Miss Radeva poured an extra helping of sugar into hers and leaned back in her chair.

  Bobby regarded her. “Have you lived very long in Yambol?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I came here to work when I was twenty-three. About twenty-three years ago, in fact. I grew up at the sea.”

  They both stared at Miss Radeva; it seemed impossible that she was in her mid-forties. She did not appear to notice. “All of our family was from Sofia, like the Lazarovi, and we lived there until I was five. Then we went to Burgas. By then, Uncle Milen had been working in Burgas a long time. He is my father’s older brother. He found my father a job in the petrochemical plant, which was very big in those days.” She stirred her coffee, too many times. “The Lazarovi went there to live, also. Uncle Stoyan was sometimes playing in the orchestra in Burgas, and in the opera, but he mostly worked at a food-processing factory. I always called them my uncle and aunt—Uncle Stoyan and Aunt Vera. Neven was like my cousin, too, or a big brother, because I did not have one.”

  Bobby put his spoon down. “Do your parents still live there?”

  She shook her head and her fine features sank a little. “My parents are dead. They died together in an accident on a boat while I was in my high school.” She picked up her cup.

  Jack, Alexandra thought. All these shades and shadows who had gone to join him, or whom he had gone to join, from every side of the globe. Some favorite lines from her college Milton course suddenly came to her: …thousands at his bidding speed / And post o’er land and ocean without rest. At that moment Alexandra realized she would someday be teaching other readers, other young people, about those words that had the power to still the shaking of her hands.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, trying to raise her voice from an inaudible place.

  “And I am,” Bobby said.

  Alexandra felt he had heard the quiver in her tone—that knowledge, with the Milton, somehow reduced the pulsation of the café around her. She thought suddenly, “Miss Radeva is an orphan,” and turned to ask her if this had been the reason for her choice of work, then stopped herself. Instead she said, “What about gospodin Lazarov? Did you know him well?”

  Miss Radeva put her cup down and sat lacing and unlacing her delicate fingers. “Not so very well,” she said. “He was always there, but he was much quieter than Aunt Vera. He didn’t seem very—interested—in children, except in his son, Neven. He was very proud of Neven.”

  Bobby set down his coffee, too. “Are you still close to Neven?”

  Miss Radeva shook her head. “I do think of him as a brother,” she said, “but unfortunately we have lived not near each other in many years. I think he is also more quiet now than he was when we were children and having fun. Maybe he is harder to know. He works for some online accounting company from the old apartment in Burgas where his parents used to live. It is a very small apartment, not very nice, especially now. I think he often works long hours—that must be lonely for him, although he told me his job allows him to go sometimes and stay with his mother. And Uncle Milen and Aunt Vera looked very old, when I saw them the last time.” She shook her head.

  Then, as if to change the subject for a minute, she asked Alexandra where she came from in the United States and whether there were discos in her town. Alexandra, who spent most of her time at the library or in the mountains, had to think hard. “Yes, there is one. I’m not sure what it’s like.”

  “I thought an American town would have lots of discos.” Miss Radeva puzzled over this. “We have at least four discos here, and I go every weekend. I love to dance.”

  “So,” said Bobby, putting his fork down. “You know we are very worried about how to find your uncle and the Lazarovi. But, as I said, we wonder if there is something about gospodin Lazarov that we don’t know and that might help us.”

  “Yes,” Miss Radeva said. “And now I am worried, also.” She sighed. “I have never heard my uncle so—strange and serious like he was on the phone. He is usually a little more calm. He said they couldn’t tell me where they were going on vacation or when they would go, or exactly when they would come to see me. I think he was saying he did not want to tell me. I felt hurt by this, because he is my closest relative, and I also was afraid that his mind was maybe going bad. I even had for a moment the idea that they would leave Bulgaria on a longer trip, if he had some money I do not know about.”

  Alexandra felt a rawness in her stomach. She had never before considered the possibility that the Lazarovi might leave the country. Would they do that, if any of them knew what had been hidden in the urn? And was this an indication that they did know they were in some danger? On the other hand, Milen had talked with Miss Radeva before they’d lost the urn. Had Neven himself hidden Stoyan’s confession inside it, with Nasko Angelov’s help? Was he frantic to retrieve it, or had something happened since then to make them flee Bulgaria? She imagined Neven at the railing of a ship, growing more distant every moment, until she could see only his black and white clothes. Maybe she herself had caused all this, by taking the urn, so that he would never get it back, never be able to bu
ry his father, perhaps never be able to return safely to his country. She had thought she could do that much right—give back what belonged to one family, at least, and to the earth. She squeezed her hands together in her lap, to keep the right one from creeping inside her left sleeve.

  “Do you think”—Bobby was asking for both of them—“do you think that they felt afraid enough about something to seriously consider leaving Bulgaria?”

  “I would never have said that.” Miss Radeva stroked her hair off her shoulders. “But now I am not sure. The whole conversation was a little not right. And because you came today and asked if I thought that Uncle Stoyan had been in trouble with the police, I am feeling suddenly more anxious. Uncle Milen has always been nervous about the police, but I thought that was only because of the time in which he was a young man, under the early socialism.”

  “Was he ever in trouble himself, in those times?” Bobby leaned forward.

  Miss Radeva was thoughtful, her large eyes clear. “I don’t think so. Maybe Uncle Stoyan’s experience made Milen nervous. Anyone could be arrested, in those days.”

  Still can, Alexandra thought, looking at Bobby. A poet, for example.

  Bobby was clearly not dwelling on his own situation, however. “Uncle Stoyan’s experience?” he asked. “What was that?”

  Miss Radeva looked uncomfortable. “That is what I feel I should tell you. Uncle Stoyan did not ever talk about it, but I know that he was arrested by the state security, and maybe more than once. Aunt Vera did not talk about it either. One night, a few months after my parents died, Uncle Milen took me to dinner in Burgas, and he drank very much. I think he wanted to speak to me about my parents, but he was too sad, and instead he told me about Stoyan, almost by accident.”