The Shadow Land

by Elizabeth Kostova

  “No, I didn’t bring it,” I said evenly, and steadied the barrow to push it uphill. He might be trying to see if he could get me to pause in my work, so he could punish me for it.

  Momo turned his golden head around. The sun was up, above the mountain slopes; it came down into the quarry in a dome of light, catching the color of his mane and the transparency of his eyes. His neck was grimy but muscular, as large and perfect as Michelangelo could have made it. “You are not supposed to talk while you work,” he said petulantly. “Now I have to punish you for it or the guards will be angry.”

  I had supposed he counted himself among the guards.

  “Well?” he said, looking at me. The gentle man and the man from Pirin worked with their heads down. “Should I punish you or him?” He pointed with his club to the old man, who was lifting another rock and tipping it into the barrow.

  “Oh, punish me,” I said. I could hear Vera telling me to keep quiet and come safely home to her. The anger had welled up in me anyway, just as he’d wanted it to. The old man dropped his rock into the barrow and was watching, frightened of us both. I put the barrow carefully down and turned my shoulder toward Momo, keeping my hands more or less out of the way. If he hit me, I would try not to let it break my hands. He swung his club hard and then stayed it at the last instant, so that it grazed my shoulder and made me stumble, without really hurting me. My heart was pounding.

  Momo laughed. “I missed,” he said. “But only this time.” When he laughed with his mouth open, I saw that several of his molars were gone and the remaining ones were dark brown, like peach pits. “Get back to work. You cunts,” he added. He climbed down the next ramp into the quarry pit and was soon out of sight.

  When Momo had gone, I saw the gentle, brown-haired man trembling, about to faint. I caught his arm, glancing around to make sure there was no guard just above us.

  “Look, we’re not hurt,” I said. “Just take a breath. He didn’t hurt me. We’re all still here.”

  “Thank you,” he said. It was the first time he’d spoken in my presence.

  “What’s your name?” I whispered, picking up the barrow handles again, to look busy.

  “Nasko,” he said softly. “I’m from Sofia, like you. I’ve heard you play once. A chamber music concert. You were wonderful.”

  “What did I play?”

  “Beethoven. Then Tchaikovsky.”

  We smiled at each other and it was the first time there I’d felt human. I gave him my hand, for an instant, and then he took the pickax up again.

  “What do you do in Sofia?” I asked him. I almost said, What did you do in Sofia, as if we were already dead.

  “I’m a painter and sculptor,” he said. “I came to Sofia from the Rhodopes when I was eighteen, because I wanted to paint.”

  “You should be saving your hands, too,” I whispered.

  “Hands!” He wagged his head.

  “I’ll help you wrap them up, later. We can use part of our shirts.”

  “All right,” he said. His eyes went on smiling for a moment.

  That was the only conversation I had that day.

  Two hours later they were driving up the hill toward Irina’s street. The gate in the wall was unlocked, but there was no answer at the door of the small reddish house. Alexandra stood holding Stoycho’s leash; the bag with the urn was firmly over Bobby’s shoulder. Bobby knocked again, and Alexandra noticed that he scanned the upper windows for a moment as they waited. “I’ll check the garden, too,” he said.

  He was gone briefly and returned with the calm face that Alexandra had learned to pay attention to.

  “Here—take the bag. Go back to the car,” he told her. He gave her his keys so quickly she didn’t know it had happened until she felt them against her hand. “Lock the doors and if there is any problem drive all the way down to the town center and park there somewhere on a main street.”

  He smiled at her, as if discussing something trivial, and she turned mutely and did as he’d instructed, shutting the gate in the museum wall behind her. She sat in the car with Stoycho, the doors locked. She remembered this kind of fear, her heartbeat rising in slow insistence. It was a dread sufficient to distract her from the situation at hand; it had a life of its own. She watched the gate in the wall. Behind that wall Bobby would be walking carefully around the outside of Irina’s house, perhaps picking the lock on the kitchen door. The table where they’d sat in the moonlight would be empty, wiped down, unused. Or, worse, scattered with uncleared dishes, ants crawling into the last crumbs of the white cheese Irina and Lenka loved.

  Or worse than that—but she tried not to imagine that they were there and no longer able to call for help. She thought she might not have enough patience to wait for Bobby’s return; she sat on one sweaty hand and touched the key in the ignition with the other. Stoycho panted audibly in the back. It was too hot—Alexandra rolled down her window and thought for the tenth time that it had been years since she’d been in a car like this, with handles instead of automatic window buttons. The waiting was—sometimes—the worst part. She remembered that, too. But she also remembered that it was the outcome of the waiting that later determined whether it really had been the worst part or not.

  At last the gate in the wall opened and Bobby stepped out. The sight of him—hair hanging into his eyes, his runner’s legs lithe in the worn black jeans—hit her with a force beyond love. He was alive and real and tied to her until the moment she died, or the moment he did. She swore it to herself, fighting down a little voice that reminded her that people often feel this way about friends they make on trips and that sooner or later she would leave this country. She unlocked the driver’s door and clambered across to the passenger seat so that Bobby could slide in behind the wheel, and when he was settled she gripped his arm. He nodded and drove away.

  “They weren’t home?” she said fearfully.

  “No. I knew that at once, from the way the garden looked.” He was driving with casual grace, as if they’d come up here just to see the old streets. No screeching of tires for Bobby. “The doors were locked, but I went in—I broke in—and looked everywhere. When they left, they must have left quickly. The beds were not neat and there were some clothes on the floor. Their bags from our trip were still there, open but not completely unpacked—they did not take anything with them, I think. They locked both of the doors as they left, so at least they had time to do that. But I found this on the floor.” He steered with one hand, drew a piece of paper from his jacket pocket, handed it to her.

  Unfolding it, she saw the untidy Cyrillic words. “What does it mean?”

  Bobby’s face was tight. “It says, You will be the next ones.”

  “Oh, what’s happened to them?” cried Alexandra.

  “If they’re wise, they’ve disappeared for a few days,” Bobby told her firmly. “The question is whether they left because they found this note, or whether someone left it afterward, maybe for us, and locked the doors again.”

  “Irina is so fragile,” Alexandra whispered. She found the pack of American tissues in her purse, an artifact that already looked unfamiliar to her, and quickly wiped her eyes and cheeks.

  “I don’t think Irina and Lenka would have locked the doors like that if they had to actually run away from something,” said Bobby. “In fact, Irina could not run away. Maybe someone came to see them—but if that happened, whoever it was did not hurt anything there. I also asked the guide at the museum if they saw Irina today, but they were closed for a long time this morning, for some meetings. She didn’t remember seeing Irina or Lenka outside at all. I called Lenka’s phone three times. No answer, and it rang only once each time.”

  “So maybe somebody took them?” Alexandra could hardly bring herself to say this aloud.

  “Well, that is the other question, of course,” said Bobby reluctantly. “Someone might have taken them and left this note in their place.”

  He had pulled down into the main streets of the city now, and Al
exandra recognized the outdoor cafés, the big hotel signs and ice-cream stands. None of it looked festive anymore. “Oh, no, no—I hope not,” Alexandra said. She was thinking of Atanas Angelov lying in the woods, the grinning wound. Or had someone left him face down in the dirt?

  “I’m not sure that anyone took them,” Bobby said quickly. “I would have found some sign of a fight.” He shook his head.

  “Maybe,” Alexandra said. She tightened her feet around the bag with the urn, feeling the solid wood inside. “Although if they went against their will—but without any struggle—it would look the same as if they had left by themselves, right? Maybe someone even made them lock the doors behind them.”

  Bobby glanced at her thoughtfully, slowed for a red light. “I think that Irina would have left some sign, or Lenka would have fought for her.”

  Alexandra wiped her face again and looked out the window. An old woman was selling wilted flowers, approaching the stopped cars. Bobby rolled up his window and shook a finger at her as she approached, and the woman turned away.

  “From cemeteries,” he explained.

  “What?” said Alexandra.

  “The flowers—she is trying to make a living, not to beg but to sell something instead. But the flowers are from cemeteries. People steal them to sell.”

  Alexandra wondered if someone would take flowers away from Stoyan Lazarov’s grave. First he would have to have one.

  Bobby shook her arm. “Don’t cry again, please. We must decide where to go now.”

  “But we don’t even know where Irina is.” Or if she is dead already, like her friend Nasko.

  “I will call Miss Radeva to see if she has heard anything. And Neven—and the mountain house, just in case.” He dialed several numbers, reaching only Miss Radeva, with whom he spoke quickly. After he hung up, he said, “She has not heard anything and she is even more distressed now. I told her to be very careful at her apartment and to think about staying with someone else for a few days.”

  “But where can we go?” Alexandra tried to keep her voice steady. “We don’t even know where to start, now.”

  Bobby sat still for a few minutes, with the absorbed look she recognized as his deepest thought. “Bovech,” he said firmly.

  “To look for Irina and Lenka?”

  “To look for—whatever we find. We could have missed something the first time, because we knew even less then. Always go back. I mean, always go back to the site where something happened, or the place where somebody lived.” He said this last like a line from a textbook and she wondered if it had been part of his professional training. She knew, watching the moles quiver near the corner of his mouth, that she would have to wait for the rest.

  He turned to her. “Look, we must go to a hotel tonight. I am too tired to drive very late again, and I cannot risk staying at my aunt’s, or with any friends. And I think we should find a small place, away from the city.”

  “I have money,” she assured him.

  “We might need to pay extra for a room,” he said. “Because of Stoycho.” She moved her shoulder closer to his. Perhaps they should just stop at the side of the highway, open the door, and set the urn down in a field. But would that save any of them, at this point? She remembered her dream about Neven—she had thrown herself at his feet and he had lifted her up and kissed her.

  1949

  The second morning, just before I awoke, I dreamed for the first time about Vivaldi. He was a little older than I, red-haired and in the long frock of a priest, and he was unlocking the small side door of a church as the sun rose; he glanced up at the light on the water, which was divided into thousands of Adriatic crystals. I could hear the slop of water above the rattle of big rusty keys, but he seemed so accustomed to that sound that it made no impression on him. I saw his hands fumble with the lock and then unlatch the wooden door. Inside, the church was cold as an underground passage, and its ceiling rose like a voice above him. For some reason, a pink-and-white cat sat licking itself in the aisle, but no one else was there yet. To one side of the nave stood a screen of gilt-laden wood—shining branches and leaves through which a thousand small eyes might be peering.

  Vivaldi went to the altar. He arranged chairs, benches, music stands unlike any I’d ever seen, although I could easily tell what they were. He set freshly copied scores on the stands with his long hands, enough for twenty musicians. I waited for him to get his violin; in fact, why wasn’t he carrying it with him? Did he keep it in the church? Was that safe? Had he left it somewhere? I was suddenly in a panic, on his behalf. What if his violin had been stolen?

  When the bugle blew, I woke startled, and found that I was lying on the shredded mats and old clothes of my bunk.

  —

  ON MY THIRD DAY at Zelenets, I began to practice again. I made myself wait until I’d seen my star, Beta-49, during our morning roll call, and had answered to my name. As soon as I’d accomplished both those things, I set off in my head: my Bach Partitas, which I had always used to warm up. I played them more slowly than usual. At first I thought I would only be able to hear the notes in my head, but after a few minutes I found I could see some of the fingerings as well. Sometimes I missed a note and made myself start the whole exercise over.

  Then I decided to work on the Unaccompanied Partitas, all the ones I had by heart, beginning with the second Partita in D minor. I started on the first movement, the Allemande, and worked up to the sublime Chaconne. I found it difficult to hear, in that terrible place, but I made myself press forward. The D minor took so much time that we were at the quarry by the time I finished all the movements correctly. I settled into work on the shelf of the pit, exchanged a few quick words with my companions there, and helped the muscular old man wrap up his hands the way I had my own, to shield them a little from the sharp edges of the rocks. I could see that the rocks would cut through his wraps, too, by the end of the day; we would have to look for more cloth.

  Later that morning, I practiced Franck’s violin sonata, in the key of A major, which I had learned my first year in Vienna. I was glad now that I had made myself memorize it. My back and legs were terribly sore from pushing the wheelbarrow, but I went through each movement several times, hearing in my head the piano part intertwining with my own. If there was an interruption—a guard coming down to harangue us into working faster, for example—I started that movement from the beginning again. And when we had to work faster, I was careful not to increase my tempo inappropriately. If I accidentally sped up the music, I made myself begin that movement over again, too.

  In the middle of the morning a train came through, passing close to the quarry on the tracks I’d observed the first day. When we heard it coming, all the skeletons shouldered their tools at the same time, like guns, and I thought for a moment that they were going to run toward the train to beg for freedom, or to try to jump on. To my amazement, they stood facing the track until it was actually passing, and then they waved. There were several passengers, with faces staring from the windows, and a hand or two waved back.

  After it had passed, everyone hurried back to work and the guards walked around to harangue those of us who hadn’t known what to do. “Next time, wave!” one shouted. “Anyone who doesn’t wave will pay for it!” yelled another.

  I had not finished the Franck when we broke for lunch. During our lunch, one of the skeletons went mad, suddenly getting down on all fours and scuttling around the edge of the pit until he ran straight off it. The guards cursed and shouted—now there would be a late start back to work. One of the younger skeletons, the man’s son, threw himself toward the edge of the pit after his father; the guards caught the young one and beat him until he was quiet. He lived through it to start work again two days later.

  —

  ON THE FOURTH AND FIFTH DAYS, I discovered something important from watching the other men: if I always had two sets of wrappings for my hands and rinsed one set in water from the washhouse pitchers at bedtime, I could have a fairly clean pair for work ea
ch day, while the other pair was still drying. In this way, my hands stayed slightly less raw. My little finger was healing despite the misery of the wheelbarrow, and I hoped to postpone infections as long as I could. I scavenged my own clothes and my bed for lightweight rags to tear into strips, washed them and hung them at the edge of the bunk. Many men did the same to make foot wraps, since few of us owned socks, although I was lucky enough to have gotten two good ones. I kept my socks on my feet, or carefully hidden, at all times. I also traded one of the prisoners in the next row of bunks four thick pieces of wood I’d found under my bed mats—he gave me the whole back of a cotton shirt for them, which would see me in clean hand wraps for quite a while. He wanted the wood because he liked to whittle figures of naked women, using a sharp stone. I tore the fabric up into neat strips and carried them in a pocket inside my jacket, so that no one could steal them while I was out of the barrack.

  Each afternoon, pushing the wheelbarrow, I worked on a concerto. I had quite a few by heart, or mostly by heart. I began with my favorites—the Brahms, Bruch’s first concerto in G minor, the Mendelssohn, and the Tchaikovsky—and then a fifth, Sibelius. I chose the Mendelssohn for that first day because I knew it best of all. It took me most of the afternoon to get it running smoothly. When I came to the third movement, I had to begin it eight or ten times over, because my memory seemed about to fail me. My hunger made it more difficult for me to think, and I wondered if I would get used to this. Sometimes I moved my fingers on the splintering handles of the wheelbarrow, to help me remember notes, until I found that simply increased the pain and fatigue. There was plenty of time to work at it. Even the trains didn’t interrupt me often; I’d learned that they passed only a couple of times a week. They were usually freight trains, and for those we didn’t have to shoulder our tools and wave, although some of the skeletons did that automatically.

  I also discovered that my companions at the pit didn’t mind if I hummed. Nasko whispered to me that he liked it. I wondered if he tried painting, in his mind, but didn’t ask him in front of the others. And if a guard appeared on the rim of the pit, we fell silent. Mostly we did not talk, anyway. They had told us already to watch one another for poor work.