by Alan Furst
“How they strut,” Khristo said.
They took great strength from each other, the Stoianev brothers. Good, big kids. Nikko was fifteen, had had his first woman, was hard at work on his second. Khristo was nineteen, introspective like his father. He shied away from the local girls, knowing too well the prevailing courtship rituals that prescribed pregnancy followed by marriage followed by another pregnancy to prove you meant it the first time. Khristo held back from that, harboring instead a very private dream—something to do with Vienna or, even, the ways of God were infinite, Paris. But of this he rarely spoke. It was simply not wise to reach too far above what you were.
They stood together on the muddy cobbled street, hard-muscled from the fishing, black-haired, fair-skinned. Good-natured because not much else was tolerated. Nikko had a peculiarly enlarged upper lip that curled away from his teeth a little, giving him a sort of permanent sneer, a wise-guy face. It had got him into trouble often enough.
In good order, the unit marched past the grand old Turkish post office that anchored the main square, then reached the intersection.
“Halt!”
Colonel Veiko thrust his arm into the air, held tension for a moment, then shouted, “Left … turn!”
They marched around the corner of the open square, heading now toward the Stoianevs, white feathers bobbing. Veiko the landlord. The grocer. The postman. Several clerks, a schoolteacher, a farmer, a fisherman, even the local matchmaker.
Nikko’s grin widened. “Hup, hup,” he said.
They watched the parade coming toward them.
“Here’s trouble,” Khristo said.
There was a hen in the street. It belonged to an old blind woman who lived down by the fishing sheds and it wandered about freely, protected from the pot by local uncertainty over what the fates might have in store for someone who stole from the blind. It tottered along, pecking at the mud from time to time, looked up suddenly, saw the Bulgarian National Union bearing down upon it, and froze. Seemingly hypnotized. Perhaps dazzled by the sparking torches.
Veiko marched like an angry toy—legs thrusting stiffly into the air, heels banging hard against the earth. The hen stood like a stone. What could Veiko do? The local wise men were later to debate the point. Stop the parade—for a hen? Never. The National Union had its dignity to consider. It had, in fact, very little else but its dignity, so it simply could not afford the sacrifice. It had to—this became immediately clear to everybody—march through the hen. No hen could stop them. So the hen was deemed not to exist.
True to its breed, the hen did not cooperate. It did exist. When the first black boot swung over its head, it rose into the air like a cyclone, wings beating frantically, with a huge, horrified squawk. It could not really fly, of course, so descended rapidly into the scissoring legs of the following rank, which stopped short, legs splayed, arms and torches waving to keep balance, amid great cursing and shouting. The following rank did its part in the business by crashing into the backs of those in front of them.
This happened directly in front of Khristo and Nikko. Who clamped their teeth together and pressed their lips shut, which made the thing, when finally it came tearing up out of them, a great bursting explosion indeed. First, as control slipped away, a series of strangled snorts. Then, at last, helplessly, they collapsed against each other and roared.
Veiko could have ignored it, with little enough loss of face, for everyone knows that giggling teenagers must, at all costs, be ignored. But he did not. He turned slowly, like a man of great power and dignity, and stared at them.
Khristo, older, understood the warning and shut up. Nikko went on with it a little, the issue altering subtly to encompass his “right” to laugh. Then changed again. So that, by some fleeting alchemy of communication, it was now very plain that Nikko was laughing at Veiko and not at the misadventures of a stray hen.
But the hen did its part. Everyone was to agree on that point at least. For, as Colonel Veiko stared, the hen ran back and forth, just beyond arm’s length of the milling troopers, cackling with fury and outraged dignity. Raucous, infuriated, absurd.
Thus there were two outraged dignities, and the relation between them, a cartoon moment, made itself evident to Nikko and he laughed even harder. His brother almost saved his life by belting him in the ribs with a sharp elbow—a time-honored blow; antidote, in classrooms, at funerals, to impossible laughter. Nikko stopped, sighing once or twice in the aftermath and wiping his eyes.
Behind Veiko, the troop was very quiet. He could feel their silence. Slowly, he walked the few paces that separated him from the brothers, then stood close enough so that they could smell the mastica on his breath, a sharp odor of licorice and raw alcohol. They always drank before they marched.
“Christ and king,” he said. It was what they said.
It was what they believed in. It was, in this instance, a challenge.
“Christ and king,” Khristo answered promptly. He’d heard what was in the voice—something itching to get out, something inside Veiko that could, at any moment, be born, be alive and running free in the street.
“Christ and king.” Nikko echoed his brother, perhaps in a bit of a mumble. He was confused. He knew what a challenge was, on the boats, in the schoolyard, and he knew the appropriate response, which was anything but submission.
Anything.
But here the provocation was coming from an adult, a man of some standing in the community no matter what one thought of his damn feathers and banners. Between Nikko and the other kids his age it was just a snarly thing, cub feints, a quick flash, perhaps a few punches were thrown and then it was over. But this—this was domination for its own sake, a nasty reek of the adult world, unjust, mean-spirited, and it made Nikko angry.
Veiko saw it happen—the tightening of the mouth, the slight flush along the cheekbones—and it pleased him. And he let Nikko know it pleased him. Showed him a face that most of the world never saw: a victorious little smirk of a face that said, See how I got the best of you and all I did was say three words.
The troop re-formed itself. Veiko squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, thrust his lead marching leg into the air.
“Forward!”
From Nikko: “Yes sir, Colonel Dog Prick!”
Not too loud.
Just loud enough.
An audible mumble particularly native to fifteen-year-olds—you can choose to hear this or not hear it, that’s up to you. A harsh insult—khuy sobachiy—but by a great deal not the worst thing you could say in a language that provided its user with a vast range of oath and invective. It was a small dog, the phrase suggested, but an excited one—dancing on its hind legs in expectation of affection or table scraps.
Veiko chose to hear it. Stopped the troop. Backed up until he was even with Nikko and, in the same motion, swept his hand backward across Nikko’s face. It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t meant to hurt. It was the blow of a tenor striking a waiter, and it was meant simply to demonstrate the proposition I am someone who can slap your face.
Veiko returned the hand halfway, to a point in line with Nikko’s nose, pointed with an index finger, and shook it firmly twice. Lifted his eyebrows, raised his chin. Meaning Naughty boy, see what happens when you curse your betters?
Nikko let him have it.
He could toss a hundred-pound sack of fish onto his shoulder. The shot was open-handed and loud and the force surprised even Nikko. The feathered cap flew off and Veiko staggered back a step. He stood absolutely still for a long moment, the red and white image of a hand blooming on his cheek.
Both brothers went down under the first rush.
There were no shouted commands or battle cries; it was an instinctive reaction, blind and furious, and it no longer had anything to do with military formations or political slogans. It had become entirely Vidin business, Bulgarian business, Balkan business.
There was an initial rain of blows, ineffective flailing punches that hit the Stoianevs, the ground, other troopers
. Khristo’s mind cleared quickly; he tried to curl into a ball, tried to protect head and groin, but he could barely move. There were five or six of them on top of him, and it was a lot of weight. He could smell them. Licorice mastica, garlic, boiled cabbage, bad fish, bad teeth, uniforms sweated and dried and sweated again. He could hear them. Grunting, panting, soon enough gasping for breath. Khristo was a moderately experienced fighter—in Vidin it was inevitable—and knew that street fights burned themselves out quickly. He did not thrash or punch. Let them get it out of their system.
Nikko was fighting. He could hear it—his brother cursing, somebody’s cry of pain, somebody yelling, “Get his head!” Damn Nikko. His crazy boiling temper. Punching walls when he got mad. Damn his wise-guy face and his fast mouth. And damn, Khristo thought, turning his attention to his own plight, this fat, sweaty fool who was sitting on his chest, trying to bang his head against the cobblestones. In just about two seconds he was going to do something about it—dig an elbow into fat boy’s throat, drive it in, give him a taste.
Then Nikko screamed. Somebody had hurt him, the sound cut Khristo’s heart. The street froze, suddenly it was dead quiet. Then, Veiko’s voice, high and quivering with exertion, breath so blown that it was very nearly a whisper: “Put that one on his feet.”
For the first time, real fear touched him. What should have been over was not over. In Khristo’s world, brawls flared and ended, honor satisfied. Everybody went off and bragged. But in Veiko’s voice there was nothing of that.
They hauled him to his feet and they made him watch what they did next. It was very important to them that it be done that way. There were four or five of them clustered around Nikko, who lay curled around himself at their feet, and they were kicking him. They kicked as hard as they could and grunted with the strain. Khristo twisted and thrashed but they had him by the arms and legs and he couldn’t break free, though he ground his teeth with the effort. Then he ceased struggling and pleaded with them to stop. Really pleaded. But they didn’t stop. Not for a long time. At the last, he tried to turn his face away but they grabbed him under the chin and forced his head toward what was happening and then he could only shut his eyes. There was no way, however, that he could keep from hearing it.
The moon was well up by the time Khristo reached home. A shack by the river, garden vines climbing along a stake fence and up over the low roof. With Nikko on his shoulder, a long night of walking. He’d had to stop many times. It was cold, the wind had dried the tears on his face.
The uniformed men had left in a silent group. Khristo had stood over his brother’s body. He’d felt for a pulse, out of duty, but he knew he need not have done it. He’d seen death before and he knew what it meant when a body lay with all the angles bent wrong. He had knelt and, slowly and carefully, with the tail of his shirt, had cleaned his brother’s face. Then he took him home.
Where the dirt road turned into his house, the dogs started barking. The door opened, and he saw his father’s silhouette in the doorway.
The Russian, Antipin, came a few weeks later.
Like the odd little man from Germany in the mint-colored overcoat, he came on the river. But, the local wise men noted quietly, there were interesting differences in the manner of his coming. The German had arrived by river steamer, with a movie projector and a steel trunk full of film cans and pamphlets. The Russian rowed in, on a small fishing skiff, tying up to one of the sagging pole-built docks that lined the river. The German was an older man, balding, with skin like parchment and a long thin nose. The Russian was a young man, a Slav, square-faced and solid, with neatly combed brown hair. The German had to use German-speaking National Union members to translate for him. The Russian spoke idiomatic Bulgarian—at least he tried—and they could understand his Russian well enough. All along the river, the Slavs could speak to each other without great difficulty.
The German arrived as a German, and his arrival was honored. The postman’s chubby daughter waited at the dockside with a basket of fruit. There had been a banquet, with speeches and copious brandy. The Russian said, at first, that he was a Bulgarian. Nobody really believed him. Then a rumor went around that he was a Czech. Because it was a rumor, there were naturally some who believed it. Somehow there was confusion, and the Russian-Bulgarian-Czech, whatever the hell he was, wasn’t much seen around the town. To a few people, the Stoianevs among them, he admitted that he was a Russian and that his name was Antipin. Vassily Dmitrievich. The falsehoods were a gesture, he explained, not serious, necessitated by the current situation.
The German smoked a cigar every night after dinner. It looked peculiar, outsized, in his thin weasel’s face. The Russian rolled and smoked cigarettes of makhorka, black Russian tobacco, earthy-smelling weed grown in the valleys of the Caucasus mountains. He was provident with it, offering constantly. Poor stuff, it was true. But what he had he shared, and this was noticed.
Of all the points of difference that distinguished the two visitors, however, there was one that absorbed the coffeehouse philosophers a great deal more than any other:
The German came from the west.
The Russian came from the east.
The German came downriver from Passau, on the German side of the Austrian border. The Russian came upriver from Izmail, in Soviet Bessarabia, having first sailed by steamer from the Black Sea port of Odessa.
And, really, the local wise men said, there you had it. That was the root of it, all right, that great poxed whore of a river that ran by every front door in the Balkans. Well, in a manner of speaking. It had brought them grief and fury, iron and fire, hangmen and tax collectors. Somewhere, surely, it was proposed, there were men and women who loved their river, were happy and peaceful upon its banks, perhaps, even, prayed to its watery gods and thanked them nightly.
Who could know? Surely it was possible, and it was much in their experience that that which was possible would, sooner or later, get around to happening. Fate had laws, they’d learned all too well, and that was one of them.
And it was their fate to live on this river. It was their fate that some rivers drew conquerors much as corpses drew flies—and the metaphor was greatly to the point, was it not. Thus it was their fate to be conquered, to live as slaves. That was the truth of it, why call it something else? And, as slaves, to have the worst slaves’ luck of all: changing masters.
For who in history had not tried it? Put another way; if they had not tried it, their place in history was soon given over to the next applicant. Every schoolchild had to learn the spellings, for their national history was written in the names of their conquerors. Sesostris the Egyptian and Darius the Persian, remote bearded figures. Alexander the Great—one of their own, a smart Macedonian lad, a very demon for the love of a fight like they all were down there, a hundred miles south in what they called the dark Balkans. With reason. Charlemagne came through this way, and so did Arpád the Hungarian. (Magyars! A curse on their blood!) Genghis Khan, with his Tatar armies, who believed that babies grew up to be soldiers and that women were the makers of soldier-babies. And acted accordingly. The Romans had come down on rafts, after Dacian gold. The legions of Napoleon were stopped some way upstream. (What? A disaster avoided? Oh how we will pay for that.) And at last, the worst. The Turks.
As love can be true love, or something short of it, hatred too has its shadings, and the Turk had stirred their passions like none of the others. It was the Turk who earned the time-honored description: “They prayed like hyenas, fought like foxes, and stank like wolves.” The Turk who decreed that no building in the empire could be higher than a Turk on horseback. The Turks who, when they were fed up with local governors, simply sent them a silken strangling cord and had them manage the business for themselves. Now there was a condition of stale palate that a man could envy! Even murder, apparently, would with time and repetition produce a state of listless ennui.
In 1908, after three hundred years of the Ottoman Empire, the Turks withdrew, leaving, alas, only a minor cultural
legacy: bastinado, the whipping of bare feet; pederasty, the notion of sheep-herding mountain youths agitated even the pashas’ burned-out lusts; and the bribery of all high persons as a matter of natural law. The first two faded quickly from life in Vidin, though the latter, of course, remained. The local wise men would have been astonished to discover people who did not know that greed far exceeded sadism and lechery in the succession of human vice.
The mosques were turned into Eastern Orthodox churches, the minarets painted pale green and mustard yellow, and the people of Vidin were free. More or less. By 1934, the Bulgarian people had enjoyed twenty-six years of freedom over the course of three centuries—if you didn’t count military dictatorships. A sad record, one had to admit, but God had set them down in a paradise with open doors front and back—the great river. Open doors encouraged thieves of the worst kind, the kind that came to live in your house. And when the thieves stole away, to whatever devil’s backside had spawned them, they left something of themselves behind.
For historical custom dictated that conquest be celebrated between the legs of the local women, and each succeeding conqueror had added a river of fresh genes to the local population. Thus they asked themselves, sometimes, in the coffeehouse: Who are we? They were Bulgars, a Turco-Tatar people from the southern steppe, chased down here in the sixth century by invading Slavs from the north. But they were also Slav and Vlach, Turkish, Circassian and Gypsy. Greek, Roman, Mongol, Tatar. Some had the straight black hair of the Asian steppe, others the blue eyes of the Russo-Slav. “And soon,” a local wit remarked, gesturing with his eyes toward the river steamer that had brought the German, “we will be blond.”
It was remarked, by others there, that he spoke very quietly.
As did Antipin.
In the evenings, in the melancholy dusks of autumn when small rains dappled the surface of the river and storks huddled in their nests in the alder grove, he would roll his makhorka into cigarettes and pass them about, so that blue clouds of smoke cut the fish-laden air of the dockside bars. He was, they discovered, a great listener.