Stork Mountain

by Miroslav Penkov

  I brought the wad from the drawer in which we kept it. “Take it all,” I insisted.

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Sure you can. I’ll feel much better.”

  “Amerikanche,” she said. I wiped my cheeks and tried laughing, like it was a big joke. Then something turned inside me. I almost shouted, Wait. Hear me out. Listen!

  There is always suffering in life. Those before us have suffered and we too must suffer. But there is also happiness, merriment, bliss. To be alive is to hurt and to laugh, not just one or the other. To laugh after you’ve hurt, while you’re hurting, that’s a great thing. Stay with me, I wanted to tell her. Let’s learn to accept the world together.

  All I managed was to mumble I loved her. By now she too was crying. “What am I going to do without you?” I said, and she didn’t answer.

  * * *

  That afternoon she made me cut her long hair.

  “I can’t be Lada,” she said. “I can’t carry you around in my hair.”

  I spread old newspapers on the floor of our room and when we were done I wrapped the locks in the paper. “Burn them,” she said, and I promised I’d do it. She knew I was lying.

  Once again, she was the way I first saw her—boyish, her cheeks sharper with the short hair. But she was not at all the same now. She bore on her face some great lightness.

  We spent the night in each other’s arms, crying from time to time, but saying nothing. With the dawn she kissed me. I drifted away and when I woke up it was past midday. Rain drummed on the windows. The wad of money lay untouched where I’d left it.

  I heard the knocking of dice from the terrace. A silly hope seized me. I jumped out of bed, sprinted. Grandpa was rolling alone, smoking. Saint Kosta lay in his corner.

  “My boy,” Grandpa said when he saw me.

  I pulled up a chair, sat down, quiet. But in my mind I was already running. Through the yard, toward the ruins, out of Klisura. In my mind I was crossing the fence at the border. She couldn’t have gotten that far. With some luck I would catch her.

  Then even in my mind I knew better. One night, when she’d first moved into our house, Elif had cuddled in bed beside me. “All my life,” she’d whispered, “I thought I was a rebel. In a world of fire dancers I thought I was the fire. But now I see, amerikanche, all along it’s you who’s the fire. You just don’t yet know it.”

  At last, I too knew it. Fire did not return where it had passed once. Fire did not burn backward.

  PART

  SEVEN

  ONE

  LOOK. SEE: NAZAR AGA, tall, terrible, rides at the head of his fifty soldiers—the new guards of the sultan, Muhammad’s Victorious Army. Tucked in his red sash—his whip, his knife, his pistol. And beside them—the grand vizier’s firman. “You are to go, Nazar Aga,” the firman orders, “to the Strandja Mountains, to the Hasekiya. You are to meet there with Salih Baba, its ruler. And when you do—you are to end them. Both the place and its ruler.”

  Nazar Aga is now an old man. Yet still, he can’t ride slowly. His blood is boiling and its vapor dyes all he sees in red—the mud, the rocks and trees, the mountain. The Hasekiya, he thinks, and spits to the left of his scarlet horse. For hundreds of years the Christians there have been spared from high taxes, allowed to worship their god freely. And Salih Baba! Nazar spits to the right side. The governor who’s built for his Greek wife a Christian chapel in the middle of his konak; who’s never erected a single mosque, but with whose permission the raya is constructing churches! A Bektashi dervish, and once upon a time a leader of the janissaries.

  No. Spittle is not enough for such a man. The knife is not enough. Nor is the pistol.

  Nazar Aga pulls out his whip and lashes—the horse, his own leg, he pays no mind to what the whip is striking. The horse flies up the narrow pathway; the soldiers struggle to keep up. Scarlet clouds are thickening the sky and scarlet rain is falling.

  “Wait for me, Salih Baba. I’m coming. And with me, I’m bringing you a sweet gift. The sultan’s will. Allah’s judgment.”

  * * *

  It is known that Murad I, the Godlike One, established the Ottoman Empire. He brought most of the Balkans under his rule, called himself sultan for the first time, and first instituted the devshirmeh—the recruit, the blood tribute. Every five years the strongest Christian boys were taken away from their parents, converted into the right faith, trained harshly, and so transformed into the sultan’s most faithful soldiers—the janissaries. When a janissary was ready to serve, a Bektashi dervish blessed him. It was the Bektashi order, an old and mystic brotherhood, that guided the order of the janissaries. The two entwined the way the oak and ivy do.

  The centuries rolled on; the janissaries grew greedy. First they wanted more money, and when the sultan refused, they rose in arms against him. So he paid them more, and after, with each new sultan, their salary increased. As did their want—to marry, to own land, to conduct private trade. All of these privileges they were given, yet their greed remained unquenched. It turned them from servants into masters, but it also made them weak and lazy. No longer were they undefeatable in battle.

  When, after a shameful military loss, Sultan Osman II vowed to disband the order, the janissaries revolted and killed him. When Salim III attempted to reform them, they had him deposed.

  At last Mahmud II came to power. He tricked both the janissaries and the Bektashis; he made them think he was their ally, but secretly he plotted, surrounded himself with allies of his own. One day in June, the year 1826, he issued a fatwa—he was to form a brand-new, modern army. He knew the janissaries would revolt and when they did he torched their barracks; thousands were burned alive. Those the sultan didn’t burn, he beheaded. Those he didn’t behead, he exiled.

  With time the janissaries disappeared, but the Bektashi roots ran deep. They had been growing, spreading for centuries on end. So here now is Salih Baba, some twenty years later. Still governing the Hasekiya.

  And here now is Nazar Aga, galloping through the Strandja, and in his sash: a knife, a gun, a firman.

  * * *

  Nazar Aga was once a janissary. He had a different name back then, a name that Mehmed Dede, the holy Baktashi leader, had given him himself. Why Nazar chose to betray his brothers no one knows. But it is known Nazar’s was the hand that brought the first torch to the barracks, and his the yataghan that slew the most men.

  Another thing too is known. How Nazar first earned the sultan’s trust. What he told him, what he did.

  * * *

  This is what Nazar told the sultan when the two first met in the throne room. This is what Nazar did to prove he could be trusted: “When I was young, Mehmed Dede himself blessed me,” Nazar told the sultan. “Only, he didn’t put his hand on my shoulder, as is the custom, but leaned forward and kissed my right eye. Truly a great honor. And now, to prove I can be trusted, I shall gouge out that eye.”

  And so he did. On his glass eye, he ordered the glazier to paint the sign of the Nazar, so it might ward off all evil.

  It is an eerie feeling, people say, to stand before the aga, to face him. His left eye watches you, black, human. His right eye judges you, azure, never closing, divine.

  * * *

  “I have seen the Black Stone in Mecca, golden with sunrise,” Salih Baba says, and takes a pull from his chibouk, “the tomb of Otman Baba, Demir Baba Tekke. And now I’ve seen you, Nazar Aga, the janissary who blinded himself to please the sultan. Who betrayed his own brothers and put them to the flame. And so, I’ve seen it all, I think. I bid you welcome.”

  They sit out in the courtyard of the konak, under the branches of a mulberry tree laden with fruit. The rain has stopped, but drops collected in the leaves still drum against the silken cloth on which the men are resting, and mulberries fall every now and then and stain the silk like blood. A band of servants lines the walls, yet no one dares to move before the master’s clap has echoed.

  Salih Baba smokes; his chibouk crackles. The air smells of the
summer storm just gone, and sweet, of tobacco. Nazar Aga watches, unmoving, quiet. The drops drum against the silk. Tenderly, softly. The mulberries fall.

  “I planted this tree myself,” Salih Baba says at last. “Thirty years ago, when my feet first touched the Strandjan mud. I brought the seed with me from Anatolia. It’s best to plant a mulberry from seed. It climbs very fast at first. Then it rests. Grows deep in root and plentiful in fruit. I had it grafted. Its mulberries are now both white and black. Pleasant shade, sweet taste. This tree has always been so good to me. I hope it always shows me kindness.”

  Nazar Aga raises his hand. He knows what the baba is trying to say and doesn’t want to hear it. Hadji Bektash Veli, the saint and father of the order, once planted from a flaming branch a mulberry whose tip, the legend claims, still burns even today. By the black fruit the baba means the dervishes, by the white the janissaries, both tied together in a sacred bond. Nazar Aga himself was never grown from seed—he was born an infidel, to infidel parents before the janissaries took him. Yet the baba knows how fast Nazar grew, thirsty for knowledge. And now he’s begging me for mercy. A coward, he speaks in tales.

  Nazar Aga pulls out a white kerchief from his jacket and dabs against his glass eye. The socket oozes sometimes, when blood is pumping through his temples much too wildly.

  “I haven’t come to talk of trees,” he says, and puts the kerchief, stained, back in his jacket. “I’ve come to end all this—infidels exempt from taxes, a governor who hasn’t built a single mosque. A church inside an Ottoman konak.”

  Like a gunshot, Salih Baba’s clap rings out within the stone walls. At once a servant girl appears. She carries a silver tray, and buzzing on the tray—two cups of coffee, a leather pouch. Her feet are bare and shiny with grains of sand she picks up as she nears. Her hair, pitch-black and never cut, down to her heels, all but brushes the ground.

  Nazar Aga watches her. It seems as though he’s met this girl before. Or no, as though he’s always known he’ll meet her.

  Just then the girl looks up and sees him. Such fright. The tresses trip her. The tray bangs loudly on the cobblestones, the cups are shattered, and gold coins roll ringing from the pouch.

  “Do what you must, Aga,” Salih Baba tells him later, when it’s clear no amount of talk or bribery can be of use. “Just wait another day. Tomorrow the Christians hold a feast. Let me watch them one last time. Then take my head.”

  * * *

  All night Nazar Aga tosses. All night he turns. The mountain talks to him with wind, with calling storks. He sees the girl, her bare feet, the long black hair on which she trips. She falls and he, Nazar Aga, he too is falling.

  Somewhere across the hills a bird begins to sing. Another answers. It’s much too soon for dawn. And suddenly the heat of fire stings him. The torch he held to burn the janissary barracks, some twenty years back. He sees himself inside this flame: a little boy. The whole village has gathered on the square. And in the coals, his father, dancing.

  * * *

  And now so many years later the infidels are dancing under the mulberry tree. They carry their icons across the coals, barefooted, and the coals don’t burn them. From upon the terrace Nazar Aga watches and blood trickles down his face. There before him, the girl with the river for hair is whirling. There Salih Baba, the Bektashi, is kissing the eyes of Christian saints and taking them across the fire.

  The drums are beating, the bagpipes shrieking. Like the surf of giant waves the blood booms through the aga. As if in a dream, he descends the staircase of the konak, parts the crowd of peasants in the courtyard, stands before the dancing girl. He feels the touch of wood, a holy icon, against his hand and then against his lips.

  His mother is calling him from a great distance, singing that old name. His name. The saint’s.

  And after this—the fire.

  * * *

  It is said that the morning after he joined the infidels in dance, Nazar Aga himself cut down the mulberry tree. The trunk he fashioned into a stake. The stump, into a chopping log. He impaled Salih Baba. He beheaded the nestinari. Then he set the village on fire and watched it burn for two whole days. On the third day—or so it is said—disgraced and ruined, he laid his own head down on the stump.

  * * *

  This was a story Lenio once told my grandfather, of how the Hasekiya was broken up, of how the surviving nestinari were forced to roam the Strandja searching for a home. Nazar Aga’s fire had turned all their icons to ash, except for two—one of Saint Constantine, one of his mother, Saint Elena. And so it was these saints the nestinari chose to follow.

  This Lenio sang as many songs, strumming the mandolin out on the terrace.

  It’s where I’m sitting now so many years later. Perhaps the time has come for me to sing her story. Or rather, to bring it to an end.

  TWO

  A WAVE OF QUIET OUTRAGE swept Klisura once people learned the news—the teacher had snuck across the border and stolen Captain Vangelis’s daughter. Within a month, there was the wedding—not in the church, but in the school yard, by the well, under the trellis white with snow. That’s where Father Dionysus held the service. Few villagers attended. The mayor too refused to go. “Don’t ask me, my boy,” he told Grandpa. “I can’t.” Nor could he legalize the marriage. After all, Lenio had crossed into Bulgaria in secret.

  Then Lenio began to show. And for Klisurans all was clear. That’s why the teacher had stolen her. That’s why he’d married her outside the church. And they were right—except, the baby wasn’t Grandpa’s. The rest was true. He’d saved Lenio from the Greeks and when, one night in Klisura, she had cried inconsolably—that she was disgraced, that her life was over, that she would die alone—he’d taken pity and said, “Don’t cry. I’ll take you as my wife.”

  After this, Lenio stayed with Grandpa in the school. He slept in his room, she in the room that later would be mine. He taught her Bulgarian; she taught him Greek. In the evenings, she played the mandolin, sang him songs, and showed him how to whistle like a bird. So what if he was much older, if she was pregnant with someone else’s child? Weren’t they married before God, living under the same roof?

  One February night—it was a vicious winter—Grandpa awoke with Lenio’s face on his chest. “Don’t cry,” he said, a tired, old refrain, and kissed her. He was afraid she’d run away, but instead, she kissed him back. And after this, they slept together in the bed and often he told her stories of where he’d take her once spring arrived.

  Of course he knew the Party wouldn’t let him leave Klisura. Of course, in the daytime, Lenio herself refused to go elsewhere. She said the mountain held her in its fist. Saint Kosta held her. But late at night, in dreams, they traveled freely, away from parties, mountains, saints.

  The baby was born when May was rolling to an end. They named him Kostadin. Then Grandpa had to leave. “You are the vekilin now,” the mayor told him. “You have a ritual to oversee. Pack up. We’re going to the Greeks.”

  And so they went. Captain Vangelis met them in his yard, wined them, dined them. Not once did he approach Grandpa with talk of his stolen daughter. Not once did Lenio’s brothers give him a vile look. Even Michalis, whom Lenio had been supposed to wed, spoke to Grandpa with the respect his caretaking role demanded. On parting, once the dance was over, the local women kissed his hands.

  Is it really this easy? Grandpa wondered. Is all forgiven? All forgotten?

  Alas, it was not.

  THREE

  I HAD DOZED OFF on the terrace, wrapped in my blanket, as I often did. Saint Kosta lay at my feet and when he stirred I woke up. A mandolin was twanging below us, deep in the bowels of the house.

  Soon Grandpa emerged from the old classroom, the Cremona in his hands. Without a word, he laid it on the table, replaced the strings with the ones I’d bought him in Burgas, and set about tuning them by ear.

  November. Winter in the Strandja. The days were short; the nights were dark and lonely. A new, sharp kind of gust was polishing the s
now into an icy crust. It swept the roads, the hills, it beat the blades of the unmoving turbines. It no longer bothered me that no one was switching them on. Nothing bothered me these days.

  Each morning we rose with the sun, and while Grandpa boiled tea I cleaned Saint Kosta’s corner. He lived with us, inside the house, a skinny, sickly thing we feared wouldn’t see the spring. Not only had his wing healed crooked, but somehow he’d developed a pitiful limp in his leg. We were all pitiful. If Grandpa said let’s eat, we ate. If he said let’s walk, we walked. We visited Baba Mina and Dyado Dacho; we stopped by the café. But if Grandpa said nothing, if he took the chair beside me, I too kept quiet in my chair. If he didn’t eat, I didn’t eat. If he didn’t walk, I didn’t walk.

  This apathy seemed like a decent bargain: I didn’t suffer. Nor was I merry.

  “No,” Grandpa said sometimes. “Laugh. Cry. But do something. That’s life. Yours isn’t.”

  “Yet here I am,” I’d say, and he would tell me: “My boy, you’re anywhere but here.”

  I guess I was. I really couldn’t tell. Ever since Elif had run away, I’d lost my sense of position, both in time and in space.

  “I look at you,” Grandpa would say, “and see myself. I can’t stand what I’m seeing. And this stork, watching me, judging me. It’s too much to take!”

  So one night he brought out the old mandolin. His fingers grew more assured with each new day, but I never made a comment. November passed. December came. I sat as quiet as a man can sit. And then, one evening on the terrace Grandpa spoke.

  “By the end, the mayor couldn’t stand me. He hated my guts. But what could he do? I was the Party. The priest was the Party. So the mayor did as we told him and let us carry out what we were sent to do.”

  Two years after Grandpa and Father Dionysus first set foot in Klisura, the Party started changing all Muslim names. In the end, it was not a campaign that succeeded, but they’d try again a few decades later. I knew how the priest had been baptizing people left and right. But Grandpa had kept his own involvement a secret. As a teacher, he made sure the children of Klisura learned their А, Б, В. He taught them they were Bulgarians, not Turks. That’s why the Party had sent him and the Pope there—to get things ready for what much later they’d call the Process of Rebirth.