“The officer finally hung up with a flourish, helped reunite us with our dusty suitcases, and led us to a bar inside the airport, where he bought us little shots of a head-emptying brandy called rakiya, partaking thoroughly himself. He asked us in his several broken languages how long we’d been committed to the revolution, when we had joined the Party, and so on, none of which made me feel any more comfortable. It all set me to pondering more than ever the possible inaccuracies of our letter of introduction, but I followed Helen’s lead and merely smiled, or made neutral remarks. He toasted friendship among the workers of every nation, refilling our glasses and his own. If one of us said something—some platitude about visiting his beautiful country, for example—he shook his head with a broad smile, as if contradicting our statements. I was unnerved by this until Helen whispered to me that she’d read about this cultural idiosyncrasy: Bulgarians shook their heads in agreement and nodded in disagreement.
“When we’d had exactly as much rakiya as I could tolerate with impunity, we were saved by the appearance of a dour-faced man in a dark suit and hat. He looked only a little older than I was and would have been handsome if any expression of pleasure had ever flitted across his countenance. As it was, his dark mustache barely hid disapprovingly pursed lips, and the fall of black hair over his forehead concealed none of his frown. The officer greeted him with deference and introduced him as our assigned guide to Bulgaria, explaining that we were privileged in this, because Krassimir Ranov was highly respected in the Bulgarian government, associated with the University of Sofia, and knew as well as anyone the interesting sights of their ancient and glorious country.
“Through a haze of brandy I shook the man’s fish-cold hand and wished to heaven we could see Bulgaria without a guide. Helen seemed less surprised by all this and greeted him, I thought, with just the right mixture of boredom and disdain. Mr. Ranov still hadn’t uttered a word to us, but he appeared to take a hearty dislike to Helen even before the officer reported too loudly that she was Hungarian and was studying in the United States. This explanation made his mustache twitch over a grim smile. ‘Professor, madam,’ he said—his first words—and turned his back on us. The customs officer beamed, shook our hands, pounded me on the shoulders as if we were old friends already, and then indicated with a gesture that we must follow Ranov.
“Outside the airport, Ranov hailed a cab, which had the most antiquated interior I’d ever seen in a vehicle, black fabric stuffed with something that could have been horsehair, and told us from the front seat that hotel rooms had been arranged for us at a hotel of the best reputation. ‘I believe you will find it comfortable, and it has an excellent restaurant. Tomorrow we shall meet for breakfast there, and you may explain to me the nature of your research and how I can help you make arrangements to complete it. You will no doubt wish to meet with your colleagues at the University of Sofia and with the appropriate ministries. Then we shall arrange for you a short tour of some of Bulgaria’s historic places.’ He smiled sourly and I stared at him in growing horror. His English was too good; despite his marked accent, it had the tonelessly correct sound of one of those records from which you can learn a language in thirty days.
“His face had something familiar in it, too. I’d certainly never seen him before, but it made me think of someone I knew, with the accompanying frustration of my not being able to remember who on earth it was. This feeling persisted for me during that first day in Sofia, dogging me on our all-too-guided tour of the city. Sofia was strangely beautiful, however—a blend of nineteenth-century elegance, medieval splendor, and shining new monuments in the socialist style. At the city’s center, we toured a grim mausoleum that held the embalmed body of the Stalinist dictator Georgi Dimitrov, who’d died five years before. Ranov took off his hat before entering the building and ushered me and Helen ahead of him. We joined a line of silent Bulgarians filing past Dimitrov’s open coffin. The dictator’s face was waxen, with a heavy dark mustache like Ranov’s. I thought of Stalin, whose body had reportedly joined Lenin’s the year before, in a similar shrine on Red Square. These atheist cultures were certainly diligent in preserving the relics of their saints.
“My sense of foreboding about our guide increased when I asked him if he could put us in touch with an Anton Stoichev and saw him recoil. ‘Mr. Stoichev is an enemy of the people,’ he assured us in his irritable voice. ‘Why do you wish to see him?’ And then, strangely, ‘Of course, if you desire it, I can arrange this. He does not teach at the university anymore—with his religious views he could not be trusted with our youth. But he is famous and perhaps you would like to see him for that reason?’”
“‘‘Ranov has been told to give us whatever we want,’ Helen remarked quietly when we had a moment alone, outside the hotel. ‘Why is that? Why does someone think that is a good idea?’ We looked fearfully at each other.
“‘I wish I knew,’ I said.
“‘We are going to have to be very careful here.’ Helen’s face was grave, her voice low, and I didn’t dare to kiss her in public. ‘Let us have an agreement from this moment that we will never reveal anything but our scholarly interests, and those as little as possible, if we have to discuss our work in front of him.’
“‘Agreed.’”
Chapter 55
“In these last years, I’ve found myself remembering over and over my first sight of Anton Stoichev’s house. Perhaps it made such a deep impression on me because of the contrast between urban Sofia and his haven just outside it, or perhaps I remember it so often because of Stoichev himself—the particular and subtle nature of his presence. I think, however, that I feel a keen, almost breathless anticipation when I recall the sight of Stoichev’s front gate because our meeting with him was the turning point in our search for Rossi.
“Much later, when I read aloud about the monasteries that lay outside the walls of Byzantine Constantinople, sanctuaries where their inhabitants sometimes escaped citywide edicts about one point of church ritual or another, where they were not protected by the great walls of the city but were a degree removed from the state’s tyrannical reach, I thought of Stoichev—his garden, its leaning apple and cherry trees starred with white, the house settled into a deep yard, its new leaves and blue beehives, the old double wooden gate with the portal above it that kept us out, the air of quiet over the place, the air of devotion, of deliberate retreat.
“We stood before that gate while the dust settled around Ranov’s car. Helen was the first to press the handle of one of the old latches; Ranov hung sullenly back as if he hated being seen there, even by us, and I felt strangely rooted to the ground. For a moment I was hypnotized by the midmorning vibration of leaves and bees, and by an unexpected, sickening feeling of dread. Stoichev, I thought, might well prove no help, a final dead end, in which case we would return home having walked a long path to nowhere. I’d imagined it a hundred times already: the silent flight back to New York from Sofia or Istanbul—I would like to see Turgut one more time, I thought—and the reorganization of my life at home without Rossi, the questions about where I had been, the problems with the department over my long absence, the resumption of my writing about those Dutch merchants—placid, prosaic people—under the guidance of some vastly inferior new adviser, and the closed door to Rossi’s office. Above all, I dreaded that closed door, and the ongoing investigation, the inadequate questioning of the police—‘So—Mr.—er—Paul, is it? You took a trip two days after your adviser disappeared?’—the small and puzzled gathering at a memorial service of sorts, eventually the question of Rossi’s works, his copyrights, his estate.
“Returning with my hand intertwined with Helen’s would be a great consolation, of course. I intended to ask her, when this horror was somehow over, to marry me; I would have to save a little money first, if I could, and take her to Boston to meet my parents. Yes, I would return with her hand in mine, but there would be no father from whom to request it in marriage. I watched through a shimmer of grief as Helen opened the g
ate.
“Inside, Stoichev’s house was sinking softly into an uneven ground—part yard and part orchard. The foundation of the house was built from a brownish-gray stone held together with white stucco; I later learned that this stone was a kind of granite, out of which most of Bulgaria’s old buildings have sprung. Above the foundation the walls were brick, but brick of the softest, mellowest red-gold, as if they had been soaking in sunlight for generations. The roof was of fluted red ceramic tiles. Roof and walls were a little dilapidated. The whole house looked as if it had grown slowly out of the earth and was now slowly returning to it, and as if the trees had grown above it simply to shade this process. The first floor had put out a rambling wing on one side, and on the other stretched a trellis, which was covered with the tendrils of grapevines above and walled with pale roses below. Under the trellis sat a wooden table and four rough chairs, and I imagined how the shadow of the grape leaves would deepen there as summer progressed. Beyond this, and beneath the most venerable of the apple trees, hovered two ghostly beehives; near them, in full sun, lay a little garden where someone had already coaxed up translucent greens in neat rows. I could smell herbs and perhaps lavender, fresh grass and frying onions. Someone tended this old place with care, and I half expected to get a glimpse of Stoichev in monk’s habit, kneeling with his trowel in the garden.
“Then a voice began to sing inside, perhaps in the vicinity of the crumbling chimney and first-floor windows. It was not the baritone chant of the hermit, but a sweet, strong feminine voice, an energetic melody that made even Ranov, sulking next to me with his cigarette, look interested. ‘Izvinete!’ he called. ‘Dobar den!’ The singing stopped abruptly and was followed by a clatter and a thump. Stoichev’s front door opened and the young woman who stood there stared hard at us, as if the last thing she’d imagined in her yard was people.
“I would have stepped forward, but Ranov cut me off, removing his hat, nodding, bowing, greeting her in a flow of Bulgarian. The young woman had put her hand to her cheek, regarding Ranov with a curiosity that seemed to me mingled with wariness. At second glance, she was not quite as young as I’d thought, but there was an energy and vigor about her that made me think she might be the author of the resplendent little garden and the good smells from the kitchen. Her hair was brushed back from a round face; she had a dark mole on her forehead. Her eyes, mouth, and chin looked like a pretty child’s. She had an apron over her white blouse and blue skirt. She surveyed us with a sharp glance that had nothing to do with the innocence of her eyes, and I saw that under her quick interrogations Ranov even opened his wallet and showed her a card. Whether she was Stoichev’s daughter or his housekeeper—did retired professors have housekeepers, in a communist country?—she was no fool. Ranov seemed to be making an uncharacteristic effort at charm; he turned, smiling, to introduce us to her. ‘This is Irina Hristova,’ he explained as we shook hands. ‘She is the ness of Professor Stoichev.’
“‘The nest?’ I said, thinking for a second that this was some elaborate metaphor.
“‘The daughter of his sister,’ Ranov said. He lit another cigarette and offered one to Irina Hristova, who refused with a decided nod. When he explained that we were from America, her eyes widened and she looked us over very carefully. Then she laughed, although I never knew what that meant. Ranov scowled again—I don’t think he was capable of looking pleasant for more than a few minutes at a time—and she turned and led us in.
“Again the house took me by surprise; it might be a sweet old farm outside, but inside, in a dusk that contrasted strongly with the sunlight of the front walk, it was a museum. The door opened directly onto a large room with a fireplace, where sunlight fell across the stones in place of fire. The furniture—dark, intricately carved bureaus set with mirrors, princely chairs and benches—would have been arresting in itself, but what drew my eye and Helen’s murmur of admiration was the rare mix of folk textiles and primitive paintings—icons, mainly, of a quality that in many cases seemed to me to surpass what we’d seen in the churches in Sofia. There were luminous-eyed Madonnas and thin-lipped, sad saints, large and small, highlighted with gilt paint or encased in beaten silver, apostles standing in boats, and martyrs patiently undergoing their martyrdoms. The rich, smoke-tinted, ancient colors were echoed on all sides by rugs and aprons woven in geometrical patterns, and even an embroidered vest and a couple of scarves trimmed with tiny coins. Helen pointed to the vest, which had strips of horizontal pockets sewn down each side. ‘For bullets,’ she said, simply.
“Next to the vest hung a pair of daggers. I wanted to ask who’d worn it, who’d caught those bullets, who’d carried those daggers. Someone had filled a ceramic jug on a table below them with roses and fronds of green, which looked supernaturally alive among all those fading treasures. The floor was highly polished. I could see another, similar room beyond.
“Ranov was looking around, too, and now he snorted. ‘In my opinion, Professor Stoichev is permitted to keep too many national possessions. These should be sold for the benefit of the people.’
“Either Irina understood no English or she didn’t deign to respond to this; she turned away and led us out of the room and up a narrow flight of stairs. I don’t know what I expected to see at the top. Perhaps we would find a littered den, a cave where the old professor hibernated, or perhaps, I thought—with that now-familiar twinge of misery—we might find a neat, orderly office of the sort that had masked Professor Rossi’s tumultuous and splendid mind. I had all but put this vision behind me when the door at the top of the stairs opened, and a white-haired man, small but erect, came out on the landing. Irina hurried to him, grasping his arm with both hands and addressing him in quick Bulgarian mixed with some excited laughter.
“The old man turned to us, calm, quiet, his face deeply withdrawn, so that I had for a minute the sense that he was gazing down at the floor, although he looked directly at us. I stepped forward then and offered my hand. He shook it gravely and turned to Helen and shook hers as well. He was polite, he was formal, he had the kind of deference that is not really deference but dignity, and his large, dark eyes went from one of us to the other, and then took in Ranov, who hung back watching the scene. At this Ranov came up and shook hands with him, too—patronizingly, I thought, disliking our guide more every minute. I wished with all my heart that he would leave, so that we could speak alone with Professor Stoichev. I wondered how on earth we were going to accomplish any kind of honest discussion, learn anything from Stoichev at all, with Ranov hovering behind us like a fly.
“Professor Stoichev turned slowly and ushered us into the room. This room, as it turned out, was one of several on the top floor of the house. It was never clear to me, during our two visits there, where its inhabitants slept. As far as I could see, the upper story of the house contained only the long, narrow sitting room that we were entering, and several smaller rooms opening off it. The doors to the other rooms stood ajar, and sunlight filtered into them through the green trees in the windows opposite and caressed the bindings of innumerable books, books that lined the walls and sat in wooden crates on the floor, or lay heaped on tables. Among them were shelved loose documents of all shapes and sizes, many of them clearly of great antiquity. No, this was not Rossi’s neat study but rather a sort of cluttered laboratory, the upper story of a collector’s mind. Everywhere I saw sunlight touching old vellum, old leather, tooled bindings, hints of gilt, crumbling page corners, knobby bindings—red and brown and bone-colored wonderful books—books and scrolls and manuscripts in a working disarray. Nothing was dusty, nothing heavy was heaped on anything fragile, and yet these books, these manuscripts were absolutely everywhere in Stoichev’s rooms, and I had a sense of being surrounded by them in a way one is not even in a museum, where such precious objects would have been more sparsely, methodically displayed.
“On one wall of the sitting room hung a primitive map, painted, to my amazement, on leather. I couldn’t help stepping toward it, and Stoichev smiled. ‘
Do you like that?’ he asked. ‘It is the Byzantine Empire in about 1150.’ It was the first time he had spoken, and he used a quiet, correct English.
“‘While Bulgaria was still among its territories,’ Helen mused.
“Stoichev glanced at her, clearly pleased. ‘Yes, exactly. I think this map was made in Venice or Genoa and brought to Constantinople, perhaps as a gift to the emperor or someone in his court. This is a copy which a friend has made for me.’
“Helen smiled, touching her chin in thought. Then she almost winked at him. ‘The emperor Manuel I Comnenus, perhaps?’
“I was stunned and Stoichev looked astonished, too. Helen laughed. ‘Byzantium used to be quite a hobby with me,’ she said. The old historian smiled, then, and bowed to her, suddenly courtly. He gestured to the chairs around a table in the middle of the sitting room, and we all sat down. From where I sat I could see the yard behind the house, sloping gradually to the edge of a wood, and the fruit trees, some of them already forming small green fruits. The windows were open, and that same hum of bees and rustle of leaves came to us. I thought how pleasant it must be for Stoichev, even in exile, to sit up here among his manuscripts and read or write and listen to that sound, which no heavy-handed state could muffle, or which no bureaucrat had yet chosen to send him away from. It was a fortunate imprisonment, as such things went, and perhaps more voluntary than we had any way of ascertaining.
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