“Why would someone do this?” Alexandra asked again.
“I don’t know,” said Bobby harshly. “I see a lot of graffiti these days, a lot of vandalism of cars. But this is the second time. And Give it back—”
He fished out his phone and took a picture of the windshield, then of each of the holes in it. “We can’t drive it like this. Watch for traffic. I don’t want to attract any more attention than we have to.”
He opened the trunk and got out an old blanket, which he spread over the windshield and began to fasten down with duct tape. Alexandra wondered how they would get back to Sofia now. The street lay quiet, but no longer peaceful, she thought. Stoycho sat gazing at them.
“Why would someone do this?” she asked again.
“That is not the right question,” Bobby said, tearing off pieces of tape. “The first question is, Who? Let’s say this is not something silly, someone making a joke. It could be, but the message doesn’t sound like that. Especially after what happened at Lelya Pavlina’s—twice in two days. If we knew who, we might know why. And, second, what are they saying we should give back? What do we have? I don’t think they mean a person, unless I am supposed to give you back to someone.”
He turned toward her, but still as if distracted, almost exasperated.
“We have Stoycho,” she said and immediately felt foolish. The dog moved on restless feet, looking up at her. “We have the urn, or we did until a few hours ago. But who would want it back? I mean, except the Lazarovi?”
Bobby taped across the top of the windshield; she held the blanket smooth for him. “Well, let’s say it is most probable that someone who wrote this means the urn. That is the only unusual thing we have—except that we don’t even have it, now, as you said. And who knows that we had it?”
“The Lazarovi,” Alexandra said again. “But we’re trying to find them to give it back. And also Irina knows, and probably her helper.” She thought for a moment, wiping paint from her fingers. “And the police, those two guards I spoke to at the station in Sofia, and maybe the receptionist there, and the officer I talked to about it.”
“Yes,” Bobby said. He was still glancing around the street every few seconds.
“But I had the urn right with me, at the police station. If they’d wanted it, they could have taken it then, and they didn’t insist. I mean, I actually brought it to them. Anyway, why would they want it?”
“Yes, why?” Bobby said.
“There is one weird thing,” Alexandra said, hesitantly. “I might be remembering it the wrong way now, or making too much of it. You know, at the station, I talked with that police officer for a few minutes—he gave me the address in Bovech. We were alone together, in his office. He didn’t seem very interested in me except at one point, when he looked up Stoyan Lazarov’s name in a database or something. Then he kind of flinched, and he made a call on his cell phone, which of course I couldn’t understand. But he seemed a little more attentive after that, or just—interested in a different way.”
She looked at Bobby. “That was when he asked if I wanted him to keep the bag, but after I said I felt I should do it myself, he immediately told me that was better and that he could give me an address. I guess the police could find anybody quickly on their own, much more quickly than we could. So I don’t know why they haven’t done that—I mean, if they’re even the ones who want it back. And they wouldn’t write threatening graffiti, right?” She wasn’t sure that was right, however, in this country where it turned out she knew less and less about everything.
“What did he look like, this officer?” Bobby asked.
She described him: the nearly bald head, the winking eye, the long intimidating office with the big desk.
“The one who gave you his business card. Yes, that was the chief,” Bobby said, straightening up. “I’m sure of it. I was surprised that they took you to him, but maybe it was because you were a foreigner and you were carrying human—remains. That doesn’t happen there every morning.”
“Why would the police want us to give back the urn now?”
Bobby shook his head again. “I don’t think this was done by the police. You are right—that is not the way they do things. They would come find us by looking for my license number and maybe even go bang on Irina Georgieva’s door, if they knew we were there.”
“But no one else knows,” Alexandra said.
“We can’t be sure that is true,” Bobby said quietly. He stretched the bottom edge of the blanket tight over the windshield. “The police could have told someone else, from what you are describing. Irina could have told someone this morning while we were out, or her helper could have told her own friends. And the Lazarovi would not be able to find us or the taxi—if they could, they would be here already, to ask for the urn.”
“Unless they went to the police themselves, but after I did,” Alexandra said. “And the police had already traced us and decided to give them the license plate number of the taxi. I mean, in theory.”
Bobby looked hard at her, then leaned over and pointed at the side of her head. “You are a very smart girl,” he said.
“Not a girl,” she said, automatically.
“Right,” Bobby said. “But I don’t think the Lazarovi would come to us like this, with a paint can, or break windows. They are normal people, old people, and probably very sad and upset. They would ask the police to help them find us, and then they would ask us in a normal way for the urn.”
“I don’t like this,” Alexandra said. “I feel as if we should tell someone about it.”
“What—do you want to go back to the police?”
“Not really,” she admitted. “At least, not right away. Maybe Irina will reach the—Lazarovi—today, and if she does she will let us know everything’s all right.” But her heart was sinking.
“I don’t like this, either,” Bobby said. He tore off a last piece of tape almost viciously and stretched it down the side of the windshield. “Also, if someone who is angry wants the urn for some reason, how can we leave it with this old lady? What if they discover that she has it now?”
“I was thinking of that, too,” Alexandra said. “And we might still be able to help her find her sister.” A little warmth, a little relief, broke through her uneasiness.
—
WHEN THEY RETURNED, IRINA GEORGIEVA was sitting under the grape arbor drinking water and slowly taking some pills. She looked up at them, apparently unsurprised.
“Without these medicines, I die tomorrow and the museum will get my house,” she said. “They have a legal right to it, and they are waiting eagerly.” She waved at the mansion across the courtyard. “Not my paintings, however. I am leaving my paintings to the art school. Did you have trouble with your car?”
“Yes,” Bobby said. It was the perfect solution—car trouble. “Would you mind if we stay a little longer, while we decide what to do?”
“Unfortunate for your car,” Irina said. “But fortunate for me.” She smiled, her watery eyes bright.
“Do you mean that your sister called?” Alexandra asked eagerly.
“No, my dear. I wish so, but she has not. And I have been calling Neven and also the phone at the mountain house, again, and still there is no answer. I never liked that they went to live in the mountains, especially in winter. It is too small a place, too far away from everything. But I think we cannot sit here forever—they have certainly gone back there, or they will go very soon.” She sighed. “If you get your car fixed quickly, we can reach the village in less than one day and take the urn to them ourselves. We could go tomorrow morning. Lenka will come, too, to help me.” The younger woman’s name, at last.
Alexandra glanced at Bobby. “Would you have time to do that?”
Bobby had folded his thin arms across his chest. The hair fell into his eyes and his skin looked pale and verdant under the leaves of the trellis. Alexandra wondered if he was handsomer than she’d first recognized, or if it was simply that phenomenon that makes people lo
ok better and better as you get used to them, familiarity softening their oddness.
He nodded. “Of course, Bird. We can do that. I will make a phone call or two, myself.”
They all smiled at one another. In spite of everything, Alexandra felt a sudden sharp pleasure, this time from the faces before her, the long-short distance to home, the early summer light and warm sun.
“One thing we must agree,” Irina said to Bobby. “Asparuh, I will hire you to drive us. You have been away from your work for several days, I think? I shall insist.”
“Thank you, Madame Georgieva.” Bobby inclined his head, respectfully. “If you feel safe, I will be honored to take you. My taxi is not very nice, however.”
And maybe not that safe, actually, Alexandra thought. “And we have Stoycho,” she said aloud. “But he could sit on my lap.”
Irina patted Bobby’s hand. “Then that is settled,” she said. “One bed, tonight, or two?”
She put this briskly, and Alexandra was a little taken aback. On the other hand, perhaps an artist, however old, couldn’t be easily shocked.
“Oh, two, please,” Alexandra said, without looking at Bobby.
“Very well. And do you have some luggage? Other luggage, that is?”
Bobby told her they didn’t. Then Irina said that she would show them Stoycho’s lodgings. She led them unsteadily beyond the arbor, where they saw a doghouse, painted blue to match the houses of the old town; Alexandra felt certain it had not been there earlier. Food and water sat in front of it and a cotton mat was spread inside.
“My place is small, but your place is smaller,” Irina Georgieva told Stoycho. “And it is in shadows enough to be cool for you.” He went into his house, turned around once, and lay down with his head outside the doorway and his eyes already closing.
Lenka took Alexandra upstairs to a room whose ceiling was so low she could stroke it with her hand flat. It was lined in time-darkened wood, the trim carved into acorns and oak leaves, a smooth-faced girl looking down from the top of the doorway. Irina had hung her animal paintings in here—goats, sheep, chickens, doves, fish, and a surprisingly vivid hippopotamus. Alexandra thought at first that there was no bed. Was she supposed to sleep on the wool rug? But Irina’s helper opened a cupboard across one wall to show her the bed inside: white pillows, a cotton coverlet, and for some reason a twig of dried herbs lying in the middle. Alexandra picked it up and smelled it and said, “Oregano?” Pronouncing it in as Slavic a way as she could think of.
Lenka laughed and said, “Chubritza,” and they stood grinning at each other, unable to communicate further.
Soon after, Irina disappeared for her afternoon rest. Bobby proposed that they leave the house for a little while; he wanted to look around the neighborhood some more. Alexandra knew he was thinking about the holes in his windshield. They took Stoycho on his rope and walked through the old town toward the ruins of the Roman theater. It stood high above the city, on what must have been a commanding site in its own time as well. There was a fence across the top; they paid an entrance fee and went in. A columned back wall had been restored enough to shelter plays and concerts. Level with the last row of the theater stood a fine old building: the music institute where Stoyan Lazarov had not been allowed to teach. Alexandra wandered around looking at gigantic rough-quarried stones and then they climbed back up to sit on the top row. Stoycho lay near them in the aisle, his rope slack. From here it was possible to imagine every kind of classical spectacle—an already antique Greek tragedy played out against the marble, for example.
Bobby waved a hand. “It was built in the time of the emperor Trajan, in the second century.”
“You know a lot about your country,” Alexandra told him.
“I’ve always been interested in history,” he said. “But a country has many myths about itself—mythology, mixed up with the history. Don’t you know a lot about your country, too? Or at least some myths?”
“Maybe a few,” she said, wondering when the Golden Gate Bridge had been erected, or Philadelphia founded.
“Well, your country is very big.” He slung an arm around her shoulders, surprising her. “Probably you can’t know all of it.”
“I know my own region pretty well,” she said. She imagined him with his arm around a boyfriend, but maybe he couldn’t do that in public, here—or didn’t have a boyfriend, anyway. His arm was comfortable, warm. The thought came to her of Jack, sitting on her bed to help with her homework; for once she felt no uprush of pain at the memory.
Voices clattered behind them and they watched as a tour guide entered with her string of tourists in tow. The guide wore a navy pantsuit, like a flight attendant, and a bright red hat that said SUNNYTRIPS, and she waved a sheaf of papers at her ducklings to keep their attention. The tourists were dark-haired or swarthy-looking, mostly middle-aged, the men bearded and the women in skirts and sandals that looked bad for walking. There were a few teenagers, hanging back alone or in pairs, a lanky boy turning away from his parents to check his phone. Alexandra imagined the text he’d just sent to his girlfriend, somewhere back home: Hi, another fucking ruin.
“Greeks,” Bobby said with interest. “But not ancient ones.” He took his arm off her shoulders and pulled Stoycho closer. Stoycho looked sadly at him—did Bobby really think he was going to dash over and chew up a bunch of tourists? Light fell over the great stones in waves and Alexandra felt that she’d never really seen the sun before; it was different in this part of the world, as if a huge veil had been removed and the sky was shining with strength from an earlier time. Her skin felt washed by it, and by the warm wind coming up the hillsides. The stones they sat on looked almost silver. She saw weeds growing unheeded out of the cracks, a cluster of poppies in bright red bloom near the stage. This, she thought, was peace, which came over you when you least expected it. But it stayed in her veins only a moment, and then the image of a broken windshield hung before her.
—
IRINA GEORGIEVA’S PHONE DIDN’T RING that evening; instead Alexandra and Bobby sat near her for a while in the perfection of a May evening in the Balkans. Lenka had brought them cups of a tea that Irina said was from the mountains. The air stirred, but only a little, and the growing moonlight spattered everything in forms like the interstices of grape leaves and tendrils. Alexandra brushed her hand across the table and found that she could move her fingers but not those shapes of light and shadow, and that her hands added complicated new shadows. She described to Irina the old house in the North Carolina mountains, although she didn’t mention Jack. Bobby explained his project to run all the streets of Sofia; Irina laughed approvingly and told them that she had once had a project to paint all the animals in the world—“Although how would you do that, from Bulgaria?”
“You mean because there are only a few species here?” asked Alexandra, who had already observed that Irina liked her forthrightness more than her politeness and had begun to avail herself of that discovery. “Because you’d have to travel so much?”
Bobby said softly, as if correcting an innocent mistake, “Remember, no one could go anywhere, under communism. I mean, most people could not. But you must have seen many animals in pictures and films, Madame Georgieva?”
Some of her white hair had come unpinned, and she tucked it back behind her ear, one of many youthful gestures Alexandra had noticed in her.
“Of course,” she said. “Also, there was the zoo in Sofia. And before the war I did go to other places, mainly England. Our father worked in London from the time I was a little child until I was twelve, when we had to return. That’s where I learned my English, you know, and we went to the London Zoo very often. As a child, I wanted to become a painter because of the animals there—for example, the way the elephant has these kind of—whiskers—along his back and around his ears.”
She gestured with long bent hands, drawing the hairs. “But you are quite right. Most of us could not travel. I knew people who dreamed all the time about going somewhere else, and
they let that ruin their lives. When you are not allowed to do something, it often becomes very important.”
Irina stopped suddenly. She frowned at the table. She stirred her tea, releasing a swirl of moon and steam, and Alexandra watched this magic, fearful.
“Those are much sadder stories than mine, and to not go somewhere else was the least of it, my dears,” Irina Georgieva said, after a moment. “You have a better life to look forward to, I hope.” She gazed at them out of her moon-speckled face.
Bobby leaned back. He looked older, too, in this tessellated light. Alexandra noticed that he listened keenly to any sound from the street, and looked around the courtyard from time to time, which made her shiver. The moon was high overhead now; she caught a glimpse of it through the top of the grape trellis and saw that it had become distant and cold.
Suddenly Bobby said, “You don’t have a nekrolog on your door.” Alexandra wondered if this would offend Irina Georgieva. She remembered Bovech, the green door with nothing pasted on it, the flowers drying in their pots on the front steps.
But Irina did not seem inclined to reproach him. “My sister asked me not to put one here, and I was not sorry. I don’t like them. They are almost always ugly-looking, so they are not a proper honor to people. I would rather have all my memories of a brother than some paper to tell to strangers that he isn’t here anymore, with a bad photograph.”
Alexandra thought how completely she could agree with that.
Irina straightened herself in her chair. She glanced at Alexandra. “Would you like to know how Stoyan married my sister?”
“Yes,” said Alexandra. “Yes, please.”
I remarked to you that Stoyan and I were like brother and sister, Irina said. This is true. There were no brothers in our family, except one who had died as a baby, before Vera was born—and you always need a brother, don’t you? Because of this, Stoyan talked with me like to a sister, sometimes, when we got older—although as I told you he was also a very reserved man, so there must have been many parts of his soul I never knew. I was only fifteen when Vera met him at the bakery, but I remember well the first time he came to call at our house. Vera was almost eighteen. My father, who had become an invalid by then, told Vera that she could not see Stoyan alone because she was too young, and that she must wait until she was at least twenty-two to marry—I don’t know exactly how he and our mother chose that age. But he allowed her to invite Stoyan to dine with our family every few weeks, especially since Stoyan had now been formally introduced to us by a friend of one of our uncles.