Inside, there was a rectangular courtyard completely hidden from the street—a kind of outdoor room, Alexandra thought, observing the long table and chairs, the porous roof of vines, the pink geraniums in pots, the open cupboard full of gardening tools and cans of paint. There was no sign of disruption—no police officers, no thugs waiting for them, no Irina or Lenka. No Neven. The man with the trowel had been digging in a vegetable bed along one wall, where potato plants sprouted leafy green. A door into the house stood open, with a small kitchen visible just inside.
In the middle of this greenery sat an ancient figure, more like a sack than a person. Alexandra knew him at once: it was Milen Radev, asleep in his wheelchair. Alexandra went closer and stood gazing at him, holding the urn in its bag. His skin looked gray and patchy as old cement. His hands were in his lap, where someone had spread a knitted afghan. He wore the clothes Alexandra remembered, the rusty dark jacket and trousers, all a little too big, as if he were gradually disappearing inside them.
She had looked at him so many times in her photograph, where he sat blurry in the depths of the taxi, that it surprised her to find him distinct and made up of actual skin, hair, worn fabric. His cheeks hung in folds on each side of his jaw; a ripe smell rose from him, like the rind of a cheese. Alexandra had just decided not to wake him when he opened his eyes and stared at her with a baby’s gaze, unfocused. Then his face collected itself and drew together and he sat up a little straighter in the wheelchair. Alexandra put out her free hand.
“Gospodin Radev,” she said.
1952
Sometimes as I watched the guards with their guns during roll call, that next year, I imagined there was a gun in my own hand, a long heavy one, and that I was going to shoot a guard with it. Then I would remember what I had seen the day I was arrested. It had been more than two years already. The giant sores made my hands throb and the boundless hunger made my stomach float up and out of my throat. Even with a gun in my hand, I could not have shot a guard, because I wouldn’t have cared enough.
1952
I reminded myself that this must still be happening to me, since I was still alive.
The old man in the wheelchair took her hand and held it, not firmly, and gazed at her, waiting for an explanation. She couldn’t tell whether he needed just an explanation of who she was or an explanation of everything around him, of what he had woken to.
She said, “I’m Alexandra Boyd.”
Then Bobby came to her rescue. Radev dropped Alexandra’s hand and shook Bobby’s, holding it for a few seconds and looking at Bobby with new sharpness. His eyes were dark, the whites yellow. Once you got used to those eyes, you could see that his face had been a pleasant and shrewd one and was still both. Bobby began to speak with him; the man with the trowel pulled out two chairs and went into the kitchen, where they heard him rattling around as if making coffee or breakfast.
Bobby pointed to Alexandra, but Radev nodded and clicked his tongue—no—and told Bobby something very slowly, searching with his hands for the words.
“He doesn’t remember you,” Bobby said. “He doesn’t remember you taking their picture in Sofia, although he knows that they were in Sofia. I don’t think he understands what happened there. He also does not seem to remember who Irina and Lenka are.”
Alexandra set the black bag gently onto the table. She wondered at what moment she would be called upon to present the urn to him, or if they should wait until Vera and Neven could be found as well. Now that the moment was almost here, she wanted only to run away. Stoycho gave a sharp whine behind her—they had left him tied up just outside the door to the courtyard and now Bobby went to bring him in. The dog pulled at his leash, twisting toward Radev. Perhaps, thought Alexandra, he’d never seen anyone in a wheelchair.
“Stoycho,” she said. “Don’t be rude.” Then she saw Radev’s face tip toward them, wide awake. Suddenly the old man put a hand up and pointed at the dog, as if he had not noticed him earlier.
“Ela!” he said. He groped without success for the wheels of his chair, then beckoned Bobby closer. His eyes were large and bright now, and he stretched out one arm.
“Careful,” said Alexandra. Radev reached forward, muttering something, and Stoycho began to lick his hands—wriggling, frantic.
Bobby turned to Alexandra, astonished. “He says that this was Stoyan’s dog.”
They stood watching while Radev’s mottled hands rubbed the dog’s head, smoothed his ears. Stoycho’s sides were quivering and his tail whacked the flagstones of the courtyard, but he was careful not to jump on the beloved figure. Radev spoke to the dog; he spoke rapidly to Bobby.
Bobby shook his head. “This dog lived with them during the year before Stoyan Lazarov died,” he told Alexandra. “They all loved him, and when Stoyan died the dog ran away. They thought he had run away because of a broken heart, or perhaps was stolen. I just explained how we met him. Gospodin Radev says that someone else must have fed him, maybe in another part of the town, all this time.”
Alexandra couldn’t take her eyes off the man, the ecstatic dog. “That’s why Irina Georgieva didn’t recognize Stoycho—she hadn’t been to visit them in Bovech for a long time before gospodin Lazarov died. But I think she felt something strange about Stoycho—remember? She liked him right away, and he liked her.”
Stoycho posted himself next to the wheelchair and leaned against the old man’s knees, but only for a moment; just then an elderly woman stepped out of the kitchen into the courtyard, carrying a plate of cheese and salami and bread. Stoycho bounded forward to meet her, whimpering again, although he was careful with her, too, not to jump.
Alexandra got to her feet. As she stood there, she suddenly thought of a time when she had been only six or seven years old, and had had a high fever. Her family had been living out on the mountain, Jack hovering in the background while their parents decided whether or not to take her to the hospital, an hour’s drive. “Let’s try one more thing,” said her father. Alexandra remembered the feeling of being stripped down, clothes coming off over her head, and the cold, cold water in the bathtub. For a long minute she had struggled to get away. Then she’d understood: this pain would reduce the other, greater pain—a trade. She had sat enduring it while her parents took turns squeezing the bitter washcloth down her back.
The old lady coming out into the courtyard wore a dark skirt and blouse; her hair gleamed discordant red, with that gray streak down the center, and her legs were bowed but strong. She looked alert and also unaware; she seemed only to be bringing refreshment for whoever had arrived to visit, as if the man with the trowel had told her nothing. Her face was deeply lined, her eyes bloodshot and wide set and still luminous, her nose long and fine. Alexandra felt a repeat of her earlier shock; this was the reality of a person, not an idea or a photograph.
This time the surprise was mutual—the old lady’s expression changed to alarm; her gaze widened under scrubbed-off brows. Her mouth opened and Alexandra could see the unnatural evenness of her dentures. She gazed down at Stoycho, who was pushing up under her hand. She stared at Alexandra, then put the plate slowly on the table. This is it, Alexandra thought. She is furious. Or bereft all over again.
But the old lady did not seem to recognize the bag with the urn, although she’d set her plate next to it.
Alexandra made herself step forward. Bobby had turned and come to her side. The old woman took Alexandra’s hand, still staring at her. Alexandra felt herself about to cry, in spite of her effort not to. She bent over and put her arms around the woman’s neck.
“I know you are Vera,” she said. “I’m Alexandra Boyd. I’m sorry I took it. I didn’t mean to.”
Vera Lazarova stood frozen in her embrace. Alexandra drew away, ashamed: she had done the wrong thing, and she spoke the wrong language. She pointed to the black bag—she did not dare hand it to the old woman; if Vera didn’t drop it in her surprise, Alexandra would surely do that herself. Vera was looking at the bag in silence. She touched the
top of it with a gentle hand, then turned to Alexandra. Tears wobbled in Vera’s eyes, jeweled, and for a moment Alexandra saw the younger woman she had been, the translucent beauty. Then Vera reached up and kissed Alexandra on each cheek. Her breath smelled like garlic and also something sweeter. She took Alexandra’s arm and drew her to a chair and pressed her down into it. She called over her shoulder, so that the man in the kitchen came out with a tray of coffee cups instead of his trowel. She spoke to Milen, pointing to the bag. Her voice was strong, a little raspy. The old man seemed to come to life, throwing one arm weakly wide and then covering his face with a veined hand. He wheeled his chair forward and Stoycho walked with him as if to help.
They all sat down together, with the urn at the center of the table. It wasn’t until they were seated there, and their host was pouring coffee, that Alexandra remembered Neven was still not there. Neither were Irina and Lenka.
1953
When spring came around again, there were changes. Two new guards appeared in the camp, and the small stooping man who had been one of the Chief’s favorites disappeared. The new guards were young and confident, professional-looking. I had a sense that they watched the Chief as well as obeyed him—perhaps they’d been sent for that purpose. Nasko fell ill with dysentery and went to the infirmary after supper one night; I saw him carried by on a stretcher and ran to grasp his hand until the guards shouted at me to get away. He moved his eyes weakly in my direction and tried to smile. I felt sure that I would never see him again.
I wept, then, standing in the yard, until Momo came up to me. “Something wrong? Nothing a good beating wouldn’t fix, right?” He spoke heartily, as if we were friends.
I turned away to keep myself from striking him with my skeleton’s hand—he was probably inviting me into suicide. I made myself walk toward the barrack, to go to bed even earlier than usual, without speaking over my shoulder. I lay there thinking through everything I knew about Nasko, which was not as much as I would have liked. I lay in my bunk painting for him: a big diptych with the Holy Virgin on one panel, bowing her head, and the angel on the other, in a flaming orange robe. The angel was dark-haired and looked very much like Vera; I put a tumble of cubist quarry rocks behind the two of them, as if the angel were delivering good news out in the desert. I considered praying to Sveta Bogoroditsa that I would not wake up in the morning, not survive after all, and then I asked the angel to forgive me for this thought.
Nasko didn’t appear the next morning, of course, at roll call, and not the next week, or the next, or ever. I watched the sacks against the wall of the latrines come and go—they were removed at least a little more quickly now that it was spring—and guessed that he must be in one of them. It no longer mattered which, so I bade them each farewell as I passed. A newcomer worked Nasko’s job in the quarry, a man of forty with a big mole on his cheek, and we did not speak to each other. I pushed the wheelbarrow only with the greatest effort. I tried to stay in my routine of practice, although the notes were becoming difficult for me to hear and I had an increasing sense of them as mere patterns in the air. I tried to think about Vivaldi, and to walk through Venice, on the right days; I had begun to see not a city but a panoply of separate images like sketches in an encyclopedia.
Only Neven was true to me, always vivid: he was eighteen now, handsome and affectionate, a consummate musician, studying and practicing independently, his sound unbelievably mature. Sometimes we worked together on duets. As he played, he glanced over the bridge at me with his golden eyes and suppressed a smile. When he came into the little kitchen after school he kissed not only his mama, who hadn’t aged a day, but also me, his skeletal Tatko, the nearly dead. It was clear to me that of the two of us, Neven would be the greater musician. He would surpass me even after my hands healed and I could rebuild my technique—and I discovered joy in that thought. Something else troubled me, however: I still didn’t know if the government was allowing people to travel, although the war had ended years ago. If they didn’t, how would Neven go to study in Vienna? How would we visit Venice together? Or was I confusing this with some other problem?
On my one thousand and sixtieth day of camp, not counting my days in the infirmary, I was standing in the front row of evening roll call, half-fainting with hunger and weakness, when the Chief announced that he had noted poor work for several days.
“We are behind on our goals,” he said, facing us angrily. Momo prowled behind him, ogling us from a distance. He had not shown much interest in me since Nasko’s disappearance a few weeks before, although the two facts were probably not related.
“You are behind on your achievement,” shouted the Chief. “How will you become decent members of society again if you cannot work?”
We shuffled our feet, all ghosts already.
He turned to Momo and made a gesture of exasperation, as if Momo had shirked his work, too. Momo sprang toward us and paced along the front row, staring each of us in the face. He wore his gap-toothed smile, but I noted wearily that he seemed unsure what the Chief wanted of him. He paused before me. I could hardly care even about this. Either he would murder me or I would die, one of these nights, in the barrack or under the sun at the quarry. I wished only that I had figured out what to do for Neven, where to send him, now that he was a man and a musician, with the borders closed.
Momo leaned in a little, trying to catch my eye. I looked away.
“You,” he said. “Do you still feel you are not so smart?”
I said nothing. He might as well kill me for being silent as for speaking—in fact, I held on to that idea as a last piece of will. I would not speak.
“If you are not so smart, what about him?” He pointed at the man next to me, and I turned a little, involuntarily, to glance at the poor fellow. A corpse, like me, one I barely knew by sight, and not one of my barrack-mates—probably a miner, from the look of his black and stiffened rags. I caught a glimpse of trousers torn off below the knee, showing a shin brilliantly red but crusted over with large darker spots. It was hard to tell what color his hair had been, since he had none, or what shape his face.
“Well,” said Momo. “Is he smart—your friend, here?” He was leaning closer to me, his golden outline filling my vision. As I often had before, I had the sense of seeing a clever man duck out of sight. I vowed to hold on to my notion of saying nothing, at least until I fainted.
The man beside me bowed his head, as if he, too, hoped this would all disappear.
Momo paused and stepped back, apparently at a loss. I could see the Chief watching us now, his arms folded. Perhaps he was giving Momo new freedoms? Or was he asking himself if Momo was worth keeping on?
Momo pointed at my neighbor with his club. “Step out and tell me how smart you are, since the tsigulka player won’t.” The man shuffled forward.
“No!” I screamed, a wispy sound, too late. Momo brought his club heavily down on the miner’s skull and the man fell forward onto his knees. The other guards did not bother to help; it was over in another second. None of them even glanced at me; no hand dragged me out of line for my turn. It seemed that Momo had not heard my protest. Had I even uttered it? I began to doubt that any sound had come out, or that I had even opened my mouth to protest, although I still felt the scrape of the noise in my throat.
We were dismissed, brusquely, but the miner’s body was left in the yard until morning, where we saw it again in the electric lights of the early roll call—a dark shape on its side, no longer particularly human. It was gone in the evening, but there was a patch in the dirt where his blood had spilled instead of mine.
—
AFTER THAT DAY, I did not try to practice anymore, or to follow the Red Priest around. I could not see even Neven’s face. There was only silence. People seem to believe that despair is the same as anguish, but it is not. It’s true that despair is surrounded by anguish, but at its core, despair is silent, a blank page.
Neven, Vera told them, had gone the evening before to check on Irina and L
enka in Plovdiv and had not yet returned—for some reason, he had seemed worried about them, perhaps because he hadn’t been able to reach them by telephone for a couple of days. She clung to Alexandra’s hand while she talked, and Alexandra reflected that Vera and Irina, sisters, had more in common than people seemed to think. Stoycho sat with his cheek against the old woman’s leg. Vera’s smile was still beautiful, and there was a slow grace in the way she turned her head above her wattled neck. Alexandra had seen none of that on the hotel steps in Sofia, but she had not known Vera Lazarova, then.
Bobby made Alexandra get out her camera and show Vera the photo. She nodded, sober, and spoke in her turn, with Bobby translating. She and Neven had not understood the bag was gone until partway to Velin Monastery, and then Vera had suddenly noticed that neither of them had it. At her insistence, Neven had made their taxi return to the hotel in Sofia, but they hadn’t found any sign of Alexandra or the bag there. Vera said she had been distraught and wanted to go to the police, but Neven had persuaded her that they should not. He said his father had hated the police and would not have wanted their help.
In fact, Neven had had a quarrel with someone in the hotel restaurant, even before they’d lost the urn—he had already been in a bad mood, upset and agitated. She and Milen had not heard what the quarrel was about. In the end, they’d returned to the hotel and had left a note at the desk with Neven’s name and number on it. Since they couldn’t stay in Sofia, Vera had wanted to visit Irina and then return to the mountain house in Gorno to wait for news. But Neven had insisted on bringing them straight to the sea. And he would not allow her to call the police or Irina or even to answer the phone.