“Then I heard the driver call from inside the car—‘Gospodin Kurilkov!’ and something else after that. Whatever the driver said made the man smile, so I could see his eyes lighting up pale blue and the gap showing between his top front teeth, and the wide bones of the face. It was the devil Momo I told you about, much older and well disguised, but the same. That is not a face you forget. A second later he closed the car door and they drove off. I hadn’t moved. I did not move from my spot for a long time.
“I remembered that the newspapers said that as a young man this Kurilkov had become a guard at the Politburo, first a guard and then somehow the assistant to an important member, many years before the changes. After the changes, he made a lot of money, buying old mines—how, I will never know. He must have done this in secret, through other people. He was away from politics for a long time after that, probably waiting. Then he became a deputy minister and began to form a party—Bez Koruptsiya.”
My father began to cough, and he took a long pause, while I gave him water.
“That’s enough,” he said after one sip. He spoke with his eyes closed. “There had never been any mention of Zelenets in the newspaper stories about him, no report of the murders they committed there. I had not even known he was alive until then—or any of the guards. But he was very much alive, and famous, and rich, and powerful—and he owned a mansion right in our village, the place in Bulgaria I loved most. I remembered reading an editor’s opinion that this man might become prime minister someday, or possibly president, that he was elderly for a politician but very smart and with a clean past, unlike many other politicians. He would understand older people and their needs, and at the same time he would build a great future for Bulgaria.”
My father moved his feet stiffly under the sheets. “I did not go outside again after that walk, and a couple of days later we returned here, to Bovech. The next time your mother wanted to visit Gorno I told her that I wasn’t well enough to travel, which was soon true anyway. I have never gone back. I could not stop thinking about him. Finally, I wrote a letter to the newspaper in Sofia where I first read about his career. I described what I had seen in Zelenets. Other people had come forward and told about these things, you know, when the changes first happened—perhaps I should have been braver then, but I was afraid for you and your mother. My effort came too late, I suppose—it was not published.”
He stopped and caught his breath. His face looked grayer than ever and his forehead glistened. “In fact, I never heard back from the newspaper—I received only silence, even when I tried again.”
He paused again. “Momo is dead, but the person he has become is not. This Kurilkov, he calls himself the Bear.”
He gripped my hand with some of his old strength, and I bent over him. I told him to rest. I told him to stop worrying about the past—it had been terrible, but it was over and there was no reason for him to worry more now. He kept his eyes on my face and his hand in my hand.
“Please,” he said. “Please do not let anyone know whose son you are.”
I bent to him and kissed his forehead, feeling the sweat on it. “Times have changed,” I said. “And I am proud to be your son. I would always let anyone know that.”
He smiled for a moment and I heard his breath whistling through his nose. “I did not try to send anything to the newspapers again, but I have written it all down. I have put it somewhere safe.” He looked too weak now to move much, and I thought his mind might be wandering a little. “I must remember where that is. Nasko found a place for me to hide it. And I put part of it somewhere else, not to be published. Where did I put that part?”
“Don’t worry, Tatko,” I said. “Wherever it is, we will find it together. Just rest.”
His head moved back and forth on the pillow. “The last time I read about him in the papers, he was proposing a plan to the Ministry of the Interior. For more prisons, for the prisoners to contribute to society by their hard work. He knows what to do with us, with prisoners. Is he over there, by the calendar?” His eyes were roving around the room.
“Tatko, it’s only me,” I said. “I’m right here. We won’t let that happen, I promise.”
He subsided, his face growing slack, and suddenly fell asleep. The sun was getting low; my mother would be arriving soon on the Plovdiv bus, and I knew I should put out some dinner for her and try to get my father to eat something as well. Milen Radev was coming to spend the weekend with us. I knew Milen was afraid, each time he said goodbye, that he would not see my father alive again. Soon Milen Radev would be the only father left to me.
“One other thing,” my father said, struggling awake again. “Forgive me—I did not take you to Venice. I never took you. I said I would, and then after they opened the borders there was no money. But I could have gotten you a passport, at least. I could have tried to save some more money.”
“Please, Tatko, rest,” I said. “You saved all you could. And we have enjoyed our books and our dreams.”
“There is something valuable, but it is not with my other music. It is on the shelf of the garderob.”
He made a movement with his hand, trying to point. “It has a special signature on the last page, which must be Vivaldi’s. I bought it in Prague, before I came back to Bulgaria. If you sell it, maybe you can go. Take me with you—cremate me and take my ashes and bury me there.” He smiled again, faintly. “You know, if Vivaldi was buried a pauper in Vienna, I can be buried a pauper in Venice.”
Soon after this I gave him the pills for pain and made him sleep, and my mother arrived, and then Milen. That evening he asked me very weakly to let his dog come inside to lie on the floor of the room. Then he told me to bring him his violin and put it beside him on the bed, touching his arm. “But don’t take it out of the case,” he whispered. Even then, he didn’t want it to be injured. I understand now that he must have spent his life fearing it would be confiscated by the state—because it was beautiful and valuable and he had bought it before the war.
The next day my father died, just at sunset, with the violin beside him. It was devastating for my mother, but we could all see the quiet in his face. I was glad for him, even as I began to miss him; never again would he live with such memories.
I told my mother and Milen—not about Zelenets—I think each of them knew, in their different ways—but about the Vivaldi manuscript, and about his wish to be cremated and buried in Venice. My mother did not want to have him cremated, but she did it, because it had been his last plea. Nasko Angelov gave us an urn he had made at my father’s request, carved with faces from the story of the Wolf and the Bear. When he brought it to us, I told him in private that I knew about Zelenets and asked him if he remembered something my father had written, but he shook his head without speaking. My mother kept the urn, in case we could somehow take it to Venice. We looked on the shelf of the clothes cabinet in their room and found several printed scores of Vivaldi, which I remembered his playing from sometimes. Inside one of them was a handwritten manuscript, very old and initialed the way he had described to me. I am no musician, but even to me it seemed remarkable looking.
We took the Vivaldi manuscript to Sofia, to a rare books dealer, and the man held it for a couple of days to examine. When we returned, he told us that he couldn’t prove it had been written by Vivaldi. Vivaldi, he said, usually signed his pieces with a very different mark. He was sorry. But it was certainly an original manuscript, and from the eighteenth century, and he could put it up for sale on the Internet.
What he gave us for it in the end was enough to buy my mother and Milen ten months of heat, electricity, and food. Their pensions cover food or heat, but not both. The next month, we sold my father’s violin, but I knew that this would see them through only another couple of years, especially if there were hospital bills, which there soon were—for Milen Radev. I was already using any extra money I could make to support the two of them. Milen aged badly after my father died. Then he had a heart attack and we thought he would die, too
, and my mother was frantic. Instead he lived, but is much weaker. The last of the money from the violin paid for his wheelchair. This year my mother put the Bovech house up for sale and they moved to Gorno to save money, but no one is buying houses in Bovech. Then I felt consumed by anger and I looked everywhere for the document my father had told me about, thinking I would publish it at any cost. I wished I had asked my father more about it, but I could not find it—or maybe, I thought, he had only imagined that he’d written it all down.
It had been two years since his death, and we felt we shouldn’t wait longer—we would never be able to go to Venice, or pay for a burial there—so we decided to take my father’s ashes to Velin Monastery, where one of my mother’s remaining cousins knew the priest and got permission. My father loved that monastery—the peace there, the old trees. And my mother thought that would be a worthy place for my father, in the cemetery outside the monastery. We took a train to Sofia to see her cousin and thank her. Also, the cousin had told us that her son drove a taxi and he could take us to Velin Monastery for free when we were ready.
But as I was sitting on the train, with the urn beside me, I thought of what my father had said about a place Nasko Angelov had found for him. When we got to Sofia, I opened the urn in private and discovered that it had a cavity built into a separate box, at the bottom. I read what I found in it and I knew I could never leave it unpublished.
The next day I made a copy of my father’s confession and put the original back inside, out of respect for him. I called a newspaper—not the one that had rejected my father’s letter—and arranged to speak with one of the editors, hinting at the story I had. He wanted me to meet him at Hotel Forest. I thought that my mother and Milen should be there to speak with them, too, if it came to that, and they sat waiting in the lobby nearby, with our bags safely between them on the floor. When this editor arrived, I told him about my father’s experience at Zelenets and gave him a copy of the document. I explained that my father had felt so deeply about it that he’d tried to publish his story once before and then had wanted it buried with his ashes. I said that I would rather publish it than bury it, but that I hoped to do both.
To my fury, the editor was contemptuous and said I had no real proof of this information and that I would probably be arrested if I spoke publicly about Kurilkov, who had done so much good for the country already. I was attacking a respected elder statesman with a story that might be considered slander. The editor said he would be reporting me to people who would want to make sure I never talked again. I shouted at him that he had no right to threaten those who had already suffered, but he told me my mother would suffer much more if I ever spoke about this matter in public. He left in a rage, taking my copy of the document away in his briefcase and threatening to call the police at once. I saw him push quickly out the doors at the back of the hotel.
I realized immediately that I might be followed—that he might intend to circle back around to the front of the building. I might be followed, my family might even be killed, and we must not be found with the urn in our hands. I went as quickly as I could to the front door of the hotel, taking my mother and Milen to meet her cousin’s son and his taxi. I knew we had to bury my father’s ashes at once, and that I must probably leave his grave at Velin unmarked, if I could.
Just then the cousin called me to say that her son could not come for us after all, and there was some confusion while we tried to get down the steps and take another taxi. I could not risk going to wait for a bus. As we were struggling with this, someone tried for the first time to help us. And then I let my father go, into the hands of a young woman he would have loved. I saw that you were holding the urn, Alexandra, without knowing it. What the urn contained had already endangered my mother and Milen—the last thing my father would have wanted—and I simply let him go.
But after he was gone, I realized that you might take the urn to the police. We had to disappear. I could only hope that you would not get in trouble, too. It never occurred to me that you would be kind enough, and persistent enough, to look for us everywhere.
The sun had moved to the middle of the sky and lay warm on Alexandra’s hair. Neven stirred, shook his head as if rising from a dream, took his hand away from hers. Tears still pooled under her eyes and she was suddenly aware of them. He pulled a crumpled paper napkin from his pants pocket and dabbed her cheekbones for her; he said nothing, but his touch was careful. Bobby stirred, but didn’t stop him.
“Where did you go, then?” she said. “We did look everywhere for you.”
He nodded, gestured for Bobby to translate. “Of course, I could not tell my mother that I had given away the urn. We started off toward Velin in another cab, although I knew this would be expensive. When she realized the urn was gone, we went back to the hotel, where of course we found nothing—I was relieved to see no sign of the editor, either. Then I took her and Milen to Nasko Angelov’s house in the mountains for a few days. It was before you visited, apparently.” Neven’s jaw tightened. “You know he is dead now.”
“Yes,” Alexandra said. “When he was killed, his son called Irina right away, and she called us.”
“Nasko promised not to tell anyone we had been there—not even Irina. While we were with him, I told him in private that I had found my father’s confession. I also told him what had happened with the editor in Sofia. He looked very serious and said that some things were meant to be secret unless the right time came for them and that perhaps my father had meant to keep them secret, in the end. He must have known I had put him in danger, since his name was in that confession. I will never forgive myself for what happened to him.” Neven clenched his hands together. “Then Nasko said he would give me something else, in case I ever needed it. I think he did not want to be found with it in his possession. He said that Stoyan had given it to Milen Radev, and Milen had given it to him.”
He opened his leather bag and took out an envelope, and from the envelope he drew a black-and-white photograph. It was printed on fine-grained paper, now yellowing, and the figures in it had the clarity of life. Neven held it out in the sunlight and Bobby sat closer to peer over Alexandra’s shoulder. It showed three men standing together under an arched gateway, smiling, their arms slung around one another’s shoulders. Two of them were in uniform, with military caps; one, much younger, wore a loose shirt and dark vest. The older men were black-haired and the younger had a light, thick mane of curls; his smile was broad, with a gap between his two front teeth. The photographer had been careful to catch the words on the arch above them. Bobby translated, automatically, but Alexandra knew almost before he read them: GLORIOUSLY FORWARD TO THE FUTURE.
Neven turned it over. On the back were words in a neat, faded handwriting, and he traced them with his finger. “Zelenets facility, S. Nedyalkov, Vasko Hristov, Momo Kurilkov, 1952. You remember my father wrote that Kurilkov—Momo—came to see him in the infirmary, at the camp. Momo dropped it by accident while he was visiting. He must have been carrying it around—and my father kept it and hid it. He told Nasko this.”
“And he brought it home with him. I see.” Bobby shook his head; he looked pale. “This kind of photograph is very rare,” he said. “Also, we could probably all be killed for seeing it.”
“Yes,” Neven said. “I think someone knew that Nasko had this photo before. His son told me that Nasko got a phone call suddenly that he would not talk about, after you were there. He must have tried somehow to protect you.”
But he could not protect himself, Alexandra thought.
Neven looked out at the river. “He had the same idea that I had with my father’s confession—he gave me this photograph to keep safe. And to publish when he was gone, like my father.”
“Your father’s story, with the photograph,” Bobby said. “It would be enough.”
Suddenly, Neven’s phone rang.
“Irina,” cried Alexandra, but Bobby put a finger to his lips. Neven answered slowly and listened for a few seconds, and then
they could hear whoever had spoken on the other end hang up. Neven’s eyes were hard.
“This is the second time a man I do not know calls me. As I said, the first time he promised he will tell me at noon where Irina and Lenka are. Now he has told me.”
Alexandra clutched Bobby’s arm. “Where?”
“He says they are at Zelenets.”
They all got quickly to their feet, Stoycho beside Alexandra.
“Who would take Irina and Lenka to Zelenets?” Alexandra was trying not to think about Nasko Angelov. “And we don’t even know where that is.”
Neven stood in front of them, hands on his hips. “There is something I would like to say. You have seen the plan of Kurilkov, on television? Many people talk about it, either for it or against it. He will help to open the mine at Chopek, near Novlievo, which will give jobs and is still full of important metals. It will be for a new economy, but along the route he will make another fortune to himself, because he owns some of the land of the mines. He is also telling that he will use prisoners to work there, so there will actually not be so many jobs, or so many people to pay.”
“And if he becomes prime minister,” Bobby said, “the prisoners will be anyone he doesn’t like.”
“Yes,” Neven said. “But no one has really seen this place. The people who protested were not allowed to go near the mine, only in roads outside it.”
“They protest mainly in Sofia.” Bobby ran his fingers through his hair. “And—they are almost always arrested.”
Alexandra said, “You think the mine is at Zelenets.”
They both turned to look at her, Neven with a quick nod.
“There is some opposition still in the government,” Bobby said thoughtfully. “I think that if the protesters could show that the mine at Chopek was a labor camp location, the opposition might grow much bigger.”