The Shadow Land
“Besides, I may be causing you more trouble than you know.” He stood by the dark window, combing his hair out of his eyes with one hand, a quick, apologetic gesture.
“What do you mean?” she asked, but he had looked away.
She tried again. “What are we going to do about the windshield?”
“Yes—well, I will show you tomorrow.”
In her wall bed, the sheets smelled like that strange herb. She left the doors to the cupboard open, in case the house was haunted rather than just magical. With its own thrill of dismay, her body remembered the shivering mattress at Aunt Pavlina’s, the serpent uncoiling beneath her.
—
THE NEXT MORNING IRINA GEORGIEVA was ready before everyone else. Coming down to the front hall, Alexandra saw a tightly packed plastic bag and a basket with a cloth over it. When she and Bobby went out to the terrace, the light still looked pale; the old lady was already eating bread, cheese, and salami, and Lenka was serving three more plates. For the first time, Irina’s helper sat down to eat with them. She had braided her dark hair thickly back from her temples and Alexandra could see now that it was threaded with gray.
“It is always important to have a good breakfast before a trip,” Irina told them, as if she traveled every week. Her chalky face was flushed, her eyes bright. Today she wore her complicated brooch pinned to a pink blouse. She had balanced a walking stick against her chair, a long wooden staff with a knobby head, as if they were going to be hiking instead of getting into Bobby’s cab. Stoycho sat beside her, waiting for pieces of salami to fall from her awkward hands.
“Bird,” Bobby said, putting jam on his bread and feta, “do you know what you’re going to see today? The Rhodope Mountains—Rodopa—the most beautiful mountains in the world.”
“I’m sorry, but my mountains are the most beautiful in the world,” Alexandra said, smiling at him.
“Yes, I only wanted for you to have a chance to say that. This way you will pay better attention to Rodopite.”
“Children,” Irina said, “Lenka and I are almost ready. Asparuh, I will show you my map. We are going first to Shiroka Luka and then south, very high into the mountains.”
Lenka poured more tea for them and began to clear the dishes. She spoke to Stoycho in a whisper, then went to his bowl and scraped bits of bread and cheese into it. Stoycho followed gratefully, but looked back several times; Alexandra thought he seemed anxious.
Bobby was wiping his hands, glancing at his cell phone. “I will bring the car up in a few minutes, to get you, but first Alexandra and I have an errand.”
They did? Probably he’d left the taxi at a repair shop, with that broken windshield. She followed him obediently through the museum gate to the street. Several blocks away from Irina’s, he turned down a block she was sure they hadn’t been on before. This one, too, was quiet, lined with old walls and newly green trees. At the far end, a young man was leaning against a shabby dark-green car with his arms folded. When Alexandra and Bobby drew near, he turned and faced them.
Alexandra took a step backward, remembering the damage to the taxi. But the man was smiling. He was black-haired and fit, taller than Bobby. He had large dark eyes—long-lashed, radiant. He wore a black polo shirt over trim muscles, black jeans, polished black shoes. Alexandra liked his alert look and the gentleness of his tanned face. He shook Bobby’s hand, half-embracing him, slapping him on the back.
“My friend Kiril,” Bobby explained. “He lives in Sofia, and we went to university together.”
Kiril shook Alexandra’s hand with sedulous politeness and stooped to admire Stoycho, who sat on the sidewalk, listening.
“We must go right now,” Bobby said. Kiril slapped and hugged him once more; as she watched, each slipped the other a set of keys. Kiril shook hands with Alexandra again and sauntered away down the exquisite street. She realized only then that she had not heard him say a single word.
Bobby opened the car and gave Alexandra a nod she understood meant she should be quick, and she got into the front seat. Stoycho jumped in after her. Bobby started the engine up at once with Kiril’s keys. The inside smelled of cigarettes but was very clean, and there was a figurine attached to the dashboard, a Mickey Mouse whose head wobbled like a gyroscope when Bobby pulled into the street. Stoycho sat up to look at it.
“Where’s your taxi?” Alexandra tried to get comfortable in her new seat.
“Kiril will have it repaired and drive it back to Sofia—he can park it inside a garage near my mother’s apartment,” said Bobby. “I checked it this morning. There was no new damage.” He glanced around as he drove.
“That’s very nice of him.”
“Well, he’s a friend,” Bobby said.
Alexandra wondered how many of her own friends at home she could have asked to bring her their car in another city, at a moment’s notice, just in case someone was shadowing her. “But do you really believe we’re being followed?”
“I think it is probable,” he admitted. He turned his blue stare on her. “I just don’t know why. Or by whom. Not yet. Let’s tell Irina that the taxi was still having some problems.”
“Well, it was,” Alexandra pointed out. “What are we going to do?”
“Keep our eyes open,” said Bobby. “Look in the—that—the glove box. Is there a map of Bulgaria?”
She clicked it open and saw the gun. “Bobby?” she said.
He glanced over. “Good. Cover it with the map.”
She had never been this close to one before, and the sight of it terrified her. “Is this your friend’s?”
“Now it’s mine,” he said. “Put the map over it, and that plastic bag. Make it look a little messy.”
She did, trying not to touch the thing with even her fingertips. She was with a man she hardly knew, now he had a gun, and he wanted her to know it was there. She looked over at him; he was shifting gears up the hill, and his face was calm.
—
AS THE CAR DROVE AWAY from Irina’s house, loaded with all of them, Alexandra turned one more time to see the high courtyard wall, the massive trees. She was sitting in front with Stoycho heavily across her lap and the bag containing the urn at her feet; the two older women sat in the back, their basket and Irina’s cane between them. Alexandra looked at Bobby in his familiar place—he was carefully keeping to a low gear over the cobblestones. The car lurched slowly down the hill past Plovdiv’s mansions; morning sun had begun already to scatter patches of light on the blue and ochre walls, the wooden gates. Five days ago, she reminded herself, she had never seen any of this before, or these people. Or this dog. She embraced his dusty neck and he touched her cheek with his nose.
Half an hour of weirdly uncultivated farmland, deserted farm sheds, and open skies brought them south. As they traveled past a meadow, Bobby suddenly pulled off the road. “Look at that,” he said. “I must take a picture.” He unbuckled his seat belt. “Excuse me,” he added to the two women in the back seat.
Alexandra peered through the window and then stepped out of the car, following him. In the field beside them stood a doorway, all by itself—no house, no door—just the frame and a few concrete blocks, as if someone had contemplated living there and wanted first to practice stepping into the unbuilt dwelling. Insects ruminated in the grasses around them; a couple of birds—swallows?—darted through the field and rose high above the empty doorframe.
Bobby was photographing it with his phone. “I’ve never seen something like this,” he told her.
“Why is it standing alone here?” She had never seen such a thing, either.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I was just thinking that literature is like that, like a door in a field.” His face was absorbed; he typed a note into his phone. She watched him with amazement. From the first, he had reminded her of someone, and now she realized that that someone might be herself.
—
SOON THE EDGE OF THE MOUNTAINS loomed in a green-black mass just ahead of them. The road seemed t
o go straight into this wall, hemmed in on each side with cliffs and precariously rooted trees—an opening blasted through by modernity, thought Alexandra, although perhaps much earlier trails had once wound upward into the mountains. The road cowered below the high forests and crossed noisy mountain streams. She had just glanced back to see if Irina Georgieva was enjoying the scenery when Bobby braked hard in the middle of a bridge. Stoycho sat up, digging his nails into her knee.
“Oh, my God,” said Alexandra. On their right side, nearly a third of the bridge’s width had crumbled into the river, railing and all, so that the pavement hung by threads of metal. She could see the rocks and white water forty feet below. Whole dead trees were suspended on the steep banks, caught in the forest as if in a tangle of hair.
“Damn,” Bobby said. “This is probably from the earthquake. Or maybe floods—or both.” He set the parking brake. She watched with trepidation as he got out and walked ahead a few feet, craning into the abyss.
Irina tapped Alexandra’s shoulder. “What is the problem?”
“Just a bridge,” Alexandra said, touching her hand. Perhaps it was a good thing that the old woman apparently couldn’t see the damage from where she sat. “I think it’s nothing to worry about. Bobby is checking the route.”
Irina Georgieva folded her hands in her lap and nodded to her helper. “I’m sure Asparuh knows what to do,” she said. Lenka stroked the old lady’s cheek and reached into the basket, from which she took a small bottle of pills; she handed one to Irina, then gave her a sip of water.
Bobby returned to the car shaking his head. “I think we should go forward,” he told Alexandra in a low voice. “Otherwise, we must drive about two hours back to a different road. This probably happened a few days ago—maybe even a few weeks—that might be the reason they have not fixed it yet. Of course, if it was the earthquake, it is very recent. But they could have put a sign here, to tell people.” He looked ready for one of his outbursts of swearing, then paused, as if considering the presence of the ladies in the back seat.
“All right,” Alexandra said, although she was terrified. “But should we get out and walk, maybe?”
“That would be more dangerous, especially—” He meant Irina, of course, with her cane and unbalanced gait. “In any case, the pavement is not hurt on the left side.”
He started the engine and began to inch forward. Alexandra squeezed Stoycho’s neck. If she fell off this Bulgarian bridge in a little green car, her parents would have nobody; all her memories of Jack would disappear with her, too.
Bobby brought them slowly to the middle of the bridge, steering into the left lane, and Alexandra was careful not to look out her window into the wild current just below. Because she was staring straight ahead, she saw the oncoming car even before Bobby did, and her cry stopped him short. The opposite approach was a blind curve. A moment hung between the two vehicles before the other car stopped hard, too, swerving away from the broken edge, so that they sat facing each other precariously near the gap.
“Agh, no.” Bobby was gripping the wheel. Stoycho sat up straighter in Alexandra’s lap, and she held him tightly to calm him. Bobby shook his head. “Politsai.”
The policeman had stepped out of his car already. He was a tall man with a pleasant and even wistful face, very different from the policemen Alexandra had met at the Sofia station. He made his way to their car and peered in, examining them. Dog, thought Alexandra. American tourist, old lady, pretty helper, basket. A full house.
The policeman and Bobby blandly exchanged words, as if they were meeting over a grocery counter instead of at the ragged edge of a precipice. Bobby gestured toward the cataract below and the policeman shook his head. Then the policeman pointed at the glove box. Alexandra froze, but when Bobby leaned over to open it and take out some papers, there was no sign of the gun. Had he somehow put it under a seat? Or in the trunk? When had he managed to do that? The policeman carried Bobby’s ID and papers back to his own car and sat inside with them for what seemed an interminable time, while Stoycho drove nervous toenails into Alexandra’s lap, trying to see. What if the policeman identified them as the people who’d had the taxi? Surely, she thought, this system could not be that well organized, even with computer records. And whoever had painted the taxi, especially if it had been the police themselves, wouldn’t have recorded that act. Besides, it probably hadn’t been the police. Bobby’s way of thinking—his paranoid way—must be rubbing off on her.
“He could at least back up his car, off the bridge,” Bobby murmured, and she understood that if any other vehicle came around the curve behind the police car, they were all in trouble.
Which, strangely, was what happened next. The new car was upon them, going too fast, before anyone could draw breath—a big pristine black BMW with tinted windows. The driver braked so hard that his tires squealed and Alexandra heard Irina give a choking gasp behind her. Bobby’s hands flew to his wheel, although there was nothing he could do. The BMW hit the back of the police car with a scraping thud, making it jump like an animal, so that Alexandra got a glimpse of the pleasant policeman hopping forward inside it, his face astonished, his mouth open. The bridge shuddered. Stoycho yelped.
But the police car had been well parked, and its quivering leap didn’t reach Bobby’s front bumper. Bobby exhaled heavily and whacked the steering wheel. The policeman leapt out, then seemed to remember the yawning gap in the other lane and steadied himself. The driver of the BMW had climbed out as well and was already raising both hands in protest. He wore a dark jacket and cap and looked huge enough to repair the bridge with his two hands, like Paul Bunyan. He bent to examine the damage to his front bumper and to the back of the police car, and Alexandra thought that he probably did want a cat to eat the organs of the policeman’s mother.
“Aw, no.” Bobby drummed his dashboard with impatient fingers. “And it’s a car of the government. Now we will never get anywhere.” The huge man was still talking with the policeman. “I hope I get my papers back someday,” Bobby said gloomily.
“Should we go out and help?” Irina’s voice came from the back seat.
“Oh, no, Madame Georgieva.” Bobby turned to her, and Lenka patted her knee. “They will decide things between them, and then perhaps we can travel onward.”
As they watched, the huge man in the cap looked around and gestured at the rushing water and at the policeman’s car.
“What is he doing?” Alexandra asked.
“I think that he is wishing he could give the policeman a little—bribe, you might call it,” Bobby explained. “But he can’t, because we are sitting right here to watch.”
“Oh,” said Alexandra. She had never seen anyone being offered a bribe and she thought it would be interesting.
“So instead they will argue,” Bobby said. “Which takes a longer time.”
The two men did argue, the big driver pushing his cap back and then pulling it forward, the policeman carefully pointing out the damage that had been inflicted on his own vehicle. Bobby put his elbows on the steering wheel. Irina patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry, my boy. They will finish soon. And I have some biscuits here if anyone is hungry.”
Suddenly, the back door of the BMW opened and another man stepped out. They all watched in surprise; Stoycho gave a startled growl. This man was not as tall as his driver, and he looked much older, but for some reason far more imposing. He was dressed in a dark-blue suit—expensively cut, was Alexandra’s first thought—that made an odd contrast with the mountain scene around them. She wondered what he would think if yet another car came around the curve behind him and hit the BMW in turn. He didn’t look as if he would take it well, and yet there was something infinitely calm, and also infinitely familiar, in his appearance. His posture was upright, although he moved rather stiffly inside the suit. He had a reddish-brown beard and a heavy mane of hair, receding from his forehead but thick and curling at the ends, as if you could lose a pencil in it. In the light filtering over the cliffs, th
at hair looked both dark and bright, metallic, not quite real. The man’s face was much older than his hair, broad and lined and somehow desiccated, heavily scarred over the cheeks. Alexandra would have thought him striking if his expression had been lively or his body more animated. But he was too collected, too quiet.
Beside her, Bobby leaned forward, peering through the windshield. “What?” he said. “I’m sure that is Kurilkov.”
“Who?” said Alexandra. She was calming Stoycho, who had begun to growl softly again.
“Mikhail Kurilkov. The Minister of Roads, the one they call the Bear, who wants to be prime minister—I told you about him, from the television. I saw him in person once before, giving a speech where we had a demonstration.”
“Oh—from the TV at Aunt Pavlina’s,” said Alexandra. “And the trout restaurant. I thought he looked familiar. But what is he doing here, in the middle of nowhere?” Then she remembered the slogan on Bobby’s taxi windshield: Without corruption.
“Maybe he really likes roads,” muttered Bobby, but he didn’t take his eyes off the man. “I hope he does not come over here. I have never wanted to meet him.”
Irina was leaning forward again. “Who is it?” she asked.
“We think it is Kurilkov, the Minister of Roads.”
“Out here?” Irina said. “Ah.” She fell silent, but Alexandra thought she looked strange—thoughtful, almost wary. Perhaps, like Bobby, Irina disliked the man, or politicians in general.
Now the three men were in conference together, and Alexandra saw the Minister of Roads reach out to shake the policeman’s hand. The policeman seemed as startled as Bobby had been; he shook Kurilkov’s hand, and bowed slightly. The huge driver had backed away, and Kurilkov and the policeman talked alone. Then the Minister signaled to his driver, who made his way toward Bobby’s car. Alexandra saw the driver stepping gingerly along the damaged bridge, as if he feared his own bulk might be the straw that broke its back.
“Go away,” Bobby muttered, but he rolled down his window again. The hackles on Stoycho’s neck rose under her hand. Stoycho was showing yellow teeth now, snaggled over his lower lip; she wondered what would happen to her dog if he bit a minister’s bodyguard.