He sat scratching the back of his head. There was mortar dust in his hair. His shirt had long wet areas under the arms and down the front. His hands looked worse than ever, and sometimes he cradled them against his chest as if he regretted hurting them further. But I thought the work had done his health some good, actually—he looked stronger, his skin was brown, his movements more normal, and his appetite huge. He seemed to be trying to figure out how to explain something to me. Finally he looked right into my face.
“Babo,” he said. “What if you did something terrible, and you wished you could undo it. But someone thought of what you’d done in a different way, and punished you for the wrong thing, against your will. And then one day you found a way to punish yourself for what you had really done.”
“Go on,” I said, although I couldn’t think of anything terrible this man could have done. I looked at his wide, steady eyes, with the broken veins in them. He was good-looking, of course, or he had been—maybe he had cheated on his wife. Hard to imagine anyone cheating on Vera, though.
“Well—” He looked down and tried to brush some of the mortar from his hands. “Then let’s say that someone tried to take from you the way you had found to punish yourself for the awful thing you had done. And you knew that if you let anyone take that away, you would have to go back to living with your terrible deed.”
“All right,” I said. “Go on.”
“Wouldn’t you refuse to let anyone take that away from you?”
“I suppose so,” I said, trying to think of any terrible deed I’d done myself. I did sell a batch of lumber to the older Kaloyan once, for a little more than I should have. And I didn’t tell Anton that I used the extra money from that for our third granddaughter’s wedding, because he would have opposed me. And once I shouted some swear words at my oldest friend right in the middle of a work bee, and she shouted at me, and then we were friends again. And I used to scold Anton about small things, more than I should have. Apart from this, I’ve tried to lead a holy life.
Stoyan was staring hard at me. “There you are. Let me finish the house by myself.”
“But what does all this have to do with me or my house, sine?” I asked him, seriously puzzled.
“Nothing at all,” Stoyan assured me, “except that you have a good heart.”
“Oh, nonsense,” I told him, but it pleased me. “All right, then. I don’t understand, but I’m an old woman and only Milena lives with me now. One story is enough for us. Just be sure you put in an extra bedroom, and build me three big beds for the great-great-grandchildren, for when they come to visit. They can share. And you can use the leftover stones to make a new wall next to the barn, for a courtyard.”
He jumped up and clapped his hands as if I’d played him some fine music.
Now he whistled while he worked. When he didn’t know how to do something, he asked the old men in the village to tell him. The main part of the house was done within another few weeks. It was almost as good as the old one, if smaller—four rooms, clean plastered walls inside, a kitchen with a stone hearth wide enough for my biggest pots. It was all very simple, even a little rough. Stoyan had built every bit of it himself, including the wooden pegs for aprons and jackets. And the stone windowsill to hold my cans of flowers. Under the summer sun, he hauled slates for the roof and fitted them above one another, the lowest row first, like trim around the hem of a dress—Anton couldn’t have done it better himself. Stoyan built up the top of the chimney and set a big slate across it, with openings for the smoke to pour out. On the slab he set little pieces of rock shaped like teardrops, pointing up to heaven.
He finished putting those rocks in place two days before Ilinden, with half the village standing out in the street to watch. When he was done, he climbed down dripping with sweat and I reached up and gave him a big kiss right on his sunburned mouth. Everybody laughed and cheered, even my grandsons. Stoyan had built this beautiful house in an incredibly short time, and he had built it alone. It was not big, but it was just right for me and my granddaughter to live in again. Everyone was smiling and slapping him on the back, and Stoyan smiled, too, which was not usual for him. Vera clapped her hands and wiped her eyes, but she was looking at him, not at the new house.
Only one person didn’t smile or cheer: little Neven. He stood next to his mother and looked at Stoyan with a soft and serious face. If he hadn’t been just a baby, I would have sworn his eyes were full of pity.
“You know that Stoyan Lazarov died,” Baba Yana concluded peacefully, as if she had no idea that she had left out the rest of the story. “I don’t know where he’s buried. Not here, although he might have liked that. Probably in some fancy place in Sofia, where his people lie.”
It was dark now, and one electric light shone out of the kitchen window behind the old woman; Lenka moved across it. Alexandra sat looking at the house Stoyan Lazarov had built from a ruin. She knew that Bobby was tired from interpreting Baba Yana’s story, but she had another question. “Ask her if she saw Stoyan again, if he kept coming to the village.”
Bobby nodded. When he put the question to Baba Yana, she seemed confused, shifting her little black eyes in the light from the window. She uncurled one hand from her stick and rubbed it over the top of Stoycho’s head, where he leaned against her. His tail hit the dust. “Well, I’m not sure. I think they visited here a few times after that, for a week now and then, and Stoyan began to play his tsigulka again, down at their place. He comes up here still when he needs to see the house he built for me. He was here yesterday, I think. Or the day before. Time is a funny thing, so I can’t quite remember. I made lunch for him.”
“But, babo Yano, you told us he was dead,” Bobby reminded her softly.
“Of course he’s dead,” she said. “Everyone dies. Except me.” She laughed without a sound, exposing that glint of long-ago teeth. Alexandra thought she must be able to eat only soup or yogurt; maybe that was why she was so small, in her men’s clothing. She looked like someone’s tiny widower, as if she had changed places with her deceased husband.
“Ask her again if she knows where Vera and Milen Radev are now—and Neven,” Alexandra said to Bobby.
But Baba Yana seemed to have lost the thread of her earlier subject. “Do you want a cup of tea?” she said. “I don’t have coffee. It hurts my insides, gives me the runs. Coffee is for young people like you.”
They refused, with thanks. Baba Yana tapped her stick on the ground, yawned—that tiny, gaping mouth. “Tell Irina I said hello, when you see her.” She had obviously forgotten that Irina was resting inside. “A strange bird. I’ve heard she had a daughter when she was almost too old, with a writer from Plovdiv. It was a secret and he’s long dead, they say. But at least she has someone to take care of her now. I wish Vera were still alive, the sweet girl.”
“That’s Lenka,” Alexandra whispered in amazement, when Bobby translated for her. “And tell her that Vera is alive.”
Bobby shook his head.
“It is no good,” he told her. “My great-grandmother became like this, too. She could not answer many of our questions properly.”
“Your great-grandmother?” Alexandra was startled; her own great-grandparents had been born in the nineteenth century and died decades before she was born. But that story would have to wait. They stood up and Bobby shook hands with Baba Yana’s curled mitts, thanking her again. The old lady embraced the top of Stoycho’s head, her stick gathered up against his ear, and then pointed at Alexandra.
“What did she say?” Alexandra asked Bobby.
“She says, ‘Tell the young maiden not to sit out in the cold on stones, the way she usually does, or she will catch a chill.’ ”
“I don’t sit on stones,” protested Alexandra, trying to remember if this was true.
“It’s a wish for your good health. Or maybe a worry about the future.”
“You translated very well.”
“Thank you. I tried,” he said. He put an arm around Alexandra for a
moment, surprising her again, as if his effort had made him feel close to her. The road—steep and rutted, houses growing like mushrooms out of the ground, lights coming on here and there, fields sloping below—took on a suddenly heightened reality for her, a last glow before it became part of the dark mountains. She knew that moment, too, from home.
When they went into the house, they found Irina sitting up, drinking something hot. Alexandra felt a huge relief, not only because she liked the old lady so much but also because the idea of another dead person in their midst made her knees weak. Irina looked strangely young and fresh after their hour with Baba Yana.
“My dears,” Irina said. “I began to worry, and Lenka has made us a little supper. How did you find my hostess Yana?”
“She’s a force of nature,” Alexandra told her, sitting down in the chair beside the bed. The room was small, with low beams across the ceiling. It smelled of cool water. “She described to us how gospodin Lazarov rebuilt this house.”
Irina smiled. She had so many teeth. “Well, yes—he did, although we all thought he was mad to tire himself that way. But in the end, it seemed to help him get well.” She stopped, and Alexandra wondered if the illness had been something of a private nature, about which Irina was too polite to speak. “And did she tell you that he once played a concert at her house, small as it was—or, rather, in the yard?”
“No,” said Alexandra. “When did he do that?”
“Well, I am not sure. I think it was to celebrate the new house after he built it.” She sipped from a glazed brown cup, looking down into it.
“I don’t suppose you have any news of your sister?” Bobby stood near the foot of the bed with his hands in his pockets.
Irina nodded slightly but definitely: no. “I wish I could tell you so. Lenka has asked everywhere now and everyone says the same thing—my sister and Milen were living here for many months and then they left about a week ago and did not come back. I am quite worried about them now, I will tell you. If you saw them in Sofia, and they didn’t come to me, and they didn’t come here, and Neven doesn’t answer his phone, then where are they? Probably they are still in Sofia, trying to discover where you are, my dear. I’m afraid I’ve made a terrible mistake, bringing you all the way up here.”
“Oh, not a mistake!” cried Alexandra. “We had to try.”
“Do you want to go to Sofia to look for them?” Bobby asked soberly. “Or do you think that they could have left Sofia now, and might be waiting for you in Plovdiv?”
The old lady sighed. “I can’t tell. I thought of this, too, and they do have a key to my house, I think. Lenka phoned there a few hours ago. But again there is no answer. Perhaps I should go to the police after all?”
She looked at Bobby as she asked this, and after a moment he shook his head. “Let’s try a little longer to find them,” he said.
Irina did not protest. “I think I will be much better tomorrow, and we can return to Plovdiv. Then I shall wait for my sister there.”
Bobby seemed to ponder this. “I don’t like to leave you alone at home,” he said slowly, “after what happened to your house here.”
“I will have Lenka with me,” Irina said. “And there are always people in the museum, at least the people who work there. One of them sleeps there at night, in fact, to guard it.”
Bobby nodded. “In that case, Alexandra and I could take you home and then return to Sofia to search there. I have several friends who work in hotels and I have called them to ask if they saw any people who look like the Lazarovi. They will ask all our other friends. Sofia is big, but I thought we should try this.”
“And you could go back to work,” Alexandra said.
Bobby looked sober. “Yes, I must do that soon.”
Lenka had just come in, her sleeves rolled up. Daughter, thought Alexandra. Lenka certainly looked very different from Irina, or even from the way Irina might have looked decades earlier, and if she understood English, she seemed too shy to speak it. She had something to tell them—in rapid Bulgarian, which Bobby translated for Alexandra. “A man stopped her in the road while she was asking people about the Lazarovi. He told her that his employer had heard there is a guest from abroad and that he would like to offer the guest some hospitality—that would be you, Bird. He invited us to lunch at his employer’s house tomorrow—a big house outside the village, around the side of the mountain. He did not give a name.”
Alexandra marveled at how quickly the news of their arrival had traveled around the village. Was this typical Balkan hospitality, as her guidebook called it? But Irina was frowning. “The big house? Did he mean that monstrous thing on the hill road? I have always been thankful we cannot see it from here.”
Bobby watched her closely. “Who is this employer?”
“The owner is officially a businessman from Plovdiv, who does not live here—he is terribly rich and with unpleasant connections. That house was built only five or six years ago and it is one of the biggest in the mountains, like a ski resort—nobody likes it.”
“Do you know who this businessman is?” asked Bobby.
“No,” Irina said. She turned to Lenka and they spoke for a few seconds. One side of Bobby’s mouth went down; Alexandra had seen that look before.
“What?” she said.
“Well,” Bobby said, “they have heard before in the village that this house is actually owned by the Minister of Roads, who arrives at night when he visits. But he does not visit often.”
Alexandra stared at him. “Kurilkov? Well, I guess that could be why we saw him coming out of the mountains, at the bridge—maybe he was up here. But why would he invite us to lunch, just because I’m a foreigner? Especially if he’s already left the village?” Then a wave of heat went through her face: the slogan on the taxi, the smashed front room here at Irina’s. “Do you think—”
He shook his head slightly and she stopped.
“Perhaps you should refuse the invitation,” Irina said, but she was looking at Bobby again. “We must get back to Plovdiv, and it does seem very strange.”
“I don’t believe that Alexandra should refuse.” Bobby shoved his hands more deeply into his pockets. “That might be worse than accepting.”
Irina stirred against her pillows. “She cannot go alone to such a place.”
“Of course not,” said Bobby. “I wouldn’t let her do that. But I do not especially want to go, either.” He was staring at the floor now and Alexandra knew he must be weighing possible complications. She was beginning to feel a cold pit at her very center.
“We saw him leave the mountains,” she said again, mainly to reassure herself.
“Whatever this is, Bobby will take care of you, my dear.” Irina smiled at Alexandra, but her face was as pale and anxious as before. “You can stay the shortest time possible, and after that we shall return to Plovdiv. I am determined to be ready.”
—
ALEXANDRA WAS ALMOST TOO TIRED to be afraid, falling asleep in her musty clean bed in the back room. Bobby had set the urn in a kitchen cupboard, for safety; he was sleeping near it. For a moment, alone in the dark, Alexandra thought with a pang of the ashes and wondered if she was actually missing them. Stoyan Lazarov had played his violin in this very house, or in the yard. She pulled a pile of blankets over her. It was chilly for May, as if the stones here never warmed up, and she had gone to bed shivering in her sweater. The blankets made a suffocating load—layers scratchy or soft, with a faintly oily smell, like the animals they had come from. Death was in the room: Baba Yana’s husband under a collapsed house, the Greek soldiers staggering toward the village, Irina’s eyes shut in her white face; and of course, of course, Jack.
She drew the weight of the blankets farther up on her shoulder and made herself think about someone living—Stoyan’s son, Neven, for example, who might be middle-aged but had looked youthful, vigorous and agitated, standing on the hotel steps in Sofia. She tried to remember his black vest, his formal shoes and the gesture of his beautiful l
arge hand. That twinge of longing she had felt for him. Where was he now? Why did he not answer his phone, even when his aunt called him repeatedly? Before she could wander down the path of this new anxiety, she grew warmer and sleep took her away.
She woke while it was still dark, feeling sharply conscious and as if she must leave the house at once, for air. Suddenly she remembered her dream: Jack had told her where Neven Lazarov was—a hot, blurred place she had never expected to look. She had found Neven standing directly in front of her; she had set down the heavy urn and thrown herself at his feet, prostrated herself, because she could not find the right words for an apology. He’d lifted her up without effort, and to her surprise he had not been angry. He had kissed her, briefly. Then she had opened her eyes. Her lips still tingled.
She lay for a moment confused by the sweetness of being forgiven and the shock of being awake. Although she’d always been a coward about darkness, she found herself getting soundlessly out of bed. The doors to the other rooms were shut; she wouldn’t wake anyone else. For a moment, she was afraid—someone had broken into Vera’s house, just down the road, and painted a wall with blood. But she also felt that she would suffocate without fresh air. She stretched both hands in front of her in the dark corridor; she stumbled against something warm, which made her breathing stop. It was Stoycho—he stood up against her legs and went silently with her, so that she was no longer frightened. Groping around, she found her sneakers among the shoes lined up by the door. She lifted the latch.
Outside, there was a buttery twilight, which she discovered was the moon, still large and bright, hovering over the rooftops. The air was full of stirrings like dawn, although it might have been two in the morning or five—she had forgotten to check the time. Stoycho walked beside her. In the mottled light and dark, she could see a gleam that proved to be stone steps up the hill behind the house, then a path through prickling grass. The path climbed the hillside; soon she was looking down on Baba Yana’s roof, scalloped with moonlight. She could see the shadow of the chimney long against the slates, the conical rocks on its stone cap showing sharp as beaks. The rest of the village lay around and below her, softly visible. She passed under dark trees and came to the edge of a high grassy plateau, which she remembered seeing from the road. There were no houses here, as if the area had been left sacred, or simply provided a playing field. She wondered at herself; at home she would have been afraid of strangers prowling in the night, or even of ghosts, and here she might be followed by someone who wished her harm. But Stoycho was with her, and everything was so unfamiliar that she felt protected, as if she weren’t actually present. I am the ghost, myself.