Now, the Wolf had a young maiden to sweep his house and cook his meals and she was beautiful enough to be a bride of Heaven. When the Wolf had ruled over the village for some years, he said to this maiden that he had to go on a journey and that she must keep everything in order and not look into the chamber under the hearthstone, where he kept his treasure box, and not let anyone into the house while he was gone. Then he went away, without saying when he would come back. She had not known there was any chamber under the hearthstone or that he had any treasure, but she agreed to his orders.
For three days, the girl cleaned the house and cooked up good food for the Wolf’s return, and she did not open the house to anyone or touch the hearthstone. But he did not come back. Then she became so curious that she couldn’t help herself, you know, and she locked the door to the house and carefully lifted the hearthstone, which was very light. Give me my other sweater, there, sweet ones—the sun is starting to get lower and I take a chill at this hour.
So she moved the hearthstone and she saw in the opening beneath it a flight of stairs. She went down these stairs and at the bottom was a chamber with a great big box in it. She was even more curious, but when she opened the box, she found it filled with the bones of the men from other villages whose sheep and goats the Wolf had stolen to give to his own villagers. The Wolf had apparently killed them to take what they had. It was a terrible sight, and the girl ran back up the stairs and quickly put the hearthstone back into place.
The next day, while she was sweeping the floors, there came a knock at the door. Looking out, she saw the huge Bear, whom she had heard about but never laid eyes on, and she was very frightened.
“Girl, let me come in and warm myself by the fire,” the Bear said through the window.
“I dare not,” said the maiden. “Besides, the Wolf who lives here told me not to open the door to anyone.”
“But I am not just anyone,” the Bear said.
She would not open the door, and he went away quietly.
The next day he knocked again. “Girl, let me come in and warm myself by the fire,” he said through the window.
“I dare not,” said the maiden. “The Wolf has given me orders. Besides, if I let you in, you will eat me.”
“I have not eaten anyone here, or you would have heard of it,” the Bear said. But she would not let him in.
The third day the Wolf had still not returned, and now it had been six whole days—and the Bear knocked at the door again. “Let me in, girl,” he said. “I only want to warm myself by the fire.”
She could resist no longer and she let him come in and sit down by the fire. He was so quiet and like a gentleman that, little by little, she stopped being afraid and gave him some soup.
After he had eaten, he said, “This is a nice house, but it’s very small for two people.”
“Oh, it’s not so small,” said she, bridling a little. “There’s even a big chamber under the hearthstone, where the Wolf keeps his treasure box.” Then she wished she had said nothing.
“What treasure would a wolf have?” the Bear asked her.
“A treasure nobody would want,” said the girl, shuddering.
The Bear looked at her with his little eyes and he said, “Then I would not want to see it either.”
He went away and met the Wolf coming over the hills. They had never met before, but each had heard of the other.
The Bear said, “I have been to your house and I hear, Brother, that you have a treasure only a Wolf would want.”
Then the Wolf was very angry, because he knew that the maiden had looked under the hearthstone and had let the Bear into the house. But the Bear said, “Don’t worry, Brother—I did not look at your treasure, and I do not know anything else about it.” The Wolf didn’t dare to fight the Bear, who was bigger than he was, so he left him and went back to his house. The Bear followed him disguised as a great bird.
Soon enough, the Wolf went into his house and he said to the maiden, “While I was gone, you looked at my treasure and you opened the door to a stranger, so now I shall kill you.” But he had left the door open behind him, and the Bear flew into the house and struck him dead.
Then the Bear in his own shape said to the girl, “Leave this place and do not tell anyone about the treasure. Now I am Tsar in place of the Wolf, but I will never look at the treasure box and I do not want to know what is in it. And you must never tell anyone about it.”
The maiden left and wandered far and wide, while the Bear settled down and ruled the village as Tsar. He was kind and just. The villagers did not have as much to eat as before, because the Bear did not take food from other villages. But they lived in peace.
Meanwhile, the maiden went into faraway lands. A prince saw her and fell in love with her and they were married. She lived in a palace and slept on a featherbed. But she could not forget the Wolf or the Bear or the secret she had to keep, and she longed to tell someone. She did not dare to tell her husband. Finally she decided that it would hurt nothing if she whispered it into a hole in the ground. She went out into the forests of her new land and found a little hole in the earth. She lay down and whispered into it that under the Bear’s hearthstone lay a treasure that even he had never seen. Then she was relieved of her secret and went back to her palace and her husband.
But under the earth was water, and the water carried the secret to the rivers and the wind found it on the surface of the rivers and blew it far away into the village of the Bear, and the villagers heard what it said. Then they thought that the Bear had been keeping a great treasure from them, while they did not have all that much for themselves. They went to the Bear and demanded to see it.
The Bear calmed them, saying, “If I have any treasure, may you take it all from me, as is only fair.” So the villagers went into the house, and they pulled up the hearthstone and went down into the chamber. There they found a big box, but it was empty and clean. The Bear’s goodness and strength had dissolved all the Wolf’s wickedness without his even seeing what was in the box.
There is another version of this story in which a Dog comes to the village and digs up the bones and scatters them on the ground, but I don’t know that one. And I have always wondered, myself, if the Bear simply took all the bones of the dead and hid them somewhere else. Will you bring me some water, dear ones? Milena, my granddaughter, will be here to make my dinner soon. She’s pretty old, poor thing, so it takes her a while to get up here. You won’t stay? My loves, goodbye and take care of yourselves—you, girl, don’t sit on any more of those cold stones. I told you not to!
Irina was better. Another neighbor had driven her and Lenka and the bag with the urn back down to their own house; Bobby and Alexandra found them in the kitchen, Irina drinking tea with her thumbs wrapped around the cup. When they came in, she looked up, her eyes full of questions. Stoycho lay on the floor beside the table, clearly in Lenka’s good graces. He got to his feet and sniffed their shoes, licked Alexandra’s hand, and lay down again. Bobby slumped onto the bench next to her and Lenka brought them cups of tea, which smelled of the hay and grasses outside. There were questions in her eyes, too.
“How was your lunch?” Irina said. Reluctantly, they told her everything, and the alarm in her face grew. She touched the brooch at her breastbone, as if for solace. Alexandra sat looking into the steaming cup—troubled, too, but by something else. What was it? It pulled at her. She had seen and not understood. Seen.
“If you are ready, I will bring the car,” said Bobby. “We must get you home as soon as possible.”
Irina sighed. “Thank you, dear. I hope that we can reach my sister, to tell her not to come back here soon. Unless she knows already not to. Yes, do bring your car. The urn is in the cupboard—will you get it, Alexandra?”
Alexandra opened a worn wooden door and lifted out the bag. It was heavy again in her hands and she felt a shift in her vision, a memory. “Wait, please,” she said. “Bobby—Madame Georgieva, may I open this again? Just the bag, I me
an.”
They stared at her, but she set it on the table and worked at the zipper, peeled back the velvet inside. She touched the carving around the top of the polished box: a wreath, or a vine, with the face of an animal on each side, two faces, different from each other.
Bobby looked thoughtful. “These leaves,” he said. “I think they are zdravets.”
Irina leaned forward to see them better. “I believe you are right.” She turned to Alexandra. “It is one of our national symbols. A very famous plant—the name comes from the word for health. I have always loved it because it is quite fragrant. You must have seen it in many places already. There are zdravets in my garden in Plovdiv, in fact.”
“But the animals,” Alexandra said. “Maybe this is just on my mind because of Baba Yana’s story.” A chill had come over her arms and neck. “That animal, the face in the leaves—I think that’s a bear. Here—” She turned the urn slowly around. “This is not a cat, or a fox, on the other side. That could be the Bear and this could be the Wolf.”
Bobby was on his feet again, carefully turning the urn. He said nothing, but Alexandra saw the intensity of his gaze.
Irina looked puzzled. “From the fairy tale?” she said.
But Bobby did not seem to be listening. He had put both hands around the urn now—Alexandra flinched—and was lifting it carefully out of the velvet, looking at the carvings. “It is signed here,” he said. “I didn’t see that before.”
“I didn’t either,” said Alexandra. “It looks like an A—two A’s, very small. Someone made this by hand.”
“Show that to me,” Irina said. They tipped the urn with care under her eyes—the two fine letters, almost hidden in the Wolf’s carved ruff. “You may put it down,” she said after a moment.
“Do you know this signature?” Bobby was still peering at it.
“I do,” the old woman said. “I have a friend who signs this way, an artist. He was also a good friend of Stoyan’s. His name is Atanas Angelov. Perhaps Vera asked him to make it—I have not heard anything about it, before this.”
Bobby sat with his elbows on the table. “Do you think he would know who wants it, or why?”
Irina gestured helplessly with a big hand. “I have no idea. I wish that I could call him, but I do not have a phone number, not with me. In fact, I haven’t seen him in several years—he lives in the mountains almost two hours from here. We would have to drive there before we go back to Plovdiv.”
“Which direction?” Bobby said.
“The wrong one,” Irina told them. “We will have to go quickly.”
—
THE MOUNTAIN ROADS TOOK THEM down into the bigger town again, then up into a higher range, and finally along a narrow valley surrounded by green-black peaks. It was already late afternoon. Alexandra had begun to feel carsick, and also to come down with what she thought of as mountain sadness. The drive up to Gorno the day before had been so riddled with novelty that she had managed it better. But now the thought of Jack rose with her stomach until she could hardly swallow. He had disappeared among ridges not so different from these. He had ruined mountains everywhere for her. Her heart would always be ill from it, her gorge rising. Had he fallen down some steep slope like that one just above them? If so, he had fallen far from all roads, where his bones could become one more statistic: on average, two point five hikers per year in the National Forest, missing, inconclusive. Search suspended. At the word bones she began to jerk the leash of her mind: down, stop, not now. She gripped Stoycho’s neck and tucked her feet around the urn in the bag, to keep it upright. She thought of the unknown man, his long life, his music. And he remained unburied.
“I believe our turn is here,” Irina said, touching Bobby’s shoulder. There was a little sign in Cyrillic and English, at the edge of the road.
“What does that mean—‘Irkad’?” Bobby wanted to know. The sign said that Irkad was two kilometers away, a turn to the right.
“I think it is a very old name, probably Turkish,” Irina told him. “We will ask Angelov.”
Alexandra looked around for a village but saw only a cluster of houses with the same slate roofs, and a high stone wall. The place was so small it hardly seemed to justify its name.
“Please stop here, Asparuh,” Irina said, rapping his shoulder.
They parked in front of a great pair of gates with iron handles, set into the wall. Bobby got out, stood staring, and then pulled the rope that hung down beside the gates. There was no address, no numbered sign. After a few seconds, somebody opened to them; Bobby drove the car up a ramp of worn stones and into a large courtyard. They all climbed out—Alexandra helping Stoycho, Lenka helping the old woman. The stone and stucco and wood building around them reminded Alexandra of Velinski manastir—partly because of its courtyard, but also because the second story had a long roofed gallery. In places the stucco had fallen off, revealing what looked like ancient hay underneath. The courtyard itself was neatly swept, boxes of flowers sitting under the windows.
The man who had opened the gates was talking with Bobby, and after a moment he turned to Irina and kissed her on both cheeks. He might have been in his fifties, dressed in an old sweater, worn woolen pants, and rubber shoes. Bits of straw dusted all his clothes, as if he’d been mucking out a stable. His face was delicate and deeply browned, his short hair turning silver around the temples; Alexandra marveled again at a country apparently full of beautiful people. While she stood staring, the man shook hands with her and Lenka. He squatted in front of Stoycho and spoke to him. Stoycho sat beside Alexandra and listened to this man without growling, then allowed him to scratch his head. The man beckoned Stoycho to a water tap at the edge of the courtyard; the faucet was brass and set into a wall carved with letters that looked like Arabic. It had a marble basin beneath it that Alexandra thought must be very old. The man ran water into the basin and Stoycho drank greedily. The man looked up and said something to the rest of them, laughing, so that wrinkles came to life all around his eyes.
“He tells us that we didn’t bring horses, like in the old days, but at least we did bring a dog,” Bobby interpreted for Alexandra. “This is an interesting place, Bird. He says this was the han, the inn for travelers in this part of the mountains, almost four hundred years old. That is why there is a big gate, to drive in the horses and the wagons.”
“Is this where the artist lives?” she asked.
“I believe so. I think this is his son. He says we can go in to see him. I will leave Stoycho out here. Just bring the urn.”
The man in muddy boots took one of Irina’s arms and Lenka took the other, and they went through more wooden doors. As they entered, Alexandra felt the urge to gasp; it was a large low space with wood-framed windows along one wall, and it seemed to hang over the valley below. She hadn’t realized that this side of the village sat on a precipice. Out the windows was a long, long view: green mountains and miniature stone houses in the deeps, the march of enormous spruces along a range to the left, and on a far horizon the highest peaks she’d seen yet, bursting with sharp rocks—a land that looked nearly untouched by history, a Grimms’ fairy tale setting in Alexandra’s eyes. The room was lit by early evening sun. Along the windows sat benches and a table. On the floor lay a woolen rug of reds and greens in matted tufts, as if it had been pulled directly off some brightly colored animal. On the walls hung more wool, woven in geometric patterns, and faded pieces of embroidery.
Suddenly an old man rose from one of the benches. He had been in shadow; Alexandra hadn’t seen him.
“Irinche!” he exclaimed, and there followed a great deal of kissing on both cheeks, including Alexandra’s. The man from the courtyard had taken off his rubber shoes and was walking around in knitted red and gray socks, like a little boy. He settled Irina Georgieva near his father and she drew Alexandra toward her. With Bobby to interpret, Irina told the old man about her, although she didn’t mention the urn.
“And this, darling, is Atanas Angelov,” she added. It
seemed to Alexandra that Irina uttered his name as one might say “Albert Einstein” or “Mohandas K. Gandhi.” The old man shook his head in approval and gripped Alexandra’s hand for a few long seconds. His own hands were large and looked strong, but Alexandra saw that his fingers were strangely worn down, almost as if they’d been sawn off at the tips. He was brown from weather, like his son, and his hair was sparse and completely white, with a pair of heavy plastic glasses perched on it. He was smiling at them, but whenever his face relaxed it fell into lines of a permanent sadness.
“Is he her cousin or something?” she whispered to Bobby, as soon as there was a chance.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I think this man is a friend, an old friend, and he has bought some of her paintings, over the years.” (Old lover? wondered Alexandra, and looked away.)
Bobby listened for a moment, the blue of his eyes fixed on the faces before them. “She calls him Nasko, his nickname—I think they are very fond of each other. He is a painter, too. Sometimes they traded their paintings or worked together. They have not seen each other for several years, as Irina said.” He listened. “His wife is dead, five years ago, and he has written a book of poems about her that was published in Plovdiv last month. Irina congratulates him.”
Bobby turned to Alexandra, and to her surprise she saw his eyes were glazed with tears. “He says that his wife was the whole universe for him.”
She squeezed his shoulder. “Bobby, you have a heart,” she said.
He looked stern. “Did you doubt that?”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Alexandra said, shamefaced. “I only meant that I like your heart.”