“Hopeless,” he muttered, as if he’d been dealing with some inferior machine that simply couldn’t do the job. “Come on, all of you. Maybe you’ll inspire this no-brain.”
The boy clung to my arm and we moved across the hall together, but two of the policemen had to drag the drunken man with them. I envied his oblivion, although what would he wake to? In the brighter light of the second room I saw the man with the hat lying on the floor on his back, his legs up over a chair. There was a policeman standing beside him, one we hadn’t met before. The man’s feet were bare; his shoes and roughly darned socks sat in a pile on the floor. I had an unexpected vision of Vera’s hands, neatly lining up my two pairs of shoes and one pair of boots on the low shelf in our front room.
The man’s cap had fallen from his head, or perhaps been knocked off; it, too, lay near him. His bared head was bald, with a fringe of gray around the ears, and a raw red welt bloomed on one side of his glossy skull. His face was ashen, purple over the cheeks. When we stumbled into the room, he turned slightly, panting, and then turned away, as if embarrassed to be seen in this position. From my new place in the corner, I could suddenly see that the soles of his bare feet were bleeding, crossed with long open cuts. Then I realized that the policeman held a cord in his hand, except that the cord was made of finely braided metal, and I saw that there was skin and blood on it. For a moment I wondered at the modesty of the punishment, just the soles of the feet, not the naked back or the medieval rack or boiling oil. But I saw again the man’s gray-green face, and remembered the exquisite sensitivity of that area, the bottom of the foot—he looked near fainting and we had heard his groans.
The new policeman ordered us to stand in a row. “You see how uncooperative this man is? He’s a traitor, but still things would go better for him if he would tell us the truth about it. Is this how you want things to go for you?”
The boy trembled beside me and I closed my hand firmly around his wrist, willing him to stay still. Surprisingly, it was the drunk who spoke for all of us. He lolled against the wall, grinning. “No,” he said. “No, no, no. Not wanting any trouble.”
The biggest policeman rolled his eyes. “No trouble? You’re already in trouble, my friend.”
“I suppose so,” the drunk man said, but amiably.
“You two,” said the policeman with the cord in his hand. “Shall we just question you all together? There’s not much time for all this.”
This made my heart jump with hope. Clearly, they intended to release us before the day was well under way—probably they had other work to attend to, or perhaps they didn’t want the publicity of holding people through the workday.
“Yes, please do,” I said, as clearly as I could manage.
“Well, you can be first, then.” He pulled the chair out from under the silent man’s legs, which fell to the ground so hard I feared they must be broken. The man twisted a little onto his side, holding his feet heavily away from him, and groaned again.
“Sit down there.”
I sat down on the chair. It was still warm, under my backside, from the man’s burning legs.
“My colleagues tell me you’re here for the possession of fascist propaganda.”
It wasn’t a question, so I remained silent. That was one thing to try, anyway. But it seemed only to annoy him.
“Well? Have you been hoarding fascist propaganda?”
I looked carefully at him, although my heart was throbbing hard and sweat ran down the sides of my neck. Like the man with the slashed feet, this policeman no longer wore his hat, and I could see comb-lines in his pomaded dark hair—it lay in hoops over the top of a round head. His skin was the kind that breaks into whisker stubble within hours of shaving, something dark constantly pushing out through the pores. His eyes were large and intelligent and would have been pleasant in a gentler face. I wondered who he was—besides Bulgarian, like me, and only a few years older than I—and where he had come from, who his parents were. His shirt looked very clean. His speech was Shopski, from the Sofia region but not of the city itself—he sounded as if he’d come from the countryside.
“No, I haven’t been hoarding anything,” I said.
“We found some interesting materials in your apartment,” he said, lowering his voice as if this was just between the two of us. “Books in German, for example, and other decadent works.”
“I do have some books in German,” I said. “Poetry and histories of music. No propaganda.”
“So you have time to read German poetry?” he said. “You have time to read the words of our enemies while your colleagues are busy building a new nation with their sweat and blood?”
I thought of the blood on the very cord he held. As if he’d read my mind, he handed the whip to one of the other policemen and carefully rolled up his shirtsleeves, which were already partly rolled up. He came closer to me. “Why are you against the Party?”
I tried to clear my throat. “I didn’t say that I am.”
“Are you from Vienna?”
“I only studied in Vienna—for some years,” I said. “I am from Sofia.”
“And what brought you back to Sofia from your new homeland?”
The other policemen shifted from foot to foot or stretched their shoulders. It occurred to me that they didn’t like the talking part of all this.
“Bulgaria is my homeland,” I said firmly. “I came back here—” I had meant to say, because my aging parents were worried about me, but I suddenly didn’t want to mention them. “I came back because of the war.”
“You had the means to come and go to the other end of Europe, at will?”
“In Vienna, I was a poor student,” I said. I kept my body as still as I could; I didn’t want him to see me trembling.
“Poor you,” he said. “Studying abroad while our peasants suffered at home under the capitalist yoke.”
I almost laughed; for several years now, we’d seen this kind of line in the newspapers or heard it blaring from megaphones at political rallies; but I hadn’t yet accepted the fact that there were ordinary individuals, even policemen, who spoke this way, and in all seriousness. I caught myself in time, horrified.
“I hoped as a musician to make my country proud of me,” I said. “That is why I went to study in Vienna. I was wounded in ’45, fighting the Germans.”
He stepped closer and looked into my face. I could see the purple beneath his eyes; he’d been working all night and was nearly as tired as I, although not as frightened. I wondered if he had a name. In face and stature, he looked very much like a boy I now remembered from my gimnasium class, an adult version, although he certainly wasn’t that person. We were the same height; I could imagine the two of us playing ball in the walled schoolyard, shouting at each other.
“What instrument is yours?” he said.
“I’m a violinist,” I said. Ridiculously, the love of it washed through my heart, even there, in a police cell. I loved those words and everything I had poured into them.
“Let me see your hands.”
Then, for the first time, I was passionately afraid. I had not thought of myself as being vulnerable, like a drunk or a boy or a silent peasant. In my world, I had always been not merely worthy but exceptional.
“Your hands,” he said slowly.
I kept them behind me for a moment, then held them out toward him. They had never looked so far away from my body, so naked, in all the uncounted, uncountable hours I’d spent gazing at them, on the bridge and bow. I could see them under that bare electric light; they were unnaturally long, slender but already a little gnarled around the joints, the haunch of each thumb muscular, the fingers squared off at the ends, the right hand a little larger than the left and with that precious callus on the middle left side of the index finger, another callus at the tip of the thumb, just to the right. People say sometimes, “I know such-and-such like the back of my hand,” but I actually knew my own hands like the back of my hand, like precious objects. If I relaxed them both on
a table, palms upward, the fingers of my left hand curled up more than those of the right. Like my leg, my left arm would always be a little stiff from shrapnel wounds. Holding my hands out before the Shopski policeman, I had a sudden strange feeling that he was going to read my fortune, or praise their extraordinary shape, as my first teacher in Vienna had. (“So these are the hands they grow in the Balkan mountains,” he had said, patronizing and admiring at the same time.)
The policeman took one of my hands in his. He held it a moment so gently that I felt the calluses on his palm, and then with his other hand he swiftly broke the top joint of my little finger.
Pain didn’t reach me as quickly as my grief and anger: sheer damage, which would take months to heal. And what if it never healed quite properly? Then a moment of relief. He had broken a bow finger, on my right hand, not my left. Then a searing heat shot up my arm. I tried to yank my hand away but the policeman held it with alarming strength. I thought of the silent man, now lying with his eyes closed at our feet, and I bit down on my lip. I wondered why I hadn’t seen this coming, why I hadn’t pulled away or ducked. If I’d lost my temper and attacked them, perhaps they would have whipped my feet or back and spared my hand. The finger was already beginning to redden and swell.
“Hurts, eh?” the policeman said sternly. “I guess it does. Your hands wouldn’t be worth a thing all broken up, would they? I know that much about music, anyway. My grandfather was a musician. You don’t want to risk another finger, do you? Or a whole hand? Wouldn’t want to spread any more decadent lies around with your books, either, would you?”
He bent one of my other fingers back, warningly, and I thought again of the fact that he was threatening my right hand, not my left. One of the other policemen leaned toward him and whispered something in his ear; I couldn’t make sense of it through the pulsing in my head.
The policeman who held my hand looked quickly at me. “You wouldn’t want to report anything you might have seen in the last few days, would you?”
“I haven’t done anything wrong.” I tried to speak slowly, to keep my voice from shaking.
“You mean, you haven’t seen anything you’d like to report, have you?”
I heard in his voice that the correct answer was an emphatic no. He wanted me to remember that answer. I wondered why they hadn’t chosen to speak to me alone, but I was glad the boy and the drunk were there with me, and even the poor man with his lacerated feet falling sideways out of his trouser legs. Perhaps they only wanted me to say no in front of witnesses.
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” I said. My hands were trembling now, too, with pain and their own terror. It occurred to me that if I kept saying this the policemen might not dare describe in front of the others what they knew I’d seen, if they even knew about it, and I would not have to lie—or admit to it.
“Oh, I suppose not,” he said suddenly, dropping my hand. “Go sit down over there.”
I sat against the wall, resting my hands on my knees, trying to reclaim them. It was the beginning of that long bifurcation that became my life: Obey and hate yourself, survive. Disobey, redeem yourself, perish. I thought later how simply and quickly they had introduced that concept to me, as easily as breaking a little finger. For some reason they had decided not to beat me.
The policeman tipped the chair on its side again, pushing the silent man out of the way with one strong foot. He said to the boy, Take off your socks and shoes. The boy cried a little, but bravely. When they started to whip his feet he began to scream at once, as if to get the screaming over with, or to establish the sound of it firmly in the room.
—
IN MY DREAMS, LATER, I rushed at them, grabbed the bloody braid from their hands, pulled it tight across their necks, tied them up with a rope from my pocket. The drunken man pulled himself together and lifted the hatless peasant over sturdy shoulders. I hoisted the boy into my arms and carried him safely home to Vera.
But only in my dreams.
Bobby paused and cleared his throat. Irina was very pale, leaning sideways against Lenka’s shoulder. Angelov sat with his stubby hands folded on the table, his face drawn. For Alexandra this was the first time words had been not only a means of expression but something real. She had read poetry and novels, and they had given her pleasure; she had read some history, and it had given her pain. This was beyond both. In a minute Bobby would continue—in fact, he read out loud to the end of the crackling pages, translating slowly into English as he went; Alexandra would see their reality over and over in her mind’s eye, during the remaining few days.
It was Irina Georgieva who thought of the next possibility. She was drying her face with the handkerchief from her sleeve. “Stoyan wrote on the first page that only Milen Radev knows about this.”
“We do not know where he is, either,” Bobby objected.
“No,” Irina said, “but I am thinking of the niece of Milen Radev.” She spoke briefly to Angelov, who shook his head in agreement. “My sister and Milen used to go often to see his niece Bogdana in Yambol, and she sometimes visited them, too. She is very fond of them, and of Neven. Earlier today, Lenka called her to ask if they all went to Yambol, by chance. If anybody else knows whether Milen Radev has more information about the urn, it might be Bogdana.”
“And did they go there?” Alexandra started up from her seat.
Irina sighed. “I’m afraid not. Bogdana told me that they have not been to visit her in quite a long time. But Milen called her about ten days ago, to say that they were planning to bury Stoyan’s ashes. She says that he promised they would visit her sometime soon after. He told her not to come to the burial, because they were going to do a very simple goodbye at Velin Monastery, she always has a lot of work, and it had already been two years since the death of Stoyan. She has not heard from them since, or been able to reach them. I had the feeling that she was worried about something, but did not want to tell me what it was. I explained to her that I have friends who have something to return to them, in case Milen calls her again.”
Bobby looked thoughtful. “Do you suppose we could go to talk with her? Or that they might be traveling there already?”
Irina nodded. “Yes, I thought of that, too. And she knows her uncle well. I will give you her number and let her know you are coming. He might have spoken to her if he felt some worry, during the last two years. Perhaps she even knows what other information Stoyan gave him.”
“Where is—Yambol?” Alexandra felt something like hope well up behind her eyes.
“In the east of Bulgaria.”
She tried to picture her guidebook map, with the sea on the far right.
Irina propped her head in her hands. “But you must take me back to Plovdiv first. If we leave now, we can be home tonight, even if we arrive very late. I fear I am too tired for more travel, after this.” Angelov reached out to touch her shoulder.
Bobby was frowning. “What if we do go to see Milen’s niece, and that puts her in some kind of danger, too?”
“Well, you must tell her what you know, to warn her. I think she would want to hear if her uncle and Vera are in any trouble.” Irina smoothed her hair, but shakily. “I have decided I would like you to take the urn with you. I feel sure you will find them, or they will reach you, and then you can give it to them at once. But if this does not work, you must bring it directly back to me.”
“I will ask gospodin Angelov to put the base on again,” Bobby said. “It must not look damaged, to Vera and Neven.” Nor, thought Alexandra, to whoever else might try to seize it. The old artist seemed to understand; he stood up and began to assemble it with delicate care, without replacing the manuscript.
Irina nodded. “Yes. I think that we should make at least two copies of these pages before you leave Plovdiv. I will keep one copy and you can carry a copy and the original separately, in your bags. When you find my sister you can put it back in the urn.”
Alexandra went to sit next to the old lady; she put her head on Irina’s should
er, which felt like a rocky outcropping, and Irina reached an arm around her. “Oh, my darling,” she said. “Let’s go. Say your goodbyes to gospodin Angelov and we will hurry now.” The old man had put the urn back into its bag. “You can spend one more night in Plovdiv with me and leave for Yambol early tomorrow. You will travel faster without an old lady on your backs.”
—
THE WALL IN FRONT of the merchant’s mansion in Plovdiv looked like home to Alexandra when they reached it in the small hours, and Irina’s house like an oasis; inside, nothing had been disturbed. The next morning, under a very different light, they told Irina and Lenka goodbye. The air was already simmering, a hot day rising off the cobblestones.
“But goodbye only for now,” Alexandra insisted, with one hand in Irina’s and the other clutching Stoycho’s rope. Bobby held the bag with the urn and a piece of paper with the number and address for Milen Radev’s niece.
“Remember, if they are not in Yambol,” Irina said, “you must bring the urn back here and I will keep it in my house for now. Please be careful. Please call us.”
Alexandra looked around the courtyard—no tourists at the doors to the museum, the leaves on the grapevines a little greener and larger than when they’d first visited, the morning sky brassy above the trees.
“We’ll come back,” she said. “We’ll find them. I promise.”
Lenka kissed her on each cheek. Irina bent over and stroked Stoycho’s head with her splayed fingers. He leaned against her knee, carefully, as if he knew he could knock her over with any sudden movement.
“If you hear from your sister or Neven, please call me immediately,” Bobby said, and he added something in Bulgarian that made Irina shake her head.
In the car, Alexandra and Bobby were silent. The road toward Yambol unfolded in a long straight line, with plains to their left and a high range of mountains on the horizon beyond that. Stretching into the distance were rows of grassy mounds, each at least twenty feet high and strangely regular, around which crops were planted or fallow meadows waved. Bobby said these were tumuli, the grave mounds of the ancient Thracians, so many graves that only a small percentage had ever been excavated, although quite a few had been robbed, over the centuries. He drummed the steering wheel with his thumbs. “I have heard that there are people who go to worship at some of these graves—they believe in Orpheus, that his spirit lives there and also lives high in the Rhodopes—especially in the caves near Greece.”