I recalled a story Grandpa once told me when I was little. The story of how one day in the dugout he’d met a man, older than him, a schoolteacher from a nearby village. From his pocket, the man had pulled out a notebook. “You seem like a fool and fools are lucky,” the man told Grandpa. “So if I die and you live, take this to my wife and children.” Inside the book were letters, and between the letters the man had stuffed tiny petals of flowers, leaves of crane’s bill and basil. Then he picked up a lump of black earth — it was an underground dugout they hid in — and smeared the mud on the first page. “For my children,” he told Grandpa, “to see what I’ve seen.” A month later the tsarists mowed down the man, and when that September the Communists seized control of Bulgaria, Grandpa found the man’s widow and gave her the notebook. But the widow wouldn’t take it. “I have no use for words and mud and dry leaves. I want a husband and my boys want a father.” And she forced Grandpa to take two sacks of schoolbooks that had belonged to her husband.
Grandpa read the man’s letters and then his schoolbooks. Then he hitched a ride to Pleven, walked straight to the university, never you mind that the semester was already half over, and signed up to study to be a teacher. Never you mind that he lacked a proper academic background. Hadn’t he been a partisan fighter, and wasn’t this more background than anyone ever needed?
Now in the light of the oil lamp, with the babble of water rushing down hills and dirt roads, and thunder booming across the border, I could see the barns burning and my grandfather gripping the torch that had set them on fire. And I wondered, was it only the shameful stories he had never told me; and if so, was this the reason he’d never mentioned the nestinari and the tree with their skulls in its branches?
“For a whole month,” Grandpa was saying, “we had been walking from one village to another, curing the sick and chasing the Fever.”
The vatafin led them and so they followed in his footsteps, they the chosen ones, the kalushari. All day long they kept quiet, and if they spoke it was always in whispers. They didn’t make the sign of the cross and when they ate a meal they didn’t bless it. They marched in pairs, Grandpa’s cousin beside him, in a chain that no stranger could break. They were not allowed to tread water. Why? Who could tell you? If they came to a small stream, they leapt over it with their cudgels; if they reached a river, they waited for a cart to take them across it. They sent a scout, the kalauz they called him, to let each village know they were coming and to look out for other bands of kalushari. Because such was the custom — no two bands were allowed to cross paths. “And if they do?” Grandpa asked the vatafin, and the vatafin pulled out his dagger and began to sharpen it.
“If only you could’ve seen me, my boy, prouder than a rooster. My chest bursting under the white shirt.”
Every ten steps Grandpa would touch the daggers in his sash and rub their handles. He’d smack the cudgel against his thigh so the bells would ring, like beautiful girls calling him to their bedside. His blood was turning sour with desire. What did he care that people were sick and perishing? All he cared about was how the women looked at him when the vatafin led them into the house of the dying. They’d lay the sick man on a rug on the floor and gather around him, and one of the boys would blow up a bagpipe and play the rachenitsa so loudly Grandpa’s teeth needled. They’d dance in circles around the sick man, slowly at first and then faster, and they’d hold the rug by its corners and toss the man up in the air a few times. Then the vatafin would break up the circle to rub the dying man with vinegar from head to toe. How the room reeked by then! A herd of rams sweating, jumping, and dancing. Then they’d leap over the sick man three times, bellowing, bleating, and braying. Give me a woman! Grandpa would shout, but no one heard him. And what the others shouted, no one could tell you. The vatafin would place a jug by the sick man, a jug full of cold water and fresh herbs, and the bagpipe would strike a new song, the florichika, so fast and fierce Grandpa went through a new pair of sandals every two days. They danced in circles until floor merged with walls and ceiling and the vatafin commanded the oldest boy to break the jug with his cudgel. And if the sick man jumped on his feet and ran out of the room when the jug shattered, if one or two of the boys fainted, that was a good sign. They’d chased away the Fever.
The sun was setting that day and they were rushing to get back to their village before the dark fell. Such was the custom. They had sent the scout ahead to make sure their passage was clear, but what good was he in their hurry? And sure enough, just at a crossroad, they met another band of kalushari, young boys like them, from some other village, like them armed and stupid. What really happened, Grandpa couldn’t tell me exactly. Excitement overcame him. A great rush. One minute they were marching, quiet, the next they were throwing themselves at strangers, flinging daggers to slash them. Sure enough they slashed them. And they got slashed. When at last the commotion settled, when their blood cooled off a little, they sat down, the two bands together, to assess the damage. Only, one of the other band’s boys wasn’t moving, and when they looked closer — from his chest there stuck out a dagger. Someone whispered it was Grandpa’s cousin who’d killed him. Someone else said he’d seen Grandpa drive in the dagger. Was it him, was it his cousin, was it another boy — who could remember? And Grandpa’s head was splitting and his stomach was turning. So he retched in the bushes and his cousin followed. “If we return to the village,” he said, “they’ll hang us. For brigands like us, there is only one place now.” And they ran through the bushes and up into the woods and they joined the Communist fighters.
After this Grandpa was quiet. The bells had stopped ringing, and he was at rest in their silence. But I wasn’t; not after he’d gone back to his room, not after I’d seen dawn over the mountains. Why was my grandfather so stubborn, so reluctant to get involved with the nestinari again? If he recognized the whole thing as nothing but a charade, why not play along and help Aysha?
The imam sang for prayer and my thoughts swerved in a sleepless eddy. Forget the ringing bells, I muttered. Grandpa had tried to tell me something else with his story: don’t bloody your hands with superstition, stay away from the madness. I tossed, turned, hid under the blanket. If I helped Elif find the nestinari, I was betraying Grandpa. But I was also helping Aysha. And if I helped Aysha, wouldn’t Elif love me? Who in Klisura, other than Grandpa, knew how to cook a stew for witches?
SEVEN
IF MY KNUCKLES MADE ANY NOISE rapping on that door, I couldn’t hear it. Nor could I hear my own heart pounding, the wind gusting, and all through Klisura the broken window frames of empty houses knocking like lids of coffins, opening and closing shut. What I heard was these noises together in one big, messy loudness that grew messier, louder. One moment the moon shone and anyone could have seen me — slouched like a thief at the threshold — the next the sky was thick clouds and the world nothing but loudness.
“Open up, neighbors. It’s the teacher’s boy. The American.”