“Ashkolsun, my boy,” the mayor bellowed, and his bear paw slapped Grandpa on the back, then on the shoulder. Among the spectators Grandpa had noticed the strange guests from last night — or rather, just the men, all dressed in black, and only their jackets and their sashes the color of dirty blood.
When he awakened with the sunrise that morning, Grandpa had found the mayor’s house empty — how he hadn’t heard the guests rising, he couldn’t say really. Later the Pope told him that the mayor had brought all of his thirteen guests to church before the rooster had crowed even once. “They woke me up at such an ungodly hour and forced me to hold a service. Three straight hours.”
Now in the cherry orchard, the mayor introduced Grandpa to the Greeks — for that’s what they were no matter that their village lay in Turkey.
The tallest one, whose mustache was freshly waxed and coiled upward like the horns of a wild ram, was Captain Vangelis. His single eyebrow was an eagle’s wing, his eyes the color of frozen ashes. Beside him were his three sons — the oldest, Kostantinos, who wore a black headband wound so that the band’s tassels fell on either side of his face like clenched fists; Demetrios, whose hair reached all the way down to his shoulders; and Yannis, who smiled at Grandpa and said in Bulgarian, “You’ve taught them well, teacher.”
There was another captain — Elias — an old man the strength of whose hair was all gathered in his mustache so that his head shone like a boiled egg. And his two sons — the older one, Giorgios, who walked with a bad limp; and Michalis, no older than eighteen, whose smooth face betrayed his young age.
“You’ve taught them well,” Elias repeated, but Captain Vangelis only shook his great head. He fixed Grandpa with his eyes and his jaw creaked before he spoke in his own language.
“He says it’s a shame to teach in an orchard,” said Yannis, the kindest of his sons.
“I say, if caves were good enough for the early teachers,” Grandpa answered, “a cherry orchard is good enough for me and my students.” He was referring to days long gone, when the Ottomans did not allow the raya to study. When people learned how to read and write in hiding.
The men nodded, but not Captain Vangelis.
“He says you have Turks among your students.”
“And I say, are they really?”
“Why do you teach the Muslims?”
“I teach children who don’t know how to read and write yet.”
Grandpa knew well what the captain was doing. It was the same thing the leader of the kalushari had done a long time back, digging up that pit on the village square and filling it with bursting fire to see which boys would tumble in and which would cross it. Grandpa hadn’t fallen in the pit back then, and now too he had no intention of falling. So he stood his ground, and soon Captain Vangelis too was nodding and putting his bony hand on Grandpa’s shoulder.
“You teach them well,” the captain said in broken Bulgarian. “But orchard is not a school.” Then to the mayor he spoke, still in Bulgarian, so Grandpa would understand him. “All right. He may come.”
NINE
THE FIRST ONE WAS AN ICON of the Theotokos, the All Holy Virgin Mary, birth-giver to God. An icon of Eleusa or Tender Mercy; the same kind as the one the Pope had given the family they had baptized in the upper hamlets. As for the other two icons, the Pope had never seen their likeness. On one, Saint Constantine had taken a giant leap and was hanging in midair. His bare feet were cast in gold. His hands in silver. On the other, his mother, Saint Elena, was also leaping, the ends of her purple robe billowing around her like the outstretched wings of a large bird. All three icons were dressed in red cloth cases, and short wooden handles hung from their bottoms, like tails.
“That’s heresy,” the Pope told Grandpa later. But there in the church, surrounded by the seven Greeks, the mayor, and Grandpa, the Pope dared say nothing. He blessed the icons and chanted, and slowly the church filled up with people.
After the service they took the icons to the shack below the walnut. Back in those days, a path cut through the forest and made the walk from the village short and easy. Back in those days, walnuts weighed down the tree’s branches. And in their nests, among the leafage, the black storks called sharply and clacked their bills, as if to greet both people and icons. When the mayor pushed the door of the shack open, three women, black like the storks, sprang to their feet, crying.
Welcome, welcome, Saint Kosta, and from their voices the hairs on Grandpa’s back bristled. Two of the women were Greek — Grandpa recognized them from last night. The third one was a local grandma. They said she was a hundred years old, but she looked at least twice that. Her name was Baba Vida.
At first Grandpa couldn’t see too well. A tiny, glassless window below the roof let in some light and then a fire was bursting in the hearth — thick oak logs the women had fixed upright. The heat was a grabbing, choking fist. The smell of frankincense was swelling and mixing with the stench of men. The walls seemed to be closing in.
Yet Grandpa was breathing in thirsty gulps. His head was turning and deep within him the kalushari of his youth banged their cudgels. Vassilko put down the candelabra he was carrying and from the embers of the altar lamp that the mayor brandished, Baba Vida stole flame to light three candles. The space brightened. In the deep end of the shack Grandpa saw a makeshift iconostasis, upon which the mayor arranged the holy icons, purifying each one over the smoke of his lamp, crossing himself, and paying obeisance. Strings of gold and silver coins, Turkish, from the days of janissaries and rebels. White and red damask roses. Fresh shoots from the walnut tree. The women adorned the icons, hands shaking, mumbling prayers. But no one seemed as tensed as Baba Vida. Grandpa could hear the noise her gums made slapping against each other, or maybe it was her bare feet on the wood floor he was hearing. And while this happened, people shuffled in and out of the shrine. Some brought kerchiefs and towels, some little bottles of oils and incense, which Baba Vida took with a thank-you. “Here now, buy a candle,” she’d say, and the visitors dropped their coins in a chest in the corner, crossed themselves before the icons, and hurried out to make room for others.
Only one girl lingered before the image of the Holy Virgin. Her body trembling, she kissed the icon’s corner. But when she came to Saint Constantine, she pulled back, as if the heat of a furnace had stung her. “Lenio!” Captain Vangelis barked from the side, and Grandpa felt the air his lips spat out lash his ears like a bullwhip. Right away he recognized her. The sick boy from the night before. But dressed in a nice dress. And two braids of black hair falling down from under her white kerchief. What hair! Make a rope of it, tie down two oxen, and watch them struggle to break free. Grandpa’s heart flittered. But she was a child still — fourteen, he guessed, no older.
Terrified was Lenio when Baba Vida swooped her hand gently and led her to Saint Constantine’s image. Terrified, she kissed his icon as though it were a diseased corpse she was kissing. But then she crossed herself three times and kissed the icon of Saint Elena, and when she turned to face the men, her eyes shone and she was smiling.
It was at that moment the pipers came in. And the drummer. Up on one wall Grandpa had seen a giant drum hanging, and on a nail beside it, coiled like an adder, a piece of hemp rope.
“Faster with the drum!” Baba Vida scolded, and Grandpa’s heart too pounded faster to catch up with the beating. The two bagpipes came to screaming.
Narrow walls, a low ceiling. The heat boiling with the stink of incense. The men’s faces gleaming, their sweat like liquid fire. Their hands on the hilts of their knives in the sashes. And the Greek women, taking quick steps around, crying “Vah, vah, vah!” like owls. The whites of their eyes flashing under the twitching eyelids and their arms flapping as though to take flight.