“Faster with the drum,” Baba Vida commanded, and Grandpa could tell, by the way she was shaking, how much she wanted to do what the Greek women were doing. And yet she was too old.
In the corner Lenio too was watching the women. At once, her voice rang out like a gunshot. Her arms flapped and her bare feet smacked the floor. Faster the drum was beating. Louder the bagpipes. From the outside, two local women rushed in. They too were dancing. The Greek men joined them, howling. The women seized the icons and the music followed them out in the open. They all danced a horo around the walnut, the mayor waving a red kerchief in the lead, their feet black with mud from the rains of last night. The crowd clapped and cheered.
At last, the dance returned them to the shrine. The icons were rested on the shelf; the music grew quiet and then drowned in silence. Only the women spoke in whispers. And Grandpa was surprised to see that Lenio too was speaking with Baba Vida, the murmur of her voice as light as the rain that had begun to drizzle.
They said of Baba Vida that she could see what hadn’t come to pass yet. And sure enough that day in the shack she pulled Grandpa to one side. “Teacher, don’t do it,” she whispered. “Unless you aim to wrestle Saint Kosta.” But Grandpa aimed to wrestle no one. Though, strictly speaking, he told me later, before the saint there came Lenio’s brothers. And then her father, Captain Vangelis, whom people also called the Wild Ram.
TEN
THE DAY WAS HEAVY WITH RITUAL. As for its meaning, no one understood it fully. “Who knows what it all means, you book rat,” the mayor said, and slammed his paw on Grandpa’s back. “I do as the old vekilin taught me.” That’s what the mayor was—vekilin of the Klisuran nestinari; which is to say, a caretaker, the bridge between them and the people’s world.
After the shack, they visited a spring in the forest, hedged in and roofed over, the ayazmo of Saint Constantine. There the priest was waiting for the service. “I heard there is a big lunch after,” he whispered in Grandpa’s ear, and let people kiss the cross and his right hand.
A fat ram was waiting in the churchyard. The mayor tied it down with the rope from the shack and slaughtered the animal kurban—the slaughtering hole also sacred, it too Saint Kosta’s. Most of the meat they gave as alms throughout the village — the rest was taken to the shrine and cast in a cauldron over the fire. There by the shrine the mayor slaughtered one more ram and a white lamb. The parents of sick children had given them kurban, hoping the saint would bring a cure. As was the custom, they let the blood seep into the roots of the walnut; then they marched to the mayor’s house and ate the big lunch.
* * *
Around five in the evening, outside the shack and under the walnut, an enormous pile of oak wood was set ablaze. Sparks and flames and black smoke carried up to the gray sky.
“It’ll hold,” Baba Vida said of the rain that still drizzled. “Saint Kosta will hold it.”
At around a quarter to eight the rain picked up. The ground turned muddier and puddles pooled where the feet of the nestinari had sunk earlier that day. But the wood still burned with a tall flame, and a wave of relief spread through the crowd of spectators. Saint Kosta had willed it, and Baba Vida had seen it: despite the rain, there would be dancing.
It had grown dark when two men began to rake the fire with long sticks, to push the still burning stumps to one side and spread the embers in a circle. The drum was pounding faster and faster, the bagpipes were screeching, and up in the branches the black storks were crying something fierce. Yet a hush spread through the crowd when three young men stepped out of the shack with the sacred icons. Even the storks grew quiet. After the icons floated Baba Vida, Lenio and the women, Captain Vangelis and his sons, and Captain Elias and his.
And now so many years later out on our terrace, where Grandpa told me this story, I too could see them. He didn’t have to tell me how the women trembled and pulled on the edges of their wet scarves. How one by one the men took the icons and swiftly, lightly carried them across the embers hissing with the rain. How Giorgios, who’d limped all day behind his brother, now hopped in perfect balance. How the mud splashed and red sparks scattered. How the rain pounded and Lenio’s face ran black with liquid ashes. How terrified Grandpa was to watch her and feel on his cheeks the cold drops lashing each time the ropes of her hair whooshed in the dark.
I too could feel the heat of the fire, the cold of the harsh drops. I too was terrified. Because I too loved a girl and missed her.
* * *
All in all, ten minutes. That’s how long the dance lasted. But those minutes seemed like many hours — the crowd awed and, by the end, exhausted. As were the nestinari—sitting now quietly on red pillows in the shrine, each staring into the nothing. Tired, but calmed somehow.
“May Saint Kosta aid us,” the mayor, their vekilin, said as a blessing. A long rug had been rolled out on the freshly swept floor, and on it bowls of yogurt, plates of white cheese, saucers with young walnuts. They drank rakia from three small bottles and then they ate the kurban, for good health. Tomorrow every ritual would be repeated — this time to honor Saint Elena.
Only two souls weren’t eating: Grandpa in his corner, his heart heavy, his fingers stained iodine from the walnut he was crushing into a pulp. And in her corner, Lenio, the Greek girl.
Yes, Lenio, you can relax now. Take a deep breath, have a sip of rakia. Fear nothing. Saint Kosta likes you. He took your hand and led you unharmed through the fire. So be merry. But take care not to show it. Your father, the Wild Ram, he doesn’t like laughter. And your brothers, the cowards, they do as he tells them. So let them keep grave and quiet, the tombstones. But you, Lenio, are not a tombstone. You laugh now, the way you’ve learned how to — like a spring running beneath thick ice. Your cheeks red apples, your lips pomegranate. Your bare feet white as the yogurt and, only under your toenails, where no one can see it, the black ash.
ELEVEN
WHEN DOES A PERSON FALL IN LOVE EXACTLY? Is it a single moment — the heart takes a beat past which there is no more turning? Or does it happen the way spring arrives, without sharp definitions?
The morning before the Greeks left for their village, Grandpa woke up awfully hungover. All night he’d drunk rakia with the captains and the mayor. His head was throbbing and he was so thirsty he could drain a river. He grabbed a towel and stumbled down to the well in the courtyard.
There by the well, in the blue dawn, Lenio was washing her long hair. She was fully clothed but she had let her hair fall free of the thick braids. She gathered the tresses and dipped them into a pail of water. Each time she pressed down the tresses, water splashed at her bare feet. For some time Grandpa watched her and only then did she turn around to see him.
She wasn’t startled. Instead, she was smiling. She pulled out her hair and began to wring it as if it were laundry. Then she put out her hand. She wanted the towel on Grandpa’s shoulder. So he came near, his bare feet on the cool water, and he gave her the towel. When she took it, her fingers brushed his.