Had it been when he’d seen her in the shack, frightened as she was before the icon of Saint Kosta? Had it been when she’d danced in the fire? Had it been there in the courtyard, her hair dripping well water? Who can tell you? But my grandfather’s heart had taken a beat past which there was no more turning.
On parting, Captain Vangelis came to Grandpa. Out in the yard, his sons were roping a bundle to Captain Elias’s back — the sacred icons. By the well, some of the men sharpened their knives; some of the women wound bands of cloth around their feet to protect them from the road’s thorns and sharp stones.
“An orchard is not a school,” Captain Vangelis said, ready it seemed to pick up the old fight. But before Grandpa could answer, the captain pulled out from his cloak a fist of paper money. For fifteen years the nestinari had collected from candles and donations. To patch up the shrine if need be, and, one day, to rebuild it nicer.
“Build a real school,” said Captain Vangelis.
And so, a week after they first arrived, Grandpa watched from the terrace the Greeks disappear up the road — their vekilin, Captain Vangelis, in the lead, then Captain Elias with the icons, their sons, their mothers, and strolling lightly at their heels, Lenio, her white kerchief last to vanish. So that was that, Grandpa thought, and after he finished his cigarette he lit another. His fingers burned where she’d touched him. Never again would he see her.
It goes without saying, he was mistaken.
TWELVE
THE MONEY CAPTAIN VANGELIS GAVE Grandpa was not sufficient. And the mayor wouldn’t hear of helping. The truth came loose after much pressing — every time Klisurans rebuilt their school, the village ended up in ruin.
“So you’re afraid!” Grandpa said, triumphant, for the mayor had driven himself into a shameful corner.
“I? Afraid?” the mayor cried, then made a few phone calls. Beams, rafters, planks, nails, lime, and tiles — he bought them at preferential prices. And by the end of the week the ruins of the old school had been transformed into a construction site.
“Here are your builders,” the mayor said, and by his side were only old men. It was the end of June, just as it was now when Grandpa told me this story, and all the young ones had gone to do field work.
“These men are good for nothing,” Grandpa cried, because really, a stronger gust, it seemed, would knock them over. But, oh, was he mistaken. These men were mules. Worse yet — devils who never tired.
Each night Grandpa collapsed in his bed, a wreckage. Each morning, he woke up a living pain. Muscles he never knew existed hurt him. Bones, joints, teeth, even his scalp and hair were aching. All summer they built — Grandpa, the mayor, Vassilko, and the old brigadiers. And on September 15, the first official day of classes, Father Dionysus held a service, a vodosvet to bless the new school.
A school is not a Christian church, complained the people of the Muslim hamlet. And they locked at home their sons and daughters. This time, it was the mayor who came along with Grandpa, from one door to another, and tried to convince them — there was no need to be frightened.
* * *
It was the Pope these people feared. For ever since he’d first arrived in Klisura, Father Dionysus had worked like the old brigadiers — a mule, a devil who never tired. Tireless, he roamed the hills of the Strandja, hamlet to hamlet, no matter how distant, as long as a Muslim lived there. He’d grown heavier, though not in belly, but in stature. His shoulders had widened, the muscles in his legs and arms had swollen up, his beard had thickened — a great and terrifying thing, like a flaming bush it put the laity in fear. But he spoke kindly, gently, in an alluring voice. Gather around me, you poor people. I’ve come to tell you something. And the poor people gathered to hear his stories. How, a long time back, the Strandja had been all Christian, which was to say, all Bulgarian really. Because to be Bulgarian meant to be Christian and no one could be Bulgarian if they weren’t Christian. It was, and always had been, this simple.
On and on Father Dionysus spun his stories and in them the centuries rolled by. Glorious tsars and martyrs came to life, then dust took them. Until a great danger arrived at the Bulgarian threshold — Murad the terrible sultan, at the head of a boundless army. Bravely, the Bulgarians fought him, in the name of Christ the great Lord. But the Turks were many and at last darkness overcame Christ’s people, so they might be tested.
For many centuries the Bulgarians fought and resisted. Push after push, the way that oak tree right over there resists the gales from Turkey. Each time our people honored Christ, it was their own blood they honored. Each time they preserved Christ, it was themselves they were preserving. But not all trees are strong like the oak tree. And sometimes the gale fells us.
There came a day at last, Father Dionysus told them, when the Ottoman Empire weakened. Afraid of losing land and power, the sultan gave an order — turn all Bulgarians into Muslims, so they may never wish to break free. Terrible janissaries roamed the Strandja, and in their lead — black imams. When a Bulgarian refused to take off his fur cap, to renounce Christ and put on a turban, they cut his head off. Many a head rolled in those days, for great was the courage of our forefathers. But not all heads. For some bowed to accept the turban. And in this, there is no shame. Again, I tell you, not all trees are strong like the oak tree.
What matters most, Father Dionysus told them, is that God still loves you. It is never too late. Renounce the lie. Redeem your blood. Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. Return to your roots. Be born again.
And some people shook their heads, spat in the dirt, cursed the Pope, and stormed away angry. But others went home pensive, the worm of doubt gnawing at their innards. And still others, though not that many, came to the Pope, and when he offered, they kissed his right hand. And when he offered, they kissed the cross and he baptized them.
It was all this the people of Klisura feared. And even when Grandpa told them, It’s only the letters I’ll teach your kids, only the numbers, they still didn’t believe him. When the mayor got angry and bellowed—you blockheads, show some courage—the people got quiet.
“They hate my guts,” the mayor told Grandpa one evening. It was the mayor who, a year before this, had closed down the village mosque and sent away the imam. There was no need for Grandpa to ask him why he’d done so. After all, the mayor had never questioned why Grandpa had ended up in Klisura, nor did they wonder why Father Dionysus was doing all this baptizing. They both knew the reason. The Party had willed it. There was no way to defy the Party’s orders.
“When I was a boy,” the mayor said, “I drove an ox into a bog once. That poor beast knew the ground was boggy — he’d smelled the mud from a distance — but I hadn’t smelled it. At first he resisted, but then I beat him until I broke the stick in half against his back. And so he grunted, lowered his head, and did as I told him. The mud ate him whole. I am the ox now,” the mayor said, the first and last time Grandpa heard him whisper.
THIRTEEN
WITH THE THREAT OF HEFTY FINES the Muslim parents were convinced to send their children back to school. It helped too that Grandpa was liked in the village. Almost every night someone new invited him to dinner — be it in the Christian or the Muslim hamlet. And to class, his students came with little bundles — now a handful of dried fruit, now apples preserved fresh under fern leaves. And after sunset, young women brought him jugs of milk, freshly baked banitsas, or loaves of rye bread. Afraid to be seen, they left their boons at his threshold, rapped their slender fingers on the gates, and ran into the dark with a giggle. Only one girl refused to hide. Each day, constant as the sun rising, she brought Grandpa a jar of yogurt — still warm from the sheepskins in which it had been wrapped to leaven. Each day he met her at the threshold. Each day, to show him how thick the yogurt was, she turned the jar upside down and shook it. Not once did the yogurt move. Then she would hold the jar up and make him breathe in deeply — the yogurt, alive with fermentation and sprinkling his face. When Grandpa scooped up yogurt with his finger, the girl would laugh.