The Historian (73 page)

―He paused again and closed his eyes. ‗I try not to think about that day. I must tell you first that I had a little apartment near
Rimskaya stena
—the Roman wall in Sofia, a very ancient site—and I loved it for the history of the city all around it. I had gone out to buy groceries and left my papers and books about Bachkovo and other monasteries open on my desk. When I returned I saw that someone had gone through all my things, pulled books off the shelves, and searched my closet. On the desk, all over my papers, was a small trail of blood. You know how ink—stains—a page—‘ He broke off, looking piercingly at us now. ‗In the middle of the desk there lay a book I had never seen before—‘ Suddenly he rose and shuffled into the other room again, and we heard him moving around, shifting books. I should have gotten up to help him, but I sat instead staring helplessly at Helen, who seemed frozen, too.

―After a moment Stoichev returned with a large folio in his arms. It was bound in worn leather. He laid it in front of us and we watched as he opened it with his reluctant old hands and showed us, wordlessly, the many blank pages, the great image in the center.

The dragon looked smaller here, because the larger pages of the folio left considerable empty space around it, but it was certainly the same woodcut, down to the smudge I‘d noticed in Hugh James‘s. There was another smudge, too, in the yellowing border near the dragon‘s claws. Stoichev pointed to it, but he seemed so overcome with some emotion—distaste, fear—that he apparently forgot for a moment to address us in English.

‗Kr‘v,‘ he said. ‗Blood.‘ I bent close. The brown smear was clearly a fingerprint.

―‗My God.‘ I was remembering my poor cat, and Rossi‘s friend Hedges. ‗Was there someone or something else in the room? What did you do, when you saw this?‘

―‗There was no one in the room,‘ he said in a low voice. ‗The door had been locked, and it was still locked when I returned and went in and saw this terrible scene. I called the police, and they looked everywhere and finally they—how do you say?—they analyzed a sample of the fresh blood and did some comparisons. They discovered easily whose blood type it was, at least.‘

―‗Whose?‘ Helen leaned forward.

―Stoichev‘s voice dropped even lower, so that I too leaned forward to catch the words.

Sweat stood out on his wrinkled face. ‗It was mine,‘ he said.

―‗But—‘

―‗No, of course not. I had not been there. But the police thought I had prepared the entire scene myself. The one thing that did not match was this fingerprint. They said they had never seen a human print like it—it had too few lines. They gave me back the book and my papers and caused me to pay some money for playing tricks with the law. And I almost lost my teaching position.‘

―‗And you dropped your research?‘ I guessed.

―Stoichev lifted his thin shoulders helplessly. ‗It is the only project I have not continued.

I might have gone on, even then, except for this.‘ He turned slowly to the second leaf of the folio. ‗This,‘ he repeated, and there on the page we saw a single word written in a beautiful and archaic hand in ancient, mellowed ink. I knew just enough by now of Kiril‘s famous alphabet to puzzle it out, although the first letter stumped me for a second.

Helen read it aloud. ‗STOICHEV,‘ she whispered. ‗Oh, you found your own name in it.

How terrible.‘

―‗Yes, my own name, and in a handwriting and an ink that were clearly medieval. I have always regretted that I was a coward about this project, but I was afraid. I thought that something might happen to me—like what happened to your father, madam.‘

―‗You feared with good reason,‘ I told the old scholar. ‗But we hope it‘s not too late for Professor Rossi.‘

―He straightened in his chair. ‗Yes. If we can somehow find Sveti Georgi. First, we must go to Rila and look at the other letters by Brother Kiril. As I said, I never before connected them with the ‖Chronicle― of Zacharias. I do not have copies of them here, and the authorities at Rila have not allowed them to be published, although several historians—including myself—have requested permission. And there is someone at Rila with whom I would like you to talk. He may not be of any assistance, however.‘

―Stoichev looked as if he had something else to say, but at that moment we heard vigorous footsteps on the stairs. He tried to rise, then shot me a pleading look. I snatched up the dragon folio and plunged into the next room with it, where I hid it as well as I could behind a box. I rejoined Stoichev and Helen in time to see Ranov open the door to the library.

―‗Ah,‘ he said. ‗A conference of historians. You are missing your own party, Professor.‘

He browsed unabashedly through the books and papers on the table and at last picked up the old journal from which Stoichev had read us parts of the ‗Chronicle‘ of Zacharias.

‗This is the object of your attention?‘ He almost smiled at us. ‗Perhaps I should read it, too, to educate myself. There is much I still do not know about the medieval Bulgaria.

And your so-distracting niece is not as interested in me as I thought. I have given her a serious invitation at the most beautiful end of your garden, and she is rather resistant.‘

―Stoichev flushed angrily and seemed on the verge of speaking, but to my surprise Helen saved him. ‗Keep your dirty bureaucratic hands off that girl,‘ she said, looking Ranov in the eye. ‗You are here to bother us, not her.‘ I touched her arm, hoping she would not enrage the man somehow; the last thing we needed was a political disaster. But she and Ranov simply gave each other a long, measured glare, and then each turned away.

―In the meantime, Stoichev had recovered himself. ‗It would be most helpful for the research of these visitors if you would arrange for them to travel to Rila,‘ he told Ranov calmly. ‗I would like to travel with them also, and it will be an honor for me to show them the library of Rila myself.‘

―‗Rila?‘ Ranov weighed the journal in his hand. ‗Very well. We will make that our next excursion. It may be possible the day after tomorrow. I will send a message to you, Professor, to let you know when you can meet us there.‘

―‗Couldn‘t we go tomorrow?‘ I tried to sound casual.

―‗So you are in a hurry?‘ Ranov raised his eyebrows. ‗It takes time to arrange such a large request.‘

―Stoichev nodded. ‗We will wait patiently, and the professors can enjoy the sights of Sofia until then. Now, my friends, this has been a pleasant exchange of ideas, but Kiril and Methodii will not mind if we also eat, drink, and be merry, as they say. Come, Miss Rossi—‘ He extended his fragile hand to Helen, who helped him up. ‗Give me your arm and we will go to celebrate a day of teaching and learning.‘

―The other guests had begun to gather under the trellis, and we soon saw why: three of the younger men were taking musical instruments out of their bags and setting up near the tables. A lanky fellow with a shock of dark hair was testing the keys of a black-and-silver accordion. Another man had a clarinet. He played a few notes while the third musician got out a large skin drum and a long stick with a padded tip. They sat down in three chairs close together and grinned at one another, played a warble or two, adjusted their seats. The clarinet player removed his jacket.

―Then they exchanged glances and were off, spinning out of nowhere the liveliest music I had ever heard. Stoichev beamed from his throne behind the roast lamb, and Helen, sitting next to me, squeezed my arm. It was a tune that whirled up into the air like a cyclone, then jolted along in a rhythm unfamiliar to me but irresistible once my toe had caught it. The accordion panted in and out and notes soared from the accordionist‘s fingers. I was astounded by the speed and energy with which they all played. The sound brought whoops of joy and encouragement from the crowd.

―After only a few minutes, some of the men listening jumped up, grabbing one another‘s belts behind the waist, and began a dance as lively as the tune. Their highly polished shoes lifted and stamped on the grass. They were soon joined by several women in sober dresses, who danced with their upper bodies erect and still, their feet a blur. The dancers‘

faces were radiant; they all smiled as if they couldn‘t help it, and the teeth of the accordionist flashed in response. The man at the front of the line had produced a white pocket handkerchief and he held it high to lead them, whirling it around and around.

Helen‘s eyes were very bright, and she tapped her hand on the table as if she couldn‘t stay still. The musicians played on and on, while the rest of us cheered and toasted them and drank, and the dancers showed no sign of stopping. At last the tune ended and the line fell apart, each dancer wiping off copious sweat and laughing aloud. The men came to refill their glasses, and the women searched for handkerchiefs and touched up their hair, chuckling together.

―Then the accordionist began to play again, but this time it was a slow series of trills, long drawn-out notes in a wailing key. He threw back his shaggy head, showing his teeth in a song. It was half song, actually, and half howl, a baritone melody so wrenching that I found my heart constricting with loss, with all the losses of my life. ‗What is he singing?‘

I asked Stoichev, to cover my emotion.

―‗It is an old song, very old—I think at least three or four hundred years. It tells the story of a beautiful Bulgarian maiden who is chased by the Turkish invaders. They want her for the harem of the local pasha, and she refuses. She runs up a high mountain near her village and they gallop after her on their horses. At the top of the mountain is a cliff.

There she cries out that she would rather die than become the mistress of an infidel, and she throws herself off the cliff. Later a spring rises up at the foot of the mountain, and it is the purest, sweetest water in that valley.‘

―Helen nodded. ‗We have songs with a similar theme in Romania.‘

―‗They exist wherever the Ottoman yoke fell over the Balkan peoples, I think,‘ Stoichev said gravely. ‗We have in Bulgarian folklore thousands of such songs, with various themes—all are a cry of protest against the enslavement of our people.‘

―The accordionist seemed to feel he had wrung our hearts sufficiently, for at the end of the song he gave a wicked smile and burst into dance music once more. This time most of the guests rose to join the line, which snaked around the terrace. One of the men urged us to come along, and after a second Helen followed, although I stayed firm in my chair next to Stoichev. I enjoyed watching her, though. She caught the dance step after a short demonstration. Some kind of dance must have been in her blood; she held herself with natural dignity, her feet moving surely to the jagged beat. Following her lithe form in the pale blouse and black skirt, her glowing face with the dark curls escaping around it, I found myself almost praying that nothing would ever harm her, and wondering, too, if she would let me keep her safe.‖

―If my first glimpse of Stoichev‘s house had filled me with sudden hopelessness, my first glimpse of Rila Monastery filled me with awe. The monastery sat in a dramatically deep valley—almost filling it, at that point—and above its walls and domes rose the Rila Mountains, which are very steep and forested with tall spruces. Ranov had parked his car in the shade outside the main gate, and we made our way in with several clumps of other tourists. It was a hot, dry day; the Balkan summer seemed to be closing in, and dust from the bare ground swirled around our ankles. The great wooden doors of the gate were open, and we went through them into a sight I can never forget. Around us loomed the striped walls of the monastery fortress, with their alternating patterns of black and red on white plaster, hung with long wooden galleries. Filling a third of the enormous courtyard was a church of exquisite proportions, its porch heavily frescoed, its pale green domes alight in the midday sun. Beside it stood a muscular, square tower of gray stone, visibly older than everything else in sight. Stoichev told us that this was Hrelyo‘s Tower, built by a medieval nobleman as a haven from his political enemies. It was the only remaining part of the earliest monastery on the site, which had been burned by the Turks and rebuilt centuries later in this striped splendor. As we stood there, the church bells began to toll, frightening a flock of birds into the sky. They soared upward, startled, and, following them with my gaze, I saw again the unimaginably high peaks above us—a day‘s climb, at least. I caught my breath; was Rossi here somewhere, in this ancient place?

―Helen, standing next to me with a thin scarf tied over her hair, put her arm through mine, and I remembered the moment in Hagia Sophia, that evening in Istanbul that seemed history already but had actually been only days before, when she had grasped my hand so hard. The Ottomans had conquered this land long before they had taken Constantinople; by rights, we should have begun our trip here, not in Hagia Sophia. On the other hand, even before that, the doctrines of the Byzantines, their elegant arts and architecture, had reached out from Constantinople to flavor Bulgarian culture. Now Saint Sophia was a museum among mosques, while this dramatically secluded valley brimmed with Byzantine culture.

―Stoichev, beside us, was clearly enjoying our astonishment. Irina, in a broad-brimmed hat, held his arm tightly. Only Ranov stood alone, scowling at the beautiful scene, turning his head suspiciously when a group of black-cowled monks passed us on their way into the church. It had been a struggle for us to persuade him to pick up Stoichev and Irina in his car and bring them along; he wanted Stoichev to have the honor of showing us Rila, he said, but there was no reason Stoichev couldn‘t take the bus like the rest of the Bulgarian people. I‘d restrained myself from pointing out that he, Ranov, didn‘t seem to take the bus much himself. We had finally prevailed, although this didn‘t prevent Ranov from grumbling about the old professor most of the way from Sofia to Stoichev‘s house.