Stork Mountain (5 page)

Earlier that day, on our way back from the sick girl's house, like a man who wanted to fake a careless disposition, Grandpa had started whistling a tune. The tune had sat on my tongue all day, familiar yet out of reach. But now, to my surprise, I pursed my lips and whistled, a song Grandpa had sung for me goodnight. He closed his eyes. The storm had passed. Far across the border, in Turkey, its thunder still rumbled.

The words to the song too returned. But I ignored them.

 

SEVEN

I WAS ON MY THIRD KNOCK AT THE GATES
when, in the window overlooking the road, a curtain stirred just enough for Elif's face to peek through. Her expression didn't change when she saw me. The curtain fell and for a long time I shivered in the morning chill. Then the window opened, but the curtain remained drawn.

“What do you want?” she said. And after a while, “I know you're there. I can hear you breathing.”

I focused all my faculties. I'd come to return the towels. The towels in which she'd wrapped the bread and cheese. And would she let me, allow me to use their phone?

“Look up the street,” she said. “Is there a window open?”

There was.

“And a hag hanging out the frame. Staring at you?”

She was.

“Well then, we might as well.” Her white hand parted the curtain and slammed the window shut. A minute later she was shooing me in through the gates.

“Good morning, Aunt Nadiré,” she called to the woman up the street. “Don't tumble over and break your neck now!” And then to me, “The phone's in the living room. When you're done come back outside. I'll be here, waiting.”

Sand dunes as wide as oceans and camels in long, snaking caravans. A flock of storks against a blazing sun and an oasis where men in white gowns and turbans had stopped to quench their thirst. A placid lake. A calm blue sky. I'd entered not a living room, but an entire world of magic.

Besides the murals, the room was plain. Red rugs covering the floor from wall to wall and cushions around a low rectangular table. A large chest against one wall and on the chest the phone. No TV set, no books other than a single leather-bound volume on the table.

I stuck my finger in the rotary and dialed the number on my calling card. Six times before I connected.
Enter your twelve-digit PIN
, the automated operator said. I turned the rotary, but by the fourth revolution the operator had asked for the PIN again. I watched the camels make their way through the desert, immense riches locked in the chests on their backs. I watched the men about to drink from the lake and wondered if it was in their power to turn tone into pulse so I could call my parents and tell them I had arrived.

I hung up and would have stepped outside if not for some sudden burst of curiosity. The sick girl's room was empty and air blew through the open window in cool, damp gusts. The bed was neatly made. The burned spot on the floor had been covered entirely with rugs, but there was still soot on the ceiling above it. I lifted the rug and touched the spot. I sniffed the char on my fingers.

“My sister starts fires here,” Elif said from the threshold.

I leapt up, stuttered an apology.

“Each spring, three years in a row. She dances barefoot in the coals and barks like an owl. Vah. Vah. Vah.” She pulled out a cigarette and lit it. “It's really sad the way her feet blister. The way my father treats her, like she's a leper. The way he treats me, like I'm his sheep. Would you believe he pays that hag across the street to spy on me day in, day out? A jar of honey every month.”

She forced a blast of smoke through her nostrils, one stream thicker than the other. “You need to loosen up,
amerikanche
,” she said. “I need to loosen up.” She watched me for a moment as if she was sizing up my weight and finding it unsatisfactory, much too low. “I know this place outside the village where back in the day the Christians danced. Where the storks nest. Where the weed hits you at least twice as hard. Don't look so scared,” she said, and seized my hand.

 

EIGHT

EVERY YEAR
, for thirteen hundred years, the
nestinari
dance. Come spring, come May, come the feast of Saint Constantine, the feast of Saint Elena. They build tall fires; three cartloads of wood are torched and burned to embers. And then, barefooted, they take the saint's invisible and holy hand and plunge into the living coals. They spin, they wave their sacred icons in the air, they rush first in, then out. They feel no pain because the saint protects them. A week, two weeks, a month before the dance the saint descends upon the ones he's chosen. The women swoon, their eyes like popping chickpeas under their flaming lids. The men blaze up in holy fever. Their temples split; their lips bring fire to everything they touch. And yet, despite the fever, a deep freeze chills them to the bone. Feet come alive, take quick, rushed steps. The muscles spasm, the bodies shake and seek the flame. An owlish cry escapes the throat. Vah. Vah. Vah. And only dancing in coals can bring relief. But if the chosen push away the hand that leads them, if they refuse both dance and saint, their sickness worsens, their blood transfigures into liquid fire, which then incinerates their bones, their hearts and souls. Come spring, come May, come the feast of Saint Constantine, of Saint Elena, the
nestinari
dance. And it has been like this for thirteen hundred years, here in the Strandja Mountains, and nowhere else.

Such was the yarn Elif was spinning. We walked the bushy bank, upstream and out of Klisura. The river rushed muddy from last night's rain and so loud I struggled to hear all that she said. The mist through which I'd left Grandpa's house that morning had rolled away and a warm sun was climbing the sky. The bushes here were in bloom. White and yellow flowers danced before my eyes as Elif pushed twigs and branches out of her way with fury.

“It started three years ago,” she said. The branch she released whipped me across the chest and I sneezed from the pollen. “My sister was coming out of the mosque when she first fainted. A perfectly insolent little creature!”

For two days Aysha thrashed in bed. Her feet twitched, her teeth chattered. A doctor came from town. “I measure no fever,” he said. “She should be fine.” And yet she wasn't. “Keep her hydrated,” the doctor ordered. Who knew, perhaps it was the flu? After all, six other girls were sick in the village.

But the old women knew. They'd found the cause long before the doctor's visit. Black magic? The evil eye? What monster could have the heart to hurt the seven little darlings? “Don't be afraid, my dears,” a woman from the Christian hamlet said. It was Saint Constantine who'd claimed the girls.

The pieces of the puzzle fell into place. A week before, Aysha and her girlfriends had gone to the river to watch the baby storks. They played in the mud, splashed in the shallow pools, then snuck into the abandoned
nestinari
shack. This was a hut down by the river where once upon a time the fire dancers kept their icons and their holy drum.

A week went by. And then two of the girls lay down with fever.

“There will be more,” the hag from the Christian hamlet said. And she was right. Before long, Aysha and the remaining girls were also sick. The hag came to Elif's house. Their father was furious at first, but he was also worried and so he let her in. They sat her down under the trellised vine and brought before her the seven sickly girls. The hag fished out a clove of garlic from her apron and popped it in her mouth—she ate garlic, Elif told me, like it was bonbons. Then she ordered the fathers to fill up a trough with water and the seven girls to stand around the trough. Their feet took tiny, frenzied steps. Their eyes rolled white, their teeth chattered. The hag waited for the water to settle and for a long time studied the faces reflected on the surface. That's how bent she was, Elif said, unable to stand up and look you in the eye. But there was more to it, the women whispered. Only in water could the hag see the things she sought to see. “Don't be afraid, my dears,” she said at last. “Rejoice!” It was Saint Kosta who held the girls like sugar cubes under his holy tongue. His feast was coming near. “Build a fire, spread the coals. Give the girls icons and let them carry them across.” Only then would the saint be calmed. Only then would the fever go away. “Lucky, lucky doves,” the hag said. “What I would give to have him claim me one last time.” And tears rolled down her cheeks.

Bitter indignation choked the parents. “Our daughters kissing Christian icons and worshipping a Christian saint? For shame before Allah!” Each father seized his daughter's hand and dragged his sickly girl back home. Windows were sealed and doors were bolted. “I'm the imam,” their father told Aysha, “and you are making a mockery of me. A mockery of God.” And then he smacked the little girl, bloodied her lip.

For seven days and nights Aysha stayed imprisoned in her room. Twice a day Elif was allowed to bring her meals, to empty out her chamber pot. How she wished she could forget that stench. Shit and piss, and her little sister, shaking on the floor and chewing the tresses of her hair. No, she would not forgive this man. As long as she breathed, she'd curse her father's soul.

The feast of Saint Constantine arrived, and with the feast, just as the hag had told them, Aysha began to howl. She jumped behind the bolted door all night. Then in the morning she was calm, slept through the day, and woke in peace. Elif and her mother washed her gently, combed her hair, and when she asked them why all this kindness, they burst into tears.

Last year the sickness once again returned. Three weeks before the feast Aysha built a fire in her room. The hag had warned them many times that such a thing might happen. Aysha burned a handful of sticks down to embers, and it was because of her shrieking that Elif found her, jumping on the glowing coals. Who knew how badly she would have hurt her feet. And what if the house had caught on fire?

Again their father locked up the little girl. But a few days later Aysha was once more dancing in the fire. At first, Elif couldn't see how her sister had snuck out, where she had found the sticks and matches. Then she understood. Their mother had helped her. Their mother too was burning with the Christian flame.

And this year, Elif told me, the fever had turned to madness. “You saw how Father had roped Aysha down. You saw my mother's blackened eye. What else is there to see?”

 

NINE

WE HAD WALKED
as far out of Klisura as the bank allowed us. From here on, the bushes were too thick. Blooming branches crisscrossed over the river to form a tunnel through which we had to pass. Sitting down on the grass, Elif removed her headscarf and stuffed it in her pocket. She tousled her short hair, then slipped her sneakers off and began to roll up the legs of her jeans.

“Hey,
amerikanche
”—she had taken to calling me “little American”—“you can't imagine the fight I had to fight with my father so he would let me walk around in jeans. The things he'd do to you, to both of us, if he found us together here, alone. If he knew you could see my toes and feet. You like them?”

I think she laughed. Sheep bells were ringing up the hill or maybe closer. I pictured a shepherd, resting on his crook, watching us and twisting his mustache. The shepherd would speak to Elif's father, who then would come for me. I sneezed.

“I've seen goats faint when they are scared,” she said, “but never a man sneezing when something spooks him,” and, laughing, she splashed upstream. Shoes in hand and trousers rolled up, I followed. The water sliced me, knee-deep and razor-cold. Elif was crying in pain or pleasure. I couldn't tell. We walked the tunnel, twisting, turning, brushing away the blossoming branches overhead. My nose ran, my eyes smarted, and every other step I sneezed.

At ten sneezes, Elif began to count them. At twenty she was laughing so hard, she had to stop and catch her breath. She told me to splash my eyes with water, which helped a bit. At thirty sneezes, the tunnel had ended and we were out in the open.

What spread before us was an island, a perfectly flat meadow, as wide as a baseball field, which split the river into two turbulent streams. One stream came from Turkey. The other was Bulgarian. They merged here and together they flowed eastward to the Black Sea.

Where the two streams met, the water was black with mud. It churned dry leaves and twigs, like a giant centrifuge, but because the basin was so wide, the water never reached above our knees.

And in the meadow I saw a tree. A giant, whose trunk a dozen men would not encircle hand in hand. Each of its lower branches could be a tree itself. It reached so high I strained to see its top. I felt at once protected and exposed, completely at its mercy. The tree was dead. But all the same, it bloomed in massive charcoal blossoms that weighed its branches down, from top to bottom.

“Stork nests,” said Elif beside me. Each year, on their way from Africa to Europe and then back, the storks passed over the Strandja Mountains. The Via Pontica, she said. Once, as a little girl, she'd tried to count the nests on the tree. At fifty, she'd lost track. But there were more. Not just in its branches, but in the oaks along the banks as well.

The giant was a walnut tree. As old as Klisura and maybe older. Under its branches once upon a time the
nestinari
danced. Look, can you see the soot on its bark? And there by its trunk, in the mist, can you see it? A tiny hut, its roof covered with stones from the river? The shack of the
nestinari
.

“I was inside it once. Found nothing. Except a twisted saint who tortures little girls.” She laughed. We sat on the ground and rubbed our feet to warm them. Mist still floated here in the meadow and the sweet stench of rotting grass filled my nostrils. At least I wasn't sneezing.

“You're shivering,” she said with a laugh. I nodded. I had told Grandpa the same last night and now I wondered if he was still in my bed, if he was feeling better. I wondered what he had felt when inevitably, many years back, he'd first seen the giant tree. Who had stood by his side then, the way Elif now stood by me?