Valley of Thracians (11 page)

Chapter
23

“What happened to you?”

“This is nothing,” Simon told his son,
gently fingering the bruises on his cheek and the scrape across his forehead.
“I fell down, that’s all. These marks are superficial. I’m fine, really.”

Thinking back to the incident at Rila,
he almost laughed to himself. Somehow he had misunderstood the information he
had received from Dave Harris. His disappointment in not fulfilling his mission
was almost as great as the pain he felt from the fall at the monastery gate,
yet he couldn’t help but be amused at the absurdity of the miscommunication.

Dave’s tip had suggested that Scott was
leading a group of tourists to the monastery, but Simon had misheard the
statement. Dave was not referring to Scott, his grandson, but rather to a Scot,
a former resident of Scotland.

The man Simon had literally run into was
similar in build to Scott and also an English speaker, but he hailed from
Glasgow. Afterward, as Simon was being treated with antiseptic lotions and antibiotic
creams, and his pulse was being checked for good measure, he learned that this
Scot, whose name escaped him, lived in the town of Kyustendil, west of Sofia,
and was married to a Bulgarian woman. As part of his ongoing work in various
capacities with firms from his homeland, the Scot was serving as a liaison with
a Scottish film studio’s production crew. The visitors were scouting out
locations for an upcoming venture and had hired the man to take them on tours
of authentic Bulgarian villages. They had investigated several possible filming
sites, including the Rila Monastery.

“When are you coming home?” Daniel
asked, drawing Simon’s attention back to the laptop screen.

The smile faded from Simon’s face and
suddenly the pain of his face abrasions felt stronger than before. It was
indeed time to go home. “I’m packing already. I leave first thing in the
morning,” he said, giving Daniel details of the flights.

“Well, are you satisfied now, seeing
that your trip to Bulgaria was in vain?”

 
“Not everything was a waste of time,” Simon
said hesitantly, not willing to get into yet another argument with his son.
“When Scott was here, he had a deep affection for Bulgaria. He expressed that
in his emails to me. I think that by visiting this country, I can appreciate
what Scott did when he served in the Peace Corps and how happy he was in these
surroundings.”

“Whatever,” Daniel said, dismissing this
statement despondently. “Your trip, well, all I see is the unnecessary damage
you’ve caused.”

Simon kept his left wrist below camera
level. No need to let Daniel see the bandage there. He was extremely lucky that
his leg hadn’t been broken or sprained in the fall.

 
“I’ll be waiting for you to contact me the
minute you land in Chicago,” Daniel said. “No, you know what? I want you to
contact me from Heathrow, so I know you’ve made it that far.”

“I’m not sure I’ll have an Internet
connection in London,” Simon said.

“Well, just find one. Let me know when
you’re there.”

The connection was broken and Simon
realized that he may have hit the disconnect button by mistake. In any case, he
didn’t have further patience to talk to his son.

His suitcase lay on the bed, but he made
no move to fill it. For a few moments, he reflected on his trip. He had come to
Bulgaria with a purpose that had guided his movements and actions. Except for
recovering his grandson’s bar mitzvah chain, everything else had failed. Hiring
the private investigator had been a waste of money. His talks with the Peace
Corps hadn’t provided any real clues. Traveling around the country with the
unfulfilled expectations of seeing Scott had drained his energy. After all that
he had done, he had as many unanswered questions today as when he started—and
possibly even more. Scott’s disappearance remained as much a mystery now as it
had been before.

His sadness at failure was
compensated—to a small degree—by what he had learned about Bulgaria during his
trips to Varna, Vratsa, and Montana. He was amazed at the physical beauty of
the country, with its grainy Black Sea beaches, its stunning mountain ranges,
and its forested river valleys. He admired the secluded serenity that drew
pilgrims to the Rila Monastery. Bulgaria was struggling to emerge into the
modern world, but the tranquility and sanctity of places like Rila made him
feel, in many ways, that Bulgaria was a land where time stood still.

And finally, he had learned about
Bulgaria’s golden Thracian history and the wondrous artifacts that revealed the
country’s glorious past. This newfound knowledge he attributed totally to
Sophia, who had captivated him with her colorful explanations and cultural
anecdotes. The university lecturer had devoted quite a bit of her free time to
helping him search for Scott. She had voluntarily accompanied him on his
journeys; nothing was too much of a burden for her.

He had strong feelings for Sophia, and
they were feelings of more than just gratitude and appreciation for everything
she had done. He could recall the tingle that had run up his spine when she
lightly touched his hand. She had awakened a side of him held dormant since his
loss of Marcia, when he had also lost any desire to start anew with someone
else. Even so, he was too old to be attracted to a woman, and this was quite
ridiculous, actually. There was no chance that Sophia reciprocated his feelings
in any way. He was leaving the country in the morning; he would never see her
again. He dismissed these unexpected thoughts, disturbed that they kept racing
through his mind and confusing him.

How could he ever repay her? Simon
wondered. Sophia had volunteered to drive him to the airport, and he
contemplated how he would bid her farewell. Should he buy her a gift? What was
the appropriate Bulgarian custom for thanking someone as kind as her?

He was exhausted. When he got back to
Chicago, he would need to rest for a number of days to fully recuperate from
his adventures in Bulgaria.

He was about to shut his laptop when he
took one last look at his Skype contacts. An English professor he knew at
Oxford was online, as was a former colleague who now taught in Michigan. Daniel
had already gone offline. Simon’s tired eyes continued down the list until he
reached the bottom entry.

WildScott1984.
His
grandson, Scott.
The icon next to Scott’s name was lit up in green.
Scott was online.

Part
Two: Prisoner of the Balkans

Chapter
24

The snow falls silently, heavily,
constantly, and I am drawn again and again to the window, eyes opened wide.
Flakes of different sizes, each one unique in its temporal shape, drop in
irregular patterns from the heavens, accumulating in drifts that shift with the
capricious wind and compound into accumulations of icy moisture. The naked
branches of a nearby tree bend under the weight of the downfall before
releasing it in sudden bursts to the ground. A lonesome bird shakes the snow
off its wings before taking flight. It is cold outside, bitter cold, but I find
that the sheer whiteness of the winter scenery fills me with unexpected warmth.
I am protected here and pleased with what I see.

What attracts me to the snow? Maybe it’s
that snow is so foreign, so unlike anything I was familiar with while growing
up. My earliest winter experiences were visiting my grandparents in Chicago,
either for Thanksgiving weekend or on the rare occasions when I would fly there
on my own for Christmas vacation. I really enjoyed those trips, especially when
Grandpa would take me to a park not far from his house and send me soaring down
what seemed at the time to be the steepest of slopes, wearing my blue parka and
strapped to a tiny wooden sled. But there was no way to take the snow back home
to Los Angeles, and those happy days quickly melted into fond childhood
memories.

It is strange that I can recall those
long-ago scenes down to their most minute detail, lacking only the names to go
with the faces I picture, when everything else from my past is a mystery to me,
lost in the darkness that clouds my mind.

They say the Eskimos have plenty of
words for snow, but I heard once that it’s just an urban legend. On the other
hand, and I think this is true, there are some forty different words for snow
in Finnish. Some of them actually refer to other types of frozen precipitation,
like slush and frozen dew. But still, forty words! And whoever told me this,
perhaps back in college, also mentioned that in Finnish there is actually no
verb for “to snow”. How could that be? Apparently, the only way to report this
particular weather condition in Finland would be to say that “there is snow
outside” or alternatively, “it is raining snow.”

In Bulgarian, there is only one word for
snow, and it’s actually quite difficult to pronounce. Snow in Bulgarian is
сняг, a strange combination of Cyrillic letters that
spit off your tongue in a three-syllable sort of way: “snee-ya-k,” with the
accent on the “ya,” and the “k” at the end drawn out toward infinity.
Bulgarians say the word with a sneer, as if this regular winter phenomenon is
an unwanted gift from a distant relative up north in Russia. But there’s no way
to avoid it. Bulgarians must deal with their snowbound homeland for weeks on
end.

Snow! It is so perfect, so simple and
natural. The silence is comforting, the beauty of winter surreal. I clearly
have a lot of time on my hands, allowing me to stare out the window for hours
on end to watch the snowfall caress the forests and whiten the meadows. The
drifts pile up higher and higher, engulfing the slopes and creating a winter
wonderland. Even the small vegetable garden just outside my bedroom is no
longer in view, cloaked instead in its wintry coat.

I calmly watch the snowfall and wait for
Katya to make her way up the path and bring me food and supplies.

It is warm in the cabin. Outside, the
temperatures dip well below freezing, and it doesn’t matter if you do your
calculations in Fahrenheit or centigrade. Here in the Bulgarian mountains, the
thermometers drop below freezing at the beginning of winter and don’t bother to
climb higher for months. Even when the snow temporarily stops and the Balkan
sun emerges to prove it still commands the sky, it is very, very cold.

But inside the cabin, I am content.
Content and safe.
It is quiet and warm, and there is no one
who can harm me.
Cabin
is my word for this small building up in the
mountains, far from all signs of civilization. It’s a stone house, actually,
with a sloping red-tiled roof. The roaring fire in the fireplace keeps me warm,
and there is enough chopped firewood to last through the winter. I wear a
lightweight long-sleeved sweater and jeans, but at night, when I slip under the
thick down blankets, I strip down to my underwear and don’t feel the cold at
all.

There is one definite drawback to living
up here. The cabin has an outhouse, which is, in fact, just that—out of the
house. It is a mere hole in the ground, surrounded by a wooden shack, and
that’s where I have to go to relieve myself. Even when it’s not snowing, you
can literally freeze your butt off out there. Because of the bone-rattling
cold, I refrain from visiting the outhouse more than absolutely necessary.

I stare at the copse of trees at the
foot of the meadow, watching the snow cover them completely from top branch all
the way down to their roots. And then I see the small figure in the distance,
trudging up the path slowly,
one
snow-covered boot at
a time.

She is wearing an oversized brown parka,
making her appear much bigger than she actually is. With her bulk and slow
movements, she looks like a Bulgarian mountain bear. Her winter wear is not
streamlined to be adaptable to the ski slopes but rather is practical for
handling winter walking. She navigates her way around the drifts.

I see she is carrying two heavy
packages. I should run down the path and help her, but by the time I could get
bundled up, she’d already be at the front door. She is a saint, that woman,
caring for me as she does. I don’t know how she is capable of making her way up
this path every few days in the worst weather. She’s been doing it for some
time now, and she never complains. She apparently doesn’t care at all whether
it’s sunny or snowing.

It takes her some time to trek up the
path. Finally she climbs the wooden steps and swings open the door. A blast of
winter fills the room; snow and ice and the outdoor chill enter my sanctuary
uninvited. She slams the door shut behind her and begins the slow process of
unthawing. Layer by layer she removes her heavy clothing. Her parka, wool hat,
ski gloves, and ski boots all end up in wet puddles on the wooden floor. She
shakes the last flakes out of her curly, brownish hair and turns to me.

“
Kak si
?” she asks.

“
Dobre
,” I reply. We talk in
basic Bulgarian—so different from my native English—and sometimes a smile forms
on my lips as I carefully pronounce words in the Slavic tongue.

“There’s a lot of snow out there,” I
say, stating the obvious as I help her unpack the groceries.

“Have you kept yourself busy?” she asks.
She tenderly strokes my forehead, the touch of her fingers temporarily
distracting me.

“Yes,” I lie to her. I force a smile,
gazing at her pretty face. Then I look away.

I haven’t done anything all day. The
English novels gather dust on the shelves, and I don’t think I could
concentrate enough to read them anyway. Of course there’s no electricity or
Internet access up here in the mountains, so there’s not a lot to occupy my
time. Most of what I do, day after day, is stand at the window and watch the
snow fall from the sky.

And try to remember.

The mind works in mysterious ways, and
no one, not the most famous physician or the most learned scientist anywhere in
the world, really understands it. I certainly don’t, and I’ve had plenty of time
to sit and contemplate my condition. The problem is I don’t recall what
happened to me. In fact, I don’t remember much at all. Some days all that I can
picture in my mind are events from long ago, from my childhood, while my time
in Bulgaria is completely fogged out. At other times, I can’t recall what I had
for breakfast just a few hours before, or if I even ate breakfast at all.

That is why I’m so grateful to Katya.
She cares for me, brings me food and clean linens. She washes the dishes, which
I promise to handle myself but always leave piled up in the sink. She gathers
the garbage bags to take them back to the village for disposal. I am not an
invalid, I tell her over and over, but she just smiles and goes about her
errands as if her role as my housekeeper was not up for discussion.

I turn to Katya, to express my gratitude
for her help, but she is already gone. In fact, it is dark in the cabin. The
daylight disappears so quickly and without warning during the winter months. I
don’t remember Katya leaving, but this is yet another time my mind has played a
trick on me.

The
pain in the side
of my head is intensifying again, so I swallow two painkillers and lie
down, fully dressed, on my cot. I will get up soon and fix myself dinner, I
think, but my eyes grow heavy. I try to do some mind exercises, to force the
gears inside my head into action, to recall the past, but I’m too tired. I find
myself drifting into a sleep that’s as silent and undisturbed as the snow
falling outside the cabin.