“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.”
Chapter 61
“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. Stoichev had used his fame to promote superstition and antipatriotic ideas; everyone knew that he had refused to drop his very unscientific allegiance to the Orthodox church; he had a son studying in East Germany who was almost as bad as he was. But we had won the battle, Stoichev could ride with us, and Irina whispered gratefully during our stop for lunch at a mountain tavern that she would have tried to prevent her uncle from going at all if they’d had to take the bus; he couldn’t stand such a hard trip in this heat.