Stork Mountain (14 page)

“Death,” said Elif. I tried to see if she was joking, but her face betrayed only pleasure—from being here, with me and with Orhan, from saying the things she said and watching me absorb them. “A month or so after the digs began, the minister died in suspicious circumstances. A number of key officials involved in the excavations took their lives. And those who didn't die, the Committee for State Security locked away, for good.”

“After this the hole was sealed,” Orhan said. “My uncle tells me they poured concrete in it for fifteen hours straight. And that was that. Goodnight, I say, sweet dreams. Now let's go back, before they've caught me off my post.”

But when he tried to stand, Elif pulled him down by the lapel.

“A coward,” she said. “That's what you've always been. Learn from the American. He's not afraid.”

“Oh yes, I am,” I said. But not because of her gibberish. And if she had caught the flash in Orhan's eyes, she too would have grown fearful. Instead, she gently swept her palm across the rocky ground.

“I wonder what she looked like, this goddess of cats. I bet she drove men crazy with just the flitter of her lashes, the flick of her tail. Imagine, to be buried with such high honors. And then the slaves who dug your grave—all put to the sword. I bet it was the goddess who drove the Thracian women mad. I bet they came to dance here not in honor of drunk Dionysus, but in hers.”

Right there, could I see the trough the Thracians had dug in the rock? That's where they mixed their sacred wine, and then they drank it, the naked, mad priestesses of the demented god. And tore to pieces the sacrificial goats. “And even men,” Elif said, and her eyes glistened. If the men were stupid enough to spy on their dances. “I bet you two are dumb enough,” she said, and laughed. “I bet you two would have been first in shreds.”

I guess by now she was pretty drunk. But so was I. Or else I would have told her to stop, if not for my sake, then for Orhan's.

“My head's started to hurt,” he said abruptly. “American, is your head hurting?” But he didn't wait for my answer. “I hate this place. Never once have I seen a snake in the stones, a bird in the bush, a beetle in the dust. All living things hate it and stay away.”

“Well, I love it,” Elif said. “And you, like your whole family, are a coward.”

“Let's go,” I said, and tried to stand up only to plop down on my ass again.

“We're going nowhere,” she said. “You don't have to act so that the coward may seem less like a coward. That's what you are, Orhan. A mouse-heart, like your father.”

At this, he slapped her, a backhand slap that sent her tumbling to the side. Her lip glistened in the light of the fire and hungrily she licked it. “Big man you are, taking a girl like she was a sheep for bribes. I bet that rifle of yours, I bet you don't even know how to shoot it properly.”

Oh yeah? he said, and grabbed the Kalashnikov. Oh yeah, she said, and waited for him to spring up to his feet. I watched them, hypnotized—him on one side of the fire, her on the other, their faces bloody with flowing flame. “American,” she called, “wake up! Where is the bottle of
rakia
?”

I pointed, not quite sure my finger was showing her the right direction. But all the same she found the bottle on the ground, and when she bent down to take it, she stumbled and fell. She dusted off her clothes, then picked up the bottle, in which some drink still remained.

“I'll count ten paces,” she said. “One, two, ten. Then you shoot the bottle off my head. The real man you are. The brave.”

You think I won't? he said. I think you can't, she told him, and so he said, balance the bottle on your head and I will shoot it off, clean as a snowdrop. The safety of the rifle clicked, and while she was struggling to balance the bottle on her head, swaying this way and that, a deathly chill spread through my back and held me in its fist.

“The bottle is crooked,” she cried.

“Or are you afraid?”

Her laughter set my ears to buzzing. “Okay,” she yelped. “I'll hold the bottle up. Like this. You shoot it off my hand.”

She held the
rakia
high, took tiny steps to counter her swaying; the soles of her shoes crunched against the sand and rock, the drink sloshed at the bottom of the bottle. Orhan jabbed the Kalashnikov against his shoulder and fixed his gaze through the sight.

“I bet you—” Elif began but didn't finish. The rifle had expelled a single deafening bang that smashed the ruins, bounced back at us, then rolled off the cliffs and into the valley in waves of unfolding echo. The bottle was no longer in Elif's hand. Her hand, however, was luckily still there. Spilled
rakia
glistened on her sweaty face and on the short locks of hair.

I called her, but she didn't hear.

Anyone could be brave, she said, rubbing her eyes, when he was on the safe side of the barrel. Let's see how he braved the death side. Oh, was that right? Orhan called. They'd come face-to-face now, and he shoved the Kalashnikov in her hands.

“I hold my canteen up and you shoot it. Five paces!”

“Ten,” she said.

“Make it fifteen!” He unlatched the canteen from his belt and held it up, like a conqueror toasting a victory. “American,” he barked, “she's too drunk to count. Count fifteen paces for her.”

“American, don't move!” she ordered. “I can. Alone.”

One, two, three. He held the canteen up while fifteen paces away through the night she stabbed the rifle against her shoulder. She swayed this way and that and I'm certain she would have shot him dead, if it weren't for me stifling her in my embrace.

There was no
Let me go! Get off of me!
Instead, she closed her eyes serenely and pressed her cheek against my shoulder. A light burning breath fled her lips and we swayed together in the dark silence before her laugh. Next I looked, Orhan had snatched the Kalashnikov and locked the safety.

He too was laughing. “American, I owe you one.” From this day on, he said, he was forever bound to me. Whatever I asked of him, no matter how daring, he'd do it.

I swung to square him in the jaw, to drop him to the ground, to knock him out. Instead, I buried my nose in the dirt and they were laughing. The kind of hate I felt for him, for her, was new, unfelt before. And for a fleeting moment, I think I liked it.

“Hey now,” Elif was saying. “It's all a joke. We do this every time.”

“For shame we do,” Orhan agreed, and took her in his arms. From my vantage point in the dirt, I watched her snuggle against his chest, the way she'd done with me, and couldn't bear it. Back by the fire I curled up into a ball and prayed the heat of the flame would burn away my hate. I couldn't reason this in so many words, but I knew it with my teeth and nails, and in my heels—for weeks my pining over Elif had inched me closer to an awful point of no return. But only tonight, among the sacrificial altars, the troughs for doctored wine, the walls of strongholds that were, for shame, no more, had I crossed this point and plunged myself, irrevocably, toward the bottom of the dried-up well.

When next I opened my eyes the fire had died and a thin red line bloodied the horizon. The rattle of the Kalashnikov shattered the air: Orhan—no, Elif—was shooting it into the dawn. Then in the valley below us, a louder rattle boomed.
American, get up and try it!

I squeezed the trigger and the rifle wriggled, a biting snake in my arms.
Rat-tat-tat.
The echo answered,
tat-tat-tat
, a thousand clacking bills. We stood atop a ruined stronghold, and down below us in the valley a thousand white storks clacked their bills. A thousand wind turbines spun their propellers, in neat and endless rows.

“The storks speak with the gun,” Elif whispered in my ear, “as if the gun were one of them. Do it again,” she said. “Speak with the storks.”

Eastward, the sun was rising from the Black Sea. I pulled the trigger and spoke with the storks.

 

ELEVEN

THE GODDESS LADA
had reached as far north as she could and now her father, the god Perun, was reeling back her hair from his mountain. She knew his pull could not be stopped, but still she fought him. That day, while he was resting, she planted her heels deep into the soil to bid farewell the land she was departing. Darkness awaited inside her father's cave, uneasy slumber at his electric feet. Farewell, my brothers, she told the stones of many sizes. Farewell, sweet, fragrant sisters. Thick, frosty moss tangled the stones; the flowers withered. And just when Lada was about to go, she saw through her tears a cloud on the horizon, a pall of black smoke creeping near, flashes of lightning boiling in its bowels. This was, she understood, a multitude of riders the like of which no Slavic god had seen before. And at their front, she saw a man whose head was shaven cleanly, a man who pointed a shiny saber as though at her. His madness took hold of Lada's heart, like a worm in an apple. She tried to run and meet him, but how could she escape the shackles that weighed her down? She tugged, she chewed on the tresses, yet nothing helped. So then she wept in greater anguish still.

But suddenly the riders halted. The man who led them brought his horse her way. Thick rags of soot were falling from the sky now that the hooves no longer raised up dust and ash from pillage fires. In ashen rain the young man watched her, without a word.

“Are you a god?” she asked, and so he told her: at first he'd been a solitary rider, but then his lust to gallop on and on and pillage had sucked into its vortex a multitude of restless tribes. He was their leader now. Attila. But god? There was a single god—the great, vast sky whose life force was coursing through his veins.

She laughed. “When mortal men look me in the face they see a river.”

“I see a girl,” he said.

And so she begged him. “Take me with you. I want to ride free by your side.”

“So ride then.” He turned to leave, but didn't move. She had expected this, of course.

That night the Huns camped by the river, their horde extending as far back as the human eye could stretch. The sky was merciful and opened up. Rain pounded down the cloud of ashes and blackened Lada's hair. She knew her father would soon wake up and start his reeling.

“Tell me,” she asked Attila, who, tangled in her tresses, was sharpening his saber on a deer hoof. “Where have you been? What have you seen?”

He was afraid to look her in the eyes. He'd never felt like this before. He said, “For ten thousand days I saw nothing but steppe and sky. Then I saw a city of silver. I thought of stopping there to drink its water, to eat whatever food its king would give. I thought of lying under the shade of silver trees. Instead, I slew the king, and burned the city, and turned it into a silver lake. I rode ten thousand days through steppe and sky and came upon a golden tower. Inside the tower, like storks in a cage, a thousand women slept—a woman of every human tribe. I thought of climbing up the tower to look at all the world. I thought of bedding the women so they might bear me one thousand sons. A son from every human tribe. Instead, I brought the tower to its ruin. The women we trampled with our hooves. Our hooves are golden now.

“Three hundred years without repose,” he said. “I cannot stop. I must ride on.”

“Take me with you,” she begged again. And then she told him of her hair and of her father, the great, almighty god.

“There is one god,” he said, jumping to his feet as if to prove it, and brought his saber down. In vain, he hacked at Lada's hair. In vain, he tried to slash it.

“You fool,” she said. “I am a god as well.”

“There is one god,” he said a final time, and sprinted to his horse.

At this point in the story, Grandpa usually paused and leaned closer, his whisper hoarse from all the talking, his breath scathing my ear. “An ancient scribe once wrote of how the Huns made the Yantra River disappear.
So horrific was the multitude of Huns who crossed the Yantra River
, the scribe wrote on his parchment,
that by the eleventh day of their crossing, their hooves had severed the river in two. By the twentieth day the Yantra was flowing backward, and by the twenty-fourth, it had disappeared whence it had come.

“No ancient scribe can tell you why all this happened,” Grandpa would whisper, “but I can. Imagine, the golden hooves pounding the riverbed! A hundred horses, then a thousand. A hundred thousand. By the fifth day Lada's hair was starting to split, tress by tress. By the eleventh the Huns had severed it completely.”

Perun awakened. He reeled, and gathered Lada's hair back to his mountain, the way one gathers a fishing seine. What horror the old fool felt to see no Lada where the tresses ended.

Lada was free. Short-haired, she flew behind Attila and on her wings flew Spring and Beauty. Where the Huns passed, beautiful death followed. And from the funeral pyres, bright peonies bloomed.

 

PART

THREE

 

ONE

AND AFTER THIS IT RAINED
, melodramatically, for many months. Or at least it seemed so from underneath the stifling Rhodopa blanket, which scratched my cheeks each time I tossed and turned. Quite frankly, I felt ashamed. Quite frankly, I couldn't help it. Beyond the window glass rippled with age, over the hills in the distance, black waves were clashing with blacker. Greek clouds tore into Turkish and battled with our own. Back in the day, Grandpa told me, on the eve of the first Balkan War, even the clouds here had been forced to pledge allegiance to a single nation. “It's raining Turkish rain today,” he'd say, then sit at the foot of my bed and force me to drink a cup of
mursal
tea. “Only Turkish rain touches this softly. And Turkish girls.” He'd laugh in an attempt to cheer me, but I would stare into the steam.

“Get up, my boy,” he'd cry an hour later, and throw the window open. “Two days is plenty to toss about in bed. Come help me tie the tomatoes. The wind's knocked over some of their poles.” Instead, I buried myself in the blanket and waited to hear his fading steps.