Valley of Thracians (21 page)

Chapter
42

“I am certain that Scott is alive.”

The statement shocked Katya. How could
Ralitsa know this? Scott had been kept in total isolation, hidden out of sight
in the secluded mountain retreat. No one had followed Katya on her trips to
deliver food and supplies, and not a soul had visited the cabin. She never
spoke about what she was doing, although the burden of caring for the injured
American was often too much to bear. She had preserved the secret for three
years; now it was time to open up and reveal all.

She had arrived at the family’s Montana
home late the previous evening, but with Boris encamped in the living room
watching a televised football match, it had been impossible to have a private
conversation with her sister-in-law. She had thanked them for their suggestion
to stay the night, hoping to find time to be alone with Ralitsa the next day.
Now, Rado was at school and there was no sign of Boris.

The two women sat at the kitchen table,
barely touching their morning coffee. The bus to Sofia wouldn’t arrive at the
Montana station for at least an hour. There was time to talk and to tell
Ralitsa everything. Except, Ralitsa seemed to know far more than Katya had
expected.

Emboldened by the confirmation she saw
on Katya’s face, Ralitsa continued. “I suspected this for some time, ever since
you came back from that trip to Varna long ago and reported that Scott was
missing without providing an acceptable explanation as to what had happened.
But only recently did I find evidence proving my suspicions.

“Do you remember when we went to the
village together?” Ralitsa asked. “We were visiting Mother, but we stopped at
the
mehana
first. Boris insisted on getting a beer. I guess he just
wanted to chat with Ivaylo. You and I had coffee while the two of them
discussed the latest football matches.”

“Yes?”

“When you stood up for some reason,
perhaps to get sugar from the bar counter, I noticed something shiny on the
next table, near the window. There was a thin object there, reflecting the
sunlight, so I got up to see. It was his chain! It was Scott’s silver chain,
the one he always wore.”

“How do you know it was his?”

“There were symbols on it, Jewish
symbols. Scott told me that the silver letters formed the Hebrew word for
life.”

Katya tried to think back and picture
Scott. Yes, he had always worn jewelry around his neck.

“Did you place it there?” Ralitsa asked.

“No, of course not!”

“If you didn’t put it on the table,
Scott must have left it. Say, what are those scars on your wrist?”

Katya instinctively drew back her left
hand, not bothering to answer Ralitsa’s concern. She tried to think back to the
last time she had seen Scott in the cabin. Had the chain been around his neck?
She had visited him so frequently over the past years that she hadn’t given a
second thought as to whether he was wearing a chain.

“Don’t you see? Scott must have been in
the
mehana
,” Ralitsa said, looking up from Katya’s wrist, her eyes wide
as she waited for confirmation of her assumption.

“He left the cabin and came to the
village,” Katya whispered, almost to herself. “For some reason he left the
chain on the table. Or he forgot it there. Ralitsa, can I tell you something,
something that I’ve never told anyone before?”

“Of course!
You are like a sister to me.”

“Where is Boris?” Katya asked, lowering
her head and noting that the door to the bedroom was closed.

“He’s sound asleep. That’s what drinking
does to him. You can talk to me, Katya.”

And then she told Ralitsa everything.
The protective wall she had built around herself safeguarding a deep secret
crumbled, leaving her vulnerable and desperate for her sister-in-law’s
understanding and support. The words spilled slowly at first, but her voice
grew more confident as the weight lifted from her shoulders. She spoke of the
beating Scott received in Varna, how she transported him across the country to
the west, and how aided his health in the isolated cabin. And she told Ralitsa
of the fears she had for Scott’s safety if he was discovered alive by those who
wished to hurt him, hinting at Boris’s involvement in this threat without
saying his name aloud. The only thing she refrained from mentioning was Scott’s
dependence on drugs, their origin and purpose.

“You’ve been with Scott all this time!”
Ralitsa said, but she wasn’t angry at Katya. “I’m so relieved he’s alive. You
don’t know how much it devastated me when he disappeared. When he went missing,
it was like losing a son. I can’t believe it. Scott is really, truly alive!”

Tears streamed down Ralitsa’s thin
cheeks, tears formed by three years of dealing with the uncertainty and pain of
losing a family member reported missing and assumed to be dead. Katya realized
she would never fully comprehend how her sister-in-law had managed to cope with
the loss while living under the same roof as Boris, for whom Scott’s absence
was
nothing
more than a serious business setback. Her
brother had grieved his lost opportunity to cash in on the sale of the artifact
Scott was meant to deliver to Varna. The discovery that Scott was still alive
was welcomed with immense relief and joy by Ralitsa while for Boris it would
awaken
an urgency
for payback and revenge.

Boris had always been prone to getting
into shady business deals, and this was something Hristo had warned her about
long before. “He’s up to no good,” Hristo told Katya, when shortly after their
marriage he was approached by her brother with an offer to join him in a
marketing venture. “I don’t know who he’s dealing with, but I bet they aren’t
the most respectable citizens,” Hristo said, indicating his dislike for Vlady,
whom he had met through Boris.

Despite turning down Boris’s proposal,
Hristo became close buddies with him. The two of them would frequently go to
Ivaylo’s pub for drinks while Katya visited her mother. Hristo would return
from these sessions reeking of alcohol and smoke, regaling her with tales of
how Boris and Vlady had concocted infallible get-rich schemes and tried
unsuccessfully to convince him to partner with them. Yet when he regained his
sobriety, Hristo again made fun of Boris’s initiatives and insisted that
Katya’s brother was nothing more than a provincial bumpkin.

Over time, Hristo and Boris began to
share a wintertime activity. Leaving Katya alone in their cold city flat on
weekends, Hristo would drive to the village to pick up Boris, who was already
partially inebriated and anxious to get going. They would speed south on back
roads covered with ice and marked by potholes nearly the size of their car.
Bypassing Sofia, they continued on their journey until they reached the turnoff
into the mountains. The Lada struggled to make the ascent, but eventually they
reached their destination, a dilapidated winter resort in the town of Bansko.
They rented a one-bedroom flat by the season and never considered that they would
need to heat the place. After all, the moment Boris’s head cleared, they were
ready to hit the slopes.

Skis and equipment were readily
available for rent at the lift station. Boris never dressed warmly enough, but
Hristo came equipped with the appropriate apparel, from an insulated
body-fitting jacket and waterproof, breathable pants, to durable ski gloves.
While Boris brought along his regular sunglasses, Hristo sported a pair of
reflective goggles that kept the mountain fog off his lenses and the chill out
of his face. Boris was ready to rent the cheapest skis, but Hristo insisted on
procuring only the very best.

“When you ski, ski like a pro,” he would
say to Boris as he picked out a pair from the rack that were guaranteed to take
the turns with security and grace, no matter the speed.

“What are you, some kind of Olympic
perfectionist?” Boris asked him.

“Maybe I am,” Hristo replied, checking
the flexibility of the tapered ski poles he had just selected.

Hristo certainly took to the sport like
a
pro,
Boris realized the first time they came down
the mountain together. Leaving Boris far behind in his wake, Hristo mastered
the wintery terrain as easily as if he had been born on the slopes. He flew
downhill with unbridled energy and a passion for speed and form. No trail was
too difficult for him, no change in weather conditions could serve as a
deterrent. His body and his skis became one as he slalomed past other skiers as
if he were racing for an Olympic medal. At the bottom, when Boris arrived
panting and eager for a beer to calm his nerves, Hristo was ready to take the
lift up the mountain again for another run.

Katya realized that she had become a
winter widow. During the long, cold months when the Bulgarian mountains were
cloaked under their snowy blanket, Hristo was out enjoying his sport. He
invited her to join him for weekends in Bansko, and once, she waited nervously
for hours in the unheated rented flat. In the end, however, she let him enjoy
his winter hobby on his own. She stayed home, concentrated on her chemistry
studies, and listened anxiously for the sound of their old car pulling in late
on Sunday nights.

Now confined to his wheelchair, Boris
was long past skiing, and Hristo had been gone for years. The past conjured
many powerful memories and was filled with the pain of heartbreak and disaster.
Now, things were swiftly changing, speeding out of control. Katya was no longer
pulling the strings; Scott was no longer where she wanted him. Her anxiety at
his being free, on his own, worried her to a great degree, although she
realized that this development was welcomed by her sister-in-law, who naturally
expected Katya to share in her excitement.

Aware that the American man she had
loved like a son was actually alive, Ralitsa’s face regained its healthy glow.
Her tears were an outpouring of relief and joy. For Ralitsa, the fact that
Scott was alive more than compensated for her agony of dealing with his
extended absence.

Katya wiped the moisture from her
sister-in-law’s face but then thought of something. “Where’s the chain now?”
she asked.

“I don’t have it,” Ralitsa replied.

“Where is it? Does Boris have it?”

“No, of course not!
I didn’t mention it to him. I gave it to Scott’s grandfather.”

“What?”

“Scott’s grandfather and a woman, a
university lecturer, came here to ask about Scott. That was before I found his
chain at the
mehana.
They were searching for Scott, even after all this
time. When they came to the house, I told them how much we enjoyed hosting
Scott and how he diligently studied Bulgarian during the time he stayed with
us. Boris was quite mean to them, I recall. In any case, I don’t think our talk
provided them with any information that they didn’t already know.

“But afterwards, when I discovered the
chain, I wanted to give Scott’s grandfather this vital sign indicating that his
grandson was still alive, to allow him to share in this exciting news. I wanted
to grant him renewed hope that he would soon find Scott and that his coming to
Bulgaria was not in vain.”

Ralitsa told her sister-in-law how she
had traveled to Sofia and left a message for Scott’s grandfather at the hotel
where he was staying.

“The message I dictated to the hotel
switchboard was: ‘Meet me at the Sofia synagogue tomorrow morning for important
info regarding your grandson.’ I chose the synagogue because I knew that Scott
was Jewish, and the synagogue would have deep meaning for his grandfather as
well. I wanted to hand over the chain in person, but at the last moment, I
couldn’t face him. I didn’t know what to say, nor could I offer any explanation
as to how I happened to have found the chain. I just wanted to encourage him to
continue his search for Scott.

“Scott is still alive, and that’s the
important thing,” Ralitsa concluded. “We’ve got to find him.”

“Yes, we’ve got to find him.”

In the excitement of their conversation,
neither of them had noticed Boris, sitting in his wheelchair in the bedroom
doorway. “That’s quite a story I’ve just heard from you two conspiring hens,”
he said, looking at his wife and sister in turn. “Two stories, actually. I
don’t know which of you is guiltier: Katya, for helping Scott all this time
behind my back, or Ralitsa, for discovering that he’s still alive and not
mentioning this to me. As you’ve said, he’s alive, and that’s the important
thing.”

They looked at Boris, wondering if his
words were masking a volcano of anger that would burst forth at any second.
Boris had a horrific temper, and now he was facing two women, both of whom had
betrayed him. Who would he lash out at first? What actions would he
take,
physical or verbal, to show his displeasure at being
tricked by those who loved him most? They waited, but the expected outburst
never came.

“We must make plans,” Boris said,
wheeling himself into the room. “We must find Scott right away.”

Katya realized immediately what her
brother was up to. Boris had no time now to deal with his rage toward her and
Ralitsa. His bitter disappointment in their actions would provide its
retribution later, at his time and choosing. And, despite her initial fears,
Boris wasn’t planning to search for Scott in order to kill him in response to
the failed delivery mission. No, Boris had something else in mind, something
far more urgent.