Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

“I cleared my throat. There was no help for it; we were going to have to ask our questions in front of Ranov. I would have to try to make them sound purely scholarly. ‘Would you ask Brother Ivan for us if he knows anything about pilgrims coming here from Wallachia?’

“Ranov put this question to the monk, and at the wordWallachia, Brother Ivan’s face brightened. ‘He says the monastery had an important connection with Wallachia beginning at the end of the fifteenth century.’

“My heart began to pound, although I tried to sit quietly. ‘Yes? What was that?’

“They conversed a little further, Brother Ivan waving a long hand toward the door. Ranov nodded. ‘He says that around that time the princes of Wallachia and Moldova began to give much support to this monastery. There are manuscripts in the library here that describe their support.’

“‘Does he know why they did this?’ Helen asked quietly.

“Ranov questioned the monk. ‘No,’ he said. ‘He only knows these manuscripts show their support.’

“‘Ask him,’ I said, ‘if he knows of any groups of pilgrims coming here from Wallachia around that time.’

“Brother Ivan actually smiled. ‘Yes,’ Ranov reported. ‘There were many. This was an important stop on the pilgrimage routes from Wallachia. Many pilgrims went on from here to Athos or to Constantinople.’

“I could have ground my teeth. ‘But a particular group of pilgrims from Wallachia, carrying a-some kind of relic, or searching for some relic-does he know any such story?’

“Ranov seemed to be holding back a triumphant smile. ‘No,’ he said. ‘He has not seen any account of such pilgrims. There were many pilgrims during that century.Bachkovski manastir was very important then. The patriarch of Bulgaria was exiled here from his office in Veliko Trnovo, the old capital, when the Ottomans captured the country. He died here in 1404 and was buried here. The oldest part of the monastery, and the only part that is original, is the ossuary.’

“Helen spoke up again. ‘Could you ask him, please, if he has a monk among the brothers here who used to be named Pondev?’

“Ranov relayed the question, and Brother Ivan looked puzzled, then wary. ‘He says that must be old Brother Angel. He used to be named Vasil Pondev, and he was an historian. But he is not-right in the head-anymore. You will not learn anything from speaking with him. The abbot is our great scholar now, and it is a shame that he is away while you are here.’

“‘We’d still like to talk with Brother Angel,’ I told Ranov. And so it was arranged, although with much frowning on the part of the librarian, who led us back out into the glowing sunlight of the courtyard and through a second arched entryway. This brought us into another courtyard, which had a very old building in the center. This second courtyard was not as well-tended as the first, and the buildings and paving stones had a crumbling, derelict look. There were weeds underfoot, and I noted a tree growing from the corner of the roof; in time, it would be large enough to destroy that end of the structure, if they let it stay. I could easily imagine that repairing this house of God was not the Bulgarian government’s highest priority. They had Rila as their showcase, with its ‘pure’ Bulgarian history and its connections to rebellion against the Ottomans. This ancient place, beautiful as it was, had taken root under the Byzantines, invaders and occupiers like the later Ottomans, and it had been Armenian, Georgian, Greek-hadn’t we just heard that it had also been independent under the Ottomans, unlike the other Bulgarian monasteries? No wonder the government let trees grow out of its roofs.

“The librarian took us into a corner room. ‘The infirmary,’ Ranov explained. This cooperative version of Ranov was making me more nervous by the hour. The librarian opened a rickety wooden door, and inside we saw a scene of such pathos that I don’t really like to remember it. Two old monks were housed there. The room was furnished only with their cots, a single wooden chair, and an iron stove; even with that stove the place must have been bitterly cold during the mountain winters. The floor was stone, the walls bare whitewash except for a shrine in one corner: hanging lamp, elaborately carved shelf, tarnished icon of the Virgin.

“One of the old men was lying on his cot and did not look at us as we entered. I saw after a moment that his eyes were permanently closed, swollen and red, and that he turned his chin from time to time as if trying to see with it. He was mostly covered with a white sheet, and one of his hands fumbled with the edge of the cot, as if to find the limit of space, the point where he might roll off if he wasn’t careful, while his other hand fumbled with the loose flesh of his own neck.

“The more functional resident of the room was upright in the only chair, a staff leaning against the wall near him as if his journey from the cot to the seat had been a long one. He was dressed in black robes, which hung unbelted over a protruding belly. His eyes were open, and hugely blue, and they turned on us with uncanny seeing as we entered. His whiskers and hair stuck out like white weeds all around him, and his head was bare. Somehow this made him look more ill and anomalous than anything else did, this uncovered head in a world in which all monks wore their tall black hats constantly. This bareheaded monk could have been an illustration for a prophet in some nineteenth-century Bible, except that his expression was anything but visionary. He wrinkled his big nose upward as if we smelled bad, and chewed the corners of his mouth, and narrowed and widened his eyes every few minutes. I couldn’t have said whether he looked fearful, or sneering, or diabolically amused, because his expression shifted constantly. His body and hands reposed in the shabby chair, as if all the motions they might have made had been sucked upward into his twitching face. I looked away.

“Ranov was talking with the librarian, who gestured around the room. ‘This man in the chair is Pondev,’ Ranov said flatly. ‘The librarian warns us that we will receive very little normal speech from him.’ Ranov approached the man cautiously, as if he thought Brother Angel might bite, and looked into his face. Brother Angel-Pondev-swung his head around to look at him, the imitative gesture of an animal in a zoo cage. Ranov seemed to be making a stab at introductions, and after a second Brother Angel’s surreally blue eyes wandered to our faces. His own face wrinkled and twitched. Then he spoke, and the words came in a rush, followed by a grinding tangle, a growl. One of his hands went up into the air and made a sign that could have been half a cross or an attempt to keep us away.

“‘What’s he saying?’ I asked Ranov in a low voice.

“‘Only nonsense,’ said Ranov with interest. ‘I have never heard anything like it. It seems to be partly prayers-something superstitious from their liturgy-and partly about the Sofia trolley system.’

“‘Can you try asking him a question? Tell him we are historians like him and we want to know if a group of pilgrims came here from Wallachia by way of Constantinople in the late fifteenth century, carrying a holy relic.’

“Ranov shrugged but made the attempt, and Brother Angel responded with a snarl of syllables, shaking his head. Did that mean yes or no? I wondered. ‘More nonsense,’ Ranov noted. ‘This time it sounds like something about the invasion of Constantinople by the Turks, so at least he understood that much.’

“Suddenly the old man’s eyes seemed to clear, as if their crystalline focus had really taken us in for the first time. In the midst of his strange flow of sounds-language, was it?-I distinctly heard the nameAtanas Angelov.