Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

“‘I have heard of this.’ Helen turned earnestly to me. ‘It was a pagan custom, and it became a Christian one in the Balkans as the people were converted. Usually it is not so much walking as dancing. I am very glad we will get to watch such a thing.’

“Ranov shrugged and herded us away toward the church, but not before I’d seen one of the men working around the wood suddenly lean forward and ignite the pile. It caught quickly and blazed up, then spread, then began to roar. The wood was tinder dry and the flames soon reached the top of the pile, so that every branch glowed. Even Ranov stood still. The men who’d built it stepped back a few feet, then a few more, and stood wiping their hands on their trousers. With a rush the fire leaped fully to life. The flames were nearly as high as the roof of the church nearby, although far enough from it for safety. We watched the fire eating this enormous meal until Ranov turned away again. ‘They will let it burn and die for the next few hours,’ he said. ‘Even the most superstitious would not dance in it now.’

“As we entered the church, a young man, apparently the priest, came forward to greet us. He shook our hands with a pleasant smile, and he and Brother Ivan bowed cordially to each other. ‘He says he’s honored to have you here for their saint’s day,’ Ranov reported a little dryly.

“‘Tell him we are honored to be able to see the festival. Would you ask him who Sveti Petko is?’

“The priest explained that he was a local martyr, killed by the Turks during their occupation for his refusal to give up his faith. Sveti Petko had been the priest of an earlier church on this site, which the Turks had burned, and even after his church was destroyed he had refused to accept the Muslim faith. This church had been erected later and his relics interred in the old crypt. Today, many people would come to kneel there. His special icon, and two others of great power, would be carried in procession around the church and through the fire. Here was Sveti Petko, painted on the front wall of the church-he pointed to a faded fresco behind him, which showed a bearded face not unlike his own. We should come back and take a tour of the church when he had everything ready. We were welcome to see the whole ceremony and to receive the blessing of Sveti Petko. We would not be the first pilgrims from other lands who had come to him and been relieved of sickness or pain. The priest smiled sweetly at us.

“I asked him through Ranov if he had ever heard of a monastery called Sveti Georgi. He shook his head. ‘The nearest monastery isBachkovski, ’ he said. ‘Sometimes monks from other monasteries have come here on pilgrimage, too, over the years-mostly long ago.’ I took this to mean that pilgrimages had probably ceased since the communist takeover, and made a mental note to ask Stoichev about this when we got back to Sofia.

“‘I will ask him to find Baba Yanka for us,’ Ranov said after a moment. The priest knew exactly which house was hers. He wished he could go with us, but the church had been closed up for months-he came here only on holidays-so he and his assistant still had much to do.

“The village lay in a hollow just below the meadow where the church stood, and it was the smallest community I’d seen since coming to the East Bloc: no more than fifteen houses huddled almost fearfully together, with apple trees and flourishing vegetable gardens around the outskirts, dirt paths just wide enough for a wagon to drive through the middle, an ancient well with a wooden pole and bucket hanging over it. I was struck by the utter lack of modernity and found myself reading it for signs of the twentieth century. Apparently this century was not occurring there at all. I felt almost betrayed when I saw a white plastic bucket in the side yard of one of the stone houses. These houses seemed to have grown up out of piles of gray rock, their upper stories stuccoed as an afterthought, their roofs made of smooth slate shingles. Some of them boasted beautiful old half-timbered ornamentation that would have looked at home in a Tudor village.

“As we entered Dimovo’s one street, people began to come out of their houses and barns to greet us-mainly old people, many of them gnarled almost beyond belief from hard labor, the women grotesquely bowlegged, the men hunched forward as if perpetually carrying an invisible sack of something heavy. Their faces were brown-skinned, red-cheeked-they smiled and called greetings, and I saw the flash of toothless gums or glinting metal in their mouths. At least they got some dental work, I thought, although it was hard to imagine where or how. A few of them came forward to bow to Brother Ivan, and he blessed them and seemed to be making inquiries among them. We walked to Baba Yanka’s house in the midst of a small crowd, the youngest members of whom might have been seventy, although Helen told me later that these peasants were probably twenty years younger than they looked to me.

“Baba Yanka’s house was a very small one, barely a cottage, and it leaned heavily against a little barn. She herself had made her way to her front door to see what was going on; my first glimpse of her was the bright spot of her red-flowered head scarf, then her striped bodice and apron. She peered out, looking at us, and some of the other villagers shouted her name, which made her nod her head rapidly. The skin of her face was mahogany, her nose and chin sharp, her eyes-as we came nearer and nearer-apparently brown but lost in folds of wrinkles.

“Ranov called out something to her-I could only hope it wasn’t anything commanding or disrespectful-and after staring at us for a few minutes, she shut the wooden door. We waited quietly outside, and when it opened again I saw she was not as tiny as I’d imagined; she came solidly up to Helen’s shoulder and her eyes were merry in a cautious face. She kissed Brother Ivan’s hand and we shook hands with her, which seemed at first to confuse her. Then she shooed us into the house as if we’d been a pack of runaway chickens.

“Her house was very poor inside, but clean, and I noticed with a twinge of sympathy that she’d ornamented it with a vase of fresh wildflowers, which sat on the scratched, scrubbed table. Helen’s mother’s house had been a mansion compared to this neat, broken-down room with a ladder to the second floor nailed against one wall. I wondered how long Baba Yanka would be able to navigate the ladder, but she was moving around the room with so much energy that it slowly dawned on me that she was not actually old. I whispered this to Helen and Helen nodded. ‘Fifty, perhaps,’ she whispered back.

“This hit me with fresh force. My own mother, in Boston, was fifty-two, and she could have been this woman’s granddaughter. Baba Yanka’s hands were as gnarled as her feet were light; I watched her bring out cloth-covered dishes and set glasses before us and wondered what she’d done with those hands all her life to make them look like that. Felled trees, perhaps, chopped firewood, harvested crops, worked in cold and heat. She stole a glance or two at us as she worked, each glance accompanied by a quick smile, and finally poured us a beverage-something white and thick-which Ranov downed at once, nodding to her and wiping off his mouth with his handkerchief. I followed suit, but it almost killed me; the stuff was lukewarm and tasted distinctly of barnyard floor. I tried not to gag visibly while Baba Yanka twinkled at me. Helen drank hers with dignity and Baba Yanka patted her hand. ‘Sheep’s milk blended with water,’ Helen told me. ‘Think of it as a milk shake.’

“‘I will ask her now if she will sing,’ Ranov told us. ‘That is what you want, is it not?’ He conferred for a moment with Brother Ivan, who turned on Baba Yanka. The woman shrank back, nodding desperately. No, she would not sing; clearly, she didn’t want to. She gestured at us and put her hands under her apron. But Brother Ivan was persistent.