Nathaniel Rich - The Mayor's Tongue

Goran led the men to his house, a hulking A-frame built of dark pine. There was an outdoor shower stall in the back. Goran told them to remove their dirty clothes. Eugene thought he might have misheard him, but Lang began stripping to his underwear, so he went along with it. Goran threw the clothes into a wine cask. With a garden hose, he filled the barrel most of the way with water, and then squeezed in half a bottle of clothing detergent. Using a vine cutter, he plunged the clothes in and out of the barrel, till the water turned muddy. Then he tipped the barrel so that the dirty water ran off into the vineyard and seeped into the red soil.

"Good for fertilization," said Goran, smoothing down the hair over his forehead. He resembled a religious figure — a holy fool, Eugene decided — with his girlish bangs, ponderous earlobes, gaunt cheeks, and long hanging arms. His speech was garbled, as though he were chewing something, but there was nothing in his mouth except for an excess of saliva and a long crimson tongue.

Lang stripped off his underwear and danced into the shower stall, his nude body hairless and petite as a child's. This left Eugene standing on the grass with Goran, his chest and legs banded with hardened striae of dirt. The vintner filled the barrel again and plunged the clothing with all his might.

"Don't you want clean underwear too?" asked Goran. He seemed offended.

Eugene grimaced, looked around, and then stripped naked. Once Goran had taken his underwear, Eugene realized he still had to wait for Lang to come out of the shower; he covered himself with his hands out of modesty.

To make conversation he explained to Goran the reason for their expedition. Goran mumbled in response every few minutes, seeming to pay more attention to the washing barrel, but when Eugene started to describe Sonia, Goran stopped mid-plunge. His flat brown eyebrows raised up so high that they touched his bangs.

"I was woken by a girl's laughter one night when I was lying asleep in my house. It was coming from the vineyard," said Goran. "When I walked outside I saw, hiding between the trellises, a pale-faced girl with reddish-brown hair."

"That's her!"

"She was not alone. There was another girl there too, silent but not sleeping. I recognized this other girl at once. She often comes to my vineyard at night, and eats my grapes. She eats more of my grapes than even the deer."

"Who is that girl? Where does she live?"

"She is a spirit of the mountain. I don't know why she bothers me, when there are so many other vineyards around here."

Goran smiled at him for a long time, until Eugene surmised that the mountain man had been joking. Eugene returned a frozen grin. Goran plunged the clothes into the barrel again.

"I've heard her called Staja," said Goran. "She haunts these hills. I think she's been wandering lost for some time. I had said to myself that if I see her again lying in my clover, she's going to catch it. And she did."

"I don't understand." That is, he desperately hoped he understood wrong.

"I waited for a long time until they were quiet and the human girl—"

"Sonia," said Eugene. "Sonia is her name."

"Sonia was asleep. When I walked up to them in the vineyard I made sure to be quiet, since Staja never sleeps and also knows a strange running style that makes her very fast. I didn't know then that your friend — Sonia — was not a fellow spirit. How could I have known?"

Eugene felt something slippery move in his gut.

"I took with me the ax," said Goran, pointing to it where it was stuck in the battered stump.

"Dear God."

"Sonia was sleeping. She was beautiful, peaceful, and curled up like a child. I could tell that she was dreaming of love. I hope for your sake that she was dreaming of you. Right away I realized that she was human. Staja did not see me. She was staring at the sleeping human girl."

There passed several silent moments as Goran resumed his study of the wine barrel, which dripped gray suds and gave off a smell not dissimilar to chestnuts. Goran bowed his head and Eugene saw for the first time his bald spot, pale and puckered, like a monk's tonsure. When Goran spoke, his voice was hurried and he didn't make eye contact with Eugene.

"If your love is halfhearted, you might turn back now."

"Who said I was in love—"

"Otherwise it's not worth it."

Eugene felt a weight plunge through him, like he was in an elevator that had come to an abrupt stop.

"Did you say something about LOVE?" Lang had come out of the shower and was dripping and prancing across the soil without a towel, pale-skinned as a newborn and just as pink. "Get in, Eugenio, the water's warm."

Eugene felt uneasy about continuing his conversation with Goran in front of Lang, so he hurried through his shower. When he came out, he found Goran and Lang exactly where he had left them. Goran was staring down at the damp soil beneath his feet, the garden hose dangling from his hand over the clothing barrel. Lang was still naked and damp, though he had put on his green beret. He cocked his head at Eugene and grinned, as if he were struggling not to disclose some deeply comical news.

"Would you like a towel, Francesco?" asked Eugene. "There's an extra one in the stall."

Lang waved him off. "I believe that Goran has something to say to you," he said.

Goran cleared his throat.

"I think I must have been confused about what I said to you earlier, Eugenio. You see, the mountain air plays foolish games on my mind sometimes." Goran looked at Lang, who ignored him. Lang was giving Eugene his jackal smile.

"I think it was a pair of deer that I saw in my vineyard that night I was telling you about. These woods are not haunted by anything except the forms taken by my imagination. I scared the animals off by waving my ax, and they haven't come back ever since." He stared at Eugene from under his bangs. "I'm sure they have found a more friendly home elsewhere on the Karst."

"In any case," said Lang, " I know where Alice is. You need only to follow me. She went to the town where I was born. Even if she met someone along the way, she would only have needed to ask for Eakins on this slope and she would have been told where to go. We don't need changelings or mountain sylphs or any other made-up creatures to show us the way."

Goran laughed uneasily and, after glancing again at Lang, invited his guests to stay the night.

The house was just a single open room with blond wood-paneled walls and several pieces of haphazardly arranged furniture, but it felt genial and calm. Two rocking chairs sat opposite a fireplace and, in a nook next to the kitchen, a thin mattress lay crooked on top of a box spring. The floor was covered by a patchwork of dusty, irregularly shaped rugs and several tall wine racks, which tilted like towers and cast monolithic shadows in the firelight. The kitchen area was empty except for a mini-fridge and a two-burner hotplate.

Eugene sat in a rocking chair by the fire while Lang, having refused the other chair, squatted on his haunches like a chimpanzee. As night fell, they wrapped themselves up in wool blankets that smelled faintly of sweat. Goran stood by the hotplate, preparing a pot of meat broth. He did not speak except to mutter to himself in some Slovenian dialect. He ladled the broth into large earthenware bowls and brought the bubbling liquid to his guests. Goran had the pitiful look of a foreigner in his own home.

"How did you meet Francesco, Goran?"

"Well, it's a funny story. . " He saw Lang and his voice trailed off.