Nathaniel Rich - The Mayor's Tongue

"Yes, go on, tell it, Goran. Eugenio is my good friend now." Lang grinned broadly.

"Well, it started when. . I'lljust say it started when I was sitting right here, in that rocking chair."

"Just like us now!" shouted Lang.

"Yes, just like us now," said Goran. He stared into the blushing coals, petting his bangs.

"Is that it?" asked Eugene.

"Oh," said Goran, coming to. "Not at all. I was looking out at my vineyard, as I have a habit of doing at night. You see, there are deer and other, ah, animals that come at night to eat my grapes. And sure enough I hear a rustling in the trellis, that trellis right over there."

Eugene followed Goran's pointed finger out of the giant triangular window. Through a gap between two fig trees at the foot of the hill, he could spot a patch of violet sea.

"As I always do, I took out my ax and rushed outside. But there, squatting in the clover between the two vineyard rows, was not a deer or animal at all. Just a very, very small man."

"It was the silliest thing, you see, I was—"

Goran ignored him. The story seemed to have imbued the mountain man with newfound confidence.

"He was wearing a funny little costume. Tiny reading glasses that pinched his nose, plaid baggy pants, and a tweed professor's jacket. A full, bushy head of brown hair, and cheeks that, even in the moonlight, shone as red as apples. He was shivering."

"Ha ha," said Lang. "That was many years ago. Fashion was unsophisticated in those days."

"I noticed that the man was not wearing hiking boots. His loafers had been ripped up by the rocks and his feet were bleeding. You see, he had been hiking down the Karst."

Goran pointed behind Eugene, toward the back wall of the kitchen, behind which loomed the mountains and the buzzing forest.

"My Italian was very poor then," said Goran. "I had only moved from Sovjak, my village, a year earlier. I addressed him in the Istrian dialect first, not thinking, and then in my cleanest Slovene. He responded twice, speaking in both tongues. I was shocked."

"Languages just come naturally to me," explained Lang.

"In Sovjak we speak a variation of the Istrian dialect that not even Slovenians living in the peninsula can understand. He spoke it fluently. I invited him to join me by the fire. He was brave but anxious. Nothing like this savvy man you see here today!"

"I'll never forget his kindness," said Lang, frowning solemnly. Goran patted him on his shoulder — a little too hard. Lang coughed several times, then continued, "He was the first real person I met. After the village. He took me in when I was young and afraid and knew nothing about the world below."

"I'll tell you what was funny. He wouldn't say anything about where he came from but he was desperate to hear about Trieste. He must have been exhausted from his trip, but he refused to go to sleep and would easily have stayed up all night listening to me talk about the city."

"I was quite naïve then," said Lang. He giggled. "Oh yes."

"Finally I had to rest, since the sky was turning purple, so I made him a bed with these blankets by the fire. But he never even lay down.

"When I woke up the next morning, he was standing next to my bed, just staring at me. I was frightened and reached for my ax, which I keep under the mattress, but he looked so peaceful that I did not wallop him. I asked him what he was doing. I'llnever forget what he said: 'I only wanted to watch you sleep.' "

"Sleep is a strange thing," said Lang, after spooning in the last of his meat broth. "I try to do as little of it as possible. Though I admit that as the years pass I need more and more rest. In fact, perhaps we should all have a rest now. It's getting late."

"But where were you coming from?" asked Eugene. "And why had you left?"

"I think we've had enough stories tonight," said Lang. "Besides, we have a long hike ahead of us tomorrow." Lang rose abruptly out of his squat and made Eugene a bed with the blankets by the fire. Goran went to the kitchen to clean the bowls. When everything was put in order, Lang announced that he would take a brief night walk before he retired. On the way out, he turned off the lights. Eugene and Goran were left in darkness, lit only by the fading fire. Goran collapsed onto his mattress.

Lang's whistle could be heard from outside as he wandered through the lanes of the vineyard. After a few minutes his chirping tune grew distant, so that it seemed he had entered the woods. Eugene rose from his mass of blankets and felt his way through the room, careful not to overturn any of the wine racks, until he reached the bed.

"Goran. Are you awake?"

Outside the wind carried the echo of Lang's whistle against the trees, sweeping it under the door and through the house like a phantom.

"I'm awake, Eugenio."

"Tell me, Goran. What did Lang say to you earlier, when I was in the shower? You did see Sonia, didn't you?" Goran exhaled uneasily. "No," he said. "I saw a pair of elk."

"You said deer."

"This is what I said."

Eugene sat down at the foot of the bed. He tried not to let his frustration creep into his voice. "Then I suppose you're not going to tell me the rest of your story about how you met Lang. Where was he coming from? What is it about his town? Why is it so secluded?"

"I'd better leave that to Francesco. He's a good storyteller, don't you think?"

"Listen, Goran, I'm not going to repeat to him anything you tell me. Why has he aged so much since then?"

"Oh, I've aged too! Believe me. I'm even starting to gray. It was ten years ago, for godsakes. That's an eternity on this mountain. Well, I'm starting to feel my age now! Time for bed, eh?"

Eugene didn't move.

"OK, fine. I'lltell you a story, if that's what you want to hear."

"Tell one about the people who live in that town above. Where Eakins lives, and where Lang is from. Where Sonia is."

"You read Eakins?"

"Of course."

"Me too. See?" He gestured at a pile of books on the floor by his bed. Sure enough, in the flickering firelight, Eugene could make out Eakins's name repeated on the spine of each paperback. They appeared to be Slovenian translations.

"He is very popular in these parts," Goran said. "He is said to live in that town above."

"Have you seen him recently?"

"Eakins? Why, he's been dead for decades! No one's seen Italo Svevo either, for that matter, but people still love him too. Of course, no one claims that Svevo still summers in Opicina. But I'lltell you quickly, before our friend returns."

"You've never seen Eakins?"

"I hope not. For then I would have seen a ghost. And that would probably mean that I wasn't long for this world. But others say they've seen him. Not only our little Francesco."

The monkish man propped his pillows behind his tonsured head and sat up in bed. His eyes were closed, his face illegible.

"They see him in different forms. Snjezana, the wife of a vintner I know in Colludrozza, claimed to have seen him about ten years ago, shortly after her daughter's fourteenth birthday. The two women were barefoot in a wine barrel, stomping grapes. Their property was on the edge of a grotto, a large cave that shelters the underground river that flows down the Karst—"

"The Timavo."

"That's the one. When the daughter was born, they built a little protective fence along the chasm. So here they are, stomping on the grapes and exchanging gossip or womanly advice, and they see a hand gripping the fence. Then another hand. But these hands, they are not ordinary — they are thick with brown curls, and the palms are streaked with dried blood. They hoist up a man from over the edge of the chasm. Slowly he rises behind the security fence, tall, taller, tallest, and finally, giant."