Miroslav Penkov - East of the West

We grab Elli’s bag, the way my wife packed it, and as for me — I have nothing worth taking that you can put in a bag.

It’s beginning to dawn. The sky is strangely green this early in the morning and the wind has stopped almost completely. The air smells bad, like a stinkbug on a raspberry bush, I suppose from the ozone. Far away we can see lighting and feel the roar of thunder, muffled at times and louder at others with the distant wind changing direction. We stand on the front porch while John Martin, the two bags in hand, runs to the truck to get it ready. It’s then that Elli’s cell phone starts ringing in my pocket.

I’ve already answered it before she can ask how I have it.

“Elli, honey, are you okay? How’s the weather?”

“Turbo sunshine,” I say in an authentic Bulgarian peasant dialect. We run through the yard and John Martin pushes the door open. Elli hops in the middle and I follow.

“Michael,” my wife says so loudly even John Martin flinches, “what’s going on? Are you down in the shelter?”

“We don’t have a shelter,” I tell her. “Listen. We’re fine. Don’t worry about us.”

“Get to the shelter,” she says, and her voice breaks up with static and an ugly accent. “Michael,” she says, and I’m thinking, seven years in the States and already calling her husband by a name that is not his. And then it strikes me: I am not her husband — and this thought seems so new at first it’s like someone else’s.

“You’re breaking up,” I say.

“Michael,” she says, “is that a truck engine? Are you driving?”

“We have to go down to the shelter. Here’s Elli.” But before I pass the phone my thumb ends the call.

Elli shouts to her mother, into the dead receiver. “We need to dial again,” she says. “I want to talk to Mommy.”

I hide the phone in my pocket and tell her there is no reception. I help her buckle up and hug her tightly. “But I’m here. I’m right here, Elli.”

“I want to talk to Mommy,” she says. Then, like that, she starts crying. All in English, too. “I wanna go to Mommy. Take me to Mommy.”

“Hush, hush,” I say. I try to kiss her on the forehead, but she pushes me away. So I say, “God damn it, John Martin, drive the fucking truck already,” and Elli begins to wail louder. I start with that tale I’ve been telling her, but she won’t listen. Not even when John Martin begs her. On she cries, a siren of our own in the car. It’s like this that we drive, the green sky thickening greener above us, a blinding thing. It’s raining again.

“Don’t look back,” I tell John Martin when he steals a peek at his house in the rearview mirror. I am speaking, of course, of pillars of salt.

IX.

“They arrive at the mountain path a day later when the sun is high above the horizon. The trail is narrow, with steep slopes on both sides; if you roll a stone over the edge, it will crumble to sand before it has reached the bottom. One wrong step and both the horse and its rider fall in the abyss. Ali Ibrahim leads. My great-grandmother follows.

“ ‘I’m exhausted,’ she says and stops her horse. ‘When I appear before the sultan, I must be at my best.’

“Ali dismounts his horse and, while she hides in the shadow of hers, sharpens his yataghan.

“ ‘The sun is too strong,’ my great-grandmother says, ‘and my skin is too fair. Give me the feredje so I can veil my face.’ Ali sighs deeply, puts the yataghan back in the sheath and takes the black kerchief out of his saddlebag. He hands the feredje to my great-grandmother, but she drops it, and the precious silk kerchief flies off the trail and down the steep slope, the wind tossing it toward the bottom of the abyss. Ali knows he can’t bring my great-grandmother to the sultan without the special silk covering her face, so very carefully he descends after the feredje .

“Narrow trail, steep slopes. The feredje jumps in the air like a bird; Ali stalks it — slowly, measuring his steps, seeking footing in the weeds that grow in between the rocks. Then he trips. He rolls down the slope.

“The moment she sees this, my great-grandmother leaps on her horse and spurs it on. She rides swiftly down the mountains, but the farther she gets, the sharper the pain in her chest becomes. She despises Ali — his face, his eyes, his voice — yet, something pulls her back. It begins to feel like her own blood she’s spilled.

“Once on a broader road, she stops the horse.

“ ‘If I see a sign,’ she whispers, ‘if I see a pink lark, I’ll go back and help him.’

“At that moment, a shower of larks pours from the sky. When she turns her horse back and spurs it toward the mountain, its hoofs squash the tiny bodies.

“She finds Ali half buried in stones. His face is bloody; pebbles embedded in his cheeks glisten underneath his skin. His arms are bruised, his knees mangled; his clothes have turned to rags. My great-grandmother kneels and strains to pick him up. She puts his arm around her shoulder and, bent in two under his weight, attempts to walk toward her horse.

“She sinks to the ground. Ali crushes her, his face upon her chest. My great-grandmother rises. She drags him five more feet and once again collapses. The rocks cut through her dress. Her knees, her elbows, palms are bleeding. She stands up again. Her hair, now sticky with Ali’s blood and her own, falls loosely over her shoulders.

“ ‘Ela, konche!’ she calls for the horse. The horse kneels down and she drops Ali on the saddle. The sun pours fire upon the gorge. The Mountain rises in the distance, its peaks still snowy.

“ ‘I can’t go on the road like this,’ she says. ‘If people see us, they’ll kill him.’

“She takes the reins and calls out at the Mountain, ‘Oy, Planino , hide us in your bosom, your precious children.”

•

“My great-grandmother leads the horse up the Mountain trails. Snowdrops blossom in a line at her feet and she follows.

“Before sunset she reaches a shepherd’s hut. There is no one in the meadow, the house is deserted and fifty sheep bleat in a pen. Inside the hut, she finds the fireplace burning. Water is boiling in a copper, and an armful of white towels lie on the solitary bed.

“My great-grandmother lays Ali down. His eyes shiver under closed lids, and every now and then he mumbles words she cannot tell apart. She unbuttons his torn shirt, takes off the shreds of his trousers, his red boots, his blood-soaked belt. The yataghan falls to the floor, and when she touches the ivory handle, cold waves pass through her body: a thousand mournful screams. She flings the sword away. She soaks a towel in the hot water, then washes him. He cries in pain every time she touches his wounds; his broken limbs and his cries echo in the falling night. Only the sheep bleat from the pen. The Mountain is quiet.”

•

“For a month my great-grandmother takes care of Ali. She changes his bandages, tightens the splints, washes out his wounds and smears them with crushed centaury and boiled crowfoots. Once a day she bathes him outside on the meadow. Because the spring she draws water from is far away, she bathes him in sheep milk. She makes cheese and yogurt to feed him, she kindles the fire at night to keep him warm, she sings to him when the silence around them gets heavy. And through this care, despite her hatred, she grows to love him.

“It is always strange when a woman falls in love, and it is stranger still when she is the most beautiful in the world. The laws of cause and effect break down again. Every time my great-grandmother milks a sheep, the grass on the meadow grows taller. Every time she lights the fire, an avalanche of stones rumbles down the distant peaks. Her love for Ali grows stronger with each day, and it is her love that cures him.”