I’m well, brate, brother—I tried to get into the language as well—thank you, and Godspeed.
It was a nice philological exercise. I could get into that sort of thing. Everything always comes down to language in the end. There it was “comrade,” here it was “bacho,” and language endured everything like a beast of burden, it didn’t revolt. Because it remembered the time before we existed. Or because it has no memory.
Lassies decked out in traditional finery with flowers behind their ears passed me, giggling. The coins adorning their costumes shone in the sun, their ornate silver belt buckles gleaming before them. From their costumes you could tell they were from different regions of Bulgaria, the red kirtles and black embroidered aprons of the girls from Thrace, the black tunics of the maidens from the Shoplukregion around Sofia, the beautiful satiny bodices of the Rhodope lasses . . . Many companies for making men’s and women’s clothing, which had now renamed themselves as “studios for homespun,” were sewing breeches, vests, tunics, and rebel uniforms at full steam, including for children, as if we were preparing for a new April Uprising.
It was a fine day, the May sun was shining softly, and you could say that the trees, too, had put on their native costumes, so as not to be left out of what was to happen. On the broad meadows of Boris’s Garden, people were sitting in small groups. Some had spread blankets on the ground and were pulling out chicken, hard-boiled eggs, ajvar, whatever they had brought along.
There were men of every caliber—from smooth-faced young boys to fellows of an undefined middle age (but with well-defined potbellies) to white-haired old men. These latter were the most sympathetic, some of them were so old that it seemed as if they had never shifted to Western dress. Every man had either a saber or an old dagger or a pocketknife.
Most of them were wearing roomy breeches decorated with black braiding and deeply pleated backsides, a revolver and a dagger with a bone handle tucked into each sash. More or less every single one of them had an old rifle—Berdans flashed past, you could also catch sight of flintlocks, Krnkas from the Russo-Turkish War, and here and there some Chassepots from that same era. The more amateurish among them, having no other weapons, had come with Flobert air rifles with the buttstocks painted in the colors of the rebel banner. (Just look how your tongue begins to slide and before you know it has slipped on breeches as well, going from word to word.)
To the right, next to the stadium itself, there was a small band of cavalry taken straight out of Zachary Stoyanoff’s 1884 Pages from the Autobiography of a Bulgarian Insurgent, or rather, the movie version of that book. Thirty or so horses with rebels mounted on them, each with a lion on their kalpak and a feather, turkey feathers, it seems to me. One of them, it must be Benkovski,† had tied up his horse and was bantering rather cheekily with some lass carrying a green rebel standard.
I wanted to mix in with some group, to hear what people were saying. I was curious, while my ironical attitude was slowly evaporating. This was my homeland, “which nationalism has stolen from us,” as K. would say. I remembered sweating in grade school under my astrakhan hat, which crushed my ears, while my woolen cloak bit into my neck so badly that for a week afterward they had to slather the rash with pig lard. Every morning, instead of normal exercises, we had had to do various folk dances in the schoolyard. They always put me at the tail end of the line, but I still managed to throw off those around me. That’s how it was, but didn’t I secretly want to feel like one of the whole for just an hour, to laugh out loud at the jokes, to feel other bodies like mine, with whom I supposedly shared common memories, common stories? . . . And weren’t they here precisely for that, to be with someone who was as confused as they are, yet proud, someone who hates Turks and Gypsies with the same passion that he loves tripe soup and imam bayildi, the magnificence of the Bulgarian Khans, Turkish coffee, the anthem “Get Up, Get Up, Young Balkan Hero,” but also the pop-folk hit “White Rose,” someone who loves to doze a bit in the afternoon, to sit down in the evening with a little shot of rakia, to turn on the TV, to let fly a juicy curse or two, to yell toward the kitchen, Woman, where the hell did you hide the saltshaker?, he likes for everything to be neat and clean at home, that’s why he dumps his ashtray into a little plastic bag, then throws the bag outside, over the balcony railing, so that tomorrow when he’s walking down the street and the wind picks up the bag and sticks it to his forehead or when he steps in dog shit, he can say, Damn, but isn’t Bulgaria a pigsty, and again let fly a few choice curses. Who ever said that swearing is the Bulgarian satori, the Bulgarian Zen, a flash of enlightenment, a shortcut to the sublime . . . ?
Thank God the bagpipes started up with a squeal and pulled me out of these dark thoughts . . . People jumped up and ran to join the horo, the traditional round dance. I stepped away and saw an old man under a tree, this rally’s Grandpa Mateyko, exactly the same as the other one I had seen at the demonstration this morning, so I headed over to him. I even wondered if it wasn’t the same old man. He was trying to light his little pipe with tinder, hitting the steel against the flint to give off a spark. There was something of the whole of Bulgarian literature and folktales in that gesture.
How goes it, grandfather, may I sit down a bit in the shade with you? I said.
Good day to you, my son. Go ahead, sit down, the shade is for all of us, he replied without lifting his eyes.
Did your heart leap when you heard the bagpipes? I said, teasing him a bit.
Aye, my heart leapt, but my legs won’t follow, the old man replied. My heart says, Giddyap, legs, but they’ll hear none of it. And my ears are deaf as doornails, as well, and my eyes can’t see. I’m like Balkandzhi Yovo‡ himself, the old man said with a laugh. The years are the biggest Turk of them all, they’ve taken everything from me. Without even asking. I used to spin songs, but my gadulka burned up, so now I just play on a pear leaf, but nowadays you can’t even find a pear tree anymore. I can sing you the songs of Botev and Vazov from beginning to end. I’m from Baldevo, have you heard of Baldevo?
I knew of the beggars of Baldevo, who were the descendants of Tsar Samuel’s blinded soldiers who scattered across the land after the grimmest of Bulgarian defeats in 1014 and became wandering gusla players and singers on the bridges and squares. To earn a crust of bread with songs about misfortunes and blinded soldiers. The old man was visibly delighted that someone had heard of this.
Well, I’m from their stock, he said, and now look, with time I, too, have gone blind like one of Samuel’s soldiers.
Have you anyone to help you? I asked.
I do, my granddaughter brought me here, she’s surely joined the horo. Once she’s had her fill of dancing, we’ll head home. This hullaballoo they’re kicking up, I don’t much like it, nor the rifle shots.
A gentle soul, he reminded me of my grandfather. Thank goodness we have such old men, who have miraculously survived.
The horo was truly thundering, growing ever larger. It had begun from the upper walkways of the park, had wound around the lily pond, and was now heading down toward Ariana Lake and the entrance to the garden. Soon it reached Eagles’ Bridge itself. I don’t know if they had a permit to block traffic on Tsarigrad Road, but who would have the guts to stop them? There was something telling about the emptiness of the highway that led to that outsized Bulgarian dream of yore. The song “A Din Rising near the Bosporus” tells us of Tsar Simeon before the walls of Tsarigrad, a city that would never be his, a city the Greeks called Constantinople. But just the fact that the Byzantine emperor Romanos trembled was still enough for the long-suffering Bulgarian soul. Besides, every day buses dumped Simeon’s descendants out onto the Kapali Carsi Market. Why bother conquering a city when you can bargain for it?