Iana Boukova, from 'Traveling in the Direction of the Shadow'

The house had been built by Iovana’s grandfather who was called Nayden, a name usually given to abandoned orphans lucky enough to be found, although nobody knew where he had come from, who had lost him, who had found him, or who had put into his hands the forked willow stick that guided him around. He always followed it barefoot, with the small steps of the fire-walking nestinari, his eyes half closed, and his breath even, as if he were asleep and dreaming. Then the stick would suddenly start to tug at his hands and pull towards the ground. He would stop, open his eyes, and tell those around him: “The water’s here.” He seemed to walk around half-asleep, but his mind was always clear, he bargained vigorously, shined his silver coins with lemon and salt to make them look more precious, and whenever he gathered enough, traded them in for a gold coin that he sewed into his waist sash. He could always find water, and his work was going smoothly. As time passed, the sash grew heavy, and he started to think his stick was becoming disobedient, since it was known that willow was drawn not just to moisture, but to metal as well. The gold must be throwing it off, he figured, then took off the sash and buried it under a rock. But even without the gold’s interference, the stick still tossed this way and that, caught a whiff of the trace only to lose it again, and refused to obey him, so he put it aside and sat down on a slope to get some rest.

And then, from this elevated spot where his path had taken him, he saw something silver, like a snake stretched along the horizon, a radiance as slim as a nail, a glimmer at the boundary between the valley and the sky, so unexpected that he thought it would disappear from his sight if he blinked even once, but he blinked, then blinked again, and then once more, and it did not disappear but remained where it was. And so he turned to the first person he spotted in this bare place where his path had taken him, an old man as twisted as the prickly shrubs his goats were chewing on, he asked him what that thing was, and the old man, without even turning around to look, replied brusquely, it’s the sea. And he asked again, breathless with fear that the old man perhaps did not know, perhaps had forgotten, or perhaps, simply out of spite, would not tell him, what is the sea, but the old man replied, growing more irate with each word, what could the sea be, it’s water, what else could it be, it’s nothing but one big water. But he kept insisting, even though the old man seemed beside himself, and kept asking him if he’d seen the sea up close, if he’d ever gone all the way down there, and what the sea looked like up close. That was when the old man completely lost his composure, grabbed his staff, and with unexpected agility gathered his goats, while along with the spit flying out of his mouth, he spewed a series of carefully selected, long-winded curses at those who appear out of nowhere, may their shadow grow too small for them, and do not bother to greet you or wish you a good day, may their eyes grow white and turn into eggs, but immediately start to interrogate you, may their own mother forget them. “Have you been there?” he mimicked, altering his voice. “Have you seen it? What would I need to go and see it for, when there’s nothing to see, when it’s nothing but water, and what’s there to see in some water? . . .”

But he probably did not even hear the last of the old man’s words because he was already running down toward the valley with all his strength, jumping over rocks, tripping over roots, the forest was growing denser until it obscured his view, he lost his path in his haste, some shrubs with long grasping thorns tore his clothes, while others, with faded blooms, covered his eyelids with a fine yellow dust, so his eyes became swollen and watery. For two days and two nights, he walked through this forest, where not even a single handspan of earth could be found that was not covered in gnarled roots and thistles and stinging grasses, so there was not even a single spot for him to sit down and rest. At night, he remained standing, half-asleep, leaning against rough tree trunks, vulnerable to the wolves and the ghouls or whatever bred in this forest whose far end did not let you see the sun, let alone that silver sliver along the length of the horizon. But the incline led him in the right direction, so he did not get lost, and eventually, half-blind and ragged, he emerged into the open, into some boundless pasture with grass taller than his shoulders, and there he collapsed and slept, and dreamt of a woman who had blood on her teeth. But before he could get scared in his sleep, he noticed it was not blood but a red Easter egg she had eaten, shell and all, so its pieces were stuck to her teeth. I mustn’t forget her name, he thought in his dream, but woke up before he could ask what it was, and smelled freshness around him. He followed the scent until he heard the rumble, then followed the rumble until the cliff came to end, and then saw it beneath his feet—the sea he had never suspected.

He stood a long time at the edge of the cliff, while the wind healed his swollen eyes, among some white, screeching birds that dropped into the foam as though they were shot, and when he looked to the side, he saw a narrow bay with boats tied to a rickety pier and some fishermen sitting next to a fire. And he asked them to take him out to sea with them, he had money and would gladly pay. But just as he was mentioning the money, he felt around his waist and remembered he had left his sash up in the mountain, under the rock, so his bottoms were now held by only a twine. “Never mind,” the fishermen laughed, “we’ll take you on veresija—and if you enjoy it, you can pay us back next time you come.”

And they took him out to sea, and until his last day he never forgot the icy tentacles that crawled down his back, that delicious thrill in his groin the moment before stepping onto the boat—one foot still on the pier and the other hanging over the void—that blissful drop, that ominous joy which made his head spin, that feeling that he was having a frightening dream and laughing in fear.

They brought him back in the evening, smeared with tears and vomit, and they laughed and held their bellies, because he had cried and begged while sticky bitter sweat ran down his face, and he had babbled deliriously, about his mother, whom he had never known, and about some gypsy woman and an egg, and he had begged them over and over to get him out of there, to do something, just to get him away from there. He could barely stand on his feet when they left him on the sand, but eventually managed to drag himself back to the water, which was already black and full of stars, and he plunged his face into it. And he spat with disgust amidst the fishermen’s new laughter, because it was salty on top of everything else, you could not even water a small garden with it, which was why he left, turned his back on it, spat once more, and never looked at it again, and returned to dry land.

Over time his bare feet grew increasingly deft at detecting the underground vein, they followed it while his stick nodded in approval, and sometimes a single stroke with the shovel was enough to make the moisture gush out and overflow before the gaping mouths of the crowd that had gathered behind him and placed bets. His waist sash grew so heavy that it made him stagger and got in the way of his walk, while the cold of the metal around his waist, and also its weight, gave him constant diarrhea, from which he suffered for the rest of his life. He also hired two men to pull the cart in which he collected the most curious kinds of objects, either because he liked them or because he had managed to buy them at a good price: a metal knocker shaped like a woman’s hand with a ring on the index finger; a taxidermied fox with a taxidermied rabbit in its mouth; a Venetian mirror with a golden frame and a chipped corner; and another, less expensive mirror with a perfect web of cracks covering its surface, on which the light played around with different colors and the faces multiplied; a walnut clock as large as a cabinet, which showed one o’clock always and one o’clock forever, because it had no second hand to make it move forward; and all kinds of other things.

But he had to wander around for a long time before his stick eventually pulled down with such force that it almost broke free from his hands, it grew insistent, led him around in a circle, and brought him back to the same spot over and over again. A mad man, the villagers said, only a mad man digs a well by the river and doesn’t find any water. And not only that, but he also brought master craftsmen from afar to build his house, which he could describe in such detail, it was as though he had already seen it many times: two stories tall and with a special place in each room for his favorite objects. And the strange thing was that after it was built, everyone felt as though the house had always been there. But back when the foundations had barely been laid, a worker was digging deep down at the bottom of the well—so far down that no light could reach him, so he worked in complete darkness—when suddenly he felt moisture on his palms but could not say anything because he had to climb the rope ladder to the top as fast as he could while the water chased at his heels, filled the entire hole, and stopped only when it reached the stone enclosure around it. This feat was something the villagers could never forgive the outsider, and they despised him once and for all. The water from the well, incidentally, turned out to be very good, tastier than any of the other springs in the area, and people came from distant places especially to try it.

But in fact it was not the water, they say, that caused him to settle down in this rugged place with its thorns and its lean Sundays, but a girl he once saw standing under a cherry tree’s branches, reaching up but failing to grab them, and laughing. He did everything in his power to make the wedding happen as soon as possible and when he awoke on the following morning, his wife was not in his bed. He found her all the way at the other end of the village, sitting on a swing with her girlfriends, still wearing her bridal garments and all the jewelry from the wedding, which jingled around her neck. And so, they began living in complete harmony: he, with his workers and the construction, and she, with the games of hide-and-seek among the trees and with the warm, yielding mud by the river where she waded around and left footprints. And it was only her advanced pregnancy that forced her to put an end to these activities. Her girlfriends once asked her about that thing, which was always kept hidden from them and only discussed in riddles, and without thinking too much about it, she said it was like swinging on a swing, except, as the woman, you were the swing yourself. But they took that as just another elusive response (which perhaps it was) and were not at all satisfied. It was only after she went into labor that it became clear why she had been married off to the outsider so hastily and without any bargaining.

It was because her seed was bad, so the child started to come out sideways, shoulder first, and those who had work to do far away gladly set off to do it, while those who had none stayed behind, cursing their fate and their village. Her screams lasted for two days and two nights, which drove the dogs mad, and some of the bigger ones even bit through their chains, ran off into the woods, and turned into wolves. On the third morning, she gave birth to a girl, and her blood ran out.

But the outsider’s plans turned out altogether miscalculated. The house had barely been finished when he felt a horse’s hoof slam into his back, right between the shoulder blades, right as he was sitting at the table and breaking bread for his workers, then he sensed the horse’s fiery breath in his ear and heard the flapping of its wings, and he slid, completely unprepared, off his chair, while the painful red gnawers rushed into his chest, along the length of his left arm, all the way down to his fingers. Someone who knew about these things let some blood from the inside of his elbow, while others set out to the surrounding villages to search for a healer. But all they could find in these remote parts was a small, shriveled-up woman who claimed to be a clairvoyant and sank her gaze into his palm and was about to tell him what she saw there—You’ll go on a long journey—when he interrupted her, impatient to know what he should do to cure himself, so she opened her mouth without knowing what she would say, and she told him—You should drink wind. Because although she seemed unremarkable, the woman was a true clairvoyant and servant to words—she always obeyed what the words commanded of her, and he paid her handsomely for her efforts, because he still remembered, he had never forgotten, the wind that had once healed his eyes, and the fishermen’s veresija. It was with that word—veresija—on his lips that he died a few days later, soaked in bitter sweat and laughing in fear, and this left everyone perplexed, since he was known as a prudent man who neither lent nor borrowed.

After his death, they excavated the whole yard three times over, looking for his sash or whatever was left of it, and someone probably found it, though no one ever confessed. Along with the sash, the large Venetian mirror also went missing, as did the small cracked one, and the clock with the single hand, and even the nails from the walls—only the knocker remained on the front gate, because the letters on the woman’s ring had scared off the man who tried to tear it down. The girl was raised by relatives until they found someone from another village who did not ask too many questions, and they married her off to him.

And years had to go by until someone set foot in the house again, used a knife to cut his way through the rusty thorns overtaking the yard and banning people from entering, climbed the damp blackened staircase, shoved the door once, then a second time with all his strength, until shards of rust sprinkled from the hinges and the door opened a crack, and through that narrow opening, sideways and with effort, this man entered the house together with his new bride, and they grew dizzy from the stench of rot and mouse droppings, and choked on the thick cloud of dust that a bird, startled by their entrance, sent flying around the room while it crashed into the walls and broke its bones. The young man cleared the yard, replaced the rotten planks and the cracked roof tiles, whitewashed the walls, and carved notches, some deep and others shallow, depending on the force of his strike, down the entire length of the two wooden pillars that supported the upper floor, covering them from top to bottom. Because his wife had gone into labor and they had untied all the knots of her clothes, but that did not help—the child was coming out sideways, just as with her mother and her mother’s mother, and further back. With the last of her blood, she gave birth to a girl—the knife had long ago snapped against the wood—and they named her Iovana.