Valley of Thracians (26 page)

Chapter
47

Before Boris could protest, Katya was
out of the car and running toward the fortress. She bypassed the ticket taker
at the entrance gate and entered the complex, eager to reconnect with the
person who had—up until recently—been under her sole guardianship. She needed
to see him, to talk to him, to reassure him that she had acted solely out of
genuine concern for his welfare. The confinement, the pills, everything was for
a good cause. She had only been trying to help him, to help him recover. He
shouldn’t have run away!

But in her mind’s eye, Katya was not
running to meet Scott at all. It was not a need to see the American that was
propelling her forward. There was someone else just ahead, someone standing
somewhere out of view at the foot of the sharp rock cliffs. In an alternative
reality, he was there, expecting her to join him on the citadel grounds. He was
waiting for her. This was the man that Katya truly sought, and he appeared to
her in a vision so strong that it had to be real.

Hristo, her beloved Hristo, was on the
mountain, and it was up to her to rescue him and bring him home.

She could picture her husband leaving
their apartment early one Saturday morning long before, anxious to pick up
Boris and head for the ski slopes. Again Katya would be alone in Sofia for the
weekend, something she normally wouldn’t mind if she was busy with her studies.
This weekend, though, she and Hristo had been invited to a friend’s apartment
for a Saturday-evening barbecue, and she was eager for the opportunity to
socialize with their acquaintances.

“Can’t you stay home this time?” she
pleaded with him, even as he was buckling his parka with his winter gear
already packed and ready by the front door.

“I don’t want to miss the slopes,” he
replied matter-of-factly. “Spring is coming soon, and I doubt we’ll see any
additional snowfalls this season. You remember that I’m planning on flying to
Italy next week with my friends.”

“How could I forget? You’re always off
skiing with your friends,” she complained.

“Today I’m skiing with your brother,” he
said, checking himself in the hallway mirror. “You’re not jealous of the time I
spend with Boris, are you?”

“I’m not happy with the fact that you’re
on the slopes every free moment you have.”

“Then you must be thankful that skiing
is only a winter pastime,” he joked, refusing to let her mood upset his plans.

It did bother her, to a greater degree
than she would
admit,
that Hristo seemed to care more
for his outdoor winter activities than he did for spending time with her. When
he was home, Hristo was demonstratively affectionate, making extra efforts to
entertain her and keep her happy. But even when they spent quality time
together, she would often catch a whimsical look in his eyes, and she knew that
he was secretly making plans for another ski vacation. One weekend he would
head south to Bansko, and then the following weekend he would hook up with
friends to hit the slopes at Pamporovo in the Rhodope Mountains. He seemed to
prefer Pamporovo, with its ski tracks of all difficulty ranges. Hristo was
becoming very adept at the sport. He worshipped his gear as if the slender skis
were a pair of extended limbs.

Katya was resigned to the fact that she
couldn’t dissuade her husband from his winter outings, but there was something
in their relationship that bothered her even more. Katya wanted to start a
family, an unreciprocated desire that resulted in frequent arguments with
Hristo.

“We’re too young for that,” her husband
insisted. “You’re still studying at the university. When do you have time to be
a mother?”

Katya had many things she could say in
response. Approaching her thirties, she was most definitely not too young to
start a family.
Quite the opposite.
She felt that she
would soon be too old to raise children. Her biological clock was ticking. Any
further delay would be detrimental to her physically, she feared, leaving her
no opportunity to achieve motherhood. She couldn’t shake off these motherly
instincts. Children should come when their parents are young enough to care for
them and when they can fully enjoy them. She thought of her own mother, who had
been in her mid-forties when she and Boris had been born. That was an
unacceptably late age to bring children into the world. If she didn’t start a
family soon, Katya realized, her mother would never take pleasure in being a
grandparent.

With her inclination to look at
everything scientifically, Katya considered Bulgaria’s low birth rate and the
lack of desire among newly married couples to raise many children. The average
family unit in Bulgaria was small; she knew this from observing society around
her and from consulting the statistics. The country’s typical household was 2.6
members, and this low figure didn’t vary between city residents and village
dwellers. Bulgaria’s birthrate was one of the lowest in Europe. The country’s
population was dropping, thanks also to the emigration of many of her
countrymen to the richer industrial countries of Western Europe.

How could she convince Hristo that they
should bring a child into the world? With rational thinking taking precedence
over emotion in her scientific mind, Katya began organizing the debate points
and imagining the possible objections Hristo would
raise
to counter her arguments. She launched into her own internal debate, preparing
her reasoning for starting a family in modern-day Bulgaria. Bulgaria was now a
free country, unshackled from the oppression of its former communist rulers.
Bulgaria was a democracy, where anyone and everyone could speak his own mind,
read editorials criticizing the government in the free press, and travel
wherever they want. There were no longer restrictions on their lives. One day
soon Bulgaria would join the European Union, opening up its borders to its
European neighbors and emerging from its third-world status. Fences and walls
would tumble down, giving them unprecedented freedoms of which previously they
could only dream.

What better time than now to bring a
child into the world?

Oh yes, she could state these
fact-proven arguments—that was the scientist within her speaking. This was how
her mind worked. First, take into consideration all rational and logical
aspects of a problem, and then determine a scientifically acceptable resolution.
But there was also the emotional side. The yearning to raise a child was rising
from the depths of her being and calling out to her. She longed for someone to
love and nurture, someone to shower with affection. The call of future
motherhood within her was nearly overwhelming. She desperately needed a child.

Why couldn’t Hristo understand this? Why
couldn’t he consider anything other than how to satisfy his own physical needs?
With a sigh, Katya realized that this was why he went skiing so frequently. He
needed the energetic rush of slaloming down the slopes, breathing the thin air
at the extreme elevations, and feeling the biting chill of the wind on his
cheeks. Only this physical exertion could satisfy Hristo. He totally lacked the
inner desires that were so powerfully calling out to her.

Nonetheless, she was determined to bring
this up again with Hristo, to explain the logical reasons for starting a
family. If need be, she would explain the emotional side as well. Having a
family would be good for him as well. He would understand.

She would talk to Hristo as soon as he
got back from Pamporovo.

“You wouldn’t believe how wonderful it
was!” Hristo said, whispering in her ear on his return.

She had waited up for him, even after he
called from Plovdiv to inform her that he was stopping there to meet friends on
the way home from the ski resort. A few drinks and they would be on the road,
he promised. She lay down on the lumpy sofa, watched a dated Russian film on
the television, drank a cup of coffee for the caffeine punch, and even puffed a
few cigarettes as she waited nervously in their living room.
Anything
to stay awake, to prepare herself for the confrontation that could no longer be
delayed.
But in the end, her eyes had drooped and her mind had tired.
She told herself that she would just lie down on the bed for a short while, but
the minute her head hit the pillow, she was fast asleep.

In the morning, she woke to find that
Hristo had already left the apartment. He had to attend to his job’s demands,
while a morning lecture was on her schedule at the university. There was no
note from him waiting on the kitchen table. Only a pile of wet ski pants and
boots in the corner served as a sign of his weekend absence. She would talk to
him that night.

But dinner talk centered on financial
problems at the company where Hristo was employed, difficulties in cash flow
that threatened to necessitate staff cutbacks. Katya could see that this was
not the appropriate time to bring up the possibility of expanding their family.
Afterward, Hristo sat wide-eyed while smoking in front of the television,
engrossed in the latest local political scandal. He watched both the nightly
BNT newscast and the follow-up discussion panel. No, tonight was not the night
to talk about this.

In the morning, Hristo was again out of
the apartment before she opened her eyes, and that evening he went out to a pub
with some of his colleagues. The opportunity to talk with him about what was on
her mind was postponed, time after time, until Katya realized that she would
need to force the subject—to compel him to listen to her arguments, to her
logic and emotions, and to accept her reasoning. To manage this, she would need
to schedule a time for this important discussion, but unfortunately, that would
have to wait until his return from the ski trip to Italy.

She was going to be on her own again in
the cold Sofia flat, and she wondered what she would do to keep busy. The
demands of her studies were not overwhelming, and she had nearly completed her
thesis as graduation approached. She could go up north to visit her mother, but
a rainy forecast kept her close to home. Perhaps she should take the tram to
the center to look for shopping bargains. Maybe there would be a good film on
television. There was that novel she had picked up a few times, only to lose
interest after the first chapter. She would be quite bored this weekend, she
realized.

Hristo called her from the resort in
northern Italy shortly after his arrival with his ski buddies. The snow cover was
great, he assured her, and yes, he would take plenty of pictures to show her
the beauty of the Alps. The resort was very nice, the food was good, the
excitement of hitting the slopes the following day was great, but now Hristo
and his friends were planning nothing more than to get totally wasted in the
local bar.

Saturday morning showed Sofia at its
worst. The rain came down incessantly, in slanted sleets of moisture unleashed
furiously from bitter Balkan skies. There was a strong, biting wind, which shrieked
around corners and into her apartment even though all the windows were closed.
The cobblestone streets and rundown neighborhood buildings were as gray and
foreboding as the skies above. Unable to sit still in the cold and dark, Katya
dressed warmly and went for a walk, struggling to keep her umbrella upright as
she walked past the shuttered fruits and vegetables stand, the tiny barbershop
where Hristo got his hair cut at a ridiculously cheap price, the flower stand
where nothing attractive was ever blooming, and the small booth where one of
her neighbors sold huge quantities of alcohol and cigarettes no matter what the
weather. The downpour and the emptiness on the streets depressed her, and she
quickly returned to the apartment without having accomplished a thing.

The phone call came at four in the
afternoon. When she heard the ringing, Katya wondered if it was her friends
inviting them to another dinner party—one Hristo would undoubtedly find excuses
not to attend. Maybe it was Boris calling, or his wife, Ralitsa, for whom Katya
had developed a growing fondness. Maybe it was even her mother, but no, her
mother typically called around dinnertime. Hristo had told her he would phone
her late that night, so she certainly wasn’t expecting him. Katya picked up the
receiver to answer the phone call that would change her life forever.

The call was from Italy, but it wasn’t
Hristo on the line. There was static, and at first Katya couldn’t identify the
voice, or what the man was saying in short bursts of excited words.

“Who is this?”

“It’s Aleks,” he replied, and then he
hesitated.

“Aleks?”

“Hristo’s friend.”

“Ah, Aleks.
Wait, aren’t you in Italy with Hristo?’

“Yes.”

And then silence.

“Are you there?” she asked, shaking the
receiver as if it would clear the static.

“Yes, Katya, I’m here. I have something
to tell you.”

“What? I can barely hear you.”

“It’s about Hristo.”

“Hristo?
Put him on the phone.”

“Katya …”

“I want to talk to Hristo.”

“Katya,” he repeated.

And then he told her. It didn’t matter
if there was static on the line because the words were just not sinking in.
There had been an accident.
A skiing accident.
On one of the steeper slopes.
Aleks had warned Hristo that
it was a difficult descent. Hristo had shrugged off the warnings. “I can do
it,” he insisted. “You’re not up to that level,” Aleks said to him, attempting
to dissuade him from tackling the steep run. Hristo was set on trying it and
urged Aleks and the others to accompany him to the lift.