Stork Mountain

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SOMEONE WAS BEATING THE DOOR of the station and I heard a man cry out, “Let us in, you donkeys. The storm’s on my tail and inching closer.” But I hadn’t slept in thirty hours and maybe I was dreaming of voices. Or maybe I didn’t want to get up, snug as I was on the floor in the corner. The handful of peasants around me began to stir, uneasy. The stench of wet wool, of sweat and tobacco, rose like mist from their ancient bodies and the waiting room fogged up. I knew they expected me, the young boy, to wrestle the door open, to let into safety whoever was out there. So I pretended that I was sleeping.

I had arrived on a bus from Sofia early that morning, a four-hour wobble east to the middle of nowhere. “You wait here,” the driver had told me, “for the bus to Klisura. It comes around noon. A blue bus. With a big sign. To Klisura. Will you be able to read it?” He’d spoken to me the way people speak to foreigners, drunks, or the dim-witted. I’d smiled and nodded and wondered which of the three he’d thought I was.

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