Stradivarius

When electricity finally came to our village, Bai Mincho’s shed was turned into a movie theater, and there, following a prolonged plane roar, the wounded aviator Maresyev—or, as the movie poster described him, “the real man”—landed his parachute. It was one of the winters after 1950, a real one, with deep snow, yet another harrowing war was passing on the whitewashed screen. We hardly noticed the fact that during the day the grown-ups would cast furtive glances at each other—an agricultural co-op was being established; at night the dogs barked while men went past each other in silence, eyes peeled, ready to duck from a dirty blow. Our village was going through the middle of the century full of doubts and impatience, while the neighbors’ boy, Kolyo, and I read novels and could hardly wait for the next movie. The skin of the Christmas swine was saved for the traditional leather tsarvuli, used by plowmen and hoers. For us, the children, the postwar times brought galoshes. Our galoshes were patched and mended, they leaked, and we always sniffled during the screening, while falling in love with the characters, so much so that when they were in a tight spot, we would shout “Run” again and again. And we’d close our eyes when they were about to die.

The film technician, a sickly man from the city, who drank the raw eggs we secretly brought him with insatiable appetite, took pity on us. He would show us pictures of actresses coyly baring their shoulders. “Actresses! Who knows what’s on their mind, right!” he’d say and then add: “Movies and novels are just for fun!” So we had a dark theater where we could make out with the girls when the time came. The teacher, Todor Donev, confirmed that novels were indeed made up since they contained direct speech: “The eye, it’s true, sees everything, even from afar, but there is no ear capable of hearing scot-free the anguish of all human secrets.” Todor Donev taught literature to the older students from middle school, so we didn’t quite get what he meant, but we decided there was something dishonest in made-up stories and considered suspicious anyone who tried to seduce us through art.

That's when the Maestro came to the village: an odd bird wearing a black tailcoat and carrying a violin.

“Attention, villagers! Tonight in the movie theater will play a violinist who came all the way from Sofia,” the janitor, doubling as village crier, announced while drumming; since the message wasn’t about regulations or fines, he hit the drumsticks absent-mindedly, carefully enunciating each syllable: “It is advisable that you attend, as the classical concert will be performed on a Stradivarius violin!”

Here I prefer to give the floor to Boris the Agronomist, who composed the advertisement for the Maestro’s concert, and then for the rest of his life carried the burden of an anecdote in which he himself was a character. Even though he was only a graduate of the agricultural “Exemplary homestead” vocational school near Rousse, in the eyes of the co-op members he was a full-fledged agronomist, embodying their hope for decent bread. He turned out to be the only witness of the event, who afterwards reflected on it, which is why I trust him and would even allow him to use direct speech on occasion:

“Boris, be careful!” the district committee told me. Because the Maestro was a really famous violinist, they ordered me to make sure that the movie theater was full. It was me they ordered because, as a vocational school graduate, I was apparently supposed to have a grasp of classical music as well. Stradivarius, Stradivarius! I remembered the abstruse word, and when I happened upon a dictionary afterwards, it was the first word I looked up. It comes from a proper name and means: “1. A famous luthier who lived in Cremona from 1644 to 1737. 2. A violin made by him, highly valued nowadays as a great and priceless rarity.” I invited the teachers, they invited the children, with the children came the mothers, and the fathers followed. The whole village rushed over as if heading to the circus and filled the hall to the brim. The Maestro appeared in front of the whitewashed screen, apologized for the poor acoustics, which would probably prevent the distinguished audience from appreciating his violin’s merits. He opened the black case, picked up the violin with two fingers of both hands and stretched his arms towards us: he held it nearer to us, so we could take a better look at it, but to us the violin looked like a regular “brashovka” fiddle, like the one Petko Ginov played, when invited to weddings or celebrations in the surrounding villages.

“There’s no orchestra, either!” the Maestro lowered his head. There really wasn’t because there were no others like him—crazy, I mean. “I did, however, bring a gramophone, so now the distinguished audience will have the pleasure of enjoying Tchaikovsky’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra.”

We fell silent, giving the impression that we’d come especially for the concert that night. But the distinguished audience and I know each other all too well: we listened to the traditional gaida, kaval and brashovka, our brass band musicians all played by ear and mainly folk music, such as the horo, and if by any chance they started a rumba or a tango, they miraculously managed to intertwine within them the twists of a humorous folk song. Only those women who had been house servants in Rousse in the thirties had seen and heard the musicians from the Fifth Regiment read sheet music when playing the waltz. That was why we fell quiet, then kept quiet and asked ourselves: What does this man want from us? What made him set off in January, in this severe, relentless weather, to our forsaken village? Here we are at each other’s throats, what we need are beating drums and blowing trumpets to muffle our cries.

The Maestro’s eyes glimmered as he tuned his violin and gazed at us.

“Light! More light!” he waved towards the projection booth. We’d called in the technician to attract more people with the promise of a free film afterwards. The screen lit up, the Maestro was pleased to see his shadow, he was no longer alone on the stage, the gramophone record started turning . . .

Tchaikovsky’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra turned out to be long, and the room was getting colder and colder. In order not to disturb the Maestro, the distinguished audience didn’t close the door when sneaking out. But he was sweating, and drying his forehead with a napkin, and in the breaks, he talked about the titans of the Renaissance, who took to the grave the secrets of violins and ruby color. So many secrets, mind you!—as if looking for compassion, and arguing with somebody at the same time, he would decisively raise his index finger and point it towards the light. Then the sneaking out would momentarily cease. After Tchaikovsky, the program continued with Camille Saint-Saëns and Paganini. The audience grew ever quieter. When the Maestro abruptly pulled the bow away from the strings and shook his head in satisfaction, someone in the corner chuckled, then bit his sleeve but kept giggling faintly.

“Either keep quiet or leave!” the Maestro darted a glare toward the blind corner. In that moment he resembled grandpa Tsoncho, the snake charmer, from the fair at the St. Marina holy spring, who showed people a taxidermied python and a dozen blotched snakes: he tamed them with his blue gaze but required understanding and complete silence from the audience.

When the concert was over, I thanked the Maestro on behalf of the whole village, and again it was on me to take him to dinner. The times were lean, but his visit happened to take place during the so-called “dirty days” from Christmas to Ivanovden on January 7th, when the entire Hărcoian mythology was let loose to wreak havoc: kallikantzaroi, vampires, woodland nymphs, and what have you; the common folk broke their fast with pork and red wine. Even dry sausages were to be had while the private farmers were getting persuaded to join the cooperative; they would cry for their oxen and slaughter them at this unusual time just so the co-op wouldn’t take them away. Seeing the pork, the dry sausage and the wine, the Maestro clapped his hands, and tied a napkin around his neck like a child who doesn’t want to get drippings on his front. He started humming a classical tune, and I almost spurted out: “What an open book you are! You wanted the technician to blind you with the lights, so as not to see how many people are left in the audience!” Petko Ginov brought more appetizers and wine, as well as his “brashovka” fiddle but then asked for permission to play around with the famed Stradivarius a bit.

He got it and started playing “na tatuncho”. There’s this custom to make a horse’s skull dance on a pole on Christmas eve—an ancient custom. The music, also ancient, makes the person riding the skull bounce all through the night without feeling tired. The music got to us; we were sitting on the chairs, still they bounced as if on their own, the wine pitcher started bouncing as well, spilling wine.

“Stop!” pleaded the Maestro, “You’re good!” And, as if angry to have admitted this, he grabbed his violin from Petko Ginov’s hands and started our very own ratchenitza. Petko Ginov couldn’t resist and went all the way out into the yard to dance. The whole neighborhood came out to watch him in the middle of the night: it was the first time we’d seen him dancing, and there seemed to be no stopping him; in the moonlight his face seemed to be getting greener and greener, until the Maestro took pity on him and stopped.

“How is Your Honor familiar with our local songs?” asked Petko Ginov.

“My father is from these parts.”

“Ah, blood!” Petko Ginov seemed to agree, but then turned to me and mumbled: “Unbelievable, this man!”

“I need to go now!” said the Maestro, suddenly in a hurry at first cockcrow. “My father would always tell me tales of wolves, and sledges in January, and I have always wanted to feel the music of such nights.”

Finding a sledge was easy, but no one wanted to go. “Wolfish weather,” disapproved the villagers, tucking their heads into their sheepskin coats’ collars; everybody knew that during the “dirty days” in January, the kallikantzaroi were not the only creature roaming around the woods, but the all too real wolves as well. The villagers still recalled an event from 1943 when two soldier boys from Karan got attacked by wolves and had to slash them with their knives, but then the animal blood froze on the knives, and when the wolves attacked again, one of the boys managed to climb a tree, but died as well from the cold. The Maestro listened with curiosity and grew more excited: “Yes, yes! Exactly like in my father’s stories: horses, sledges, and wolves under the January moonlight.”

Out of sheer embarrassment—maybe I knew nothing about classical music, but at least I wasn’t afraid of wolves—I decided to go. Petko Ginov joined us. I borrowed the carbine from the town hall.

“Why do you need a rifle?” asked the Maestro. “Have no fear when you’re with me!”

I remember that these were his exact words, even though at that moment I wasn’t paying much attention, since they seemed like utter nonsense. But I came to them later, when in the grating of the sled's runners I sensed something more: the sledge was unstable, the horses started turning their heads to see what was coming from behind. Wolves were coming. Seven of them! I counted. Down the hill I saw several balls, rolling, eager to cross our way. They had chosen an opportune place, just at the turn near Markova Cherkovtza Hill. If the horses noticed the wolves in front, they would turn and dart straight through the field, dumping us in the ditch. We’d be appetizers for the wolves. I threw the reins at Petko Ginov and grabbed the carbine. I took aim, but the Maestro grabbed my shoulder:

“Your rifle won’t save us!” he warned and took the Stradivarius out of its black case.

When the Maestro started playing, the horses relaxed, the runners stopped grating, the stars above us doubled and the bells on the horses’ gear fell silent. The wolves, who initially had meant to cut our way, instead turned straight towards us, and lined up on the crag of the Markova Cherkovtza Hill itself. I should clarify something: there’s no actual church there, although wrong-headed folk had named the crag “cherkovtza,” and when passing by they always spat out of superstition and crossed themselves as precaution against vampires and kallikantzaroi.

“What a bad place!” Petko Ginov crossed himself and sobered up.

When I tried to spur on the horses, they pulled and stopped. More wolves were sitting in front, as if the Maestro had gathered all the wolf packs from the valley. Snow had crumbled to powder; the wind was taking handfuls of it and scattering it about; on the sides of the road the acacia trees loomed black. The wind hissed through their pods and the frozen pods made a ringing sound. The Maestro’s fingers were starting to freeze. “Wine!” he remembered suddenly, and Petko Ginov produced out of his coat the canteen we’d taken for the road. The wolves stirred, while the horses gave a neigh, raised their front legs, and suddenly turned and jumped over the ditch. The sledge rushed along through fields and meadows. I turned and noticed that the Maestro was missing. Petko Ginov was clenching the rifle, but his teeth chattered: “I’m scared, agronomist, what a sin, we brought him to his demise.” And he jumped off.

An hour later, I came back with two sledges and a dozen men, only to find Petko Ginov perched on the very same crag where the wolves were. He was squatting and sipping from the canteen.

“What are you doing there?” the men asked.

“This canteen is bottomless,” he answered. “Try it.”

The wine had frozen, and he was speaking as if out of his mind.

“Don’t you see he’s drunk!?” said the others.

“I could be,” agreed Petko Ginov. “What a canteen, must be bottomless. That man, our man, gave it to me and said: ‘You should drink too, so you don’t freeze!’ and headed toward the train station by himself.”

“Where’s the Maestro?” I shook Petko Ginov to get him out of his stupor.

“That’s what I’m telling you . . . They went with him. It must have been a hundred wolves. He played and they followed.”

The villagers didn’t believe the story, thinking I was leading them on, and I was left to check the way to the station by myself. But he had disappeared without a trace, not even his clothes were found, his black clothes; I was told such a man never got on the train to Sofia either. I was just explaining the case in a memorandum, when a wire arrived: “Send me the case and the gramophone. They’ve been assigned to me from work.”

Twenty years later, Boris was vacationing in the holiday home of the working villagers near Varna. By then he’d become a real agronomist and had even listened to classical music during his correspondence courses. In the holiday home he met some friends, just enough for a foursome for cards, and was extremely surprised to find out that the other three were trying to sell him this very anecdote with themselves as participants.

“What are you insinuating?” asked Boris angrily. “Someone must be lying.”

“It’s been so long. A lot of time has flown by!”

“Time itself cannot add wolves to the story.”

“If it’s about the wolves, we can leave them out because the rest is more important, and more inexplicable. So many years have passed, and I’m still thinking: who was this person?” started the first man.

“Also, unimportant.” added the second one. “But why did he come? Whom for?”

“And more precisely,” the third one chimed in, “Was his visit worth it?”

“Wait!” interrupted Boris. “When the concert was over, he said: ‘Even if only one remembers me, I win.’”

“Well, this wasn’t really a bet!” pondered the first one, but the rest were eager to start playing cards.

Back to that evening: after the concert, in the dark and cold hall a kid had lingered on, not just impressed but dazzled by the Maestro. On Ivanovden, we all took a dip in the river for good health, the “dirty days” were over and the creatures from the Hărcoian mythology skulked inside the willow groves and sank into the murk of the rock monasteries along the river. On Shrove Sunday the halva piece was hung from the electric lightbulb. When we tried to catch it with our mouths, as the tradition had it, twenty-five watts shone straight into our eyes, chasing away the holidays’ mystery. All we had left was the Maestro—the neighbor’s boy and I would often see him resting on the pear tree’s dry branch, in the red eye of the rooster brought as a gift for the best man at our cousins’ weddings, or on the moon’s old and wrinkly face. That was our boyish strive for immortality.

Years after the episode with the Maestro, Petko Ginov went blind, and I wonder, my childhood friend, through whose eyes did you see the leader of the wolfpack as he walked along and played his violin . . . The last wolves of the Hărcoian plain gathered together to disappear forever after that winter, having been shot dead or poisoned. The Maestro was walking along and playing, while they followed him on both sides of the road, turning into a mythology of real winters, deep snow and fierce wolves.