Xmas on One Foot Part 2

Radoslav’s mother lived in a modest two-storey house halfway up a gently sloping cobbled street  named after an obscure communist hero. Parking beneath a tangle of knotty vines we stepped from the car into a cold quiet night smelling of woodsmoke. Concrete steps led to the front door, where we paused to remove our boots before entering a small dark hallway off which several doors led. The nearest of these, that of the living room-kitchen, was closed and from underneath it a crack of light showed. Upon opening the door I was hit by a welcome gust of warm fragrant air while a dog, small by the sound of it, started frantically barking.

A face appeared from behind the door and I found myself gazing into a pair of arctic blue eyes set above high Slavic cheekbones. Zori had tied her long blonde back into an ascetic bun which accentuated her pale, delicately moulded features and gave her, I thought, an unnecessarily severe look. She held out a slender hand, greeting me in perfect English honed during a youthful career as a stewardess with Bulgarian Airlines, simultaneously fighting off a tiny, long-haired, flop-eared creature that appeared quite determined to get at my throat.

This was Chocky, a year-old Jack Russel belonging to Radoslav and Zori’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Viara. The latter now entered the picture, a dusky angel of a girl who combined her father’s dark looks with her mother’s catwalk elegance in a lithe and exotic beauty all her own. In Viara’s eyes Chocky could do little wrong but she scolded her anyway, out of politeness, saying, ‘Chocky!’ in a tone of voice that appeared to suggest she was unable to believe such appalling behaviour. The dog, a law unto its tiny wound-up self, took little notice; but having lost interest in being barked at, I had turned my attention to the room at large.  

It was a good-sized space, brightly lit, with pale yellow walls and a high white ceiling. The kitchen lay at the far end, compact but functional with a fridge and stove and two metres of bench in between. The rest of the room was dominated by a large, dark wooden table whose surface, I couldn’t help noticing, was attractively arrayed with plates of food. Icons hung on the walls and large, shiny-leaved, triffid-like indoor plants monstered a plastic Xmas tree hung with shiny baubles and flickering lights. Music played softly on a device placed underneath the tree. A fire rumbled in a cast-iron stove standing in the corner by the door.

Seated at the table was Mitko, my rakija-bestowing benefactor of last year. He looked as youthful as ever but his mouth had lost its lopsided twist and with it had gone the expression of permanent disappointment that had been so pronounced; in its place, I was delighted to see, was a near-ecstatic grin. His speech had returned too, although I had no idea what he was saying when he shook my hand, mainly because he was speaking Bulgarian. I got the impression, though, that he was happy to see me.

Dressed all in black, Radoslav’s mother, Sonia, greeted me with a beatific smile whose loveliness was in no way diminished by the notable absence of several teeth. She was a striking-looking woman – physically imposing, with lank black hair, thinning in places, framing a pale, heavy-featured face that was often sunk in an expression of utter dejection, but which had a way of unexpectedly lighting up as it did now when she shook my hand. She was a devout woman of the sort you might find living alone in a hut on the Russian steppe – an adherent of the Orthodox Church who surrounded herself with religious paraphernalia but who might, should circumstances warrant, turn her hand with equal dexterity to the practice of the darker arts.

Once the formalities were over, we seated ourselves at the table. My mouth watered with anticipatory relish as I scanned the fare on offer: liberally stocked plates of cheese and salami, a heaped bowl of black olives, a mountain of potato salad and an equally large serving of an appetiser made of yogurt and cucumber. There was a jar of lutenitsa, a spicy puree of sun-dried tomatoes and peppers, endemic to this part of the Balkans, and an assortment of condiments. No less enticing, arranged with what I thought was astonishing delicacy among the plates of food were several bottles of alcohol, including two types of rakija, the nostalgic undertones of which at once began to nip beguilingly at my palette.

There was very little ceremony. Drinks were poured and we raised our glasses and said,  ‘Chestita Koleda!’ ‘Merry Xmas!’ and threw our drinks back. Then Sonia removed a sizzling tray of perfectly grilled purzhole, or pork chops, from the oven and placed them in the middle of the table on an ornate silver platter, from which we helped ourselves.

I took two chops and otherwise filled my plate high on the assumption that it was going to be a long night and I would need all the sustenance I could get. The meat was delicious, very tender and extremely tasty. It went perfectly with the rakija which had been made from grapes and was fierce and strong but smooth enough to throw down easily which was what I did. No doubt because of this, events began to blur very quickly into a multi-coloured and quite delightful haze that I knew, even as they occurred, I would have little chance of remembering in the morning.

Yet incidents stuck in my memory, like crinkled brown leaves clinging to trees at the beginning of winter. There was Mitko grinning across the table, happy to be drinking again this year and able to speak though not as clearly as the rest of us. And Viara telling me about school and saying how she and her mother and Chocky were going to Thessaloniki for New Year’s Eve. Zori spoke fondly about Greece and recalled in particular a holiday many years ago on Ios, which she described as beautiful and quite unspoiled.

‘It’s the party island,’ I said, to which she replied, ‘Yes, but it doesn’t have an airport, so doesn’t get overrun.’ She also spoke fondly of Ithaka, the island of Odysseus. ‘If you haven’t been, you must go,’ she said. ‘It is quite magical.’

Things were looking pretty magical where we were. But at some point they began to change. Suddenly Mitko was lying flat out on the couch behind me, his eyes closed and a dreamy smile on his face. Then I turned around and next time I looked back he was gone. Sonia had vanished too, and Zori and Viara. There was just me and Radoslav, sitting there at a table covered in empty plates and glasses, nursing our rakijas, while ‘Silent Night’, sung in Bulgarian, issued from the device underneath the Xmas tree.

‘What do you think, Ian,’ said my landlord, ‘should we go to a bar?’

It was a curious idea, but I thought to myself: why the hell not? Xmas only comes round once a year, or something to that effect.

So off we went, walking through dark and empty streets past unlighted houses, with strings of multicoloured Xmas lights flickering eerily on and off in otherwise lifeless-looking windows. I was limping slightly on account of my plantar fasciitis; the cold air bit at my cheeks and gnawed at the tips of my fingers. The village was absolutely silent and I found it hard to believe, as we approached the river that runs through the middle of it, that anyone else could be out on such a night but Radoslav was adamant. ‘The bar will be open,’ he said, ‘and there will be people there. Trust me.’ 

The bar lay across the river, a circumstance which struck me as being of some importance, though don’t ask me why. From the outside it didn’t look like much. In fact, as far as I can recall, it was simply a door in a wall. The wall may have been scrawled with graffiti. If it wasn’t, it should have been; for it was that type of wall. Somewhat to my surprise, the door opened when Radoslav turned the handle and, stepping inside, we found ourselves at the head of a small flight of stairs looking down on a room that contained several plain laminated tables. Two of the tables were occupied by groups of young men.

Upon our appearance they all turned and looked at us. They looked us for quite a long time. I guess we looked back. Then something unexpected and marvellous happened: suddenly, without a word or any indication of what they were about to do, the young men stood up in unison and shifted to different tables. One group settled at a table in the far corner of the room. The other, which proved to be our group, established themselves at a table in front of the bar.

For some reason I found this terribly amusing and couldn’t stop laughing. It reminded me of a game of musical chairs, played by grown-up men half shot on rakija. I stopped laughing, though, and quite suddenly, when it came to my attention that nobody else in the room shared my mirth. On the contrary, everyone looked incredibly solemn. This was funny too, of course, madly so, but now I kept my amusement to myself.

Two chairs had been left for us at the table in front of the bar, although, from what I remember, no one acknowledged our presence as we sat down. The barmaid came and took our order. She was the only woman in the place, a thin dark girl with a prominent black mole above her left temple. She went off without a word and, moments later, returned with two large glasses of rakija and a meze of yogurt and cucumber dip which she placed on the table before us. Needless to say she wasn’t smiling, either. In fact, she looked like the bar was the last place in the world she wanted to be.

The men at the table continued to ignore us. They talked quietly among themselves as they worked on their drinks. I watched their faces, which looked intent and serious and, above all, conspicuously devoid of Xmas cheer. Most of them had short-cropped hair. They wore flimsy jackets and cheap collared shirts. I had no idea what they were saying, although at one point Radoslav, turning to me, said, ‘They’re talking about guns and hunting, Ian.’ His voice seemed to come from a long way away.

It was another David Lynch moment; we could have been in the Black Lodge and my landlord, with his unemotional, matter-of-fact manner, might easily have been masquerading as the Giant or the Dancing Dwarf offering me tantalising hints into the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer. The same feeling of unreality pervaded the scene.

Yet I had become fixated on the room around us. It was quite a place. The floor was covered in a thin layer of carpet the same innocuous grey colour as the tables. But the most amazing thing were the walls, which were painted a gaudy shade of vermillion and hung with cheap prints showing island sunsets and other tropical scenes. The prints were framed and illuminated, in the dimly-lit room, by spotlights placed strategically beneath them. It resembled an art exhibition, and was, I thought, the funniest thing of all.

Yet walls can’t talk, alas, and we left the bar after just one drink, with nothing having happened and no one having spoken to us. Back outside in the cold night I noticed that my crippled right foot had been miraculously healed. Either that or it had gone numb and I was stumbling so badly that I failed to notice it. In the dark windows, meanwhile, the Xmas lights flickered on and off.