Fear of Barbarians Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Sponsors

  About

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Postcard: Oksana

  Boat of Fear: Penelope

  Dream: Oksana

  The Colour of Snow: Penelope

  Women Imprisoned on the Islands: Oksana

  Temptation: Penelope

  A Sick Country: Oksana

  A Boat Without an Oar: Penelope

  Meeting: Oksana

  A Room with a View of the Sea: Penelope

  The Flood: Oksana

  Kiss: Penelope

  Death under the Lemon Tree: Oksana

  Death under the Lemon Tree: Penelope

  Walls: Oksana

  Betrayal: Penelope

  Betrayal: Oksana

  A Slap: Penelope

  An Unexpected Visitor: Oksana

  Fire: Penelope

  Fire: Oksana

  End Note

  Parthian Translations 1

  Parthian Translations 2

  Parthian Translations 3

  Parthian Translations 4

  Parthian Translations 5

  Parthian Translations 6

  Copyright

  Fear of Barbarians

  Petar Andonovski

  Translated by Christina E. Kramer

  Co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union

  Petar Andonovski was born in 1987, in Kumanovo, North Macedonia. He studied at the University of Cyril and Methodius in Skopje. His novels include Eyes the Color of Shoes, The Body One Must Live In, which received the Macedonian novel of the year award. The Fear of Barbarians was published in 2018 and won the European Prize for Literature. He has also published a collection of poetry, Mental Space. His latest novel is Summer Without You (2020).

  Christina E. Kramer is a Professor Emerita in the Department of Slavic languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto, Canada. In addition to her numerous articles relating to Balkan linguistics and a Macedonian grammar (University of Wisconsin Press), she is also a literary translator. Her translations include A Spare Life by Lidija Dimkovska (Two Lines Press) Freud’s Sister by Goce Smilevski (Penguin Books) and three novels by Luan Starova My Father’s Books, The Time of the Goats (University of Wisconsin Press, 2012), and The Path of the Eels (Autumn Hill Books). Her translations also appear in numerous journals including Asymptote, Chicago Review, Two Line Online, M-Dash, Tin House, a Words without Borders, World Literature Today and others.

  For my mother, and for Liljana Dirjan, and Elizabeta Mukaetova Ladinska

  Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?

  Isaiah 51:10

  Postcard: Oksana

  I don’t know how much time has passed since our last meeting. From today’s distance it seems like it was in another lifetime. Once you were gone, I thought I would never leave Ukraine, I would stay in Donetsk my whole life and wait for your return. But I left Donetsk a long time ago, and a short time ago I even left Ukraine. Just think, I now live on an island, wherever I look I see the sea, though for now I see it only through the windows of our house. They are large and there’s a good view, so no matter what room I enter, I see the sea before me. It’s huge! Just as we imagined it. The house is also like the one in the postcard your father brought you, white, two-story, the window frames are blue, the shutters are also blue, and in front of the door there’s a lemon tree. Do you remember when I was sick and you came to visit me, outside it was snowing, really snowing a lot, and you brought me two lemons. I told you I was cold, and you stroked my forehead and told me not to worry, that one day we would go to an island in Greece where we would always be warm, and we wouldn’t have just two lemons, but a whole orchard of lemons, we would live in a house like the one in the postcard your father brought you. After so many years, I really did move to an island, I live in a house like the one in the postcard your father brought you, and I have a lemon tree, but I live with Evgenii and Igor, not with you. You don’t even know who Evgenii is.

  It was afternoon when Evgenii and I met in a lecture hall at the university. It was afternoon when the two of us—both just graduated—were called to the dean’s office and told that since we were the best students, we were going to be employed at the nuclear power station in Chernobyl. It was afternoon when we learned that there had been a meltdown in the fourth reactor of the Lenin nuclear power station.

  It was afternoon when the fisherman threw the rope to the people gathered, and we stepped onto the island for the first time.

  Evgenii and I had been living together the past few years in Kiev. Everything we had was left behind in Pripyat. One morning, Evgenii happened to run into Igor, our colleague at the power plant, who we thought had died in the explosion. He told Evgenii that he’d moved to Crete after the accident and was living there in a village near Psiloritis. No one lives in the village except a few old people and some cats. He survives by helping out the old people and shepherds from the surrounding villages, and in return they give him food and a bit of money. He managed to get cured of radiation there. All these years Evgenii has been constantly sick, he’s constantly undergoing various tests. As Igor was leaving, he told Evgenii that he was home because his father was in the hospital, but he was going back in a few weeks, this time to an island near Crete. To Gavdos.

  Boat of Fear: Penelope

  If you hadn’t fled the convent that night, we would now most likely be somewhere in Spain or Portugal. That afternoon when the fisherman tied the rope to the harbour dock, I knew I would always remain here. The day I stepped foot on Gavdos, I promised myself I would never think of you again. And I didn’t for ten whole years, until today, when Mihalis returned home upset. I saw fear in his face for the first time. He said that since early morning, people had been gathering in the taverna to greet the doctor. While they drank raki, the priest asked the doctor what was new over there, gesturing across the sea. He told them the Berlin Wall had fallen, and all of Europe was in a state of anticipation. Everyone was silent. It wasn’t clear to anyone how some wall in Europe could have any significance.

  Here people live for years forgotten, history persistently passes them by, even leprosy and hunger had passed them by, and just when they thought it would pass them by again, Spiros flew into the taverna and, according to Mihalis, began shouting at full volume: “They’ve arrived! There they are, they’re pulling into the harbour!” And without asking who they were, everybody set off towards the harbour of Karave. There, in the middle of the calm sea, drawing closer and closer, there, in the shape of a boat, was fear.

  Three people stepped out of the boat, two men and a woman. The woman had short-cropped hair and looked more like a man than a woman. The fisherman who brought them said they had come to get cured on the island. He said they were Russians.

  Then my blood froze! Not from fear! But from the thought of you! I saw you standing there; you have that smile on your face that Sister Theoktisti called devilish. You laugh at them ironically while looking at the fear in their eyes. You who said you weren’t afraid of anything, not even of death.

  Do you remember when those two Americans came to the convent and said they were journalists and wanted to photograph the girls who lived there, but Sister Erotea hopped about nervously on one foot and kept repeating, while glancing at the windows of Sister Theoktisti’s study, that Sister Superior Theoktisti wasn’t there; she was visiting the monastery in Arkadi. And after a long discussion with the Americans, you dragged me by the arm and told them we would pose. We stood and posed. The whole time I looked shamefully at my shoes covered in dust while you shamelessly made faces
at the camera. Sister Erotea stood to the side and threatened you the whole time, saying she would tell Sister Theoktisti about you, but to me she merely said that I was shaming myself by following your example, you were half a foreigner so such behaviour could be expected of you, but not me. I never told you that I was also a little afraid of them, and at the same time I was afraid of disappointing you because you kept saying that I was different, that I wasn’t like the other girls.

  Dream: Oksana

  I dreamt I was looking for a post office so I could send you a postcard. I am going from one lane to another, you know, those alleyways like the ones we have only here in the Mediterranean, narrow, lined with stone houses; whenever I come to the end of the street, in front of me there is the sea, huge, so huge you can’t tell where it ends and the sky begins. At one moment, I understand that I am not on Gavdos, this is some other island. I try to remember how I got there, and while I hopelessly attempt to recall at least one detail that would lead me to the place I came from, I remember the postcard and that my address might be on it—but not only is nothing written there, the postcard is old and faded, its image barely recognisable, there’s an old dilapidated house, its white paint barely discernible, and the blue of its window frames and shutters so imperceptible that from a distance there appear to be no windows. The lemon tree is old and withered, with a single yellow lemon hanging from it, a reminder that this tree once bore fruit, an abundance of fruit.

  I was awakened from my dream by Evgenii’s loud coughing. He was holding a bloodied handkerchief in his hand. Frightened by my dream and by Evgenii’s cough, I went to look for Igor, but he wasn’t in the house. Evgenii wanted me to bring him some water. The jug in the kitchen was empty, so I had to go outside to draw water from the well. That was my first time leaving the house in three days. Ever since we arrived, Igor had been saying it would be best if I didn’t go out of the house for a while until the islanders got used to us. Every morning he and Evgenii would go out at dawn, walk along the seashore to catch fish, and they would bring the fish back for me to cook. This was the first morning that Evgenii didn’t go with him.

  Outside, a warm breeze was blowing. The smell of the salt stirred my nostrils – if I could just go down to the sea, sit on a craggy rock and look across the sea’s endless expanse. When we arrived on Crete, Igor took us to Agia Roumeli and told us we would find a fisherman there who would take us across to Gavdos. Boats rarely come here. We stayed about a month in Agia Roumeli – not a single fisherman was willing to take on the job of transporting us as far as Gavdos, we would have to wait until spring, but Igor kept offering one of them more and more money until they somehow came to an agreement.

  I didn’t know exactly where the well was, I circled the house a few times but didn’t find anything. A hundred or so metres away there’s another house; this is a small village, there are only about three houses. Igor told me there is another house on the way out of the village, the part that people call the women’s village on account of the two old women who live there. When I got to the other house, I saw a woman drawing water from a well. When she saw me, the bucket fell from her hands. The water poured over her feet. She stood there and looked at me, she had blue eyes like the sea, she didn’t look at me with fear but with disbelief, I wanted to say something to her but I couldn’t, my voice had suddenly vanished. I opened my mouth, but it was useless, nothing came out. I don’t know how long we stood like this: she with her frozen look, I with my open mouth from which nothing emerged. A young girl came out of the house. She looked at us with curiosity, and when she reached the woman, she took her by the hand and they went into the house. I continued standing there with my mouth open and looked at the door they had entered, the woman then glanced out the window, and when she saw that I was still standing there, she turned away. I don’t know how long I stood there. When I glanced towards our house, I saw Igor observing me, his look full of reproach.

  The Colour of Snow: Penelope

  All night I tried to recall your voice. But what came to me again and again was the image of the first day you arrived at the convent. You were sitting there on a bench, looking at us, smirking. You weren’t like us, we were all the same, our hair was braided, we all wore black dresses with white collars that Sister Dionysia had sewn for us, but you had long blond hair and wore a red dress. None of us had ever seen a colourful dress until that moment; we always wore black except for Easter and for the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, when we wore white dresses. Your grandmother, who brought you to the convent, was standing there with Sister Theoktisti talking about something when she suddenly began to cry and Sister Theoktisti comforted her; later, Olympia told us that your mother had run off. After she abandoned your father, he and your grandmother decided to bring you to the convent because they were afraid you might also run off.

  All week you didn’t say a word to anyone, until the day I was sitting on the terrace, drawing the Virgin. I wanted her to have a white dress, white like the snow on Psiloritis. I kept trying to get the colour right, and you came up to me, took the brush from my hand, mixed a few colours and said there, that’s the colour; I just sat there and looked at you in bewilderment. I never found out how you knew I wanted the Virgin’s dress to be white like the snow on Psiloritis. Later, at lunch, you sat beside me and told me that you knew right from the beginning as soon as you saw me that I wasn’t like the other girls. When Olympia saw you talking to me, she came over and asked you if you had finally broken your vow of silence and she began to laugh; you gave her a look full of irony, and told her that you would take your vows before she did. Everyone in the convent knew that Sister Theoktisti didn’t like Olympia, and that she had been trying a long time to marry her off, but simply couldn’t find a man to take her. When Olympia turned twenty-five, she said she wanted to take her vows, but Sister Theoktisti kept dissuading her, hoping that someone would come along who would want her for his wife. From that day on Sister Theoktisti no long paid any attention to you, she constantly avoided you, but once, while I was helping her with lunch, she told me to be careful around you, that you were an absolute devil.

  But I wanted more and more to be near you, I was ready to do anything so as not to disappoint you. That day you sat next to me during lunch and asked whether I was planning to enrol in an art academy, I told you I was planning to, even though I had no plans for the future, I knew nothing about life, I wanted to stay in the convent even after I turned sixteen, to take care of the girls and, by painting icons, to help the convent financially. Sister Theoktisti slowly prepared me for life in the convent. She tried every way she could to keep the girls who had some talent in the convent, and for those who didn’t, she found wealthy husbands who would then help her.

  In the convent I was the only one who had no one. The other girls had been brought by their families when they reached puberty. Not only did nuns teach us to read and write, they also taught us how to embroider and knit, they taught us about fidelity and love, and then, when their wards turned sixteen, if their families hadn’t found an opportunity to marry them, Sister Theoktisti found it for them. When one of the wards was of marriageable age, we were taken to the market in Timbaki on a Friday, or to the market in Mires on Saturday. Out in front rode Sister Theoktisti mounted on a donkey, behind her went Sister Dionysia with the marriageable girl, and behind them all the rest of us passed by the tavernas where men were sitting; we all looked at the ground, not daring to look at them, the only one who dared to look was the girl who was to be married. Once, Sister Erotea told me they had brought Olympia out for nearly an entire year, but no one ever came forward, and finally her time had passed.

  I never told you how I came to the convent, although I think you knew and never asked me. When I was two years old, my mother died of tuberculosis, leaving behind my father and me. He was a fisherman and was at sea more than on land, there was no one to look after me, so he took me to the convent when I was four years old. Every weekend he would come to fetch me, take me
to our house in Kokkinos Pirgos and then return me to the convent. On my seventh birthday he came to the convent and brought me a doll – it was my first and only doll – that he had bought at a shop in Athens. He said that he would go out fishing one more week, and then he’d come for me and would never leave me again, he told me he had collected enough money to open a small taverna, and I would go to school, and then I’d help him. That was the longest week of my life. I thought it would never end. When the day finally came, Sister Dionysia got me ready to leave. I stood impatiently on the convent stairs and waited for him to come, my left hand holding tightly to the doll he had brought me. But he didn’t come. I waited the next day, and the one after that and the following weeks and months, he didn’t come. When I turned fourteen, the day before you came to the convent, Sister Theoktisti told me that she and I would go for a walk through the olive groves behind the convent. While we were walking, she told me that I needed to know the truth about why my father never came that day. I don’t know whether I wanted to hear the truth, I was more afraid of it than the fact that he hadn’t come. She told me that the night he came to visit me in the convent, he had gone out in a boat; there was a terrible storm that night and it was too much for the boat; it was an old boat and not even his; he had borrowed it. His body was never found, but several weeks after the accident some fisherman found the plank on which the name of the boat was written, Elpida. That was the boat’s name: Hope.

  Women Imprisoned on the Islands: Oksana

  This morning Igor went off to see the doctor about coming to examine Evgenii. Even though Igor said the doctor had promised yesterday evening he would come, this morning he refused, saying he couldn’t because he’d have problems later on with the islanders. Evgenii ran a temperature all night; he was coughing constantly and spitting up blood. Igor said he’d try once more to convince him. The doctor is from Crete; he comes to Gavdos on the last boat in the autumn and goes back on the first in the spring. No one apparently wants to accept work on Gavdos, there isn’t even a clinic here, and he’s not even a real doctor, they say that he abandoned his medical studies in his fourth year.