The Hawthorn Bush Zdravka Evtimova Orriginally published in Issue XXII of Vulgata, Nov. 2009

    The first thing that struck me about Anna was her voice. Once I heard a woman sing one of those simple songs that the peasants in in the mountain villages hum to keep wake in the long evenings.  The song was about a young lassie who wanted her boyfriend to buy her a belt with a silver clasp. I knew that song and could say I’d never particularly liked it. But what a voice it was – it had all the silver of all the sliver clasps in the world in it, and it was bigger than the wind and it had the strength of a thousand belts in it. I’d never heard a voice like that. I was a keg maker and a barrel maker, but my heart wasn’t in the hoops that held together the staves nor was it in the wine that the barrel held. I made taps that whistled when the wine passed through them and I loved it when I caught the sounds of the summer and of the wind in my gadgets. I made pen-whistles and tin-whistles for fun and I could listen for hours their shrill piercing voices. A good voice in a silly song could make me freeze in my tracks. What I wanted was to capture the voice in my wine taps and make them sing.
    My barrels were known everywhere in Bulgaria between the ridges of the Vitosha Mountain  and the Rila Mountain, and that said a lot – the guys from the Vitosha mountain drank like eels on weekdays and like dragons on Sundays. Well, that was a pity because brandy ruined their voices.  And their voices were deeper than the deepest lakes in the Rila Mountain, transparent like the water, and harder than the crags on the shore.
      All those guys appreciated good brandy in a good keg and good wines in an old strong barrel of mine I however had reached the point when I wanted an ordinary song more than a barrel. A song could turn the hot noon into a mountain peak for me, and a song could make the wind as tame as newborn puppy. I looked around. I wanted to be sure who the singer was. Alas, the only person I saw was the dark girl no taller than a keg for the weak hawthorn beer I made when I was drunk, or when I was in no mood to carve one of the magnificent barrels I was famous for. I couldn’t believe what I heard. The small missy went on warbling about the belt with the silver clasps. Well, I was dumbfounded. Her voice was twice as big as her. I wondered where she produced it from - she seemed so meager and thin. The voice was like a hill with a hundred whirlwinds thrashing it, and at the top of that hill there was strong July sun that made the wind and the land pure gold. I listened and listened, and I said to myself, this can’t be true. I was dreadfully sorry when the lass in the tune found her belt with a silver clasp and the song ended abruptly. The voice that was bigger than all the lakes in the Rila Mountain vanished into thin air and the wind died.
    “Hay, “I said, but she didn’t turn to me. “Hey! Can you sing something else for me? I’ll pay you.”
    She looked at me her eyes the color of gunpowder about to explode any minute.
    “Nobody calls me “Hey”, Mister. Let another “Hey” sing for you,” the girl said. “I’d remember that if I were you.”
    “I’m sorry, Madame,” I said. There must have been a bite in my tone of voice for the young woman snapped, “I sing for no brazen-faced barrel-maker even if he gave me all his filthy whistling casks.”     “Oh!” I said. “Nobody has referred to me as a brazen faced barrel maker.”
    “You are one,” she said.
    Then she was gone. I saw her narrow back, jumping and twitching and I caught a glimpse of her hair, curly and thick like a pile of thistles, bigger and heavier than the girl. She took her voice with her and suddenly I realized I’d lost something I could never retrace. I could put her song in my barrels and when the guys drank their plum brandy they’d have that mountain her voice had given the tune, and they’d have the big July sun and the bottomless dark lakes.
    “Wait! Wait!” I called after her. “I’ll give you my horse if you sing for me.”
    Everybody in these parts knew my horse Dorcho. He was red like the flames of one million candles and every hair shone a different shade of fire on his back. He galloped faster than an Opel car along the winding mountain roads and he had cost me four summers of barrel making eighteen hours of hammering and scooping and chiseling every single day. Those were happy summers, though. I made majestic vats and barrels that built a name for me no one could shake or steal. If a guy looked for “the barrel maker” it went without saying he meant me, Ivan the master of the singing casks. I’d hoped that runt of a girl would freeze in her tracks spell-bound on hearing the name of my whirlwind Dorcho.
    “Ha!” she scoffed. “I wouldn’t waste my spittle for a horse that’s no better than a rag.”
    “What!”
    “Rag,” she said the heap of her wild hair bobbing, vanishing like an owl that was chasing a rat amidst the beeches.
    I went into one of my black huffs. I’d have no slandering mouths spitting and spewing lies about my thunderbolt Dorcho.
    “Listen, hey!” I shouted at the top of my lungs which were very strong lungs of a barrel maker. “The mayor’s daughter would be flattered I talked to her. Do you know what I’ll do if I meet you again? I’ll put you in front of my workshop to polish the shoes of my clients.”
    She must have heard me for after a minute or so she was again in front of me, looking me in the eye.
    “And do you know what I’ll do if I meet you again?” There was that smoldering gunpowder in her eyes that I happened to like.
    “I’d very much like to know,” I said waiting for her gunpowder to explode.
    “I’ll put you in front of the door of my room in the place of the doormat. First I’ll wipe my shoes on you then I’ll talk to you.”
    “What! The leaves of the beeches rang like church bells.
It was summer, the best time to make a keg from a dry walnut trunk for grapes bandy.  The gapes and the walnut made good tunes in my whistles I put in the kegs. If the weather was windy the tune sounded sad and the guys who drank the brandy thought they were in store for a fight. But if the sun had stayed long enough with the wood and the brandy, the beech kegs sang. They remembered the roots of the trees, the branches, and the hill on which the beech forest used to grow. My whistles jumped with joy. That was what the sun was to my kegs. I had made kegs for many girls. I remembered a big keg I made for the mayor’s daughter, and a small narrow one for the priest’s daughter, and a low squat one for the daughter of the district police chief.
I often found a forgotten petticoat or a pair of lady’s stockings under my bed. The girls were all pretty and each one of them deserved the barrel I made and the tune I put in it for her. No woman so far had said was her doormat.
“A flea is bigger than you!” I shouted the summer and the leaves of the trees still dead church bells in my head.
    She walked away and her back narrow as a cuckoo’s nest sank into the bush. I felt like running after her.
Then I remembered I had found again a petticoat under my bed. The girl was the mayor’s daughter and as usual I promised I’d make a barrel with a nice tune for her. Was it possible, I asked myself, to find the petticoat of one and the same girl every day and make barrels with good tunes for her? No, I’d be bored stiff! There should be different girls if I wanted new tunes and new barrels. I was sure of that.
The small girl whose name I didn’t know stopped and shouted at me, “You goat.”
“It’s time you settled down,” my mom said. “It’s time I had grandchildren and not forgotten petticoats in our house.” Then she heaved a sigh as deep as the sky before a storm and added sadly, “Your father was … Well, I hate speaking about that,” and she heaved another sigh.
“I will not have anybody call me a goat,” I shouted back.
My mother was a gentle, quiet woman. She sang to me when I was a boy and she sang to dad when he was sick after he’d fought with other guys. I believed her songs made him strong again. He drank so much and ruined his voice that was powerful like a sledge hammer and sharp as a chisel. He was a brawler, and at times he screamed at mom but he was quiet when she sang to him, so I think that was why she sang to him, to keep him quiet.  His eyes were as quiet as a room in which little children slept, and she sang, her soft voice making me guess dad had done something wrong. I was somehow sure she didn’t like it at all although she didn’t say anything.
The girl walked along the path, all the light of the summer in her hair and all the blue of the sky in her long thick dress.
“Your dress is a rag,” I told her. “Your shoes look even worse.”     She didn’t say a word.
Mom never complained. Father was notorious far and wide in the valley of the Struma River and the old wives wondered how she put up with his numerous “female friends”. I knew she often found petticoats and other things like lipstick or bottles of make up that didn’t belong to her.
“Hey,” I shouted after the minx of a girl with a storm and sun in her hair. “If you don’t want to sing for me, maybe you will do something else with me. I’ve got a villa and I’ll give you a golden necklace after that.”
“O, will you?” She said, turning around. “Could you wait a minute, please?”
“Yes, I could. But why should I wait?”
“Because I need a sec to pick up a stone to hit your thick head with,” she said and before I had time to wink she hurled the basket she was carrying at me. Then she walked away as calm as a hill all covered with snow, and as cold. I wondered how the big mountain was suddenly quiet under her feet and the grass she stepped seemed to sparkle.
“Wait,” I said but she strode purposefully across the meadow, a mushroom that had suddenly learned to strut. “Hey, molehill, I’ll break your basket” I called after her brandishing the thing like a sward
“Ha!” she sneered.
That was all I saw of that young lady that day and when I arrived at home I asked my mother after her.
“Well,” my mother said. “I don’t know which girl you mean. If she’s the one I think she is, then you should be careful, son. She’s got three brothers.”
I passed many times by that stream where I’d met her but Molehill had vanished into thin air. I asked the shop assistant in the clothes department after her, and I asked the mayor’s daughter. Molehill was on my mind all the time I worked on a small keg from a trunk of a cherry tree I had exchanged for three big bottles of my father’s brandy. I worked and I looked at the basket she had thrown at me.  
And then one day I saw her herd of goats. The beasts looked as meager as cats. They should have been very hungry, the poor things, for the meadow looked as if a razor had shaved the grass to the root in their wake. The meadow was steep and there were crags jutting out of it, and there were big thistles and thorns all over the place. Above the meadow the mountain soared abruptly to the sky, sharp, brown and huge. I noticed snakes and lizards basking in the sun on the boulders.  The clouds were flat and hot, and it was a most ordinary and dull day – I could make nothing but a pitiable barrel for the lowly brandy the men in these parts made from half rotten tomatoes. We drank such swill only when one of my friends got divorced or when his wife ran away on him, or when his donkey died in the middle of the road. That was a day for a barrel to keep such hogwash in.
Then suddenly the big voice erupted amidst the goats. This was no song. It had no words, it was just a huge endless voice that thrashed through the crags, beat the heat and ran over the line where the hill ended and the horizon began. I couldn’t tell where her voice went or why sky was suddenly in my hands. Her song glittered, big and deep and long like a path to the place I had wanted to be all my life. It felt like suddenly it was winter with deep snow, and at the same time it was autumn and the trees were golden, and it was summer, too. There were church bells in her voice and there were hills and wheat grains. I stood transfixed. I listened and listened.  The mountain became small. I had never seen so many winters and kids skating on icy rinks in a human voice. I never imagined a tune could hold a mountain, a summer and a herd of goats in it. My whole life was in that melody.
The song stopped abruptly.
“You again!” the angelic voice shouted. “Go away!”
The sky was flat, the winter was gone and the herd of goats attacked the steep meadow. That was the girl, this time her hair looked wilder if that was possible at all. I stared as she turned her back to me shooing her goats away.
“Hey!” I shouted. ”Hey, marry me. Don’t run away. Stay and marry me!”
She sopped.
“What?” she said. Her voice was small and her eyes were most ordinary brown eyes as she stood in front of me. Then I suddenly noticed her eyes were bigger than her, bigger than my whole life.
“I don’t know your name, but it doesn’t matter.” I said. “Marry me!”
Her most ordinary brown eyes measured me and I knew they didn’t believe me.
“I mean it!” I shouted.
“Ha,” she said and pushed her goats up the thorns and thistles in the meadow. I followed her.
“Be tomorrow at 5 pm at Bitter Crossroads,” she said over her shoulder. “Don’t forget to take an axe and a pickaxe with you.”
“Bitter Crossroads?” I gasped. “You are out of your mind. There are only thorns, thistles and hawthorns there.”
“I mean it,” she said.
“What! What do you mean?” I asked her but she pushed her goats disciplining them with her thin stick. She paid no attention to me.
Bitter Crossroads was a lousy spring that ran dry in summer and spewed muddy water and sleet in the autumn that tasted bitter in your mouth if you were crazy enough to taste it.  In winter, the thing turned into a thick shield of ice that covered the whole hill. The place was thickly overgrown with hawthorn shrubs and sloe-thorns, and the path that squirmed its way to the spring seemed as narrow as the eye of a needle to me. It was hot, and the axe and the pickax I carried weighed a ton each. I had tied my horse Dorcho a mile away from the wilderness and all the way to Bitter Crossroads nettles, thorns and prickles clawed at me and tore at my shirt. It was half past four, I’d come too early, but I was all ears. Perhaps Molehill was nearby? I could hear her steps if I was lucky.
Well, if the guys who bought my kegs saw me here at the back of beyond, they’d make fun of me until the day I breathed my last.  And they’d be perfectly right. I was waiting for a mushroom, I didn’t know her name and I’d told her I wanted to marry her. As a matter of fact, I’d thrown hints a number of times it was about time I settled down in the presence of the mayor’s daughter and wife.
I’d been walking two hours to get to Bitter Crossroads in the scorching heat, dragging a pickaxe and an axe, damn it. Didn’t I have a screw loose? It was ten past five and no Molehill was in sight. I fidgeted, sweated and cursed under my breath. What a fool I was, what an idiot! I stared at the endless thorny shrubs, at the hole that used to spew brown mud, and I chewed my lip. It was twenty minutes to six. The axe and the pickax lay useless at my feet.
“Hey, barrel maker!”
Wasn’t I startled! I looked around and I saw nothing, no Molehill, no Mushroom, nothing.
“Where are you?”
Then I saw her. She was amidst the thickest shrubs, her old long, long dress showing nothing of her legs.
“I was here all the time, barrel maker.”
“No!” I said. “I was listening and I was watching.”
“Didn’t I hear somebody mutter he was a damned fool and an idiot?” she said her most ordinary brown eyes on my face. Suddenly they were the most extraordinary eyes I’d ever seen.
Then I was angry.
“You sneaked up on me like a snake,” I said seething.
“You said you wanted to marry me,” she said.
“Yes,” I admitted. “So what?”  
She said nothing. She ran into the wood, grabbed a big hawthorn shrub, her arms pushing through the branches, her old long dress sticking to the leaves, her wild hair mixing with the barbs and prickles of the damned thing.
“If you want to marry me,” she said, “You have to wrench me from that bush first”.
“O, come on,” I said. “I won’t have bullshit like this.”
  “It’s your choice,” she said, plunging her fingers deeper into the thick sharp leaves amidst the prickles.
I took a step to the hawthorn tree and a couple of nettles stung my bare legs. I retreated rapidly towards the dead spring.
“You are not much of a man, barrel maker,” the girl scoffed amidst the hawthorn branches.
I advanced to the shrub taking no heed of the nettles, but the spiky twigs, sprigs and their barbs dug into my cheeks.
“I told you to bring an axe and a pickaxe,” she said.
I grabbed her long dress and pulled. The garment came apart at the seams and a piece of the rough cloth remained in my fists, but Molehill clung to the hawthorn bush like a horseshoe to Dorcho’s hoof. It was hot, and the prickles of the small tree stuck into my hands. I could see her little face. It appeared as calm as 20-year- old brandy sleeping in my best barrel. She waited unperturbed, reserved and remote as if I wasn’t sweating to get to her.
“You are not even beautiful” I shouted.
Her face remained aloof and I knew the brandy in her eyes wasn’t meant for me. Well, Molehill, you don’t know me, I thought to myself. I reached out, caught hold of her arm and pulled hard. The minute I thought I’d got the better of her she bit me. Weren’t her teeth sharp as chisels! And sharper! I let go of her arm.
“Use the axe and the pickaxe,” she said her voice quite dry and matter-of- fact.
I lifted the pickaxe and tried to cut off some damned branches, but I cut my leg instead. Then a thought crossed my mind: if I felled the tree, couldn’t I drag Molehill, leaves, spines and all? I hit the branches, beat at the trunk, sweated and thrashed about, then finally saw it would be easier if I uprooted the damned shrub. I started digging a big ditch the thing while Molehill clung to the thorny branches, her hair entangled with the twigs. I dug the hole, and started chopping and clobbering the trunk. It was a thin bush, nothing strong or sturdy, so I cut it off in no time.
“It would’ve been easier if you’d simply asked me to climb down,” she said.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t care that the spines had scratched and scraped my nose. There were splinters in my toes and my fingers tingled, but I could live with that. I clutched at the hawthorn bush and at Molehill who clung to it, then I shouldered the bundle of thorny branches, torn dress and wild hair.
“Now you can ask me to walk you home,” she said and smiled. I thought it was the first time she smiled for me. Her smile was big like the sky and the wind in it.
“You and the bush are not heavy at all,” I said. “I can carry you both to the top of the mountain.”
Her smile was gone and there was no more sky above my head.
“Sing to me, please. Sing to me.”
There was the big smile on her face again half hidden behind her endless hair.
She sang. The mountain under my feet froze in its tracks. The wind listened. It was a very simple song, the one about the girl and her old belt. It was a great song. Her voice was thousand times richer than my all singing barrels. My whole workshop was dust compared to the old belt in Molehill’s song.
Then suddenly she stopped singing and I didn’t know where I was. I saw her smile waiting for me. Thee old belt in her song loved me. The mountain top was my brother and waited for me, too.
“I can’t live without you,” I whispered. “I simply can’t. I wouldn’t for all the barrels I made.”
“I know,” she said.
She tried to kiss me, but her enormous hair was all over the place, entangled with the branches of the hawthorn bush I’d just uprooted. I kissed her. There were some spikes that were in the way, but I could live with them. In fact, I couldn’t. I couldn’t kiss her big and long the way I wanted.
“Here he is! Here! This way!” I heard men’s voices shouting. “What is he doing to her!”
Her two brothers, not  very tall, but stout and sturdy, rushed to me, very dangerous with their axes and cudgels, their eyes burning like branding irons.
“We’ll kill you like a pig!” the bigger one shouted. “Anni, did he do anything to you?”
“I’ll cut his ears, I’ll cook them and I’ll make him eat them!” the smaller one yelled very bloodthirstily, brandishing his axe. “Come here, Anni, come!” he urged her.
“Quick,” the bigger brother chimed in. “Let us save you fist. We’ll kill him later.”
Molehill suddenly ran away from me and I thought, “It’s over. She’s gone.” Everything became gray. The world was a dark place and I didn’t care if they beat me black and blue or they cooked my ears and made me eat them. Then Molehill suddenly grasped another hawthorn bush, a smaller one this time. She clung to the stem, clasping it, her fingers caught hold of the spiny branches, her dress stuck to the thick leaves, her hair was all over the place bushier than the hawthorn bush.
“Come here or I’ll break your head!” her smaller brother thundered.
“Break it if you can,” she said calmly.
“Let’s first kill him, and then save her,” the other brother offered as the two of them stared at me. It was suddenly very hot. The sky reeled, the mountain shook and the only thing I saw was the bigger brother’s cudgel and the smaller one’s axe.
“I’ll stay with him!” Molehill said. Her brothers froze in their tracks. I froze too, but then the air was suddenly so wonderful and the sky was my friend. The wind was my brother, and the mountain peaks loved me.  The magnificent summer waited in my hands.
“What!” the bigger brother screamed.
“What!” the more bloodthirsty one bawled.
“You have to extract me from the tree if you want to take me home,” Molehill told them. “Or you can tear the bush by the roots.”
“You are off your rocker,” the more thickset brother muttered trying to seize her hand. “Ouch!”
“Ouch!” the second brother screamed, trying to pluck out the thorn from his thumb.
“Tell them you love me,” Molehill turned to me. “Tell them you can’t make your barrels without me.”
“Shut up!” the brothers roared in unison.
“He’s after the mayor’s daughter!” screamed the one.
“And you are dirt under his shoes!” thundered the other/
“I love her!” I thundered back. “I don’t want to live without her. I don’t want to breathe without her…I can’t walk without…”
I’d forgotten the younger brother’s cudgel. It hit my head as the axe of the bigger one bit my shoulder. I’d forgotten everything, but then their fists were at work,
 “If you hit him one more time,” Molehill was shouting. “I’ll tie both of you while you’re sleeping, I’ll drag you to the river and I’ll drown you in the pool!”
All of a sudden her brothers stopped beating me.
“She’ll sure do that,” the elder one ventured. “You know her.”
“Yea,” the other one said. “I know her.”
“Hey, idiot,” the younger brother barked at me. “Get out of here before I kill you.”
I could have hit him in the face. I knew that after my blow his face would be a heap of broken bones, smashed nose and tattered skin. I didn’t clobber him; after all he was Molehill’s brother. The air was still wonderful and the mountain peaks were still my brothers. Molehill was there smiling, her black eyes full of summer, her smile a light, happy breeze in my heart.
“I love you, Molehill!” I cried out.
Her brothers stood in her tracks, staring at me the cudgels and axes idle in their hands.
“I love the tunes you put in your barrels, Ivan,” she said.
It was the first time she’d pronounced my name, and I froze in my tracks too. “I love these tunes. They are so beautiful.”
The mountain was a song, the hawthorn shrub was a song and Molehill’s hand felt magnificent on my arm. And she was beautiful, so beautiful I could hardly say another word.