Stork Mountain Read Online Free PDF Page B

if it were to blame. All the accusations, the powerful, dramatic speeches I’d been preparing for months rang perfectly clear in my head even now. But the moment I opened my mouth the words rolled out crippled.
    Grandpa picked up the jar and drank it dry. “I’m thirsty like a rabid dog,” he said. “And maybe I am rabid. Maybe that’s why I came here. Did you think of that?”
    I nodded. Insane, unstable, terminally ill—all these were scenarios my parents and I had considered at length.
    â€œListen, my boy,” Grandpa said gently, and spread his palms open. “We’re both tired. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
    The newspapers on the table flapped and, zipping up my jacket, I stretched back in the chair. I really was tired. The wind had grown cold. The sun had dived behind the hills and though the sky was bright in that direction, it was indigo to the east. From our vantage point, high on the terrace, I could see the bridge, the river, and on the other side the Muslim houses with their red rooftops, the thin minaret of the mosque. On our side of the village was desolation—crumbling stone walls, yards overgrown with thorns and dead trees. And on the chimneys of the ruined houses—like large, unblinking eyes that watched me in the dusk—dozens of stork nests.
    â€œDoes every house have a nest?” I asked Grandpa a few days later.
    â€œSome roofs have two.”
    But why there weren’t any in the Muslim hamlet he couldn’t say.
    The nests were still empty. Though it was time, the storks had not arrived yet. Two more weeks would pass before the first birds—the scouts, as Grandpa called them—spun their belated wheels in the skies over Klisura.
    â€œWhat’s that?” I pointed toward the end of the village, where, as a grotesque counterpoint to the white minaret, stuck up an ugly black metal frame.
    Grandpa groaned in disgust. “There is the Babel Tower,” he said, “there is the Eiffel Tower. That there is the Tower of Klisura. A world fucking wonder. If you permit.”
    A few months back some genius had started building a wind turbine and then abandoned it mid-construction. And that was that.
    He lit up and the plume he exhaled hung between us, changing shapes. The wind whooshed through the treetops and carried the smell of budding leaves, of wet, damp earth, which mixed with the stench of the tobacco. I cowered in my jacket. The cigarette burned red, redder in the smoke, like a living coal. The smoke drew a wing, the wing morphed into a woman’s face.
    A hand shook my shoulder. “Wake up, my boy. Listen. Hear!”
    How long had I dozed? Night had fallen. Somewhere in the dark, behind hills I couldn’t see, a bird was calling, its song melodic, mournful. And like today, another bird answered it from the Muslim hamlet, where now timid lights shone behind the curtained windows.
    â€œIt’s from across the border,” Grandpa said. “A man has died. They’re letting us know.”
    â€œWho is?” I perched forward and listened to the whistling song.
    â€œThe people of his village. That’s how they cross the hills. They’ve learned to speak like birds.”
    I’m not sure how long I sat in my chair mesmerized. The song had dissolved in the night and silence had returned to the village—crickets cried in the yard, dogs barked, the treetops rustled.
    â€œThis man,” I said at last, and my ugly accent startled me. What beauty, to speak unburdened like a bird. “Did you know him? Was he a good man?”
    â€œWhat difference does it make?” Grandpa asked. “He’s dead.”
    *   *   *
    I woke up with thunder ringing in my ears. Sheets of rain slapped the window and the glass rattled in its frame. The whole house had come to life—walls, floors, beams in the ceiling. Caught in jet lag, I listened, dozed off, came to again. Then, sharp as