Angelopolis A Novel Page 0,49
Mercedes jeep waited, ostentatious and anonymous at once. She hadn’t been asked for her passport: Her presence in Bulgaria would not be registered. Officially, she had never entered the country.
A woman with black hair and deeply tanned skin greeted her from the driver’s seat. She introduced herself as Sveti and told her that Bruno had called hours before about Vera’s arrival and her requirements while in Bulgaria. She said, “If you’re hungry, help yourself.”
Vera opened a wicker basket filled with cucumber and tomato sandwiches, an egg and feta cheese pastry Sveti called banitza, stuffed grape leaves, bottles of Kamenitza beer and Gorna Banya mineral water. She couldn’t imagine eating much after her morning with Nadia but nonetheless spread a cloth napkin on her lap and took a sandwich.
“We are currently outside of Burgas,” Sveti said, pulling away from the airport, the tires kicking gravel as she turned onto a paved road. “About twenty-five minutes from Sozopol. Once we arrive I will take you to the Angelological Society of Bulgaria Dive Center, where we will meet with Dr. Azov. Our outpost has been here for years, but somehow we’ve managed to stay off the radar. He’s been doing work nobody could dream existed. And yet the rest of the world has never come calling before. You are the first foreign angelologist in ages to visit us.”
Vera stared out the window as they drove through the city of Burgas, gas stations and a McDonald’s marking the way. They passed dour concrete apartment buildings, a Lukoil station, and any number of makeshift fruit-and-vegetable stands. Traffic was sparse, and Sveti took full advantage of the open road, driving faster and faster. As they made their way south, the two-lane highway swung out to the water’s edge, skirting the jagged coastline. They passed a shipping yard filled with industrial barges and clusters of houses that seemed ready to tip into the water. The Black Sea glinted in the sunlight, an enormous pool of green-blue, still and calm as a sheet of glass. The peculiarity of the color, Sveti informed her, was due to a certain variety of algae that bloomed in the spring. Normally the water was a steely gray, a shade more in keeping with its dark name.
“We’re nearly there,” Sveti said, turning off the highway and onto a winding road that overlooked the water. A village rose before them, perched high on a promontory.
“Sozopol was once called Apollonia,” Sveti said. “The Greeks traded from the port, and it became an important outpost on the Black Sea. Obviously much has changed since then: the Romans came, and then the Ottomans, and then the Russians. I’ve been visiting this place since I was as a child, when Sozopol was a small fishing village where families vacationed every summer.” Sveti slowed on the winding road. “Then the village itself was contained on an arm of land that reaches into the Black Sea. Since that time there has been massive development. Hotels and clubs have sprung up on every vacant piece of land. A modern section of the town has taken over the opposite side of the bay. It used to be a kind of paradise. Now, well, now it is like everything else: all about business. At least it is still quiet in the spring.”
They drove along a harbor, past sailboats and fishing vessels, reams of net hanging from the sides. Sveti stopped the jeep, cut the engine, and jumped out, gesturing for Vera to follow. She stretched, feeling the sunlight on her skin. Suddenly the cold drafts of the wind from the Neva seemed a world away.
Vera glanced up at the village. It rose behind the harbor, displaying a warren of narrow streets. She studied a house poised upon the hill. The construction appeared to be ancient—the first floors were built entirely of stone, windowless, as if to resist the onslaught of water, with a wooden second floor that overhung the stone base. There was a small terrace laden with strings of drying peppers, bundles of herbs, and wet laundry. An old woman stared down at them, a pipe hanging from her lips, her hands crossed over her chest, incurious as to what was happening below.
Within minutes of their arrival a motorboat arrived at the water’s edge. Vera and Sveti climbed aboard, took seats, and held tight to a metal railing on the boat’s edge. The driver turned the wheel and the boat angled away from Sozopol as they headed into the calm waters of