Spring 2024 - Recrudescence

“Through the Plague”

with a slightly clouded head from Hadji Dragan’s old wine, Grandpa Neyko continued on his way. He was trying to get to the lower end of the village because he had a job to do over there. He knew that while the young and the old wondered where to hide out of fear, there, in the lower neighborhood, the ragged and the scoundrels were gath ering in the pubs saying: “No plague can catch us. The plague is out for the rich. We will be the ones to outlive them.”. Grandpa Neyko found them in the pub holding their glasses, listening to the drums, and looking at each other as if confused. “What is going on?” they kept asking each other. “A wedding, that’s what’s going on,” Grandpa Neyko an swered, leaving them looking each other in the eyes and still won dering. When Grandpa Neyko returned to Hadji Dragan’s yard, un der the black grapes, he saw people playing the horo dance. They were playing like crazy, drenched in sweat as if they had been bath ing. Hadji Dragan no longer had any enemies, the whole village had gathered in his yard. Whoever was at the dance was dancing, and those who weren’t were going to the barns to fill their sack: Vulko Kehaya, Hadji Dragan’s kehaya, poured wheat as if it was gold and marked the tally sticks with his knife. Grandpa Neyko felt content. This was how this unprecedented wedding went on over a whole week. As soon as the new day broke, everyone ran to Hadji Dragan’s. People cheered each other and danced to their limit. But there was something sick about all that gaiety. They drank wine to put their worries to sleep, they laughed to hide their fear. And they looked at each other shyly and each one thought that the other knew some thing bad but wasn’t saying it. In the evenings the fires would light the Balkan Mountains. Once they returned home, the same people who had been having fun at the wedding now locked their doors and listened timidly. Suddenly they would feel a lump in their throats, as they were falling asleep, they felt as if they were suffocating. In the faint glow of the lamp, their faces looked as pale and tormented as 197