The composer put his notes away and watched the wreathsdrift downstream. He could feel that something was going to happen. Beside him,Triglav made a small shuddering sound and laid the camera into the composer’sarms. The composer was surprised, but shifted to shoulder the burden. Hewatched his assistant join the village youth. For reasons that he would not beable to remember later, he did not call Triglav back to him.
The girls and boys paired off, Triglav beside a girl with anarrow, pointed face that reminded the composer of a fox. The composer watchedas they opened their mouths in another soundless song. Triglav sang too.
When they finished singing, Triglav waded waist-deep intothe river with the other boys. Ripples formed circles around them. Theyshivered with the cold. The composer wondered what he would name the concertohe wrote in honor of this ritual. He knew the villagers would drown the littledecorated birch tree at the end of the festival. He wondered if they woulddrown anything else.
Snake-like things came from the middle of the river, thesame wet spitting predators that had been in the trees. Legs twined aroundnecks, obscuring faces. The composer already knew his assistant was gone beforeTriglav sank into the water.
◊
The woman Magdalena was old and built like a boulder. Shecrossed herself when the composer came to the door, saying, “You can never betoo careful during green week.”
In her little cottage, she served the composer a fist-sizedhunk of black bread with soft curdish cheese. While he ate, she covered thewindows and locked the doors. Twice she said a charm. He didn’t know the wordsbut he felt their rhythm and knew they were holy.
When he finished eating, the composer took out aleather-bound notebook and a pencil. He had not asked Magdalena if she wouldshare the village music with him; he had not yet spoken to her. He thoughtsomething wordless must have passed between them. Already she had madeovertures to protect him from whatever spirits the rustics believed in. He wascomforted, a little flattered. He was hoping he would not end up like Triglav,dead on the floor of the river.
“Do your people use modern notation?” he said first.
She blinked at him.
“The treble and bass clefs?”
“No,” she said. “We don’t learn our music, not the music youmean.”
“And which music is that?” He made a note: ritual musicdistinguished from other genres. Possible religious component to this.
“The music that killed your friend.”
“The music made no sounds. I thought it must be some kind ofpageant, or spell, not—not music. And it was vocals only, no instrumentation.Is there a reason for that?”
“You couldn’t hear it?” She looked suspicious.
“No,” the composer said. “Should I have been able to hearit?”
“Hmmm,” said Magdalena.
“Do you make music like that?”
“I can,” she said. “But I don’t think I shall.”
“I’ll pay,” the composer said. For months his artisticfailures had been haunting him; he had drifted in a sort of waking nightmarebetween concert halls and conservatories. He had been longing to make music asthe rustics did in his homeland. Now he was wandering the earth like Cain, amark of wonder on his forehead, trying to find what secrets were containedwithin the little villages long forgotten by the Poles and the Russians whoseoperettas were so popular. Civilization had no beauty any longer, he had toldsomeone in a Viennese coffeehouse. He wanted to compose the wilderness.
Magdalena blinked sleepily. “But we are, as you say,soundless.”
“How can I train myself to hear you?”
“You cannot. Outsiders cannot.”
“And if I am not an outsider?”
The woman laughed from deep inside her throat. She took thenotebook from the composer’s hands and laid it on the floor. The wire recorder,she regarded with suspicion but allowed to stay. “You do not want to become oneof us.”
“Why not?”
She licked her dry lips. Her eyes kept darting from his faceto the covered windows. Shadows were playing on the blankets she had used asmakeshift curtains. “When you hear the music, you will not be able to liveanywhere else. You will have to stay here.”
The last tribe he had lived with used to say the same thingswhen they taught him how to play their fiddles and pipes. The composer admiredhow romantic the people of the plains were. He took up his notebook and made anote: music of central ritualistic and cultural significance.
“While you live among us,” said the old woman, “alwaysremember to listen for rain.”
The composer said he would. Satisfied with his first day ofwork, he returned to the stranger house in the middle of Sklep. The snake-likethings moved in the trees above his head but he did not hear them, or pretendedhe didn’t. That night, he composed a mazurka on his fiddle. He lay in his bedwith the burlap-scented pillow and listened for rain.
The bodies on the floor of the river shifted, and rain fell.
◊
The villagers of Sklep rarely left their homes. Even thefood-sellers were reluctant to set up shop. While they sold goose eggs and ryeflour to the composer, their eyes roved the landscape nervously. Green week, hekept hearing. It was green week so everyone was afraid.
They were not an expressive people. They did not mourn theboys and girls whom they had lost in the ritual. The composer made a note: ritualisticsacrifices occur with regularity? No one spoke of the lost youth, or of thesnake-like arms that had reached for them. Magdalena would not acknowledge thatanything had been lost, when the composer asked her.
“They will come home. They have to sow their oats,” shesaid.
The composer sent for a pianoforte. He taught modernnotation and scales to anyone who would listen. He composed nocturnes andsketches on his fiddle. He filled numerous notebooks with his observations onthe popular music of Sklep, which was mostly ballads full of cruel women and theirhapless lovers. Only boys sang the songs. The girls never sang. They satknitting with their long white fingers. Their feet drummed rhythms on thefloor. The composer sat with them and felt impotent.
Many nights the people retreated to the banyas, littlewood bathhouses where strangers were not welcome. Boys hauled piles of hotstones from the hearth to the banya door, where their mothers andsisters
