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JET-LAGGED, I WAKE BEFORE SUNRISE in a hotel outside Rila Monastery, in the mountains south of Sofia. I slip out of my room and take a seat at the empty outdoor restaurant facing a tree-covered hill. A standalone brick fireplace is crackling, to my surprise, with half-charred wood.
Rila is a center of Bulgarian culture and monastic tradition that is plastered with demons who will fuck you up in hell. It is a place of contemplation. In the firelight I replay images from the day before. Black-and-white-striped arches. Haloed icons. Byzantine frescoes ennobled by the crisp pine air. For lunch, bone-in fried fish caught from the mountain stream. For dessert, the traditional Mekitsa pastry heaped with powdered sugar and raspberry jam.
The sound of footfalls brings me to the present—a worker arriving carting a wheelbarrow of split logs. He offers me a cigarette. I usually don't smoke, but I take it. He could be from anywhere. We try English then settle on broken Spanish. He picked it up working in Madrid, he explains, I think.
I want to thank him for greeting me while I sat alone in an unfamiliar place. But I go quiet, embarrassed to travel at will when he travels to carry loads in the dark. Dawn breaks. He tosses his cigarette in the fire and returns to work.