Ljerumlup is technically the name of the of two mountains peaking from the shroud of Elhem. They're the most recognisable landmark of Dronesk, and till this day they're printed on all of our postcards. But ever since my great-great-grandfather relocated the Bikjaru settlements from Rujga to Dronesk, Ljerumlup had become synonymous with the proud estate he had built and the land that now belonged to my family.
To me, Ljerumlup was my backyard. It was the valley that I knew like the back of my hand. I knew where our property began and ended before I could even write. It was embedded in my being, cemented forever as home. I was too young to have formed an objective view of it. It wasn't until I brought Yuri Karamov home that I got to witness what other people had to process when they saw our famous estate.
I grew self-conscious when I realised that we had reached a point where the only thing separating us from my home was a small hill. Yuri had called the residence a castle, and it wasn't the first time I had heard the likeness being made. Though, I had never before been forced to ponder what it meant.
At the root of my self-consciousness was the fear of not being able to live up to his expectations. Mystery enshrouded a castle. Embedded in its very definition was an aura of excitement and funâwhereas home was...home. It was where I had to take long, tedious baths, do my homework, sleep, and eat. I wasn't completely oblivious at that age. On some level, I would like to believe that I understood that my house was larger than other people's. Larger than Yuri Karamov's. I just didn't like to think it was the biggest.
As soon as my home came into view, Yuri grew quiet, and the distance between us seemed like meters instead of centimeters. I was afraid that if he wasn't impressed his mood swung on the opposite end of the spectrum. He was either impressed or gravely disheartened by the building's magnitude
I must have been staring at him for some time because he looked over at me with a quizzical expression.
- It's not that big, right? I asked.
He shook his head.
- It doesn't really look like a castle.
This made me more relieved than I cared to admit.
- It's just a big house, I said.
Yuri's eyebrows drew together as he directed his attention to the house. I did the same, trying to gauge what he saw.
There was no gate, no fence, none of that stuff around the residence. The trees grew wild around its perimeters, except for the gravel passage that facilitated access to vehicles. The house was almost as tall as it was wide, but there was little symmetry looking at it from the front.
The middle part of the building hosted the entrance and was also the only part which hadn't been decimated in the war in 1988. Formed like a half-cylinder, it protruded out of the stone facade. The stone-wall roof had indentations that reminded me of an archetypical mediaeval fortress, like the one I had seen as a child in OdzhonskÃa where my great-great-grandfather had fought against the Red Army.
Flanked on either side were two newer additions. Their facades lighter in shade, and thus distinguishable. On the left side, was a tall rectangle with a traditional sloped roof which was bare save for its many windows. The right sideâmore cubicalâhosted several smaller, cone-shaped rooftops. Vines covered this side of the building, which due to the cold January weather looked like a knot of twisted thorns; withered and gnarly.
The building melted so seamlessly into the mountainsides, that if not for its stature, it could have fooled you into thinking it lay abandoned. There were no bikes, nor any garden tools, nor small trivial every day-things placed outside. Those had their own shed in the back, far out of sight.
- How many people live here? Yuri asked. - It looks empty. Do you have siblings?
I shook my head. - It's just me, Eline and my father.
- Oh, and the cook, I added when Yuri's face fell in sympathy, - she lives with us too.
I didn't know what to make of his expression. For a fraction of a second, I was tempted to tell him that I had a half-brother on my mother'a side, that I wasn't completely sibling-less, but I wasn't sure if I was allowed to talk about him, and so I said nothing.
- Is Eline your...mother? Yuri asked.
My jaw fell.
- No! Eline is...she's my step-mother. She wants me to call her Mother, but I already have a mother. I don't need two. Besides, I added, hesitating, - she's a witch.
- A witch? Yuri took the meaning literally.
I pinched my nose and mimicked Eline's nasal tone.
- Ru! Go up to your room right now!
- Ru, you just made Mother very upset.
I thought my theatrical performance deserved a standing ovation, but it had fallen on deaf ears. I wasn't worried though, Yuri would catch on soon enough. The thought which on any other day would have made me snicker, now filled me with dread. Dread at having suggested we play at my house when I knew how pedantic my familyâespecially Elineâwas, and how my household was worlds apart from his. I wanted to play it off; to laugh, to compensate for the fear that whispered that Yuri wouldn't get it, or worse, that he would use it against me in school. But I didn't. I kept quiet, my mind buzzing with regret, as we walked to the door.
Eline was getting dressed in the foyer. We didn't get to process much else of the interior before the heavy oak door opened and revealed her frame, standing in the background. Her back was to us, and luckily we saw her first. I braced myself for her grating voice, my back straightening. The housekeeper, who held the door open, alerted Eline to our presence, making her pivot on her heel.
- Ru? Her voice echoed in the hollow foyer, off the marble and the stone sculptures. It was as smooth as her appearance. She wore her outwear: her heeled boots and a coat, and had just been strapping a purse over her shoulder when we interrupted.
Whatever she'd been about to say died on her tongue the moment she laid eyes on the head peeking out from behind me. I moved to the side so she could take him in. I had grown accustomed to Yuri's appearance. In the short span of time I had known him, I had even started to grow fond of its charm, but the way Eline looked at him lay bare all her prejudices.
I felt my shoulders stiffen under her calculating gaze.
- Good afternoon, ma'am, Yuri greeted. He bowed.
Eline was pensive and stiff. Her eyes panned over to me.
- I'm heading out. Her voice was collected, but she was scatterbrained. I saw it in the way she flexed her gloved fingers; the way her eyes kept flickering back and forth between us.
- I told Petra to warm some broth for you and to take it up to your room. You're late, but that's something you'll have to take with Stefan once he returns.
She looked over at Yuri and smiled, but smiling didn't suit her. Eline was an attractive lady with rich, blonde locks and a healthy complexion, yet when she smiled it stretched the thin skin over the bridge of her large nose. She stood tall and straight with her gloved hands folded in front of her. She was proper, an exemplar of Arash women.
Her gaze fixed on Yuri, she said, - I can guess who you are. I'm glad I got to meet you...Karamov, was it? Yes, Karamov. You're always welcome to play with Ru. I'm sorry we had to meet like this.
She flashed him another polite smile.
- I'm in a rush down to the Centre. You'll stay for supper, won't you?
Without waiting for an answer Eline called for the housekeeper.
- Mjinska, she addressed the young woman, - tell Petra to prepare an extra cup of broth for the boy, and an extra plate at the table.
- I'm sorry ma'am, Yuri interrupted.
- I don't think I'll stay for long.
He didn't hold her gaze, instead, his eyes flicked over to mine, as he fiddled with the zipper on his jacket.
Had it been someone else, Eline might have at least offered words to persuade them otherwise, but she looked over at Yuri and smiled thin-lipped. She turned back to Mjinska, - It's settled then.
Eline secured her purse and click-clacked over to us. She placed a hand on my head.
- Be a good boy while I'm gone. Mjinska is here to help you with everything you need.
As always, her mind filtered out my scowl and general displeased stance. She bent forward and pecked my forehead. I couldn't stand her dotingâespecially not now while Yuri was watching. I push her back just as she was retreating. Seemingly unbothered, Eline said, - Mné paká, to both Yuri and I before she sashayed out of the door.
As soon as the door had closed behind her, I pinched my nose and pantomimed her expressions. This time Yuri laughed, albeit faintly. A pleased rush spread over my body.
This was going to be the best day ever. We had the whole house to ourselves. Bribing some sweets out of Petra was always a priority, so I took Yuri to the west wing of the house, to the kitchen, to teach him my eight years of expertise in the art of persuasion.
Petra was smoking, seated near the low windows on a stool. She must have been lost in a reverie because she startled when she heard us, and by then there was less than a meter between us. With a hand on her heart and a grimace, she said, - I have an old heart boy, be kind and stomp when you enter.
- Who's your friend? She asked looking over at Yuri. She put out the butt of her cigarette on the stone windowsill and dispersed the wisps of smoke with a wave of her hand. She wasn't supposed to be smoking indoors, with my asthma and all, but Petra was old and rarely ever intimidated by my father.
Mjinska appeared at the door.
- The two of them will have broths, she called from the entrance.
- Can we have something sweet too? I pleaded. - Is there any raisin cake left?
- What do you want, Yuri? I asked, looking his way. - You can speak to her in Brommin, she'll understand you.
Yuri looked hesitantly at both of us. Petra inspected him from head to toe, eyes lingering over his uniform. She said something short and to the point in Brommin. Yuri answered her without his expression changing.
He glanced over at me. - I'll have what you have.
Petra muttered something under her breath. She glared at us, but I sensed that she would cave to our request. Petra had a hard and worn shell, but on the inside, she was soft and sweet like a bonbon.
- I'll send them up with Mjinska. Now, get out of my kitchen. She shooed us away with a wave of her hand. - I don't want to see your faces in here again.
Flashing her a smile, I grabbed Yuri by his sleeve and dragged him into the dimly lit corridors of the west wing. Most of the rooms here were unused and the lights were rarely turned on.
My old nursery, a laundry room and the kitchen all lay on the first floor. Further back in the corridor, in the left corner, was a storage room where we kept most of our Christmas and Easter decorations. The second floor was home to several empty bedrooms and a large viewing room that doubled as Eline's studio, and sometimes spare wardrobe. The third floor was never used and the rooms up there were empty of decor. Last I knew, we kept some old furniture there which were too sentimental to throw away.
Yuri was right on my heels, taking everything in with a childlike wonder. Thick wooden frames supported the walls to keep the cold out. The floors were laminated over stone, and if it weren't for the carpet that covered every centimeter of the floor, our footsteps would've echoed against the naked walls. Yuri told me it was strange to be walking on the carpet with our shoes on. The Brommian took off their shoes at the entrance.
- Like in school, he said, - it's just something you do.
Things were different at Ljerumlup, different in a way I couldn't articulate. In the end, I'd settled for, - Our socks will get dirtied.
It was what I had been told growing up, but even so, I struggled to grasp the logic because I saw Mjinska scrub the carpets every day. I reiterated what I knew: we took off our shoes where the carpeting was clean; the upstairs living room, the master bedroom, my bedroom, and my father's office. And even then, only if we felt like it.
There wasn't much decor in the corridors. The ground floor of the west wing was just one, long, stuffy enclosure. Once there was something, Yuri couldn't help but point it out. He exclaimed in awe at the busts made in the images of deceased relatives. He smiled and bowed to the eery-looking children and women. Even touched them (though I told him not to touch them). They were stone statues made by several people, most of them collected by my great-grandfather who he, himself had been a renounced artist once.
Legend has it he had been one semester away from graduating from the University of Florence when he'd been called to service. The war eventually ended when both sides grew too tired and too famished to fight. My great-grandfather returned to Dronesk with only a pinky-finger left on his right hand. He took up sculpting when every other medium failed him. The war and the gruesome winter that had killed so many of our countrymen were mirrored in his sculptures; in their cold and vacant eyes and calloused expressions. Whoever the people he depicted were, they'd no doubt built themselves homes in his troubled psyche.
Most of his statues weren't fit to display in an Orthodox homeâmy aunt disliked them; she thought the naked ones, those of the peasant women, too vulgar. Whenever she quipped a snide remark (which was more often then one would think) my father was quick to remind her how they were part of history. To us, the Bikjaru, remembering our roots and our history has always been the cornerstone of our prosperity.
My grandfather, unlike his humanist father, had cultivated a love for hunting. He had been an admirer of the falcon hunters of the East in his youth, which lead him to become a devout huntsman. His victims hung, stuffed and framed, on archways and on the walls like trophies. A black bear, its impressive snout in mid roar hung on the archway to the living room, while the fur of a lynx decorated the floor of my father's office. There were several heads of bucks and stags with intelligent eyes and beautiful antlers hanging on several other locations around the house.
I didn't have the same reaction to them as Yuri. I wasn't nearly as impressed. There had always been something unsettling about taxidermy to me, but my father loved them. And as natural a backlash as any, I grew to hate everything my father loved.
The more Yuri pointed and probedâturning a vase this and that way, touching the stuffed birds' feathers, yelping at the chime of the grandfather clock the more unsettled I grew. I found his fascination unnerving. I wanted him away from it all, from the outdated extravagance that was sure to mark me as being different.
I quickened my steps, and he followed suit. We returned to the foyer and took the central staircase upstairs to my room. But to get up there, we first had to pass the rug. I always avoided looking at it. I had done it so often that it'd become second nature to me, which was why I didn't notice Yuri fall behind.
I was three steps away from reaching the second floor when I glance over my shoulder and saw him standing at the foot of the staircase, a good three meters between us. His head was turned to the wall. Immediately, I understood.
He craned his neck to take in the rug in its entirety. It hung on the wall closest to the curve of the staircase. The location wasn't by accident. The windows on the curved wall gathered the afternoon sunlight and directed the rays to a point near the ceiling, shining a beam of light on the handmade rug. Its placement made everything else in the house dim in comparison. After all, it had been sewn with the intended purpose of being the most eye-grabbing piece of handwork you'd ever laid eyes on. The colours went from dark to light in hue, from bright to dim in contrast.
I expected Yuri's eyes to fall on me sooner rather than later. And when they did, the feeling of dread that washed over me wasn't any less obtrusive.
Yuri's mouth was agape.
We stared at each other in silence. I knew even before he knew what he would say. I'll never forget it. The words he uttered still ring hollowly in my chest from time to time.
- He looks just like you.
It wasn't what most people said. Those who knew the man the rug depicted, knew that he had lived a hundred and twenty years ago, and so instead they said: you look just like him.
But in the end, Yuri had concluded the same thing. One fleeting glance and he knew.
My hand tightened on the bannister. My eyes dragged upwards to the man's face in the rug.
There was something in Konstantin Ru's face that I didn't like, and it wasn't the diffuse lines of the rug. There was something beyond that, something in the core of him. I've never been able to see my likeness in his hard, emotionless face. It made me wonder which parts of him I resembled so much. His jaw was set, his stance proud. He had one foot dipped in a stream, and the other in greenery that put paradise to shame. Around him were symbolic depictions of Elhem, of the Bikjaru settlers, of armies on horsebacks, and battlefields. The rug told a story. The story of the first Arash settlers in Dronesk. It was my family's heritage on one large piece of fabric, and in the heart of that story stood my great-great-grandfather, Konstantin Ru.
We shared the same light head of hair, the same frontal bone, and nose, but that's where our similarities ended.
- Is that your father? Yuri asked.
I shook my head without taking my eyes off the art.
- But he looks like my father.
It wasn't true. My father had darker hair and was more filled out compared to the depiction of my great-great-grandfather. Appearance wise they shared maybe two or three features that were commonplace in the Konstantin lineage. Yet, somehow, I had always seen my father in the man, ever since I was a small child.
There were things sewn into that rug that went beyond our physical reality. It had captured the soul of Konstantin Ru, and unfortunately, that soul was just as dark as my father's.