Shorn summer flocks saturate the Osogovan mountainside like a superfluous sweater. Their unshaven chaperons dawdle in that leisurely way that makes idylls so imperturbably idyllic. Sweet Osogovo poses her hills in rows and rows of verdant mammaries, irresistible to sheep and shepherds alike. She promises an easy day, enticing all creation to indulge.
Stojan haloos Vlatko from afar, his ebullience echoing over and over over the din of bleating. Vlatko, visibly pleased, slips his slender oak kuval from his shirtfolds and begins fluting a low droning note. Stojan approaches, quite unconcerned with whatever his headcount should be, his nibbling flock strewn a league behind him along the buffet. The shepherds all admit the sheep and shepherding are convenient excuses, accessories, only means to this music. Giddy, Stojan eagerly extracts his own kuval from his knapsack.
Like a stolid usuror, Vlatko drones that low uncompromising drone, bedrock on which Stojan gambols freely. Slowly, the players forfeit control of the ezgija's melody, which flourishes as an evocative thicket of brambles and blossoms: fusillades of Slovakian arpeggios, baying of octaval wolves, contemplative wooden textures, and all the contours of Osogovo -- Stojan's and Vlatko's and all the shepherds' insatiable mistress.
When Stojan tires, he drones and Vlatko drives the melody. Perhaps different notes, but it is the same song, for the same idyll, for the same Osogovo. Dozens of shepherds join and leave the ezgija. They dare nothing, coddling every note, repeating this ritual. Worship tolerates no creativity. So they play until lips loosen, until fingers blister, until summer grows cranky. Sweet Osogovo hibernates and her men retreat to Baraklija until next summer awakens her.
Six months linger each year. The village becomes awkward and quiet and manly. None play music.
While their masters mope, agitated black and white wool commingles and demingles in cramped square pens, very reminiscent of the static produced by the defunct television Gjorgji procured this winter. During lucid moments, his television offers occasional glimpses of the world beyond Osogovo: Macedonian not Yugoslovia; how acting now may save 15 denari; St Petersburg not Leningrad; how all ruminants have four stomachs; and other matters inane and grave. These are all diversions from their beloved Osogovo.
The wool grows bushy. The television programming stays bland. The seasons change too slowly.
When summer returns, so does Osogovo. And so do her idylls and their sheep and their shepherds. And so do their kuvals and their ezgijas. And so do their dronings, their melodies, their blossoms, their brambles. And Stojan is there, and Vlatko and Risto are there, and all the shepherds are there. Even Gjorgji, who everyone now calls Television-Man. The ezgijas begin. Stojan goes, then Vlatko goes, and it's just like every year. Osogovo always receives her melodies so nonchalantly that one cannot tell if she receives them at all.
During the trek to the pastures, Gjorgji had confided his mind spent its winter far from Osogovo, far from Baraklija and far from Macedonia, to whereever his crystal ball directed him. It's his turn to play atop the shepherds' drone, his angular and perplexing melodies gouge the round easiness of the pasture, polluting it with whiny traffic horns, fluttering receipts, the syncopated chatter of data computations, terse telephone niceties, the crescendoing inflation of floundering economies. Under these sounds foreign to Osogovo and rare to Baraklija, the shepherds' drones start to falter then give away completely, leaving Gjorgji playing his thin melody a solo. The misfit Gjorgji dismisses himself. The shepherds continue, trying to resume their frivolities.
Summer goes, Baraklija populates with awkward men, summer comes.
The shepherds and sheep return. So does Television-Man. He brings electric guitars, theramins, pyrotechnic rigging, subwoofers, garish costumes, personnel to webcast the ordeal, fettering record contracts. The few sheep his flock retained seem common when hoof-to-hoof with the other shepherds' flocks. But within Gjorgji's herd of ibex, cassowaries, capybara, ride-on gas mowers, and whatever else, the shepherd's sheep remain unique.
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