The Physics of Sorrow (12 page)

I climb down from the window carefully, unfolding my body, instead of simply jumping down. The room, lit up by the autumn sun, has come alive. One ray passes right through the massive glass ashtray on the table, breaking the light down into its constituent colors. Even the long-dead, mummified fly next to it looks exquisite and sparkles like a forgotten earring. The Brownian motion of the dust specks in the ray of light . . . The first mundane proof of atomism and quantum physics, we are made of specks of dust. And perhaps the whole room, the afternoon and my very self, with my awkward three-dimensionality are being merely projected. The beam of light from the old whirring film projector at the local movie theater was similar.

I recalled the darkness, the scent of Pine-Sol, the whirring of the machine. Everything in the movie theater was made from that darkness and a single beam of light. The headless horseman arrived along the beam, as did the great Rocky Mountains, the Grand Canyon; horses and Indians, whooping Sioux tribes, geometrical Roman legions, and ragged Gypsy caravans headed for the heavens kicked up dust along it, Lollobrigida and Loren came down that beam, along with Bardot, Alain Delon and his eternal rival Belmondo,
oof, what an ugly mug . . . I remember how, when the movie was boring—less fighting, more talking—I would turn my back on the screen and peer into the beam coming from the little window at the back of the theater. It swarmed with chaotically dancing particles. But this wasn’t your average, ordinary dust wiped off the furniture in every home. This magical dust made up the faces and bodies of the most attractive men and women in the world, as well as horses, swords, bows and arrows, kisses, love, absolutely everything . . . I watched the specks of dust and tried to guess which would turn into lips, an eye, a horse’s hoof or Lollobrigida’s breasts, which flashed by for an instant in one scene . . .

I pass my hand through the beam of light in the room, stir up the specks of dust, and quickly close my fist, as if trying to catch them, that’s what I did as a child . . . I would wave my arms, charging into battle against them . . . From today’s point of view, the battle was lost, they’ve won. My one small consolation is that soon I, too, will be with them. Dust to dust . . .

The House

I’m here incognito. The ironic thing is that I’m not making any particular effort. The surest refuge, if you want to remain unnoticed, is to go back to your hometown. I nevertheless try to keep up the conspiracy to some extent, going out only rarely. Before coming, I let it slip here and there that I was leaving the country for a good long while, I made up some writers’ fellowship in Latin America. I got my regular dose of snarky comments on two or three literary websites, to the effect that the number of trips I’ve taken has significantly outstripped the number of sentences I’ve published in recent years. Completely justified accusations. I grabbed my bags and took off. Or rather, I came back. I don’t know which verb is more accurate in this case.

The house we’d once rented rooms in had stood empty for years. The old owners had passed away, their descendants were scattered all over the world. I managed to get in touch with the caretaker. I paid him for three months, although I didn’t count on staying for more than two or three weeks. I planned on returning to Sofia incognito, where all those boxes and my gloomy birthright of a basement awaited me.

Still, the caretaker couldn’t help but ask what had brought me here and why I wanted to rent this particular house. I had an alibi ready, of course. If nothing else, in this line of work I could always come up with a story that sounded believable. I put my money on the tried-and-true spiel about a scholar who had chosen an isolated place to finish up an important study.

But still, what made you choose these parts, of all places? The locals run away from here as fast as their legs can carry them.

That’s exactly the reason, I’m looking for peace and quiet. I passed by here some years back, treated my broken leg at the Baths. This is a wonderful place you’ve got here, just wonderful, I repeated. His suspicions melted away. If you praise the place where someone lives, it’s like he personally deserves the credit for it, and you’re already one of the gang, you’re in. I again stressed that I would have lots of work to do and would like to remain undisturbed. The caretaker assured me that I had picked the right place. My neighbor to the left was an old deaf woman, while the house to the right had been empty for many years and rats and hobgoblins had the run of the place. They say, he went on, that you can catch sight of a faint light flickering through the rooms from time to time. That’s the soul of Blind Mariyka, who was the last one to live there. The man fell silent, perhaps afraid I would back out of the deal, before adding that he, of course, didn’t believe in such nonsense.

I remember that neighboring house very well. Back then, Blind Mariyka was alive and Lord knows why we were so terrified of her.
During the day she would stay hidden inside her room, only in the evenings would she come out into the yard and wander amid the trees with her arms stretched out wide. Some said she saw better at night than during the day, since the darkness within her and the darkness outside got along. Just like with moles. Folks in these parts don’t mince words.

Otherwise, everything was the same. The street still bore its old name, that of a Soviet commander, the room was the same, with a table, a bed, and an old oil stove. Even the now-faded orchids on the wallpaper hadn’t changed.

A family of swallows had built a nest under the eaves of the house. They had three little ones. In the evening I would deliberately leave the light on outside. It lured flies and moths, which the swallows would catch. Soon I found myself wondering if what I was doing was right. I was helping one species kill another more easily. Yes, the swallows had babies that needed more food. Children are a bulletproof alibi. But most likely those flies and moths I was victimizing had children, too. Why should the little swallows be more precious than flies’ larvae? Are not the murder of a fly and the murder of an elephant both murders equally?

I had come back to that house in T. for a specific reason. I pull up the floorboard to the right of the window. That’s where the bed had been. As a child, I had hidden a secret stash box there. Afterward we had moved quickly and I hadn’t been able to take the box. I told myself that one day, I would come back for it. That box gave rise to all those later boxes and crates, they all stemmed from it and at the end of the day, without it my collection would never be complete.

The End of the Indians

Let’s have a moment of silence for the dead Indians and those of us from their tribe. I need to add them to that catalogue of disappeared things. Along with those extinct pagers, videotapes, and Tamagotchis. When we watched
Winnetou
, we all become Winnetou. After
Osceola
, the neighborhood was filled with Osceolas. It was the same thing all over again with Tecumseh, Tokei-ihto, Severino, and Chingachook, the Great Snake . . . I know that now these names mean nothing to those who were born later. Batman, Spider-Man, and the Ninja Turtles have managed to get the upper hand over the Indians and their whole mythology, dishonestly at that, never once going directly into battle against them. They finished up what the pale faces had begun two centuries ago.

The story I want to tell takes place after the showing of one of these old East German cowboy films. I remember that we always came out of the movie theater dazed, as if after a battle with the Whites. For at least an hour afterward, we always had one foot still in the film, half-Indians, half-third-graders. It was almost a physical sensation. And so, after one of these films, we went to a bakery near the movie theater to get our usual
boza
and
tulumbichka
. We needed quite some time to pull ourselves together after the battles, to climb down off our horses and reenter the dull Bulgarian world. We got in line at the bakery. Finally, it was time for the first of our gang, let’s call him our “chief,” to order, and he ordered his
boza
and
tulumbichka
with dignity. The woman at the counter, however, was chatting with someone and didn’t hear him. Our chief stood in front of the display case with a stony expression on his ten-year-old face. When the woman finally looked at him and somewhat rudely snapped, “Come on, squirt, tell me what ya want, I don’t have all day,” he spat out coldly: “Chingachook does not like to repeat himself.” No one had expected this. It definitely took guts to spout off such a
line and the long pause, during which only the ceiling fan could be heard, underscored the magnificence of the moment. A second later, however, the woman and several of the regular customers burst out laughing as if on cue. That was really low (super-duper low, as we would have said back then), worse than if they’d smacked us around or thrown us out. Chingachook couldn’t take it and dashed outside. We also “spurred our horses.”

None of us made fun of Chingachook afterward; on the contrary, we admired his courage in a world that didn’t give a shit about you. Especially if you’re a kid in third grade.

The epilogue to this story is far more depressing. Strolling around the town of T. now, years later, I came across a carnival shooting gallery. I could have sworn that it was the same trailer from my childhood, faded and rusted out. Even the rifles were the same, the butts were just more worn than ever. This had once been the most magical place for us. Only here could we see all the foreign treasures that were otherwise locked away (I now know that they came from Yugoslavia). It was an Ali Baba’s cave with candy cigarettes, color postcards of Gojko Mitić, Claudia Cardinale, Brigitte Bardot, pocket calendars of naked women, decks of cards, pictures of a woman who would wink at you, depending on which angle you looked at her from, pens with a boat floating inside it, scented Chinese erasers, pistol-shaped cigarette lighters, cap guns, leather belts with huge metal buckles, Elvis Presley pins, Eiffel Tower key chains, old calendars with the whole Levski soccer team, glass canes full of colorful candy, sparklers, leather cowboy hats, plastic holsters, glass balls of every size and color, Bakelite ballerinas, porcelain Little Red Riding Hoods complete with a wolf . . . This whole porcelain-plastic kitsch emporium, which, I repeat, was once priceless to us, now looked run down and defeated. In every store, you could now see far greater treasures (and far greater kitsch). Right in front stood
those brown, poorly molded Indians with their tomahawks, bows, spears, horses, and so on, which we would have given our right arms for back then. I went over to the trailer and suddenly recognized in the man behind the counter the once-proud Chingachook, aged and paunchy, calling out to a group of kids who were passing by unimpressed. The film was over.

I didn’t say anything to him, I stepped back into the shadows of the chestnuts across the way and stayed there, watching. A short while later, a boy of around fifteen, most likely his son, came up to the trailer; they exchanged a few words and Chingachook left. I waited a bit, then went over to the boy. I paid for ten shots, picked one of the two rifles, and started shooting at the walnuts. With the first shot it became clear that the rifle’s aim was off a few centimeters to the left. That old trick used in all shooting galleries, it downright warmed my heart.

“This rifle’s aim is off,” I said.

“Well uh, no, it shouldn’t be,” the boy blushed. “Try the other one.”

“No, no, I’ve already figured out how far this one is off,” I laughed. I broke a few walnuts, then took aim at the wolf that was hot on the rabbit’s trail, then at the prince, who bowed and kissed the princess.

“Pick a prize, sir,” the boy said, after I’d put the rifle back in its place.

I asked how much the Indians cost, I picked up a squatting brave shooting a bow and arrow, another on horseback, I caressed their edges, looking them over like a connoisseur. The boy stood there, staring in disbelief. I was surely the first one who had shown any interest in them. When I said that I wanted to buy all the Indians, he looked frightened. He didn’t know what his dad would say, he was really attached to them. But they are for sale, aren’t they, I asked more sharply. Yes, of course, they’re for sale, the boy replied, looking around helplessly for his father. How much? The price, of course, was laughable. Look, here’s what we’ll do, I said, I’ll pay for all of
them, but only take half. I’ll leave the others for your dad. And tell him not to give them away so cheap. They’ve got added value from the past. I’m not sure he understood me.

“Are you a collector?” The boy asked, while handing me the cheap plastic bag full of Indians.

“You could say that.”

“Leave me a name or stop by again, I’m sure my dad would be happy to meet you. Nobody around here cares about Indians.”

“Tell your father ‘hello,’” I replied, walking away.

“What’s your name?” The boy called after me.

I took a few more steps, I was under no obligation to answer, I could pretend that I hadn’t heard him. Yet I turned around.

“Swift-Footed Stag is my Indian name.” I waved and disappeared around the corner.

Side Corridor

Blind Man’s Bluff. The easiest way to make a labyrinth—you just put on a blindfold and start walking. Suddenly the world is turned upside-down, the room you knew so well is different. A true labyrinth in which you stumble into things, get hurt, move about with moans and groans. It now occurs to me that this would be the Minotaur’s favorite game.

When we were kids, my female cousins and I made a pact that no matter how old we got and how much we changed, even if we had kids of our own and become bigwigs or total losers, we would get together on one particular day every year to play Blind Man’s Bluff. Until we really do go blind, they laughed. Those accidental brushes while trying to catch someone in the dark, the drawn-out process of recognition through touch were part of the innocent eroticism of that game. We played for the last time sometime toward the end of college. I only remember that I stumbled into the giant cactus in the living room and was pulling out needles for the next two days.