Everything Happens as It Does (12 page)

52.
Awakening

 

The baby's crying woke Valentin. In one fell swoop, everything he knew came back to him. The baby was screaming furiously, probably starving. Valentin took it in his arms, but the baby continued to cry.

There was some milk powder and fruit flour in the fridge. While reading the ingredients and the instructions on the packages, he rocked the baby in his arms. Where did Maria keep the sterilized feeding bottles? In the sterilizer.

He managed to prepare some food, more or less, and put the bottle in the microwave. After two minutes, the baby was snorting happily, sucking on the bottle.

Probably the diapers needed to be changed.

Once he managed to change them, again more or less successfully, by using whatever he found in the baby's room, he went to Margarita's room. The door was locked. It had happened before, but now he just couldn't bear it. He pushed and pounded on the door with all his force. And he pushed and pounded until a disheveled creature, wearing his own face, opened the door and looked at him with clear eyes. At last.

The others were gone. Valentin went to his room and lay down, this time on his real bed.

He thought that from now on many mornings would be like this. He stretched and turned a little. Now he was finally in his right place, or so it seemed.

 

53.
Short Days

 

In the days that followed, things took place and Valentin simply waited for them to end. He knew that these things had to happen once and only once. For example, Maria's funeral, to which everyone came peaceful and calm. Valentin was also peaceful and calm. What was happening now had nothing to do with what had happened to his mother.

Margarita seemed to be feeling the same way. And visibly everyone else, too. Fanny was the only one who looked confused. But this somehow suited her.

Throughout the visits, the comings and goings of people, Fanny took care of the baby. She sometimes stayed with the baby in the house, and sometimes took him with them.

Gradually things quieted down.

Then Valentin decided to go and see Raya. And for some unknown reason he took Margarita with him.

When they arrived at Raya's place, they looked like a delegation on an official mission. Valentin carried presents for his daughter, flowers for Raya, and Margarita carried the baby. The visit resembled an old-fashioned event where the families of the two parties met for the first time. Raya, who knows where she had found any, served them fig jam on small crystal plates, glasses of water, and some liqueur that made her tipsy in no time. But even that could not spoil the afternoon. Raya was surprised and happy to see the little baby, and her daughter was simply ecstatic. Margarita managed to convince them to return the visit the following day.

Philip continued to wear his old face. Nothing more. He continued living in his apartment, but there was no longer anything scary about it. Now he felt comfortable in his independence. For some reason, he no longer felt ashamed before his children, although he still didn't know them as well as he knew the girls in Suhata Reka, or his students. And he was able to move between them all more freely than before.

 

54.
The Narrow Door

 

Boris remained a riddle to all of them, however. It was not because they—Margarita, Valentin, Philip, and the others—understood each other better. And they never really thought of Boris as someone they could not fathom. They now simply knew their respective homes and visited each other. On the other hand, no one had ever seen anything that belonged to Boris. No one had gone into the place where Boris lived. With the exception of a few words he had spoken in his official capacity, no one had heard him say anything. And no one had shared any experience with him. Their only connection to him was Maria. Now perhaps the baby, too. Still, no one knew anything about him.

But Boris was just that. If anyone knew what had happened in the chapel on Christmas, he did.

Boris smiled as he remembered Philip fussing about the autopsy, which, of course, a colleague of his had to perform. There were cases like this—one in how many…—Boris had no idea. No known cause of death. And yet, there was death. Maria, dead, was proof enough.

What did “Maria, dead” mean? Boris laughed out loud. Maria and Maria's body, were these two one and the same? Boris knew something about her eyes in that chapel that she didn't know herself. He knew the child she had seen, and who had seen her, on the day of his christening.

Back then, when he had entered the dark chapel, the woman had jumped to her feet and rushed to the door. Black folds of cloth and hair had billowed around her like night wind and flapping wings. She had vanished before anyone from the procession had reached the door.

Boris never dared ask if anyone else had seen her. The seeping fog of her eyes had filled his. No one had spoken about her. But he never doubted that she existed. Until the day he met her. On the street, in broad daylight, in the middle of the city. And again, she saw him. And he saw her. Nothing before that encounter had ever held any importance for Boris. He stayed with her, and that was that.

In what world had their meeting taken place? And was there anyone who had witnessed it, could someone speak of it, say anything? For example, how the baby had appeared. Everything between Boris and Maria was lost to memory. It was “something like nothing else,” obscuring their meeting in the chapel from view, like a cloud.

With one exception. The girl, Margarita, had heard the story.

When he had found her sleeping in his suitcase and heard, through her ears, his own voice, Boris had felt the urge to destroy the whole thing. Undo. The recording or Margarita, either way. But he was not able to. It was not so simple to lift the suitcase and carry them away. The Suitcase Man.

It was not so simple to leave them either. But still, he did just that. He left them.

Many days later he came back for his suitcase. Margarita begged him to give her the box with the fairy tales. He picked a few tapes at random and gave them to her.

Now when all was coming to an end, Boris tried to imagine the whole picture. Maria, his parents, the baby, Margarita. Everyone was in their place. He had left his son on Margarita's bed. Maybe they were going to listen to the “fairy tales from the box” together. He himself was not in the picture. Just as he had always wanted it to be.

Boris smiled and got up. Just a little more and then it was over.

He headed downhill. He was walking slowly. The snow had again erased all traces. To the narrow door. In order to go back, he thought to himself, I'll need to make a new path.

About the Author

 

A
lbena Stambolova is the author of three novels:
Everything Happens as It Does
,
Hop-Hop the Stars
, and
An Adventure, to Pass the Time
. She has also published a collection of short stories,
Three Dots
, and a psychoanalytical study on Marguerite Duras,
Sickness in Death
. She currently lives in Bulgaria, where she works as a psychological and organizational consultant, and is working on a book about fairy tales.

About the Translator

 

O
lga Nikolova completed her PhD at Harvard University, with a dissertation on modern poetry, graphic design, and academic writing. Disaffected by academic conventions, she redirected her attention to translation. She's been translating the works of Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein into Bulgarian, and
Everything Happens as It Does
is her first translation into English.

About the Publisher

 

O
pen Letter—the University of Rochester's nonprofit, literary translation
press—is one of only a handful of publishing houses dedicated to in
creasing access to world literature for English readers. Publishing ten titles in translation each year, Open Letter searches for works that are extraordinary and influential, works that we hope will become the classics of tomorrow.

 

Making world literature available in English is crucial to opening our cultural borders, and its availability plays a vital role in maintaining a healthy and vibrant book culture. Open Letter strives to cultivate an audience for these works by helping readers discover imaginative, stunning works of fiction and poetry, and by creating a constellation of international writing that is engaging, stimulating, and enduring.

 

Current and forthcoming titles from Open Letter include works from Argentina, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Russia, and many other countries.

 

www.openletterbooks.org