Georgi Gospodinov - The Physics of Sorrow

“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.

Juliet in Front of the Movie Theater

This is probably my third outing at most since I’ve been here.

I’m walking slowly down the dusky streets, meeting people whose faces mean nothing to me. Sullen, tired, expressionless. The early October twilight falls quickly, the scent of roasted peppers hangs in the air, everyone has gone home for dinner, I can hear lines from (one and the same) television show. I pass by the town movie theater, which has long since forgotten the scent of film reels. And suddenly behind me, a female voice spits out in a single breath: “Hi, hi. what are you up to? I’m leaving. Okay, goodbye. I won’t be back anytime soon. ”

A tongue-twister, followed by strange, soundless laughter. It was so unexpected that it really did make me jump. By the time I had summoned up a reply, even though there was clearly no need to do so, the woman had already passed me by. Juliet, crazy Juliet! I recognized her from behind, slightly stooped and always rushing. The same old-fashioned pink suit she’d worn for as long as I could remember, with big cloth buttons and a drooping hat like the Queen of England’s.

Juliet from my childhood, Alain Delon’s fiancée, who was always hanging around the local movie theater, they let her in for free, and she knew all the films by heart.

Once as a child, when I still possessed that ability in spades, I sensed the whole cacophony inside her. As if she herself were made of movie scenes, slightly blurred and changing at breakneck speed. Runaway trains swooped down on me, along with horses, amorous shivers, a few merciless kicks to the gut, faces, lines, a punch in the nose, low-flying planes, off-the-cuff remarks, sorrow, and euphoria. I slipped back out exhausted and dazed.

Blissful over her “romance” with Alain Delon, she was always explaining how he would come get her from T. to take her directly to Paris, par avion . She was illiterate and was constantly looking for someone to help her write letters to her beloved. Since I, too, was often hanging around the movie theater and was one of the few who didn’t mock her, I became her go-to letter-writer, a local Cyrano de Bergerac. They all began with “To my heart’s true love, Alain,” then obligatorily moved on to a short critique of his latest film, with a detailed explanation of how she had deciphered all the signs he was sending her from the screen. Sometimes, she would allow herself brief, jealous admonitions, for example to watch out for that young Anne Parillaud, as well as for that ditzy M. D. (I silently replaced “ditzy” with “ritzy”). The letters always ended with assurances that she, Juliet, was ready, she didn’t have much luggage and was waiting for him, so why didn’t he drop her a line or two to let her know when he would be coming to get her? He could find her every afternoon in front of the movie theater. I would put the letter in an envelope, write “Alain Delon, Paris” on it, and she herself would drop it into the yellow mailbox. The return address was invariably “The Town of T., Juliet, in front of the movie theater.” Clearly, these addresses only underscored the fame of both correspondents. Known to the world and to their town.

One day, however, the miracle of miracles occurred and Juliet received a letter from Alain Delon. Someone had left it at the box office of the movie theater. The fact that the postmark on the envelope bore the name of the neighboring city and that the letter was written in Bulgarian were negligible details. I had the honor of being its first reader. Juliet no longer trusted anyone else.

“My dear Juliet,” the local wags had written, with all of their small-town cruelty, “I get your letters regularly and I was forced to learn Bulgarian so I would be able to write back to you. I don’t always manage to reply, because I’m swamped with work and women, but I don’t pay any attention to the women due to my eternal devotion to you, my dearest child, my darling fiancée. Never stop waiting for me, gather up your dowry, be sure to throw in a swimsuit, I’ll swing by T. to take you directly to Sardinia. Your ever-loving, Delon.”

They had reeled her in like a sardine, but she was darting around in such joy that I didn’t have the heart to insist that the letter was a forgery. She snatched the envelope out of my hands and stuffed her nose into it, as if trying to catch a whiff of Delon’s cologne, then she hugged me, tucked the letter in her bosom and set off to make the rounds of the city, mad with happiness, spreading the good news and saying her goodbyes.

Now nothing could shake her certainty that Delon would come, and she spent all her afternoons in front of the movie theater with a shabby little bag holding her dowry and swimsuit. Years passed, the movie theater closed down in the ’90s, Delon himself grew mercilessly old, but Juliet never missed an afternoon, hanging around the agreed-upon place. I’ve rummaged through my personal archives and old newspapers from those days, I can’t find any pictures or any sign of her, the town’s sole aristocrat. Her brother, Downtown Gosho, had wrested the title of town madman from her, what inequality in madness as well! Gosho himself, good-natured and harmless, was found drowned, entangled in the reeds of the Tundzha River. From the surviving picture of him, which I include here, we can reconstruct a bit of his sister Juliet’s luminous face as well.

Let me add Juliet’s story to the time capsule that is this book. One day, Delon, old and forgotten, will learn that every afternoon in the town of T. for forty years (here Penelope shrinks in shame), a woman has been waiting for him in front of the long-defunct local movie theater with all her luggage in a small bag.

AN OFFICIAL HISTORY OF THE 1980S

In 1981, Bulgaria turned 1,300 years old. For two years running, we watched herds of galloping proto-Bulgarians and hordes of barbaric Slavs hidden in the bogs, breathing through hollow reeds like snorkels. Everybody had a friend or relative who was an extra in the crowd scenes in those historic epic films. Rumors flew about proto-Bulgarians with digital watches that carelessly appeared in some of the shots. At that time, digital watches were a big hit, to the delight of the Vietnamese wheeler-dealers we bought them from on the black market; you couldn’t just take them off and leave them lying around somewhere. In a certain sense, the 1,300 thanniversary passed like a film premiere. The true events of 1981, the ones we hadn’t prepared for, were something else entirely.