Georgi Gospodinov - The Physics of Sorrow

He also might be going crazy, everything might just be in his head. He got up and slowly went over to the window. He stood there for a moment before drawing aside the tatty curtain, then abruptly yanks it away. Down below school kids really were marching around, in the same uniforms as fifty years ago, men and women in suits and long gray trench coats were standing around them. The marching band was doing its routine, while the sun showered its glimmering rays into the brass instruments, which had been shined with putzing polish in advance. He hadn’t thought about putzing in ages. A little farther on stood the platform. He got dressed quickly and went downstairs. They were all real, three-dimensional, living, the men with crew cuts, the women cold-curled, they smelled of strong, cheap cologne, green apples, and once-ubiquitous “Ideal” soap.

They must be shooting a film, how could he have fallen for it? Somewhere here the whole cinematographic machinery would reveal itself. The trucks with the generators, the cameras, the dollies, and slider tracks. He carefully looked around. There was no sign of any equipment, they had hidden it that well. But still, a bearded director with a megaphone would have to appear out of somewhere shouting “Cut!” and making everyone go back for a second take. The demonstration continued, however, the music was playing, the band had marched quite a ways ahead. On the platform, bored people in dark suits waved to the enthusiastic squads of marchers. Twenty or so kids in blue neckerchiefs broke away from the parading ranks and, guided by their teaches, ran over to the platform holding bouquets of carnations. The dark suits took the carnations, patted the children on the heads and kept waving. There were carnations everywhere, just like back in the day, he thought to himself. They were perfect for every occasion — party meetings, demonstrations, weddings, and funerals. In the latter case, you had to make sure they were an even number. The set designers had done a good job. They clearly had a nice, fat budget, yet another one of those stupid co-productions. He couldn’t help himself, he turned toward an elderly man wearing a suit that looked like it had been sewn in the ’70s with a pin on his lapel.

“Excuse me, but what are they filming?”

“What are they filming? Who’s filming?” The man looked around anxiously.

“Uhh. it must be some movie. What’s with this. demonstration?”

“Don’t you know? Today is September ninth.”

That really was the date, but it hadn’t been a national holiday for the past twenty years at least. Bewildered, he begged the man’s pardon and stepped away from the crowd. He now noticed that his clothes also differed quite a bit from the others’. Against the backdrop of the sober brown of their trench coats and suits, their macramé sweater-vests, and the older women’s headscarves, he looked as if coming from another, hostile — or so he thought — world. His short red jacket stood out like a sore thumb, while his jeans and sneakers, in all their casualness, looked strange amid the sharp creases all around him. He ducked off to the right, wanting to stroll for a bit through the deserted side streets. The warm September sun was shining. The faint scent of roasted peppers wafted from somewhere. Flags were hanging from some of the windows. On one corner, a swarthy grubby man of indeterminate age was selling funnels of sunflower seeds, just like back in the day. The funnel is an ingenious invention, his father had loved to say, the cone gives a sense of height and volume, yet the inside holds a much smaller amount, the ideal shape for commerce. He bought himself a funnel. It was made of a piece of old newspaper. Just like in the old days, he thought yet again on that day. Once upon a time, everything could be made from old newspaper — from a painter’s cap to a lampshade. As a rule, everything could be made from everything you had at hand. He could read parts of words, numbers and percentage signs on the scrap of newspaper, which was certainly from back then, with that unmistakable ink and font. If this is a movie shoot, they really have thought of everything down to the smallest detail. He was the only thing that didn’t fit the set at all.

Carried away by such thoughts, he didn’t notice the two uniformed men who had been following him for the last few minutes, without bothering to hide it. When they suddenly jumped out in front of him, they gave him a good scare. Then he noticed that the uniforms they were wearing were not exactly like modern police uniforms. With those ridiculous jackets and big peaked caps, those belt buckles, well yes, they were gendarmes from the socialist era. This reassured him a bit, anything could happen in a movie, and could happen like in the movies, without any particular consequences. Your passport? I don’t have it on me. It’s back at the hotel. How long have you been here? Two days. We’ll be forced to take your down to the station. You have not completed the obligatory registration with the local office of the Interior Ministry, you’re sauntering about in provocative attire on a national holiday, not taking part in the event. He let them stuff him into the Lada, Jesus, where did they dig this thing up, and drove off. There most likely weren’t any cameras in the car and he thought that here they would finally put their cards on the table. He smiled and with a wink asked the sergeant who was sitting next to the driver: When will they show the movie? The cops looked at each other, then the sergeant turned around and with a well-aimed swing punched the arrestee between the eyes.

The building they brought him to had just been built, but architecturally it recreated late Happy Socialism from the 1980s, roughly hewn marble, wood and frosted glass. Blood trickled down from his split brow. The man who came out of the building wearing a suit immediately ordered them to get him medical attention, a nurse appeared from somewhere, put on a Band-Aid, found some ice, and led him into an office with a leather couch.

“Sorry, they got a bit carried away. I had explicitly told them not to touch a hair on your head. They can be real brutes sometimes, just like back in the day. Just don’t tell me you don’t remember me”—the man across from him took a bottle of brand-name whiskey and two glasses out of his desk drawer with a practiced gesture.

There was something familiar about that face, soft, babyish, looking ready to start bawling at any minute.

“Baby Cakes, is that you?”

“It’s me, Swift-Footed Stag.”

My (I didn’t know it was me, God damn it) schoolmate Baby Cakes, one of the gang back then, the eternal butt of our jokes, we didn’t even give him an Indian name. He carried Chingachook’s bow and quiver of arrows.

“So you’ve bought up the whole town of T., you’re the one. ”

“When did you get here, when did you learn all the gossip? Yes, I occupy several posts, mayor, party secretary, chief of the gendarmerie.”

“And why did you have to arrest me?”

“Oh, I have more than enough reasons. But above all, I wanted to see you, shame on you for coming here and not giving me a call. Because of the good old days. You’ve rented out a house to write in, and just imagine the coincidence, the same one you used to live in. I’m happy that you look back fondly on those years.”

“What’s with that baloney downtown, are you shooting some kind of a movie? You haven’t become a director, too, now have you?”

“No, it’s far more serious than that. I’ve launched a project. In short, I’m turning time back thirty years. Nothing has changed here in any case. I’m creating the world’s largest museum. A museum of the past, of socialism, call it what you will. The whole town, every day, round-the-clock, a total museum. Actually, ‘museum’ isn’t exactly the right word, everything is live. Everyone keeps being whatever he was then, and we pay him for it. I foot the bill for everything. We don’t pay them much, but we don’t ask much of them, either. Just for them to stay the same. They’re nostalgic for the olden days in any case. We’ve cut off the Internet, TV, we sell newspapers only from back then, actually we reprint the old editions in reverse order, we’ve imposed penalties for telling political jokes, we’ve reintroduced the people’s militia, party meetings, demonstrations. I invited those who had been secret service informers to get back to work. I also pay a few folks who used to grumble against the government to keep doing it. Those sorts of things create atmosphere.