Georgi Gospodinov - The Physics of Sorrow

I was born at the end of August 1913 as a human being of the male sex. I don’t know the exact date. They waited a few days to see whether I would survive and then put me down in the registry. That’s what they did with everyone. Summer work was winding down, they still had to harvest this and that from the fields, the cow had calved, they were fussing over her. The Great War was about to start. I sweated through it right alongside all the other childhood illnesses, chicken pox, measles, and so on.

I was born two hours before dawn like a fruit fly. I’ll die this evening after sundown.

I was born on January 1, 1968, as a human being of the male sex. I remember all of 1968 in detail from beginning to end. I don’t remember anything of the year we’re in now. I don’t even know its number.

I have always been born. I still remember the beginning of the Ice Age and the end of the Cold War. The sight of the dying dinosaurs (in both epochs) is one of the most unbearable things I have seen.

I haven’t been born yet. I am forthcoming. I am minus seven months old. I don’t know how to count that negative time in the womb. I am as big as an olive, weighing a gram and a half. They still don’t know my sex. My tail is gradually retracting. The animal in me is taking leave, waving at me with its vanishing tail. Looks like I’ve been chosen for a human being. It’s dark and cozy here, I’m tied to something that moves.

I was born on September 6, 1944, as a human being of the male sex. Wartime. A week later my father left for the front. My mother’s milk dried up. A childless auntie wanted to take me in and raise me, but they wouldn’t give me up. I cried whole nights from hunger. They gave me bread dipped in wine as a pacifier.

I remember being born as a rose bush, a partridge, as ginkgo biloba, a snail, a cloud in June (that memory is brief), a purple autumnal crocus near Halensee, an early-blooming cherry frozen by a late April snow, as snow freezing a hoodwinked cherry tree.

We am.

THE SORCERER

And then a sorcerer grabbed the cap off my head, stuck his finger straight through it and made a hole about yea big. I started bawling, how could I go home with my cap torn like that? He laughed, blew on it, and marvel of marvels, it was good as new. Now that’s one mighty powerful sorcerer.

Come on, Grandpa, that was a magician, I hear myself say.

Back then they were sorcerers, my grandfather says, later they became magicians.

But I’m already there, twelve years old, the year must be 1925. There’s the fiver I’m clutching in my hand, sweaty, I can feel its edge. For the first time I’m alone at the fair and with money to boot.

Step right up, ladies and gents. See the fearsome python, ten feet long from head to tail, and as long again from tail to head.

Daaang, what’s this twenty-foot-long snake?. Hang on there you, where do you think you’re going, you owe me a fiver. Well, I only got five and I’m not gonna waste it on some snake.

Across the way they’re selling pomades, medicinal clay, and hair dyes.

Dyyyyyyye for your ringletsssss, brains for your nitwitssss.

And who is that guy with all the sniffling grannies gathered around him?

. Nikolcho, the prisoner of war, finally made it back home, and heard that his bride had married another, Nikolcho met her at the well and cut her head clean off, as her head sailed through the air it spoke, oh Nikolcho, what have you done. Time for the waterworks, grannies.

And the grannies bawl their eyes out. Now buy a songbook to find out what terrible mistake he made, slaying his innocent wife. A songbook hawker. Geez, what could that mistake have been?.

People, people, jostling me, I clutch the money, just don’t let anybody steal it, my father had said when he gave it to me.

Stop. Agop’s. Syrup. Written in large, syrupy pink letters. I swallow hard. Should I drink one?.

Come and get your rock candyyyyyy. The devil is tempting me, disguised as an Armenian granny. If you’re in the know, here is where you’ll go . So what now? Syrup or rock candy? I stand in the middle, swallowing hard, completely unable to decide. My grandfather in me cannot decide. So that’s where I get the indecisiveness that will constantly torment me. I see myself sitting there, scrawny, lanky, with a skinned knee, in the cap that will soon be punctured by the sorcerer, gawking and tempted by the world offering itself all around me. I step yet further aside, see myself from a bird’s-eye view, everyone is scurrying around me, I’m standing there, and my grandfather is standing there, the two of us in one body.

Whoosh, a hand grabs the cap off my head. I’ve reached the sorcerer’s little table. Easy now, I’m not going to cry, I know very well what will happen. Now there’s the sorcerer’s finger coming out the other side of the cloth, man oh man, what a hole. The crowd around me roars with laughter. Someone smacks my bare neck so hard that tears spring into my eyes. I wait, but the sorcerer seems to have forgotten how the rest of the story goes, he sets my torn cap aside, brings his hand to my lips, pinches his fingers and turns them and, horror of horrors, my mouth is locked. I can’t open it. I’ve gone mute, the crowd around me is now roaring with laughter. I try to shout something, but all that can be heard is a mooing from somewhere in my throat. Mmmmm. Mmmmm.

Harry Stoev has come to the fair, Harry Stoev has come back from America.

A husky man in a city-slicker suit rends the crowd, which whispers respectfully and greets him. Harry Stoev — the new Dan Kolov, the Bulgarian dream. His legs are worth a million U.S. dollars, someone behind me says. He puts ’em in a chokehold with his legs, they can’t move a muscle. Well, that’s why they call it his death grip, whispers another.

I clearly imagine the strangled wrestlers, tossed down on the mat one next to the other, and start feeling the shortage of air, as if I’ve fallen into Harry Stoev’s hold. I rush to escape, while the crowd takes off after him. And then from somewhere behind me I hear: