Albena Stambolova - Everything Happens as It Does

Valentin vaguely suspected that Raya’s father played a significant role in the whole misunderstanding, even if only in accepting the baby with open arms, as if it were one of his own. He had even heard him say “the children of my children are also my children,” with such boundless, yet exclusive generosity. At least that was how Valentin felt about the situation. But he could never talk about it to anyone.

Valentin went back to his room and hurled himself onto the bed, covering his head with a blanket. Something was knocking on the door of his mind, but he had no desire to let it in. His thoughts kept crashing against the same words, “once the decision taken…” His daughter’s age, the years, like the beginnings of a bridge extending from one side of the river, but with no support, like a floating arch over the water, and every Christmas he was adding to it. But what was he adding? Length? He was just making it more fragile. Did he have any chance of reaching the opposite bank?

You could look at it the other way — the bridge, once built in its entirety, was blown up on the opposite side of the river, so that whatever was left stood hanging on this side, as if by magic, like the bridge in Avignon.

He let the images flow, drifting with them, half-seeing, half-hearing, giving in to the tingling in his stomach, like a child in its cradle, swinging down into an abyss with squeals of delight. One of the last half-formed tendrils of thought he felt before falling asleep was that he needed to write something, to glue some pieces together…

He woke up with the image of Raya’s face in his dream. He could not remember anything except her face. She had accompanied him to the gates of the waking world as if not allowed to cross over. He sat up in his bed and propped his back against the wall. He could hear the blood pounding in his head. He closed his eyes and tried to descend back into the sensation of his dream and elicit its unarticulated meaning. It held a key to something. But his mind had never been able to roam freely and he soon became angry with the futility of his attempt.

Things can be thought about. Valentin believed that every equation led to a solution. The problem was that he was not very good at math. States of mind such as this indefinite, wandering sensation exhausted him. How strange that all of these things, decided upon a long time ago, kept hovering about, refusing to ebb into the past. His decision to leave Raya, for example.

The past was not at all a quiet background, a foil to his new adventures. There was still something to be done, but what was it — that was the riddle. He suddenly thought of his mother and shivered. What would Maria do in such a case, or rather, what did she do? Nothing. The answer was nothing, she did nothing.

On the other hand, he couldn’t stand the idea of doing nothing — and wasn’t that what it meant to be Valentin? Or at least try to be Valentin?

Then he thought that if Raya got married, maybe he would be able to make love again.

Fanny was as fretful on the inside as her cat was on the outside. The inevitable awakening. Cleaners had been hired over the phone and asked to come and bring the place to its previous state, its only state — one fit for logarithmic functions.

But the reason Fanny was irritated was not the cleaning. For the first time in her life she did not feel like working, she did not feel like dealing with the gallery at all. She went there anyway, sat down in her vast office, wrapped in the silence of Christmas day, and stared blankly at the piles of papers and catalogs. She flipped through her agenda, but everything seemed devoid of interest. She suddenly felt like doing something ordinary people would do — let some stupid guy take her to the cinema, for example. Her system did not include the option of just calling up someone. The “someones” simply gathered around her and she gave them directions like a switchman at a railway junction.

Fanny had always had her life organized. If she did not work from six in the morning to ten at night, she feared losing her brilliance. But here she was now, sitting, rotting because of this idiotic hollow day, this “holiday,” and no one cared. She had to get a grip on herself, otherwise she risked losing it. In the same train of thought, she remembered something. In her car, she had a bag with everything needed for a short trip, and another bag with accessories for the gym and for swimming. Her credit cards were there, and her passport with a one-year visa for the European Union. She picked up the phone and booked a room at Hotel Athene in Athens. A little later, passers-by on the streets of Sofia glared after a BMW, wondering what thick-necked boss was pushing pedal to the metal this time.

Mr. V. unlocked the apartment door and stopped to listen for any noise. Half past eleven, Christmas morning. He was anxious, tense, ready for anything — an attack and a quick retreat. The words he was likely to hear scared him. One couldn’t do anything with words. He was less scared by things in the absence of words. He could hold somebody’s hand for hours, rub somebody’s little feet, change wet towels, and check somebody’s blood pressure. He could run to the pharmacy to get something and juice tons of citrus fruit. But words, words were deadly. They paralyzed him; they deprived him of his dignity every time he could hear himself mumble in response to Madame’s fiery cannonballs.

The house was quiet like a closed box. Mr. V. went into the living room and saw a row of different-sized bottles neatly arranged on the coffee table. A blanket and a pillow were on the sofa — somebody had slept there. The lights were on.

Suddenly he felt panic — pills! Covered in cold sweat and trembling, he pushed the bedroom door ajar. His wife was lying across the bed, the shutters and the curtains were closed, and it was almost dark inside. He tiptoed toward her. She was breathing. Thank God.

His presence did not wake her. She lay relaxed in her lacy underwear, which stood out dark against her skin. In spite of himself he admired her body, curvy, but well proportioned, and below the belly, that incomparable little mound; looking at it suddenly aroused him. It excited him to see her strong and round legs meet at a triangle that looked tiny in comparison, almost like a child’s.

He slowly lay down beside her and put his hand on her stomach. She was still sleeping. He unbuttoned his pants, he could barely stand them anymore. His arousal was so intense that it was becoming painful. He slipped one hand under her waist, and the other under the lace disappearing between her legs. She sighed softly, opened her eyes and closed them again. His fingers sank into the folds of that place he loved so much, drawing him in as if it was the center of the universe. She opened her legs slightly and, through the haze of his excitement, he could feel that she wanted him, that she wanted him more than anything, her desire growing with his. His hand glided under her body and slowly pulled the sheer fabric down from her waist. When he reached the middle of her thighs, he was amazed to see his other hand half hidden between her legs. He bent lower over her and pressed his lips on her belly, holding her up from behind. Desire was now neither “hers” nor “his”; it was simply desire. He climbed over her and penetrated her, slowly and gently, as if opening a flower. He felt her abandoning herself to him, wanting him even more, and he went deeper and there, stood still. Movement was unnecessary. He held her, filled with him. He loosened his arms and pulled her up toward him. Her eyes were still closed. The two of them were half sitting in each other now, as if some craftsman had shaped them as a perfect fit. He reached for her breast. Touching the point of her hard nipple made them both moan with ecstasy, their bodies had become finely tuned instruments, from which they could draw melodies. She opened her eyes when his fingers touched her lips. They looked at each other as if they had never looked at each other before — her eyes were bottomless and his eyes disappeared into hers. There was no anxiety, no worry about anything; there was only this, here, where everything happened as it did. His lips melted into hers forming a masterpiece of a kiss, their fingers wove together and they knew that anything they did would be right. He pressed her against his chest and entered her with more force, with impossible force, and his desire exploded, disintegrating his consciousness into pure gratitude — toward her, toward the world, toward everything that had made his existence possible. He fell asleep in her, in his place, forever his.