Albena Stambolova - Everything Happens as It Does

The rest was of no importance. What happened was simply the stuff of fairy tales. In just a few short pages an entire life unfolded. The astonishing thing was that he always imagined something like this would never happen to him. There. He came in and… he came out.

Now he was back to where he had always been. And where he would have remained, if it wasn’t for that little girl, Margarita, who had fallen asleep in his suitcase.

And if it wasn’t for his own voice, which he heard through her ears. But after all, that also would come to be of no importance. Just like everything else.

When Maria failed to come back before nightfall, the old couple became worried. The baby was quiet. The old woman prepared milk, according to her own recipe, and the baby liked it very much. Everything was fine with the child, but it was getting dark outside, it was snowing, and they didn’t know what to do. There was no such thing as a telephone in the house.

When it became completely dark, the old man put on his fur coat, took a gas lamp and went outside to try and wade his way through the snow to the nearest neighbors. They had a telephone.

Time passed. The baby fell asleep again, the wick of the other gas lamp was visibly coming to its end, and the old woman was bustling about the house, doing her unending chores.

At a certain point the old man came back, covered in snow, and stomped his feet at the threshold. He said that tomorrow, when it was daylight again, they were to send people to look for Maria.

During the week between Christmas and New Year’s, while Fanny was in Athens, while Philip was struggling to listen to his body and not to his head, while Mr. V. and Madame loved each other, while Raya played hide-and-seek with her daughter, while Boris was away, and while Rallie and her friends were barely surviving, Valentin and Margarita were alone in the house.

It wasn’t the first time. Every now and then, Maria would disappear for a few days and they wouldn’t know where she was.

When an unfamiliar voice on the phone asked if Maria was at home, Margarita was alone. There followed a long and painful conversation, equally confusing for both parties. Then the phone fell silent for another day.

When it rang again, Valentin recognized the voice of his father. But hardly. Now the voice prohibited contradiction; it demanded. It insisted that Valentin come to the hospital to see his father immediately, but no mention of this should be made to Margarita.

His father was waiting for him in his office. He was wearing a white uniform. He was sitting behind his desk and his face reminded Valentin of the way his father used to be many years ago. He barely remembered that face any more.

Philip stood up, came to Valentin and put his arms around him. Then he whispered in his ear that his mother was dead.

For a long time Valentin remained seated on a chair in his father’s office. Silent. His father’s words hung in the air, suspended between them. His first reaction was to keep them there, outside, for a little longer. Something enormous had emerged. Something enormous was here and was refusing to leave. No one could remove it.

Then he remembered the baby. He had never thought about the baby as separate from Maria. What had happened to the baby? The likeliest possibility, even now, seemed to be that his mother had taken him with her.

His father told him that the baby was with Boris’s parents. And no one knew where Boris was.

Later, who knows how much later, Valentin said that he wanted to see his mother. With his new face, his father replied that he could see her, but in a place that was not a room and on something that was not a bed.

Valentin understood what he was saying and stood up. The air was so thick that walking through it and breathing were impossible. Valentin could breathe only in short heaves, internally, without taking the air in. He concentrated on trying to make the oxygen inside circulate endlessly.

He was blind to where they were going. He followed only the white blur of his father’s back, trying hard not to lose it. This white thing was going to take him to his mother.

They reached a place, some newly created space, where his mother had also come for the first time.

His father opened a lid in the wall and pulled out a bed, which remained suspended in the air. It was at chest height. The two of them stood, one on each side. His father’s hands slowly unwrapped something that looked like a swaddle. And Valentin saw her.

He saw her in a way he had never seen her before. He had always known that his mother was different from everyone else. That the degrees of difference between other people were much smaller than those between her and other people.

But now, he saw her the way he could see her only once. She was naked and her body shone like an oval pearl on a bed of black hair. This was not the body of a woman, but that of a child. He could not take his eyes off the body, it was exquisite. He lingered at the slender line of her shoulders as if he could find shelter there before approaching the face. He knew that if he looked at the face, it would all be over.

Then he took a deep breath and looked at her. The air turned his heart over and Valentin felt such acute pain that he thought he was dying. It hurt unbearably, and unbearably, his inaccessible mother was now becoming accessible to the whole world.

Maria and her face, pearl-white and smooth, her impossible face. Not rest, but triumph.

Yet something was missing. Something was different. Her eyes were no longer there. Her eyes were closed.

She lay in her shell. Voiceless, sightless.

Valentin closed his eyes, and something shook him. He could see her looking at him with her foggy irises, smiling at him, telling him to go away.

His father wrapped her back in her swaddle. Valentin turned and left. He heard the bed sliding back into the wall with a bang.

He hurried. He did not want his father to catch up with him.

He wanted to go back to Margarita. Back to where he had something to do, for a long time, an indefinite amount of time. Where the three of them, with the baby, would have to continue living with Maria’s absence.

While she was still with them, her absence, which kept everyone at a distance and made her different, used to scare them.

Now, when she was no longer with them, they had to somehow domesticate her absence. Now the three of them had to make it — Maria’s life.

And maybe there were other lives to make, too.

In the kitchen, the old couple was sitting by the fire with the baby when Boris came in. He nodded to no one in particular and headed for the baby.

The old man stood up and tried to block his way. Boris pushed him aside with such force that the old man found himself on the ground.

“Maria…” the old woman tried to tell him something, but Boris had already grabbed the baby, holding him tight to his chest. The baby buried its little head in the fold of his neck and rested there. Boris stood still for a moment. His figure loomed gigantic in the house of his tiny old parents, who looked at him with horror, as if he were the goddess Nemesis come to punish them.

They had stopped talking to each other years ago, and did not exchange any words now. After a while Boris sat down with his legs crossed by the fire, the baby still in his arms. The old woman approached, placed a feeding bottle next to him, and retreated. From the corners of the house came creaking, and then all fell silent. Only the wind whistled through the poplars with a monotonous sea-like sound. But the old woman and the old man, having never seen the sea, remained deaf to the waves breaking in the branches.