Albena Stambolova - Everything Happens as It Does

A handful of precious stones. Valentin stared at the other face of his sister. The one that was not his own.

Other faces crowded around them. Other voices gathered, saying pleasant things. The din was becoming denser and denser.

The two remained frozen.

Until Margarita pulled herself away and ran out.

Margarita often filled her black bag with things and went out.

No one knew where she went. No one knew what she had in that bag. She carried the heavy thing everywhere with her, and like the weight on a pendulum, the bag always brought her home.

One evening Valentin found a laptop in the bag. A magnificent little machine, a real gem. Where could she have gotten it from — had she stolen it? In answer to his questions, at first Margarita calmly repeated that it was hers. Then she flew into a rage and threw something at Valentin. In the end, she grew sad and shut herself up completely.

Valentin insisted and Maria was obliged to go to Margarita’s room. When she entered, Margarita was asleep curled on the bed. Maria lifted the object tentatively, as if its weight could provide an explanation. She held it up for a while; too long, Valentin thought. Then she placed it back, took Valentin’s hand and pulled him out of the room.

He could not accept the sudden and inexplicable appearance of this object. Finally, Maria, kindly enough, told him that if Margarita had stolen it, they would be charged with theft and that was it. What was this, some kind of irresponsible accountability? This was his own mother. Margarita didn’t just conjure up the damn thing, he screamed at her, slamming the kitchen door and locking himself in his room.

He was angry for several days. When he saw Margarita hanging her bag over her shoulder and leaving again, he decided to follow her, sneaking noiselessly behind her. Margarita changed multiple buses and tramways, most of the time traveling in a circle. Finally she got off and headed with a firm step up the steep boulevard toward the crossing called Krusta. When she reached the top of the hill, she stopped at the traffic lights and stood there for a while. Then turned and headed for Hladilnika.

Valentin was getting annoyed. This was probably useless. For a moment he thought of catching up with his sister and helping her carry the heavy bag. It would have never crossed her mind that he might be following her. He was also getting tired, but now his legs seemed to be doing the walking alone. There was nothing to be done; he had to continue what he had started this morning. He had to follow the mysterious itineraries his sister was walking and protect her from unimaginable dangers.

When Margarita finally reached the first tram stop, he was cursing her for having walked for miles. With astonishment, he saw her climb into an empty tram going in the opposite direction. On the other hand, trams could not go in any other direction from here. She sat down, rummaged through her bag, and, in that long and empty tramcar, took out the computer, opening it on her lap like a first-class traveler on an airplane. Locals and residents from other parts of Sofia were filling the tram, so he hurried to take the seat behind her and look at the screen. No one else was paying attention to what Margarita was doing.

She was playing a rather complex game of solitaire, which looked like Clock Solitaire, but the cards were not arranged in a twelve-point star. At first it seemed that she was moving the cursor randomly across the screen, but then he realized that she was wielding the in-built mouse with impressive skill. And all of a sudden the game was over and she had won. The tramcar, already half-full, started to move.

Before they reached Vazrazhdane, where Margarita prepared to get off, obviously to return home, she had won quite a few games of solitaire, on average a game every couple of stops. He let her descend from the tram alone and stayed on, feeling a kind of dazed relief. Margarita had apparently won her right to go out and play with the computer.

Valentin got off several stops after his sister and also headed home. He was ashamed, but he had managed to get some kind of essential information. He had witnessed something that could serve as an explanation, although he knew it didn’t really explain anything. Some words could be used to describe what Margarita was doing with the computer, but so what? Other words could be used to describe what had happened between him and Raya, but so what? Such words could form sentences full of pathos, yet they didn’t lead to any clarity or illumination. They couldn’t show him a way, or reveal a place where everything resolved itself and fell into place, if not forever, at least for a while. Why could things happen like this, but also like that, and otherwise?

Valentin felt like he had become the embodiment of a crossroads and that there were many possible directions. And he silently cursed his fate — to have been born an imperfect being, and lured, who knows why or how, into searching for meaning.

The gentleman with the umbrella entered the café, looked around him for a place to leave his umbrella and after freeing himself of the thing by propping it up against the edge of the table, sat down and stared at it. Suddenly there was the sound of parchment-dry skin, hands rubbing together, and his fingers produced a kind of impatient double snap. He cast a glance around, as if to stretch his neck inside his shirt and jacket, though elegantly enough not to attract any attention. Still, several pairs of bored eyes briefly turned in his direction, then, the movement caused by his entry having subsided, his presence was accepted as a fact. The gentleman rose from his seat a little and settled back comfortably, obviously in a peaceful state of mind. He laughed to himself at the thought of the panicky “No room! There’s no room!” from Alice in Wonderland, and felt happy.

The place was just the way he liked it — ceilings at least fifteen feet high, lined with plaster friezes, supported by large cream-colored marble columns; a thick, dark-green carpet on the floor and shiny brass ornaments over the heavy, polished furniture; ample, cushiony armchairs that invited intimacy; a discreet melody drifting from the enormous white grand piano which someone was probably playing.

In such a place, even waiting could be pleasurable. And he assumed the posture of a patient guest waiting for his party with an expression of benevolent tolerance.

He was meeting a client in a divorce case. She had emphatically refused to come to his office, for who knows what complicated reasons. So their first meeting was to take place on neutral ground, far from the courtroom, over afternoon tea whose taste could delicately suggest the beau monde. He had already ordered his tea and wondered whether his client would appear before the waiter returned, and whether his client would be able to recognize him. The elaborate ritual of recognizing someone, with its “oh” and “ah” and “are you… oh, I recognized you immediately.” The gentleman speculated if their conversation in such circumstances could be called “tête-à-tête.” It probably could, if it came to that. Some deluded hope that their starting positions would be equal, a game whose purpose was to distance themselves from what usually happened and so suppress the mounting anxiety. He felt satisfaction at his own ability to analyze the situation. Everything seemed under control.

Two people, a man and a young woman, entered, leaving the winter afternoon behind them, and sat down at a small table. The man reached forward and switched on the table lamp, which enveloped him and the woman in a golden circle of light. What calm and somehow objective harmony other people could project. His mother had her own way of making a similar kind of observation — why couldn’t we be like other people and get it right for once? People were her preferred object of contemplation. And really, what could be more interesting than people, than the perpetual back-and-forth movement of glances from us to them, and from them to us, and the infinite variety of interpretations it engendered. People, the product of our outward looking gaze.