Angel Igov - A Short Tale of Shame

Everyone was drowning here, he was surrounded by drowned fruit flies and other little bugs, and he was swimming, swimming away, so as not to drown, but at a certain point he reached the clear wall of the glass and could go no further, he couldn’t hang on to it, because he didn’t have vacuum feet like the flies, which, by the way, also weren’t able to hang on to the glass, wet and disheveled, they could only go back to the center or wander the outlying districts, along the periphery of the glass wall, but the important thing was not to stop swimming in the strange liquid with its undefined color and smell, flat beer or cold tea, from time to time new gnats would arrive from outside and would sink into the liquid with an inexplicable urge towards self-sacrifice, kicking their little legs, trying to flap their stuck-together wings, but they would soon drop lifelessly into the glass. Spartacus wondered how he had ended up here and what would happen if someone decided to drink the liquid, he already felt a traitorous exhaustion in his muscles, he couldn’t keep swimming forever, even if only in some glass, and completely businesslike, without fear, he thought to himself that in the end he, too, would surely drown like all the other bugs, but suddenly it hit him that he could float on his back and relax, he tried it and wouldn’t you know, it worked, his body submissively went slack in the liquid and for some time there was nothing.

But then a brrrm-zhhhush-zoop started up, obviously some fly, not a fruit fly, but some bigger one had slipped out of the glass with him and was now ramming the netted corners of the tent, let’s have a brrrm now for Mom, a zhhhush for Dad, a zoop for Grandma and Grandpa, okay, the fly obediently carried out the instructions, keeping up the rhythm and, as annoying as it was, Spartacus was thankful for it because they were moving after all, cutting a trail through the forest together, he carefully pushed aside the branches, brrrm-zhhhush-zoop and at one point, so late that he felt ashamed of his own foolishness, he realized that this was no fly, but the writer with the Caucasian Ford , the humming and buzzing were coming from the engine, and there was no forest anywhere nearby, nor any glass of cold tea, the old, decrepit car puttered along the rural route, I’ve written two novels and thrrrrreee! collections of poetry, the fly said and Spartacus suddenly realized that he had read one of those two novels, he now remembered it perfectly clearly, it was called Ascension Day and in it one of his classmates axe-murdered the girl he was in love with, until now, however, Spartacus had thought that the novel was by Leo Tolstoy, but now he realized that, in fact, it was by the windbag with the Caucasian Ford, he was impressed, then confused, so how did he know it was his book, since the guy hadn’t said anything about his novel, not even the title, but still he knew it, he knew it instinctively, the way he knew not to touch a hot stove, so, he asked, you know my classmates? I don’t know them, the guy replied, buuut! art moves in mysterious ways, and I mean mysterious with a capital M! Now Spartacus was holding the novel itself on his lap, paging through it and instead of letters he saw scenes from it before his eyes as if he were present at the events, at the same time he also saw the windbag writing the novel and wanted to shout at him, what are you doing, keep your hands on the wheel, but the guy had fallen into some kind of blissful, artistic trance, his hand raced over the pages that Spartacus was simultaneously reading, the windbag turned to him and asked should I tell you how it ends, no, Spartacus replied indignantly, why would you tell me, well, because, the windbag replied, if I don’t tell you, we’ll crash. But Spartacus stubbornly refused, he didn’t want him to give away the ending, he wanted to find out for himself, to see the final scene projected like a hologram from the book on his lap, the windbag shrugged, let go of the wheel and they really did crash instantly.

Now the important thing is to fall asleep, Spartacus told himself, if I fall asleep the car will start moving again. But he never figured out whether he managed to fall asleep or not, in any case the car was no longer there and he was completely convinced that he was in his tent, to make sure he even flipped through some of what had happened that day, yes, exactly, Elena’s dad had picked them up, they had taken the ferryboat to Thasos, they had gone swimming, drunk beer, eaten dinner, afterwards they all had felt really tired and had gone to bed, now he was furious that he couldn’t fall asleep properly, this night was his chance, they had gone to bed so early, when would he have a chance to sleep the following nights, some pachanga would start up, Sirma topless with a lei of Hawaiian flowers around her neck, now the petals of the flowers covered her nipples, but the more he looked at her, the more he realized that the flowers were, in fact, growing, multiplying and taking over an ever-larger part of her body, this was happening slowly and she didn’t seem to notice it, she kept dancing some strange dance, look, Maya told him and squeezed his hand, look, the flowers will erase her, he again tried to shout to warn her, but he only heard some mooing in his ears, while the fly stirred again, brrrm-zhhhush-zoop, and besides the fly he heard very clearly someone walking around outside his tent, sniffing and wheezing, was that a dog, could somebody steal his backpack, somebody walking around his tent with a dog? Zoop, said the fly. It wasn’t a fly, it was the zipper of his tent. Spartacus struggled to get up, but his body was terribly heavy, he couldn’t even move his arm. Zoop, and a little later zoop again, and female laughter. That was Sirma’s sister, he was absolutely convinced of this, true, Sirma had never mentioned having a sister, but now it was as clear as day to him that this was Sirma’s sister, they looked alike, but this girl was somehow softer and smiling, she was kneeling in the sand in front of his tent and quickly pulling the zipper up and down, now showing her face, now hiding it, she was playing with the zipper and laughing, Sirma’s sister. Suddenly the whirr of the zipper stopped and for a long time there was nothing again.

He woke up once and for all from the heat. The sun had clearly climbed high enough to warm the tent and it was gradually becoming a greenhouse inside. But he didn’t feel like getting out. If the sun was already high in the sky, then he’d slept a long time. He could still remember most of the strange dreams he’d had, it must’ve been really stuffy, and a fat black fly was crawling over the netting of the tent. But the zipper of the tent was sitting there, quietly closed. Sirma’s sister. He felt his cock apathetically harden in the usual morning erection, that tiresome caprice of the hormones. He suddenly realized who the girl from his dream had been, hidden behind the inexplicable idea that Sirma had a sister. She was a girl from high school, younger than they were, whose birthday party they had ended up at more or less accidentally a year ago, they were already in college, but they still had friends in high school and the latter had dragged them to some party. Spartacus snorted, that was surely his last true high school stunt. He knew the girl in passing, who, in fact, did not particularly resemble Sirma, but she was attractive, still he had gone to the party without any plans, but gradually and imperceptibly he had had way too much to drink, so much so that he blacked out and whatever he knew about that evening had come from Sirma and Maya’s giggling stories. He wondered how much to believe them, because he had a hard time believing that in his drunkenness he had been so hyperactive so as to do everything they had attributed to him. According to them, he was racing around everywhere, he had chased a solitary and sullen skinhead, insisting that he explain exactly what his problem with blacks was, he was the life of the party until at one point he definitively homed in on the birthday girl, dancing a slow dance with her, the song ended, but they kept spinning around, staggering in the middle of the room, Spartacus perhaps remembered that vaguely when they told him, a soft, dazed spinning around the girl’s warm breath, and the realization that he couldn’t see anything, who knows what kind of alcohol they had foisted on him, but the next part he really didn’t remember: according to Sirma and Maya everyone in the room was laughing loudly, shouting at them that the song was over and it was time to finally untangle themselves, but they kept spinning, so finally one girl said well, let’s not let a good dance go to waste and sat down at the piano, that sounded believable, because there really had been a piano in the room, and so the girl had started playing another ballad on the piano and they kept spinning for a while longer, and when it finished, Spartacus and the girl as if on command tumbled under the piano and started vigorously making out. Here Spartacus had tossed back his head and started laughing in disbelief, indignant and satisfied, now you’re making stuff up, he kept saying, even though that could’ve been true, too, he had some memory of the warm taste of the girl’s mouth, of her busy tongue, while Sirma and Maya swore they weren’t embellishing a single detail, well, if that’s how it was, he shrugged, that makes it even funnier, it’s just too bad that I clearly had no idea what was going on, so you were having fun without me. In any case, it was true that in the morning or some time around then, he woke up in a huge bed in which five people were sleeping or pretending to sleep, the birthday girl was snuggled up to him and looked extremely out of it, he tried to kiss her, so that thing about the piano must’ve been true, otherwise why would he have done that, but she couldn’t even move, she merely looked at him numbly, they really must have drunk some very sketchy alcohol, lift your head a little, he said jokingly, but she replied I can’t, I’ll throw up in your mouth, and shortly thereafter she cleared out, maybe she really was going to throw up, however, there were two other girls in the bed, they looked pretty young, but he played dumb, putting his arms around one of them and lying down comfortably, she gave in to his embrace, without saying anything, but also without moving closer, and at one point he woke up or sobered up or enough of both to ask himself what the hell am I doing here, he removed his hand from the random body he had come across, got up and went to splash cold water on his face, but in the kitchen Sirma and Maya, who were drinking coffee, met him with a round of applause, and shortly thereafter dragged him outside to go home, the first buses were already lazily humming in the darkness.