Angel Igov - A Short Tale of Shame

But, as he had come to realize years later, around the time they had won the Rammstein gig, his wife had already started seeing her director, he never did find out where she’d met him, whether he was blond or dark, whether he did Shakespeare or Pinter; she simply mentioned him once, when it was already completely clear to both of them that their relationship was more that of roommates, otherwise polite and considerate of each other, she mentioned to him that for five years she’d had a boyfriend who was a director, a theater director, she said, as if saying in passing that last night she’d been to a restaurant with her girlfriends, an Italian restaurant, and Krustev was stunned by his lack of jealousy, well okay, he replied, but I don’t want to see him, Irina agreed, afterwards he felt hurt, even though he knew he had no such right, he himself also had mistresses, and not just one or two, and perhaps that was precisely what changed things, he had scattered his sexual instinct, which was in any case blunted by work, among many women, while Irina had simply replaced him with another, she had found herself another man and she surely even loved him, it was just that she didn’t live with him, but no one mentioned divorce, the wounded Krustev’s first thought was that his wife, of course, did not want to deprive herself of the house, the car and everything else, of her secure and comfortable life, and that very well may have been part of it, but besides that she was surely afraid that if she got divorced and started living with her director, sooner or later their relationship would wither just like her marriage had. Does Elena know, he asked her, I’ve only hinted about it to her, Irina replied, Krustev suddenly wondered whether he would be expected to move out of the nuptial bed, but in fact, this foreign object, his wife’s body, did not bother him and she did not leave the bed, either, presumably the force of habit was too powerful, and with such an obvious act of separation, they would have had to give their daughter definite explanations. This conversation had taken place only three years earlier, so that means, Krustev calculated, that Elena had been seventeen then and sufficiently tuned in to sense what was going on even without her mother’s hinting. At that time, Krustev sometimes stared at his daughter in astonishment, momentarily stunned by the memory of that erstwhile baby in his arms and unable to understand what the pretty young girl in his living room could possibly have in common with that surprised little tuft of life, two so very different creatures, who by some coincidence bore the same name. Elena seemed to be going through some teenage crisis, from which she recovered on her own and he made sure not to grill her too much, he felt ill at ease rummaging around in his daughter’s life with his rough, manly paws and he certainly wouldn’t have understood anything of her problems and worries, the parade of pimply boyish faces, the staggering, terrible meaning that even the most casual words take on at that age, maybe six months before that, yes, that’s about how long it had been, he had started becoming seriously worried about Elena, she was out and about far more than she should be, she would silently lock herself away in her room, and when she would come out or come home, she looked steel-plated in her leather jacket, scornful and — in some vague and disturbing way — evil. What more could she want, he would sometimes ask himself the question of all parents from all continents and eras, and when he would catch himself thinking such thoughts, he would sullenly decide that he was starting to get old, not physically, but in his perceptions, in the automatic schemata through which one thinks about the world, and he would even tell himself that if he hadn’t become a father and husband so early, he would surely feel younger right now, he wasn’t even forty. But right when Irina had casually mentioned her theater director, her tagliatelle with gorgonzola, he had stopped worrying about his daughter, because she looked a lot better, she was sociable, as the doctors loved to put it, the two of them would talk, and nothing seemed strange or wrong to him, and besides, back when she was still out and about, she had never come home drunk and Krustev simply could not believe that was possible. And still listening to the three young people’s steady breathing, lying in the dark on the uncomfortable mattress, he wondered which Elena they knew, what had happened between them and whether he wanted to know or not. It was him, not Elena who was doing something wrong, chumming up with her friends, albeit her former friends, secretly, through the back door, he was sneaking into her personal life, so carefully hidden from her parents, just as it should be, and having once ended up inside this forbidden house accidentally and in the absence of its master, perhaps it would nevertheless be best not to act like a bull in a china shop, not to break or rearrange things, not to leave muddy footprints on the floor and not even to look around, but simply to sit with his eyes closed, until the time came to leave. He sighed. He had lost both his wife and his daughter, and if the loss of the former was in large part his own fault, the loss of the latter could not be helped, it was the natural result of the mechanical march of time, from a certain point onward our own children belong to us less than any other person around. He suddenly felt like sitting down with Elena again, like they had during the winter, when with her soccer banter she had unexpectedly wrenched him from his stupor, he wanted to bring out the bottle of scotch with two glasses and say with his unused voice, so now tell me what’s going on with you, back then she had told him some things, hinted at others, it seemed that leaving for the States had been very important to her, not just because of the university and the opportunities, but because it allowed her to break away from something or someone here, where her life had passed until then, and now her mother, her mother’s body tied up in its tubes, had called her back at the beginning of beginnings, Elena didn’t want to stay here. So he had assured her that he would be all right and sent her off to America, after which he proceeded to read all the books in the house and lose sleep. He knew he should be very grateful to her. In fact, she really didn’t know anything about soccer. She had read a pile of articles about the upcoming match and had learned the players’ names from pictures on the Internet, just to be able to talk to him.

He imperceptibly dropped off to sleep during the night and woke up only when the human presence leaning over his face pulled him out of the depths into which he had sunk. It was Maya, she was looking down on him with a slyly bashful smile, uh, it’s eleven o’clock already, she said, we were thinking of going to check out the beach, the water here must be a lot warmer than on Thasos. They had to walk quite a ways before finding an open space with fewer tourists, the season had already begun and the hordes crawled in tireless ranks between the hotels and the beach. The shoreline was covered with tiny pebbles and Maya grumbled that she would cut her feet, which wasn’t far from the truth, and after hesitantly wobbling around at the water’s edge for a while, Spartacus dashed forward, scooped her up despite her protests, carried her out to sea and simply tossed her in the water, you’ll drown me, you idiot, she screamed, well, he giggled, I’ve been meaning to for a while, and now I finally got my chance. Sirma was standing a little aside, up to her neck in water and watching them indulgently, momentarily amused by their childish antics. Krustev tried floating on his back, at first he thought he’d done it, but then it suddenly turned out that he was lying diagonally in the water with his feet almost touching the bottom. The sea was choppy, the tightly packed waves approached from the horizon and rocked their unmoored bodies, today isn’t so great for swimming lessons, Sirma said, still, the water is a lot warmer than on Thasos, that goes without saying, Maya swam up to them panting, her face red from her battle with Spartacus. It’s nice, said Krustev.