Miroslav Penkov - East of the West

I thanked her. I took the bag and explained to Yuki what this was about.

The woman smiled at her. “Are you having trouble, my child?” she said. “Do you mind?” I scooted over and she sat between us. “You don’t mind, do you?” she said, and put her palm on Yuki’s belly. Yuki didn’t protest. She closed her eyes. Her face became very still. The woman ran her palm in circles over Yuki’s stomach and her calluses caught on Yuki’s dress and moved it slightly. Then the woman held her palm still. “There you go,” the woman said. “There you have it.”

•

It was dark when we stood up to leave.

“You can’t leave yet,” the father said, but didn’t stop us. “Are you coming tomorrow?”

“Yes,” I said. “We’ll be at the graveyard at ten. And we’ll go to town right after that and get the picture printed.”

“Thank you,” the father said. He caught me by the elbow. “Please come with me inside,” he said. “Leave your wife for a moment. She’ll be all right. But take the camera.” I looked at Yuki. I knew she didn’t want to be left alone.

“It’s okay,” she said. She sat down at the table again and someone filled her glass half with lemonade and half with red wine.

The father took me to his boy’s room. Two older girls were sitting by the bed, in the glow of a small oil lamp whose reflecting mirror, too, was clothed over with a kerchief. The girls fled and their shadows scattered long across the wall, like tall grass cut down and blown away by a gust. The father kneeled beside the boy and lay a hand on his shoulder.

“A quick picture before my wife sees us, will you?” he said.

I fixed the camera on them and watched their grainy image in the back screen. The half of the boy’s face that was close to the light looked bright yellow, almost glowing. The Gypsies had put two coins on his eyes to keep them from opening, so one coin, closer to the light, shone like a cat’s pupil. The other coin was dark and that whole side of the boy’s face was darker and then his chest, his hands stiffly tied together with stained fingers were darker still, and finally his shoes were almost invisible in the dark, so far away from the oil lamp.

I pressed the button and the flash came on and in the picture both the father and the boy were flushed with flooding light. Everything shone.

The father looked at the little screen. “Is this a scratch?” he said. “Why is there a scratch here?” He had seen something on the boy’s photographed face I couldn’t see. “His face isn’t scratched,” the father said. “No scratches at all on his face.”

I looked closer at the screen and then at the boy.

“It’s an eyelash,” I said.

The father went to see for himself. He licked his finger and picked up the eyelash from the boy’s face. He didn’t know what to do with it right away. Then with his free hand he took a kerchief from his pocket, lay the lash in it and bundled it up.

I watched him do this and I knew if I didn’t tell him now, I’d never tell him. And if I didn’t tell him now, I’d never forgive myself, not in a thousand years.

He came to me and leaned down to kiss my hands. He did not notice the grease.

•

Back in our yard, Yuki pulled out a cigarette. But she didn’t light it. We sat at the threshold, and she played with her lighter. She flipped it open and stared at the flame in silence, until the flame burned her finger and she let the light expire.

“We have to get the picture printed out tonight,” she said, and dropped the unlit cigarette at her feet. “We’ll make a nekrolog and paste it around the village.”

I told her it was already after nine. It would be difficult to find a printer in town.

“We’ll find something,” she said. “An Internet café. There must be something that’s open.”

“Okay,” I said. “We can do that.”

“But we’re not going to the funeral tomorrow. We’ll print the picture out and we’ll take it to them tonight. We’re not going tomorrow.”

I agreed. I told her we should get going, then; we had a long way to go. But she didn’t move.

“Just a little longer,” she said. I could see she was waiting for me to put my arm around her shoulder, to kiss her forehead. Good things, Yuki, she wanted me to tell her, happened to good people.

But I couldn’t tell her such a thing now. I couldn’t pull out the camera, the way I would have at the end of a pleasant vacation, and prop it on the hood of the busted car for one final, memorable picture. I couldn’t ask her, while I played with the self-timer, to stand just a little to the right, yes, right there, Yuki, so there’d be room for me by your side, so the house, and the orchard, and the barn would be visible behind us.

I had kept quiet before the Gypsy, quiet before the gates in the barn. And now at the threshold, I kept quiet still. After a minute, I went in for the car keys, and while Yuki packed our bags, I folded Grandpa’s trousers and, so they wouldn’t get dusty, lay them out in a drawer. I made sure all the windows were shut, all the doors. Yuki waited in the car while I struggled with the lock. I stood outside the gate and allowed myself one final look at the yard, at the walnut tree. But I did not allow myself to think of the child, our child, nor of the summers that would have to pass before we could return to the village.

In the car I checked the backseat to make sure we hadn’t forgotten anything.

“Did we get everything?” I said. “All the bags? Your cigarettes?”

“I don’t need cigarettes,” she said. “I threw them away.” She was chewing nicotine gum.

I started the engine.

“Wait,” she said. She turned around and rummaged through the luggage. She pulled things out and put them back again. At last she held out the bag of herbs the Gypsy woman had given us. She cradled it in her lap. “It’s all here,” she said, “now we can go.”

A girl with no breasts storms inside the café to tell us the government has fallen and there will be no school today. Someone throws a beer bottle at her so she will shut the door. It’s minus five outside but in the schoolyard café it’s just right. We’ve stayed up all night, drinking clouds and playing svarka . Very early on, Gogo managed to flap a thirty-three against this rich kid who bet his watch and pager on a pair of aces, so for the rest of the night we keep getting pages from the kid’s parents. Dechko, where are you? Dechko, come home!

“You imagine my parents paging me?” Gogo asks me.

“What’s so hard to imagine? You owning a pager or them calling you ‘dechko’?”

It’s not that Gogo’s parents don’t give a shit about him. But then there’s his big brother who always keeps their hair on fire. As for my parents, let’s say I haven’t seen them in four days, blame Father for it and leave it at that.

The girl shuts the door and goes to the bar to get a ViK. She is an all right girl, maybe too short in the legs. She downs her vodka and wipes her mouth with her sleeve. Then she drinks her kola in tiny sips.

“Kopche , look at that dog,” Gogo says, and yells at her, “Woof-woof.” Right now that’s what we call each other. Kopche , which means button . Before that it was, What’s up, shnur . Cable. Before that, what’s up shprangel , which isn’t even a word. Why? I don’t know, it’s nonsense. We’ve renounced our names. No more Radoslav, no more Georgi. I was named after my Grandpa who was named after his, but so what?

“Kopche , watch my chips,” I say, and leave the café to take a piss. Glass shatters behind me and Bay Petko, the owner, curses at whoever threw it. It’s a chilly, bitter morning and already the streets beyond the school fence are teeming with people, a dirty flood. I watch it whirl, a mishmash of faces, arms and legs, and the chants, loud and angry, blow fuses in my skull. Down with the Reds! Cherveni boklutsi. Communist trash!