Köpenik, Berlin, the beginning of the new century

„This isn’t you,” she said in a tremulous voice. „I don’t recognize you like this.”

Regaining control, she repeated, „This isn’t you.”

He flared up. „You, how do you know who I am? You think you know me so well? After a few months?”

„It’s been almost a year,” she corrected him gently, but with a clear note of reproach.

„Eh, and so what? You’re reading me like an open book, is that it? Come on, enlighten me then: who am I?”

„You are good,” she said with the faith of the newly converted. „What we have here is someone else.”

„Blah blah, the dinosaurs were good, that’s why they died. But me, I’m still alive.”

„Let’s not quarrel, please! You know I can’t eat baguette.”

„Rubbish! Of course you can. You just don’t try, that’s all.”

„But why have I got to try! Is it so important?”

„It’s important for me,” he insisted.

„But why? I don’t understand. What’s come over you? I hardly recognize you.”

„I simply want you to show you love me!”

She cast him a tearful look. She didn’t expect to win so easily, but still this sometimes made him take a step back. But not this time.

„Ask something else,” she begged, looking at the floor. „Whatever you want.”

„I don’t want anything else, just this! To bite off a little bit of baguette. This smallest one.”

She said nothing. She was well used to his pettiness, although he was seldom so explicit. He usually used more delicate methods, worked with hints and whims, sighs, dark looks, outbursts of wounded pride, stuff like that. She was happy to leave him with the impression that his laddish game had gone unnoticed. Sometimes she even found something sweet in all of this, something immature, so defenceless, so childish… She conceded that the reason for this weakness was probably cloaked in her need to take care of somebody, in unfulfilled maternal instincts, in the blessed sense that she had managed to find a being, more in need of protection than herself — who, when all was said and done, was good and tender, even if he didn’t know it. Exactly that, good, and nothing less! He would begin to trust her, sooner or later. She had sworn by everything holy that she would overcome his ox-like determination, she’d melt his armour with caresses, she would drive his true ego out into the open — the one which was deeply hidden, held captive, trodden over, whose existence no one suspected, him least of all. The seeming impossibility of this task stoked her ambition to greater heights, kindled a new flame within her that made her feel alive again, so alive.

She had dug her fingers into this task in desperation — no, with the strength of the proverbial drowning man reaching for a straw — and she had no intention to give up, whatever the cost. Not so much out of gratitude. Not because of his obvious need for protection — after so many years spent in the oldest profession, a man who could not be a man was for her something like a pleasant distraction, at least for a time. She didn’t do it just out of love, although, yes, she really had fallen in love, childishly, desperately, as only an adolescent could fall in love, not a mature woman. No, no, no. She did it for her own sake, simply because all this added to her sense of self, something she thought otherwise had been lost a long time ago.

„Well, so, are we going to be gaping at each other the whole evening like this?”

Oh yes, of course. He never gives up easily.

„I can’t,” she repeated tiredly. „Anything else, just not a baguette.”

He banged his fist on the table. The glasses rattled. „Stubborn as a donkey! Spoilt girl can’t do it! And why? Because she can’t. End, full stop. I could as well try to stand on my head — the result is always the same. And yet we talk the big talk.”

„I really do love you,” she said. „Please don’t force me to prove it.”

„Well, me, I don’t believe you. If you can’t do one trivial thing like this—”

„This isn’t trivial. Not for me.”

„But why? Tell me why!”

She was silent. God forgive him, he knows not what he does.

„You see, it’s nothing but pig-headedness! Just pig-headedness, nothing else!”

She gathered all her strength to suppress the scream, which was straining to break out — not so much from her throat, as straight from her chest, and even from lower down, somewhere towards her kidneys, her loins. But she could not hold back her tears. She began to snuffle like a child, she shook. Her knees weakened, the room suddenly darkened. She only just managed to grab one of the chairs: she sat — or fell — in it. Coloured circles swirled in front of her eyes, her throat tightened and heaved, reluctant to let air pass.

No, no, no! This isn’t him. This isn’t him! Everything is just a test, the next test.

Here now, she thought, she would pull herself together, hold out, win through. He doesn’t even know what power there is inside me. He is just a sad, immature child. A child who plays games. A child who plays games. A child who plays games.

When she felt a little better, she opened her eyes. He was holding the piece of baguette in front of her mouth.

Her body reacted before her mind took in what was happening. The sight acted on her like a punch in the stomach. She didn’t even manage to moan before the contents of her stomach, the whole festive mixture of wickedly expensive food and wine — plus all the love and dedication which, no doubt, he had put into the dinner preparation — now covered his favourite trampled slippers.

Instinctively he went to lash out, but at the last second he managed to hold back his hand. „Don’t forget that I’ve never hit you! Never forget that!”

He turned and without another word he disappeared in the direction of the bathroom.

Prespan, somewhere in Bulgaria in the 80s

The heat filled her with disquiet, prompting her to strip off and roll like a donkey through the thistles, yelling herself hoarse. Her breasts, now fully formed, could hardly bear the touch of her thin blouse. Sweat mixed with dust covered her in thin smelly grease, which she wanted to scrape off, slowly and viciously — along with her skin, along with everything that made her feel like an alien from outer space. But there could be no question of a second bath. In any case, her mother was forever moaning that she wasted too much water with this continual washing.

From when she reached fifteen, everything around had begun to seem ugly, desolate, gloomy and wretched. So wretched. The little town lost all its charm: its carefree kindliness suddenly disappeared like a mask wiped off an old clown, revealing a face she had never noticed until now — the rotten loose teeth of the tumbledown old houses, the malevolent eyes of the concrete blocks, the cracked earth turned grey from dust. The heat — at once the lover, the mother and the stepmother of this patch of land — had withered it to the point when all colour had deserted it and now it lay exhausted under the bright blue sky.

„Maria!” her mother shouted to her from the scorched-white summer kitchen which was filling the yard with the smell of roast peppers and garlic sauce. „Where have you hidden again, lazybones? Didn’t I tell you to wash the dishes! When your father gets home, I’ll tell him everything. I mean it!”

I don’t give a damn if you tell him, thought Maria. Anyway he doesn’t see anything beyond my tits, the old billy-goat. „He’s not my father!” she cut back as always when her mother used this word. Then she stood up and reluctantly traced her foot through the dust, preparing herself for the kitchen’s hellish heat. Inside it was at least fifty degrees. „The water’s stopped. What can I do?”

„It’ll stop, girl!” her mother scolded angrily. „When you’re taking three baths a day like some posh whore. Come on now, grab the demijohns and go down to the stream so at least we’ve got drinking water. Don’t look at me like that! Get going! By the time you doll yourself up, it’ll be dark.”

Maria was about to shoot back a tart reply but thought better of it. The old goose would have that to grind her with till the evening, if she got really mad. And then she wouldn’t be allowed out to the party with the student brigadiers.

She grabbed the two wicker-covered demijohns and set off down towards the stream and the Salabash water tap. The sharp edge of the willow twig, broken right on top of the demijohn’s handle, as always sank painfully into her palm. Later, when they were filled and heavy, the demijohns would make her hands bloody. Everyone else had now bought new plastic demijohns, but her skinflint mother still sent her out with the old ones. Just try to say something to her and she would reply, „When I was your age… ” Like she’d ever been her age! She’d been born old. Old and spiteful. She’d been like this always, for sure.

The cool by the river, under the shade of the poplars, relieved her a little. She carefully set off over the slippery stones, bent down over the huge stone trough and began to splash her face but stopped in shock: the water in the trough had a strange pink colour, and stuck on its edges were clots of blood, from which long red threads ran out, gradually disappearing into the channel, flowing into the river.

Maria looked around in fright. She was ready to shout for help, but felt ashamed of her fear and realised that from down there her voice would scarcely be heard. Then her eyes made out a bloody shirt in the undergrowth and now she was really scared. She forgot the demijohns and rushed headlong up towards the street. The slippery stones didn’t miss the chance to play her a dirty trick, she slipped just before reaching the bank and fell heavily.

In spite of the pain in her bruised knees she straightened up, gritted her teeth and limped upwards. Then she heard a voice that made her freeze. „Hang on there, yo! Why are you running off?”

The voice was male, but lacking in strength, a little childlike even, with comically whistling high notes amongst the deeper, mature modulations. This calmed her a little. She turned carefully and cautiously looked back.

Yuck, a Pikey, she thought with instinctive revulsion, turned to run off again, but remembered the forgotten demijohns, and halted on the spot, frowning at the gypsy lad lying on the ground.

The boy was clearly younger than her, maybe thirteen, fourteen at most, but as tall and fit as a young tree. What’s more he was endowed with that natural feline grace which some folk possess from birth. She couldn’t help looking at his bare stomach, on which the muscles, barely covered by the thin layer of skin, were outlined as in a textbook picture. She felt embarrassed and hurriedly averted her eyes — and then saw the enormous bloodstain on his left trouser leg. She gasped in shock, covering her mouth with both hands. The boy looked at her calmly, even somewhat mockingly. She felt embarrassed again and adjusted her dress which had risen high above her knees.

The boy giggled and bared a row of teeth, dazzling white in the sun.

„What are you staring at me for? Haven’t you seen a girl before?” she snapped but then looked at the bloodstain again. She said more gently, „Who messed you up like this?”

„My brother, Purko,” he answered dismissively. „But he didn’t get away with it.”

Maria gasped again. Purko, a big one-eyed gypsy who had stayed behind for years in the third class until eventually he reached school-leaving age and relieved the school of his presence was the scarecrow whom the town’s mothers used to scare their children.

„He ain’t going to be shaving soon,” the boy added and took out a shiny razor blade from his pocket. „I messed him up with his own razor.”

Maria looked desperately towards the demijohns, which were lying below by the water tap at an unreachable distance. How would she return home without them, without water? She looked towards the street, but the heat had driven away every living soul and help was out of the question.

The boy kept staring at her. Then, as though the wind blew him, he unexpectedly dropped his head and swayed to one side. Maria wrung her hands in terror and helplessness. She looked again at the empty street then back at the bloody stain increasing before her eyes. So in the end, she conquered her fear and started down.

He lay without moving, smeared in blood and mud, as though dead. If he hadn’t been talking to her just now, she would never have dared approach him. She managed her every step only with supreme effort, as if facing a whirlwind. At last she came close enough to cautiously touch him — at first with her foot, more precisely the tips of her bare toes. He didn’t move.

This gave her courage and she crouched beside him, trying not to dirty even more her already soiled dress. The wound in his thigh gaped threateningly. Closing her eyes, she pulled down his trousers. He was wearing just the remains of an old tracksuit, faded and mended more than an old man’s glove. She searched for something that she could use as a bandage and lit on the shirt. She twisted it round a few times and, panting from the effort, tightened it up round his thigh above the artery.

This had limited success: the blood continued to flow, although more slowly. Then she remembered what her mother had taught her, and snapped off one of the thicker branches from a willow close by. She pushed it under the shirt-rope and started to turn it relentlessly as if it was a mangle. The lad moaned but she continued to tighten it until the wound stopped pulsing. Then she tied the branch securely so it wouldn’t come loose and looked approvingly at her work. She knelt down by him, ready to wait for as long as necessary.

In the hospital with her mother she had seen naked men since she was a child, but this was different. Here for the first time she was alone with this male nakedness — intriguing, if not a little frightening. The boy’s male organs, still not fully matured and yet of impressive size, attracted her gaze. She wanted to give herself a slap for staring at some gypsy like this. After a while she made up her mind to go — her mother was surely beginning to be worried — but then thought he could die if left alone.

In the pocket of his tracksuit she found a packet of cigarettes. She lit one, took a puff, choked and threw it away in fury. Rubbish, of course. What else would a gypsy smoke?

At long last the boy began to stir. He opened his eyes and looked her straight in her eye, still with a dose of mischief, as though nothing had happened.

„You’re beautiful,” he said, licking his cracked lips. „Like a peach.”

„Quit babbling rubbish,” Maria cut him off. „Look at this mess. Won’t take much for the church bell to be ringing for you.”

„The church bell don’t ring for gypsies,” he giggled. „We sort ourselves out gypsy-style.”

Just look at you, pikey guttersnipe, Maria thought, suppressing the pleasant sensation his hungry eyes left on her skin. You are practically dying and it’s still that on your mind. Gypsy stuff.

„Can you stand up?” she asked. „You have to drag yourself to the hospital. The wound needs cleaning and stitching. Otherwise you won’t last long.”

„Huh!” he grunted. „Hospitals are for sick people.”

„Cut the crap!” she said firmly and stood up. The lad looked hungrily up her skirt but she made no attempt to move back. „Can you put your trousers on? Get up. Time’s running.”

„Time costs nothing,” he replied sulkily but he bent double and managed to get into his torn tracksuit bottoms without moaning once. But then his face grew grey and glistened with tiny beads of sweat. „You, where did you learn doctoring?”

„My mum’s a nurse. Can you walk on your own?”

„If you want I could carry you.” This time his voice wasn’t cocky, it was more emotionless, somehow resigned.

Why don’t I like this? A cheeky bugger is easier to resist.

„If my brother hears you, he’ll smash your bones,” she lied to feel more confident. „Wait a bit so I can fill the demijohns.”

His eyes hovered over her legs like spots of sunlight. The tickling sensation didn’t leave off for a second. She got angry with herself and had half a mind to snap at him, but then she thought, Why not? Anyway, no one’s looking. Up on the street was different, of course. Difficult or not, the pikey would have to drag himself to the hospital. Being seen together with him was the last thing she wanted.

„What’s your name?” she asked over her shoulder. The tap hardly flowed: the demijohns were filling with irritating slowness.

„Stamko,” he replied. „And you?”

„Maria. What did your brother cut you with like that?”

„An axe.”

She looked at him in shock, almost overturning the nearly full demijohn. „Why?”

„Because—” His eyes darted back and forth, he scratched his stomach, giggled again. „Because of a girl. One of ours. I was just fooling with her, nothing serious,” he added quickly, avoiding her look.

„And you’d fight because of?” she shot back, unexpectedly angry. „Come on, get going. What are you staring at?”

He hopped about behind her back like a sparrow. She allowed him a good dose of suffering, enjoying his helplessness, then waved contemptuously and began to search the undergrowth. With her usual efficiency, she found what she was looking for almost immediately — a strong branch he could use as a staff. „Here, hold on,” she said, holding the branch out from a distance, still hostile. „And pull yourself out quicker, look at the time.”

Stamko looked at her sadly and fluttered his eyelashes. Long eyelashes like a girl’s.

She caught herself staring, then turned her back on him. „Will you get going or do I call an ambulance?”

„Thank you,” he murmured. „But on these rocks—”

„Like you got in, you’ll get out,” was her harsh reply.

She grabbed the demijohns, moaned from pain — she’d forgotten about her wounded hand — and limped up over the stone steps. Pah, gypsy stuff.

*

„It can’t be good, this business,” said Grandpa Boncho, looking at the tree covered in ladybirds. „God doesn’t make any creature in vain. Why so many ladybirds this summer, eh? It’s a sign, a sign from God, but who’s going to understand it?”

Nikola boy stretched out lazily, picked out a larger bug and began to turn it slowly round his fingers. He had no desire to squash it or even break its legs. If you squeezed them hard, they released a yellow liquid, smelly and unpleasant. Not so unpleasant as to save their lives but still unpleasant, especially if it’s the twentieth or thirtieth ladybird you’re forced to kill your time with.

He fumbled and took out of the back pocket of his shorts a handmade magnifying glass. Just a few more dots on the back and he could show it to his biology teacher. „Look, Comrade Vurbanova, I found a ladybird with thirteen spots.” Or fifteen. Or eighteen. Actually that might not be such a good idea. She looked on him with suspicion anyway whenever he tried to do something interesting. Two or three disembowelled frogs, big deal! What a hullaballoo she raised, as if it was people disembowelled. His father had to ring the crazy young teacher personally to calm her.

And the ladybird kicked and kicked. Let it kick, it’s her last time. The boy held her tighter, turned the shiny back upwards and began to burn new extra dots. The trick was of course to do them so they didn’t look different from the old real ones. Anyone can burn dots into a ladybird’s back, but not everyone can do it well…

Look at you, bloody ladybird. It simply would not die. It carried on kicking, even though on its back were scorched three, four, five extra dots. The boy was so engrossed in his task that he didn’t notice how the old man had sneaked up behind him and was watching him, gaping in shock. Only when the bony old fingers grabbed his ear and mercilessly pulled him up, did he realise, but too late.

„Nikola, what are you doing, you rascal!” the old man shrieked, shaking in fury. „Are you human? What are you? How can you be torturing a little creature, eh, donkey! What if I grabbed you and burnt holes with that glass? Then we’d see what you’d do!”

„Let me go, let me go!” the boy screamed, lifted up on his toes, trembling from fear and helpless rage. „I’ll tell Mum, Dad, I’ll tell everyone!”

„You can tell the priest’s wife if you want!” the old man shouted, red in the face and sweating, his cap pushed back. „I’ll pull off this ear so as to keep you warm, rascal of rascals!”

„Dad! What are you doing? Let go of the boy right now! How can you be hurting him like this?”

At last! His mother had appeared at the downstairs window, hair tousled, face puffed up from her afternoon nap, and he quickly screamed even louder, now certain of his imminent release. He tore himself from the old man’s weakening grip, escaped to a safe distance and began to gesture and make faces through bitter tears. His grandfather doddered after him, raising his stick angrily, but this was an empty threat. The youngster darted hither and thither, dancing in front of him like a devil on springs, now sure of his safety.

„Hooligan!” Grandpa Boncho gave up on chasing the boy and sat down on the bench, put his hand on his chest, gasping. „God protect us from hooligans!”

*

Ranko Balkanski appeared quite noiselessly, as always. He’d learnt to do this while yet young, long before the term „forest guerrilla” turned into something more than a contemptuous label reserved for folk like him — vagrant, outcast who never fed their mothers, backwoodsman. Later, younger men began to award themselves the label like a garland, at some point everyone wanting to be a forest guerrilla — he had nothing to do with this but the police didn’t see the distinction overmuch so they locked him up too, along with every Tom, Dick and Harry, and they beat him until something in his head turned. Fom then on everyone called him „Crazy Ranko”. But his guerrilla capabilities had stuck with him, as his knowledge of the forest, where he still felt best, far from the spite of folk.

The gypsy stood helpless on one leg, supported by a tree branch, down below by the tap. Ranko instinctively started to turn back, but he was very thirsty, and anyway he’d never suffered a bad turn from a gypsy, so he conquered his worries and started down the steps. The boy was smoking a cigarette and didn’t say anything even after he’d seen him. Ranko dipped his head into the stone trough and allowed the coolness of the water to penetrate him slowly, in sweet, intoxicatingly pleasant sips. Then he sat on the trough’s edge. The water wetted from below and that too was nice.

He was a dry and slight old man, a bag of bones, but otherwise strong and enduring, weathered by the winds and sun, with nothing spare on his body. Everything about him was brown — his face, hands, greasy cap, jacket and trousers, parts of an old suit, which maybe came down all the way from his father’s tailoring workshop, just like the shirt, whose half rotting cuffs showed themselves far beyond the hopelessly shortened jacket. Only the galoshes on his feet were of an unclear bluey-grey colour — and his eyes, forever restless, forever darting hither and thither.

Ranko splashed his grey bristly face all over and let the water run down his back and his chest under his clothes. He closed his eyes and sat. Here by the river the heat was bearable.

The lad offered him the packet of cigarettes, helpfully pushing one forward. Ranko nodded his head in refusal. The boy shrugged and put the packet back in his pocket. The two stayed for a while, each a prisoner of his own silence.

„Well, you’re not going to be able to get out of here on your own,” Ranko said eventually.

„Won’t be able,” the lad agreed.

„Because you smoke cigarettes, that’s why.” Ranko struck a reproachful note.

The lad shrugged again. Everyone in the town knew old Ranko.

„And now what’ll you do?” Ranko asked, after the next long pause.

„I’ll wait until my folks fetch me.”

„This blood, is it yours?”

„And Purko’s. But less of his,” the lad answered hesitantly.

„Where is he?”

„Ran off. Ages ago.”

„I’m sure he doesn’t smoke, eh?”

The lad snorted like a young stallion, banging his hand on his healthy thigh. Ranko took offence. „Why are you giggling, lad?”

„Because he started smoking through his arse too, when I clipped him.” He felt in his pocket and proudly showed the razor. Ranko started backwards and almost fell into the trough. „Put it away, put it away, so I don’t see that thing! Devilish stuff!”

„Why, don’t you shave?”

The old man mechanically stroked his chin but said nothing. The lad shrugged and put the razor back..

„Okay, I’ll be on my way,” Ranko said and rose. The bottom of his trousers was wet and pleasantly cool. „I’ve got work to do, not like you.”

„Stamko!” Over their heads a woman’s shrieking voice shocked both men. „Stamko, you good-for-nothing, may God kill you!”

There followed a volley of incomprehensible Gypsy words, full of much „krr” and „grr” sounds. Down the steps, an old woman came, quickly, quickly, in vivid loose shalwars, a waistcoat and a scarf covering her head. The boy lowered his head, like a stubborn bull calf. Old Ranko pulled back to a safe distance and watched silently while the mother gathered her prodigal son, here with blows, there with caresses, there with tears.