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The Magazine
Zdravka Evtimova
Zdravka Evtimova lives in Pernik, Bulgaria and works as a literary
translator. Some of her short stories have been broadcast on Radio BBC, UK and published in
Mississippi Review online, Adirondack Review, Paumanok review, In Posse Review and others.
Among her other two published novels and five short story collections are Bitter Sky
(2003) and Somebody Else (2004).
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"I thought I'd never
get over it."
The shards of her words whirred in his face.
"I'd been saving my teacher's salaries. I had put aside all the
money I took from the private lessons in that backwoods village. My students' parents paid me
beans, tomatoes, eggs. I collected the levs [Bulgarian national currency] I got in my pillow."
It was difficult for him to place this refined woman beside a
shabby pillow and a sweaty bundle of banknotes stuffed in it.
"I had saved up enough to buy a small house. The village was
wild with howls of wolves in winter, with owls that lived in the linden tree in my landlady's
backyard. Autumns came with mushrooms that sprouted up in front of my threshold. I put up with
the owls and wolves for my students' sake. Every night the growls of a pack of wolves invaded my
room instead of the newscast on the TV. I gave him all my money."
Her words tied an icy knot around his wine. When they first met
they made love and she paid him well.
"Boris was important to me," the woman went on. "At that time, I
thought a human being was meant for another human being. Banal, isn't it? I thought my life made
sense only because I was born at the time when he picked mushrooms in my backyard and, in the
evenings, sauntered with the owls to get to know the night. He was a poet. He dedicated his
poems to me ... My room was constantly in a mess, the floor was covered in dust, perhaps time
and clouds turned into dust."
He could not imagine the clutter in her room. Here, even the
shadows of the vases lay symmetrically on the Persian rug. The gold jewellery, the collection
of sapphires and ancient swords glittered warmly.
"I dreamt of the house I'd buy and he dreamt of becoming a
great poet. I asked, 'Isn't it enough that you have me?' It was not enough. He couldn't go
and live in Sofia. I knew he'd become a great man. I gave him my money.
"'I'll give it back to you,' he said. I believed his words the
way I believed the clouds and the river that never ran dry in summer. He promised he'd come
back during the spring term. Perhaps he'd make people's hearts explode, I hoped."
He wondered why she told him all that. He felt much better when
her distant eyes did not linger on his face. He couldn't care less what the poet had done. He
knew him.
"It was a pile of tattered banknotes that the guys had got for
their Indian corn, so their kids could analyse Wild Stories [a classical Bulgarian
writer by Nikolay Haitov]…. Boris went away,
| "I thought my life made sense only because I was
born at the time when he picked mushrooms in my backyard and, in the evenings, sauntered with
the owls to get to know the night. He was a poet. He dedicated his poems to me." |
and I received a letter from him in which he explained how hard it was to find a rented flat
in Sofia and how lonely he felt. There were two poems for me in the envelope. The howl of the
wolves became my happy path and his poems illuminated the whole village that had only outskirts
and no centre at all. There was the Town Hall, too, with the mayor in it and, from time to time,
his old friend from the armoured troops.
"That was the only letter from him I got. I glued it to the wall,
beside the calendar. I circled in red ink the words in his poems every day I had no news from
Boris. The red circles became so many I could build a blood-soaked pyramid with them. After a
couple of months that I spent in the company of owls, the folks from the neighbouring villages
carried rumours that I had a screw loosen in my head.
"They stopped sending their kids to me and I had no one to give
private lessons to. One day I received a parcel: a magazine in which Boris's poems were
published plus an invitation card asking me to kindly attend Boris's wedding. It let me know
where the wedding feast would take place: Bulgaria Restaurant.
"Then I contracted anaemia.
"I could not eat. The smell of food made me throw up. I vomited
when I saw the owls. I vomited when people talked to me. I vomited. And not only did my young
students avoided me, their parents chose the opposite end of the village to get out of my way.
It didn't matter to me. I obstinately went to school, to the only classroom where the students
had lessons, but the kids were scared. They clumped together by the door and peeked inside the
room with the mayor and his fellow-soldier from the armoured troops. Wolves howled from the
blackboard. One day the mayor and his old friend dragged me out of the classroom and took me
to the ambulance that usually arrived in the village when somebody had died. The mayor himself
drove me to the county hospital in Radomir.
"I don't remember how long I saw owls, wolves, the outskirts of
the village, Boris' letter and the circles in red ink. I remember that I wrenched out the needle
through which the doctors infused drugs into me to make me a human being again.
"I trudged from the hospital to the village for a week. Lorries
stopped and gave me a lift. I did what the drivers wanted, and I did things that even the
drivers could not think of. Every evening of that month sick, with wet snow, I ate a piece of
that magazine. The lorry driver did not understand I fed on poetry. He asked me if I was in my
right mind, but it was not because of my right mind that he kept me on the passenger's seat. Not
because of my right mind the lorry deviated from its usual route, turning to the nearby groves,
to the driver's country shack where he gave me as a present to his cousins.
"It was only natural I lost my job in the village with the owls
and the only classroom. I lost the mushrooms and the mountain, I lost the howl of the wolves,
but sometimes I can still hear it, especially when I drink from this wine, Sir."
He avoided her eyes--cold like a screech of the owls she was
talking about. Her face was a wolf's howl that bit the windowpane.
"I didn't have any money, I didn't even have clothes. The
sweaters I put on smelled of lorry drivers, of groves and cousins, but at least they did not
smell of Boris."
He could not understand why she gave him that expensive wine,
which probably cost as much as one of these houses with owls in the attics and mushrooms in
the backyards. Maybe that bottle cost more than the whole village that had outskirts and a
mayor, and no centre at all.
"Your husband will be back soon," he told her, astonished that
she remained unimpressed with his remark.
| "The banknotes in his hand looked humped. There was
wolf's howl in them. The woman took a sip of her wine. Her hand, as thin as the river that does
not run dry in summer, did not go for the money." |
"No, Petar won't be back soon," she said. "You are a quiet man.
It's my pleasure talking to you...
"First, I became Mr. Petar Savov's housekeeper. Imagine the
chaos in the woods I was accustomed to, the notebooks, the sheets of paper, the dictionaries
I've cluttered my bed with. My room had walls built of poetry, of owls and the moon. I never
knew where my pens and my bag were.
"I could cook scrambled eggs. My landlady milked her cow and
drank the milk from the bucket. I ate sorrels and bread when I was hungry in the breaks. I
drank raw eggs and rainwater. Mr. Savov adored French cuisine and hired a cook from
Fevre-sur-Mere to train me. It was agony learning the names of the 127 spices the French
cook had brought with him. Imagine me cooking a smoked duck with sugar beet, caramel sauce and
raisins. I had boiled potatoes before, and that was all I had cooked."
The wine from the ancient Bordeaux cellar scorched his throat.
Her words were mad ducks in caramel sauce and raisins, and he could hear their wings flapping
in his face.
"I can't imagine that," he said.
"Mr. Savov gave me the sack a number of times. I stayed in a
garret owned by two Turkish women who sold second-hand clothes at the Housewife's Market. They
let me spend the night under their roof and I taught them to speak Bulgarian. One of them told
me, 'Your eyes are great.' She was not interested only in my eyes, but when she went on saying
what else was great about me I left their place and strolled at midnight along the Housewife's
Market. It was beautiful, no crush, no shoppers, the stalls like owls hovering over the
sidewalks.
"I visited an old lady and her cat that was almost as big as the
woman. She walked with difficulty, gasping and choking, and when I entered her home she said
she'd call down curses on me. I was not scared of curses. I had eaten so many pages of that
poetry magazine.
"I still don't know why Mr. Savov sent his bodyguard to bring me
back to his house. Surely not because I glued dozens of pages of "Wild Stories" all over the
narrow room he had allowed me to move into. The letters on the pages reminded me of the kids
I taught to read and write, of their parents who paid me hot peppers they plucked from their
meager gardens.
"The old lady stopped calling down curses on me. Once she gave me
money to buy aspirin for her: she fought death with aspirin and hoped to win the game. I did
not steal her money. Once she and I recited together Goethe's "Ruhe" and she sobbed. It was not
because she was hungry or lonely. She felt her shadow flit beyond the Housewife's Market and she
feared I wouldn't be there to ward off death sneaking through the front door of her apartment.
"Mr. Savov's men dragged me from the Turkish women's garret, from
the old lady's shadow and the desperate songs of her cat. They brought me back to the narrow
room where the walls told their wild stories.
"Savov is a silent man like you, but he doesn't drink. He just
sits in his armchair, intent, waiting, watching me set in order his spoons, his cigars. It was
after his child was born, that is, after I gave birth to Savov's son and the doctors said the baby
was normal, that he stopped throwing me out of that room. He forbade me to amble down to the
Housewife's Market. I went there all the same. I hoped the old lady and I could recite "Ruhe"
once again, but her shadow had already vanished beyond the clouds and her cat was nowhere in
sight. The Turkish woman told me, 'I'll give my mother's only golden coin. Please, stay with
us.'
"Drink all your wine, please. We'll make love now. I hope my
husband finds us. I don't see any reason why he should keep me here any more. I have
money--enough to buy the only classroom in that village."
He rose from the chair. She was a generous woman. She had left a
bundle of banknotes for him in a saucer exactly four inches from her sapphire collection, just
like the first time.
She looked at him and the glass of expensive wine in his hand
shook.
"Boris sends you this," he said. His words sounded sharp, like
ancient swords in the golden air of her books. "That's the money he owes you. He hired me to
find you for him."
The banknotes in his hand looked humped. There was wolf's howl
in them.
The woman took a sip of her wine. Her hand, as thin as the river
that does not run dry in summer, did not go for the money.
"Boris told me that after he sent you that magazine he could not
write any more," the man said.
* * *
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