“Would it have been such a big deal for you to tell people not to drink milk and not to pick anything from the trees? To at least forbid them from swimming in rivers and the sea until the danger had passed?”
Silence. She begins again: “Do you think you’re going to get away with it? Do you think that nobody has found out about it and nothing is known about it? Don’t try to tell me that they didn’t inform you, don’t try to tell me you were misled — who sent me there for a check up? Why don’t you just admit that you did it on purpose — which means you had your doubts, you were afraid! Even back then you wanted it to stay a secret, you only wanted to take care of yourself.”
“I didn’t take care of myself.”
“To take care of yourself only and others like you, as for the rest — who cares what happens! It was a Sunday, you purposely chose Sunday, when there were no other people at that institute. They stripped me naked and put me through some machine. ”
“They didn’t put you through any machine.”
“At the Institute of Radiology — did you think I didn’t understand anything, did you think I couldn’t read? Do you think I’m just a child, you’re counting on that, right? Me being a child and not understanding.”
“You’re not a child, of course. Children don’t speak that way to their parents.”
“Shut up! Shut up, just stop talking, you’re making me sick. All you do is talk and talk and stroke your chin like that, making that face. I’m not like the rest, I’m not like the others — I know you. I know, get it? And the others know, how do you think you’re going to wriggle out of it, to get away with it? You’re hoping to get away scot-free after committing a crime!”
If only she could move her arms, I tell myself, if only she could hit me.
“You’re imagining things, you’re making things up. Tell me, do you really believe that I’m a criminal, that I could do something to hurt someone? And if so, what?”
“Don’t use me as an excuse.”
“Just tell me what!”
“Don’t try to use me. You always do that — you use me.”
“You know I’ve always only done what’s best for you. If you stop to think about it, if you finally learn to think, you’ll realize that everything I’ve done was for you and because of you.”
“But I don’t want that!”
“Think about it.”
“I don’t want to think!”
“See, what did I tell you?”
“Don’t start with that again. Don’t keep telling me to think, don’t keep tormenting me.”
“Who, me?”
“I can’t, I can’t do it like this. ”
She can’t think like this, I know. Her thoughts break up, get cut off, they short-circuit.
“You can’t do this anymore, I forbid you.”
“Who, me? Am I the one doing this? So now you’re accusing me?”
“You have no right!”
“I know I have no right. So why is it happening all over again, why has it ended up like that? What are you doing here in front of me? Get the hell out of here!”
“No.”
If only she could really get the hell out of here. If only she could not be here. If only she could take a swing and hit me, but so hard that I would fly back, far away from her face. I’d be torn away from her presence, lose consciousness, the end — for her to stop existing. If only she, not me, would disappear and melt away, cease.
“This is a crime, this is something that shouldn’t be done! I’m your daughter!”
She doesn’t hit me, however, she just prolongs the moment. So I’m forced to hit her myself.
She screams, but not aloud, not out loud — her body curls inwardly and then erupts again: “Why did you do that?”
The question that destroys me. It pierces me and makes me wince. And she repeats it: “Why did you do that do me? Why did you do it?”
Her arms grow shorter, her knees, pressed against my knees, turn into narrow disks that desperately try to kick me, her body shrinks in my hands. She pummels me with her little fists, her hands with their childish nails are frenzied with rage. Night is falling, it’s raining, the nightmare thickens. I fall with her in my arms, I fall on top of my very self.
Her body slowly passes beneath the edge of the leaden cliffs. It is swallowed up, both of us are swallowed up by the pyramid, the gray squares stacked up without a crack.
“Just a few more minutes,” says the doctor, a professor of something or other, von Ehrenbauer. “Just a few more minutes, Herr K-shev, and the test results will be ready.”
Leukemia was the mildest punishment I expected to befall me — for everything I had done.
It smells horrible.
The river is murky, black lines parallel to the current. Muddy shafts and fuses flit past, matted balls of paper pop up in the eddies. Slimy, frayed rags of unknown consumer origin lap at the furry, sticky rocks. Rough bristles line the canal’s cement walls. It’s not even a river, but actually a canal, the longest reinforced canal in Sofia, narrow and straight as a gutter, cutting straight through the settlement: The Perlovska River.
The intestine-river flows swiftly, as if it can’t wait to carry off the shameful filth somewhere — where? — somewhere else. However, I return once more to that place, cast out of the illusion that I was ever anywhere at all.
The dream of escape crumples in my hands, nothing but a cheap wrapper. The scent of vomit at my feet invades it like a signal of reality, even though I myself was the one who vomited here, see, that’s the juice from my innards — which, by the way, simply confirms yet again that reality is something entirely internal. I always run this far and stop here, at the bridge over the river. The canal, slippery stones on both sides of the channel.
Did I fail? Of course — but that’s a feeling that helps me hang on: at least on the edge, at least for a bit.
You are the reason words exist, as I admitted before, and now I’ll admit that even if no one among you can help me, I still respect you, I bow passionately before every yes that extends the path through fear in the face of every no that could stop me.
So here I am in shoes, tube socks, and ridiculous, non-sporty shorts. The journey continues, the running continues, begun at the roots of the night only to hit the light from the iris of the sun itself.
The guys at the reception desk only briefly lifted their heads when I flew through the door’s revolving wings and entered via the hotel’s electric lobby into the natural darkness of the night. The cold metal vase of the Elba, knocked over onto the ground, flowed to one side. The water, the pontoon bridge, the pathway — I remember, that much I remember clearly — that I’m running, right? Please say yes, please fix me to this game board for at least a little while longer with the pin that I have been preserved on.
It turned out that the sign for Makarenko Strasse really marked a street with that name, and not just a nightmare in my head. What’s more, further on I also discovered a school also named after the Soviet pedagogue. So it would be bad manners not to reach the end. A thousand meters or so to the clinic. After all, we’re talking about money, a whole briefcase-full, a million and a half.
I enter quietly, I enter slowly — that’s how a needle should find a vein. It’s early, the hallways are empty. There’s a white splotch in front of his door, light coming from a window built way up into the ceiling for some unknown reason. This strange Hamburgian and Saxon architecture. But whatever, it doesn’t matter. I don’t pay too much attention to the hospital design — if nothing else, I’m still a medical student. Who never graduated.
Medicine
My choice, not accidental, as always. The demon with the ruby-red eyes — I’ll admit my naïveté—I wanted to conquer it with my own two hands.