‘You can stay if you like,’ I said, ‘and spend a few days with your cousin,’ I added cautiously.
‘No, we haven’t seen each other for years.’
She said it without pretence. There was no longer any point in pretending that she had come here to see her cousin.
‘I’m leaving. I’m going to see if I can find the street where my grandparents lived.’
‘I am going with you,’ she said. A childish determination rang in her voice.
‘No,’ I said.
She pressed her lips together as if she were a little insulted. All the more so because it was clear that we’d be skipping our morning cup of coffee. We parted ways in front of the hotel, agreeing to meet back there at three o’clock. I didn’t ask her what she would do.
‘Priyatno snimane!’ she shouted in the tone of a child who is being left behind. Perhaps this is a common phrase in Bulgarian, but it, too, grated on my ear. Have a great time with the picture-taking!
I was suddenly awash with relief. It was as if only now – once I’d finally got rid of Aba’s presence – I had arrived in Varna. I set off down Vladislav Varnenchik street (was this what the street had been called before?), trying to retrieve a living image from memory. This was the route I used to take to the city beach and I would come back, sun-burned and groggy, dragging my feet on the hot asphalt. The only place I recognised, however, was the main post office. Everything else seemed confused. My grandparents lived on Dospat Street, one of the smaller streets off to the left. Earlier they had had a house of their own with a garden by a lake just outside of Varna. That is where my mother spent her childhood and early youth. There was a train station there on the lake, long since abandoned, where Grandpa had worked. Mum remembered the station with special tenderness. During summer evenings the neighbourhood children gathered there. We’d meet down at the station in the evening, after all the trains had passed… I remembered that phrase – in the evening, after all the trains had passed – because she must have repeated it. Having adopted the phrase, I further embroidered it with my own colours. Dusk, fireflies, a quiet train station, the warm tracks gleaming in the dark, croaking frogs, a moon in the sky – and my mother’s young, eager heart pounding with excitement.
Now I wondered why it was that although we had come to visit my grandparents so many times, we never went to see the old abandoned train station and the house they’d lived in. When Grandpa retired, my grandparents moved to a school where they lived as custodians. They stayed in a little house in the school yard. The house had only two rooms, but the yard was large and part of it was covered, so we were out all day during the summer, even when it rained. The school was empty over the summer; there was plenty of space.
I found the school. The gate was locked. I hadn’t remembered a brick wall, it must have been built since then. I remembered an iron gate with bars. The gate was painted an ugly green colour. The word Kotelno, ‘furnace’, was written on it in black. I tried the handle. It was locked. This was upsetting. A familiar sense of panic swelled in me, a feeling I sometimes have when I can’t get out of a place. I stood there at the door as if hypnotised. How small everything looked! The roof of the little house by the wall was dilapidated, the wall on the outside was cracked, damp stains spread along its base. And the yard – that spacious sunny yard with the vast piece of blue sky – how tiny it had become! How did all of us fit here? Dad, Mum, my brother and I? Had my grandparents slept at the home of friends across the way during the times when we visited? Or in one of the classrooms in the school building on improvised beds?
What had once been a charming little street with cosy houses and gardens was no longer recognisable. The street had become a construction site; new homes were sprouting on all sides. I walked around the school, found the entrance and bumped into a man and two women in the corridor. I explained that I would like to see the yard, and had tried to let myself in, but it was locked.
‘Why are you interested in the yard?’ the man asked.
‘My grandparents used to live there years ago.’
‘You cannot go in. The furnace for the school is there.’
‘I would just like to peep into the yard for a moment.’
‘Madam, there is no yard there! There is nothing there! It’s the furnace for the school. And it has always been there as far as I know.’
The women agreed and nodded, right to left, as the Bulgarians do.
* * *
I left the school building and went back to the green gate. It was standing there in front of me like a forgotten password. If I could only open the gate a crack, I thought, everything would come back to me. Some images were surfacing: the dynamic figure of my grandmother, who was always busy with something – cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing – and the static figure of my grandfather, who sat in the school yard and smoked. Everything else tumbled and mixed in the furnace behind the green gate.
I looked over at the little house across the way, which, sur prisingly, was still standing. My grandmother died in that house while she was over visiting her friends, who, themselves, are no longer alive. They were watching television together, Grandma, suddenly agitated, asked, ‘Why did it get so dark?’ and then she died. That was Mum’s most recent version of Grandma’s dying words.
Gulping breaths of air I went back to the main street and there I flagged down a taxi that saved me. The ride was an instant sedative. I decided to take the route of this pointless and troubling pilgrimage all the way to its end.
‘Can you take me to the old train station by the lake?’ I said.
‘Why?’ The taxi driver was astonished. ‘There is nothing there!’
Beyond the tangle of rusty tracks, in front of me stood the lake. It stood – precisely that and nothing more. The sky was intersected by electric wires, the tracks were covered in grass. The grass was a dark green, the sky and lake a greyish blue. The place was ugly, but not entirely without appeal. The appeal lay in the sense of total desertion that radiated from all sides. I turned around. Across, on the other side of the road, where the house with the garden was supposed to have stood, the one we’d never gone to see, there was a slope with a few run-down little houses along the top. The slope was dangerously eroded, so much so that the little old houses looked as if they might come tumbling down at any minute. At the foot of the hill, along the road, were more run-down buildings with advertisement signs: Car Mechanic, We Change Oil, and so forth.
‘Love, I told you there is nothing here but ghosts! Unless you are looking for a part for a car. And a very old one at that!’ the taxi driver said kindly.
When we turned around to return to the centre of town, I looked back once more at the lake. It seemed as if I could see a barely visible bluish shimmering, ghosts shimmering in the air over the lake.
7.
Walking towards the hotel, I saw Aba standing by the fountain, feeding seagulls. The water spraying in spurts behind her looked a little more lively than it had that morning. Lit by sunshine that was breaking through the clouds, the jets of water glistened in all the colours of the rainbow. And the seagulls, it was as if the gulls had gone mad: they swooped in great loops in the air, flapped their wings and then slowly, like parachutes, they descended to Aba’s interlocked open hands and they pecked at the crumbs of bread.
Passers-by stopped and watched the scene: there was something marvellously acrobatic and, at the same time, natural in Aba’s performance. Aba inscribed herself perfectly into the space. This time there was no ‘wrong tone’. If Aba was sending a message, that message was not directed at those of us who were watching her on the square, I was sure of that.
I did not go over to her. I loathe feathered creatures. I watched the scene from the side. She caught sight of me, tossed the rest of the bread into the air, clapped her hands together to wipe off the crumbs and came over to me.
We brought out the bags that had been left at the main desk that morning. While we waited for the taxi in front of the hotel, I as
ked her how she had spent her time.
‘Nothing much, I wandered around town a bit.’
And then she looked at me carefully, and said,
‘Ah, yes, I went over to your grandmother’s – Dospat Street, n’est-ce pas?’
She had deliberately stabbed me in the flesh with her sharp little claw, there could be no doubt. Fury bubbled up in me in an instant. I quietly sucked the blood from the invisible wound and said,
‘Why? There is nothing there!’
At that moment the taxi arrived.
As They Came, So They Went Away
‘I can hardly wait for you to come to Zagreb and tell me all about how it was in Varna! I can hardly wait,’ she repeated excitedly during every phone conversation. I could recognise in her voice the routine excitement she always expressed the same way: I can hardly wait.
I rehearsed versions of my report in my mind. Maybe it would be better to tell her I had stayed in Varna for two days, that the weather had been bad, which was true, and that I had hardly seen anything. Or should I tell her that with the help of a kind Varna policeman I had been able to locate her Petya, who looked well, beautiful in fact, had sent her regards, but, unfortunately, couldn’t write, because she was having difficulties writing. Her son, Kostya, who, by the way, had stopped drinking, was looking after her with genuine devotion. And Varna, Varna was so wonderful, but I hadn’t brought her any pictures because I pressed the wrong button on that new digital camera.
‘I don’t recognise anything here,’ she said, peering at the images on my computer screen. ‘Is that Varna?’
She was surprisingly cool and collected. Of the wall that separated the school yard from the street, she said, ‘No, that wall wasn’t there before. Something new.’
Amazingly she was not as disappointed by the grey scenes of the city beach as I had been.
‘That city beach was never very nice. Do you remember how we always preferred to go to Asparuhovo and Galata? The water was cleaner there.’
When I next visited I urged her to look at the photographs again. She seemed to have forgotten she’d seen them the first time. Her comments were identical, and her indifference troubled me. I had not received the anticipated ‘payment’ for my service as a bedel, the emotional reciprocation from her end. Then again, maybe I hadn’t deserved it. I had clearly done the job badly. I had brought back nothing from my pilgrimage, and received nothing in return. I can’t tell whether she had erased the Varna file in her memory, or had saved it somewhere else, but I was sure that neither she nor I would be opening it again any time soon.
This time I noticed that she had changed the way she walked. She was trying to stand a little straighter when she pushed her walker, and to lift her feet a little more with each step.
‘That is what Jasminka told me, to lift my feet.’
Jasminka was her physiotherapist.
We went, as usual, to her favourite café at the marketplace for coffee. She went in with the walker, stubbornly refusing to leave it outside (I don’t want anyone stealing it!). People had to get up and move their chairs to let her pass. I think she was not unaware that her arrival at the café with the walker was causing a fuss.
‘When you aren’t here with me, the waiters lend me a hand. They are all very, very kind. People are generally very kind, especially when they see me with the walker,’ she said.
She always ordered the same thing, a cappuccino, and Kaia or I would bring her a cheese turnover, a triangular piece of pastry, from the shop two steps down from the café. Without her ritual turnover and the cappuccino, the day wouldn’t function. If the weather was bad and she couldn’t go out herself, someone else would bring the turnover, and the cappuccino would be made at home.
After she sat for a bit, she had to go to the bathroom. She came back from the bathroom upset.
‘How could that happen to me! The prettiest little old lady in the neighbourhood!’ she grumbled.
She refused to wear the incontinence pads with the same obstinacy that she refused to wear flat-heeled orthopaedic shoes for the elderly (I can’t bear them! I have always worn heels!). Someone had told her she was the prettiest little old lady in the neighbourhood. A year earlier she would have been insulted by a similar sentiment, but now she was pleased to say it over and over: Everyone says I am the prettiest little old lady in the neighbourhood! It is true that she said it with a hint of irony. She used the phrase as an apology for her clumsiness and as a request to respect her ‘exceptional’ age. The incontinence was the worst insult her body had come up with for her. And she was irked by her forgetfulness (No, I did not forgot!) yet ultimately she relented (Maybe I forgot after all?) and finally she made her peace with it (It is hardly surprising that I forget things nowadays. I’m eighty years old, you know!).
‘If this happens again, I’ll kill myself straight away,’ she said, indirectly asking me to say something to console her.
‘It’s perfectly normal for your age! Look on the bright side. You are over eighty, you are up and about, you are in no pain, you live in your own home, you go out every day and you socialise. Your best friend, with whom you drink coffee every day, is ten years younger than you. Jasminka visits you three times a week. Kaia brings you breakfast, lunch and dinner every day, and she is an excellent cook and keeps you on schedule with your medical check-ups. Your doctor is only five minutes’ walk from your house, your grandchildren visit you regularly and love you, and I come to see you all the time,’ I recited.
‘If I could only read,’ she sighed, although she had little patience for reading any more, aside from leafing through newspapers.
‘Well, you can read, though, it’s true, with difficulty.’
‘If only I could read my Tessa one more time.’
She was referring to Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
‘As soon as you decide, we’ll go ahead with the operation. It is a breeze to remove age-related cataracts.’
‘At my age nothing is easy.’
‘I said a breeze, not easy. Do you want me to buy you a magnifying glass?’
‘Who could stand reading with a magnifying glass?!’
‘Do you want me to read you Tess out loud? A chapter a day?’
‘It’s not as nice when someone else reads to you as when you read for yourself.’
She responded to all my attempts to cheer her up with obstinate childish baulking. She’d give way for a moment (Maybe you’re right), but the next instant she would clutch at some new detail (Ah, everything would be different if I could only walk a little faster!).
‘I have changed so much. I barely recognise myself.’
‘What are you saying? You haven’t a single wrinkle on your forehead.’
‘Maybe so, but the skin sags on my neck.’
‘The wrinkles on your face are so fine they are barely visible.’
‘Maybe, but my back is so hunched.’
‘You’ve kept your slender figure.’
‘My belly sticks out.’ she complained.
‘Sure, a little, but nobody notices,’ I consoled her.
‘I have changed. I barely recognise myself.’
‘Can you think of anyone your age who hasn’t changed?’
‘Well, now that you ask,’ she’d relent.
‘What were you expecting?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Your beloved Ava Gardner, for instance.’
‘Ava was the most beautiful woman in the world!’ she said firmly, but with a hint of melancholy, as if she had been speaking of herself.
‘Ava died at the age of sixty-eight.’
‘You’re kidding!’
‘No, really, she had a stroke. Half of her face was paralysed. Near the end of her life she was penniless, so Frank Sinatra paid for her medical expenses.’
‘She? Broke!? I can’t believe it.’
‘Yes, she moved from the States to London. She was isolated there, she was probably no longer able to earn anything. Her last
words to her servant Carmen were: “I am tired,”’ I said. ‘Story has it that Frank Sinatra locked himself up in his room for two days when he heard that Ava had died. They say he sobbed uncontrollably.’
‘Well, and so he should have!’ she said. ‘Such a little man, nothing much to look at, scrawny, a shrimp. Next to her he looked like a frog!’
‘What about Mickey Rooney?’
‘Why Mickey Rooney?’
‘Well, he was her first husband.’
‘Well, that Rooney was a shrimp too! Such an exquisite woman and around her she had only dwarves.’
‘Ava was only four years older than you.’
‘Ava was the most beautiful woman in the world!’ she repeated, ignoring the comment about the difference in their ages.
‘Take, for instance, Audrey Hepburn.’
‘That little woman? The skinny one?’
‘Yes. She died at sixty-four.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘And Ingrid Bergman?’
‘What about Ingrid Bergman?’
‘She died when she was sixty-seven.’
‘She was a little clumsy, but still exquisite.’
‘What about Marilyn Monroe? Marilyn was a twomonth- old baby when you were born! And she died at thirty-six!’
‘Marilyn was my age?’
‘Your generation! You were both born in 1926!’
It seemed that the fact that she shared her year of birth with Marilyn Monroe left her cold.
‘What about Elizabeth Taylor?’ she asked.
Baba Yaga Laid an Egg (Myths S.) Page 6
