The Physics of Sorrow

by Georgi Gospodinov, Translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel

  The only thing I want now is to remember a few days with that physical intensity of childhood, when I lived out everyone else’s story as my own. What was the diagnosis again—radical empathetic-somatic syndrome . . . I no longer embed, I only have memories of such embeddings—but what memories! They soar like meteorites in the dark. Sometimes I am (again) the Minotaur, other times Laika the dog, I leave a woman during wartime, I see my nine-month-old father and am happy, they abandon my three-year-old self at a mill at the turn of the century, they kill me as a bull a century later in a bullfight in T . . .

  When I sensed that this ability was starting to fade, that I was undergoing de-empathization, as my doctor might jokingly put it, I resorted to this pale substitute—collecting. I felt an urgent need to horde, to organize things into boxes and notebooks, into lists and enumerations. To preserve things with words. The empty space left behind by one obsession can always be taken up by another. Before, I could inhabit all the bodies in the world, now I’m happy if I manage to move from room to room within the house of my own body. I stay the longest (did I mention this already?) in the children’s bedroom.

  Who am I. A forty-four-year-old man, in a basement with thick cement walls, a former bomb shelter. I say I’m forty-four, but add to that the age of my grandfather, who was born in 1913, also add that of my father, born at the end of the second Great War, of Juliet in front of the movie theater, of the escape artist Gaustine, add the ages of yet more people, whom I’ve inhabited for longer or shorter stretches, two cats, a dog, a few slugs, two dinosaurs—their skeletons are in the Berlin Museum of Natural Sciences. Add to all that the incalculable age of one Minotaur, who has never left the home that is my body.

  Sometimes I am forty-four, sometimes ninety-one, sometimes in the labyrinth of a cave or a basement, in the night of time, sometimes in the darkness of a womb, as of yet unborn.

  Most often, I am ten.

  I wonder whether I’ll die as all those things at once? I’ll become totally extinct, he told them, I’ll become totally extinct . . . like in that kiddie song about dinosaurs, where do I know it from?

  FIRST AID KIT FOR AFTER THE END OF THE WORLD

  And here’s the first notebook with instructions, begun in the late ’70s, when it became definitively clear that World War III was inevitable—and the end of the world along with it.

  I open up to the first page, written in a difficult-to-decipher hand.

  Human beings like hugs. If you happen to meet some surviving human being, open your upper appendages up wide and gently squeeze him. For best results, keep your arms like that as long as you can.

  (This is followed by a hand-drawn diagram of people hugging.)

  This will calm the human being down a lot. He might even start crying with a clear liquid coming from his eyes. Human beings love to cry. It’s no big deal, it can’t kill you. It’s more dangerous if a red liquid starts trickling out of somewhere, it’s stickier, because of the erythrocytes, I think. You have to stop it immediately or it could result in death. Death is . . .

  I had stopped there. Not because I couldn’t explain death. I was already twelve and knew what death is, I could have copied the definition from my biology textbook—the cessation of all the vital functions of an organism is called . . . But who knows whether the language of those who would find the notebook had developed according to the same logic, whether their words followed that logic and whether they even used language in the first place? Did the ones who would come know what “red” is, for example? Maybe they would use some other word for red, say “blue.” Or “tomato.” Or “ktrnt.” Or maybe they wouldn’t have any words for colors at all:

  a) because eyes will have long-since become vestigial organs, they will use far more advanced senses.

  b) they won’t read letters, that’ll be a bygone stage, they will be illiterate, which in their case might actually be some kind of supra-literacy . . .

  In any case, I added down at the bottom:

  If you find this, you’d best come looking for me, I’ll explain everything in real life (if I’m still alive). You can find me in the basement at the school (the entrance is under the stairway) or in the bomb shelter under the Tobacco Factory, which is three blocks from here.

  I signed it, too. Then I decided that wasn’t enough, so I wrote out my full name and a short description of myself. Bluish-green eyes, more greenish in the summer, light hair, tall, with a straight nose, no visible identification marks. Just like in my grandfather’s passport. However, that “no visible identification marks” wouldn’t have helped much in recognizing me, so I added: high forehead with superciliary protuberances (I had heard that from the school doctor during a check-up) and a mole on the left side under my lower lip. I knew that people who hadn’t met in a long time recognized each other by their moles. I also added, which now seems wise to me, that in the year 2000, I would be a thirty-three-year-old man. And since human beings live an average of seventy-five years—and men even a bit less than that—that after 2050 I most likely won’t be able to be of any assistance. But until then I’ll be at their disposal. Then I signed it once again.

  He places (I can see him clearly in my memory) the notebook with the instructions in a round metal Singer tin, the most valuable thing he owns. It’s from “before the Ninth,” as his grandfather liked to say. Always, when someone wants to say that something is really old, they say it is from “before the Ninth”—i.e. before September 9, 1944, the date of the communist coup in Bulgaria. It sounds like “before Christ.” And the strangest part of all is that his grandma and grandpa are also from before the Ninth, it’s downright unbelievable. The tin has some strange letters on it, with a big red S on the lid and gold decorations winding around it. Years later, on all of my travels I would recognize in the details of houses and pictures from the turn of the century that Secession style, which, thanks to that tin, had been part of my childhood. A tin for thread and fabric samples given as a free gift along with the sewing machine.

  The Singer sewing machine itself had disappeared “after the Ninth” for some strange reason. That was another dark and muddled thing. What existed before the Ninth disappeared after the Ninth. Yet that tin for thread and fabric samples remained, it had somehow managed to smuggle itself from one system into the other, so he could keep all of his treasures in it. The metal was sturdy enough to survive one end of the world, that’s why he put his notebook with instructions inside as well. Just in case, however, he put the Singer tin in a larger, round halvah tin. True, it didn’t look nearly as nice, it was even a little rusty, but it would nevertheless be safer that way, with doubled armor. Besides, who would think to swipe an old halvah tin? Then he tore a sheet of paper out of the notebook, smeared it with a tube of half-dried-up Rila glue and stuck it on top of the halvah label. Then very slowly, in capital letters, he wrote out: “To Be Opened after the End of the World!”

  Although he couldn’t explain why, he knew that the end of the world was not the end. After that, something would have to survive, to start all over again.

  He had read in an encyclopedia that the most important discoveries in human history were fire and the wheel. That’s why the first thing he put in the tin was a box of matches. After some hesitation, he added his favorite toy car. First, they would figure out what a wheel was and how it worked, then they would produce a real car, following the prototype. The matches and the little red car formed the basis of this kit for surviving apocalypses. Then he added a bottle of iodine, a bandage, half a package of aspirin and that “Vietnamese wonder gel” with its fearsome ingredient “tiger balm,” whose sharp, pungent scent cured everything—from colds to mosquito bites. A first-aid kit for after the end of the world. That would do for a start.

  I race into the bomb shelter of the third person singular, I send another into the minefields of the past. I was that same person, who was once in first person, and now I’m afraid to ask whether he’s still alive. Are they still alive, all those we’ve been?


  DOUBLE PREPAREDNESS

  1980. On the one hand, there was the apocalypse, the flood, the end of the world according to John and his grandmother. On the other hand, that toothy (and armed to the teeth) Jimmy Carter was lurking, with his cowboy hat, riding a Pershing missile, as he was drawn in his father’s newspaper. At school, the slide projector was constantly showing shots of that atomic mushroom cloud and he already carefully skirted any mushroom that happened to sprout up in the garden, as if it might explode under his sandals.

  The two apocalypses—his grandmother’s and the school’s official one—didn’t coincide precisely, which only made matters worse. It clearly was a question of two different ends of the world, as if one weren’t enough. And a person had to be ready for each of them if he wanted to survive.

  The preventative measures were also different. His grandma stopped slaughtering chickens, leaving that sin to weigh on his grandfather’s soul. According to her, a person had to constantly repent and avoid sins of any kind. To reduce his load, for some time he ceased his experiments with ants and tried not to hate so much that revolting creature Stefka, who sat in the desk behind him, who never missed a chance to make fun of him for blushing. He couldn’t think of any other sins.

  Defense against nuclear and chemical weapons was more complicated. You needed to put on your gas mask in no time flat. “In no time flat”—his Basic Military Training teacher’s favorite phrase. Then immediately add your cloak, rubber gloves, rubber boots, and hightail it to the nearest bomb shelter. Or if the bomb shelter is too far away, fall flat on your face in the direction opposite the nuclear blast, and don’t look at the mushroom cloud so as not to ruin your eyes. He knew everything, just as the rest of his classmates did, about the chemical weapons sarin, soman, mustard gas, and the havoc they wreaked. They had become experts on poison gases, chemical and biological weapons, atomic and neutron bombs, Pershing and cruise missiles.

  So there wouldn’t be any surprises, he practiced for both scenarios. Whatever happens, put on your gas mask and start praying. During one of the drills, he tried to say a prayer with his gas mask on his head, but only a quiet rumbling could be heard through the hose, while the eyepieces of the tight rubber mask fogged up.

  “What are you babbling to yourself about, greenhorn?” His military training teacher barked at him—he was a major, wore a uniform, and they were all afraid of him. “When you prattle on, you only use up your oxygen more quickly.”

  Whoever managed to put on his gas mask in the allotted time—how many seconds was it?—would survive. Whoever didn’t, like Zhivka the Gimp, whose left arm was deformed, would be toast.

  During recess, he would sit by himself at his desk, calculating whether his mother and father would make the cut-off. If they didn’t, why should he bother trying to survive? As for his grandma and grandpa, they didn’t stand a chance, they were so slow. His grandma would first have to put on her glasses, she never knew where they were, then she’d have to find the bag with the gas mask, call to his grandpa, who was surely out somewhere with the cows . . .That definitely added up to more seconds than were allotted.

  SIDE CORRIDOR

  A person wearing a gas mask resembles a Minotaur.

  DEATH IS A CHERRY TREE THAT RIPENS WITHOUT US

  Nothing will be destroyed by the bomb. The houses will remain intact, the school will remain intact, the streets and trees will still be there, and the cherry tree in the yard will ripen, only we won’t be there. That’s what they told us today in school about the aftermath of the neutron bomb.

  —Notebook with instructions, 1980

  Only now do I realize how precise that description is. The street is still there, the trees are still there, look, there’s the cherry tree, except we’re dead. Nothing is left of me, the erstwhile savior of the world. So that means somebody nevertheless dropped the neutron bomb. The absence of my grandmother, my grandfather, my father, my mother, and of that boy, about whom it’s difficult for me to speak in the first person, only serves to confirm this.

  No one has yet thought up a gas mask and bomb shelter that protects against time.

  TIME SHELTER

  The day after the Apocalypse, there won’t be any newspapers. How ironic. The most significant event in the history of the world will go unreported.

  But it’s still beforehand. And I need to hurry . . . to finish my work.

  A woman from Iran, sentenced to be stoned to death for adultery. Just don’t do it in front of my son, the woman says, having managed to give an interview to a European newspaper. A girl from Afghanistan on the cover of Time with her ears and nose cut off. The photo is shocking, a big black hole gapes where her nose should be.

  A huge fire near Moscow, the suffocating smoke blankets the city, the number of victims rises every day. Floods in Europe. A deluge in Pakistan . . .

  I copy down the newspaper headlines. The dates say August 2010. I’ve read similar news in the Old Testament and in some of the medieval chronicles. It would be interesting to make a journal out of newspaper headlines only. Flood . . . Fire . . . Cut off . . . I carefully fold the newspaper in half, then once again, then once again, until it is as small as a napkin and all that can be read of the words are . . . od . . . fi . . . off. I stuff it into a box labeled “Fragile.” I’m trying to keep a precise catalogue of everything. For the time when “now” will be “back then,” as we wrote in our school yearbooks, liberally doused with the tears of our youth, which didn’t cost a thing. Good thing that the basement is big, an old bomb shelter, and despite all the stuff I’ve gathered up over the years, there’s still free space to be found. I insisted on that when buying the place. A nice, big cellar, a whole underground apartment, with two hallways, walls that form niches and secret passageways. I quizzed the owner at length about the thickness of the walls, the year the place was built, any past flooding, and so on. He was quite surprised. He must’ve regretted not raising the price a bit. Are you planning on living down here? No, I replied. And the next day I moved the most basic necessities for living into the basement. I spend most of my time down here. I feel at home. I mostly use the floor above as an alibi. If you put some effort into appearing normal, you can save yourself a lot of time, during which you can be what you want to be in peace.

  In recent days the newspapers have reported that they’ve found the diaries of Dr. Mengele, who lived to a ripe old age in Latin America. Written between 1960 and 1975 in ordinary spiral-bound notebooks. Full of notes about the weather, short poems and philosophical musings, biographical details. An alibi for life itself, with all of its innocent details.

  JANUARY 1

  I’m not a hermit, I have a television downstairs (I only watch the evening news), I subscribe to thirty-odd newspapers and magazines, so I’m certainly no hermit. I still need to follow the world closely, I’m gathering signs.

  I read Aristotle’s Poetics and listen to some surviving vinyl record. It’s January 1 of the final year, according to some calendar. It’s too quiet, even for the afternoon of such a day. There aren’t the usual calls, texted greetings. I turn off my phone, to have an alibi for that silence.

  In the newspapers I processed a while back, it said that “unfriend” was the word of the year for 2009. It feels like that’s all I’ve been doing these past ten years. Over time, friends have been disappearing in different ways. Some suddenly, as if they had never existed. Others gradually, awkwardly, apologetically . . . They stop calling. At first you don’t get it. Then you start checking to see whether your phone battery has died. A sharp absence at five in the afternoon. At first it lasts around an hour, then it gets shorter. But it never disappears. Just like with the cigarettes you quit smoking years ago, but which you keep dreaming about.

  In the dying light of the day I once again feel that inrush of obscure sorrow and fear, true savage fear, for which I have no name. I quickly put on my coat, pull on a hat with ear flaps, I could easily pass as either hip or homeless, that suits me fine, I’m
invisible in any case.

  If anyone wants to see what his neighborhood will look like after the end of the world, he should go outside on the afternoon of January 1. Indescribable silence. All available reserves of joy have been spent the previous evening. Dry and cold, the rock bottom has been laid bare. Metaphysical rock bottom. I’ve always wondered what is actually being celebrated—the end of one year or the beginning of another. Most likely the end. If we were celebrating the beginning, then January 1 would be the happiest day.

  I stroll through the narrow, icy pathways between the apartment buildings, some empty wine bottle rolls from beneath my feet, along with the remains of explosive devices of every caliber . . . And not a soul outside. This is starting to look suspicious. As if someone, under the cover of New Year’s fireworks, managed to blow everyone away. They detonated that neutron bomb. I’m the only survivor, behind the thick walls of my hiding place. I can’t imagine there was anyone else cautious enough to have spent New Year’s Eve in a bomb shelter. I wonder what’s on CNN after the end of the world? I turn around to go check, and from the nothingness, two dogs and a bum jump out in front of me. The first living creatures . . . this year. I’m overjoyed to see them. Actually, this is their day, their New Year’s is a day later. When the previous night’s leftovers are thrown away and the dumpsters are overflowing like sad post-holiday malls.

  TO BE OPENED AFTER . . .

  An alarm clock, safety pin, toothbrush, doll, matchbox car, ladies’ hat, make-up kit, electric razor, cigarette case, pack of cigarettes, pipe, various scraps of cloth and fabric, one dollar in change, seeds for corn, tobacco, rice, beans, carrots . . .

  What could hold a collection of such uncollectable things?

  A suitcase, most likely. But who could be the owner of such a suitcase? The ladies’ hat suggests a woman, the pipe and the electric razor a gentleman, even though that’s no longer certain. Or the suitcase belongs to a little girl because of the doll, or perhaps a little boy because of the cars and all the odds and ends little boys tend to collect.