The Physics of Sorrow

by Georgi Gospodinov, Translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel

  She was born early in the morning in winter. It was dark. I was walking back home, the way out of the hospital passed through a strange tunnel. I felt as if I were coming out of a womb, as if I was going down the child’s path. A newborn father. It had been a long time since I had walked around that city at five in the morning, before sunrise. The neon signs were going out, the first streetcar passed by, I looked at the number. Seven. I told myself that this meant everything would be all right. It was exactly 5:07 A.M. A man was opening up his newspaper stand, I asked for every single one of the daily newspapers. He looked at me sleepily and bewildered. After all, nothing all that special has happened today, he said, puzzled.

  Oh yes, it has. I paid, took my pile of newspapers, and walked away, happy.

  What were the headlines from that day? Was the world’s nursery ready to meet that child?

  . . .

  First winter.

  First snow.

  First wind.

  First dog.

  First cloud.

  For the eye of a child.

  For the eye of every newborn—rat, fly, or turtle—each time the world is created anew.

  In the beginning, they speak the language of all living creatures, cooing like a dove, gurgling like a dolphin, meowing, squawking, bawling . . . The linguistic primordial soup.

  Dgish, anguh, pneya, eeeh, deeeya, bunya-bunya-bunyaba, batyabuuu.

  God does not give language to newborns immediately. And that’s no accident. They still know the secret of paradise, but they have no words for it. When they are given language, the secret has already been forgotten.

  Her first steps, she’s wobbling like a royal penguin. As if walking on the moon. She reaches out to grab onto the air. So concentrated and smiling to herself, so fragile. When you look at her, she falls.

  While I’m writing about the world’s sorrows, Portuguese saudade, Turkish hüzün, about the Swiss illness—nostalgia . . . she comes to me, at two and a half, and suddenly snatches away my pen.

  Sit here and open your mouth up wide, she says. Then she gets up on tiptoe and looks inside. Wow, it’s really dark inside you, I can’t see a thing . . .

  Come on, let’s play dust motes. You’re the daddy dust mote, and I’m the baby dust mote.

  VI.

  THE STORY BUYER

  THE BABY CARRIER

  Here’s the deal, why shouldn’t I tell you? I’m not afraid. You get pregnant here and around the seventh month you’ve got to cross the border into Greece. You suck in your belly, wear baggy clothes, that’s why it’s better to choose colder weather. You light up a cigarette while they check your passport, to keep calm and cool on the one hand, and to not give away that you’re pregnant, on the other. Of course, the guy who’s taking you across has greased some palms, but you’ve got to do your part, too. So you cross the border. You sit on the outskirts of Athens for two months in some windowless room, like a closet. You don’t go out anywhere, so as not to run into any trouble. You just lie around, watching TV and eating like a pig. They feed you well, because the goods have got to be healthy. So you carry it to term, they have gotten in touch with the buyers, they say you’re a relative, they find you a doctor and you give birth illegally. Your guy takes the money and that’s that. I just don’t want them to show it to me when it’s born, so I don’t get sad. If I see it even once, it’s all over, I can’t give it away and I’ll screw up the whole deal. I support my other kids with this gig, I’ve got four waiting for me at home. I’m only doing it for them. How much do they sell for? Around five or six thousand, for one they gave me 8K, it was a boy, boys cost more, I get ten percent. I’ve sold four and raised four, that’s the breakdown. But this one now is the last one, end of story. Hey, it’s kicking, it knows we’re talking about it, stop kicking, kid, you’re life’s gonna be a hundred times better there. Sometimes I dream about them and light candles for them.

  I bought this story in late October, near the Greek border. When I offered her money, the woman looked at me in astonishment. She couldn’t figure out what exactly I was paying her for. I’ve got nothing to sell you, she said, plus I’m not gonna have any more kids. I replied that I had just bought her story. I’m not sure she understood. She took the money and turned it over in her hands, as if expecting me to ask for it back, then turned around, took a few steps, squatted down, and burst out sobbing. I thought to myself that only now had she begun to sell her children. When she started telling about them. Without a story, it was all nothing but business.

  Telling stories is part of Judgment Day, because it makes people understand. But what the point of understanding is remains unclear. I put these stories in the box, too.

  THE STORY BUYER

  In the past I could implant, now I’m forced to buy. I could introduce myself this way, too: I’m a person who buys up the past. A story trader. Others might trade tea, coriander, stocks and bonds, gold watches, land . . . I go around buying up the past wholesale. Call me what you want, find me a name. Those who own land are called “landholders,” I’m a timeholder, a holder of others’ time, the owner of others’ stories and pasts. I’m an honest buyer, I never try to undercut the price. I only buy up private pasts, the pasts of specific people. Once they tried to sell me the past of a whole nation, but I turned it down.

  I buy all sorts of stories—about abandonment, about unfaithful women, about childhood, about travelling and getting lost, about sorrow and unexpected deliverance . . . I also buy happy stories, but there aren’t many sellers of those. From the first word I can tell fresh from rancid goods, true stories from those of fibbing shysters who only want to make a quick buck.

  Most people sell their stories for a pittance, some are even dumb-founded that I offer them money for something that doesn’t cost a thing. Others are thankful to have someone to take on the burden they had previously been carrying alone.

  What’s in it for me? Thanks to an earlier illness and to the purchased stories, I could now move through the corridors of various times. I could have the childhood of everyone I had bought one from, I could possess their wives and their sorrows. I could pile them up in the Noah’s Boxes in that basement.

  THE OLIVE OIL TRADER (THE WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT MR. G.)

  1.

  I’ve never met such a gentleman—and I’ve met plenty, believe you me—who respected women as much as the ever-so-gallant Mr. G., he was so respectful it was downright worrisome, I’ve never met a man who could sit calmly next to a naked woman, a woman who was ready for him, after he himself had prepared her, a woman soft as clay, feeling her skin burning and hearing her crying out for him and not laying a finger on her, not driving his stallion into her, as was written somewhere, I read a lot, not letting his horse run free, not drawing his sword, not releasing his arrow from the taut bow, I have not met and will never again meet such a man, who, faced with such an opportunity, would speak of how easily we drink from the cup of sin, as if it were an infusion of chamomile or mulled wine, and how we covet what is not ours like a fig tree growing in the middle of the road, dear God, how Mr. G. could talk, cleverly and outlandishly, peculiarly and prettily, our men don’t talk that way, they simply stick their hands up your skirt, grab your tits and push you up against the wall. I don’t know if that saintly man is still alive, does the gentleman know anything more about him, since he is asking?

  Oh, the gentleman is so courteous, but must one pay even for that nowadays?

  2.

  It was rape, I’ll tell you flat out, rape, pure and simple, without physical communion, I know that bit about physical communion from the late Judge R., may he rest in peace, he spent more nights with me than with his lawfully wedded wife, we had physical communion, that’s what he called it, I didn’t mind, it was the same thing, it just sounded fancier, so unlike the late judge, Mr. G. and I didn’t engage in any physical communion, yet despite that I’ve never been so roughly and brutally raped, I had to suffer all his crackpot ranting about infidelity and sin, the likes of wh
ich I hadn’t even heard from my husband . . . you call a woman over to your house, strip her naked and then look her over as if inspecting sheep, you condemn her, as if you yourself weren’t the one leading her into sin, and in the end you throw her out . . . I’ve never felt so bruised and degraded after any other man, I got up, went straight over to Judge R. and told him that Mr. G. had tried to rape me and lead me into . . . I fixed him good, I don’t know what exactly my dear judge did or how he did it, but the very next day, in the darkness before dawn, Mr. G. slunk out of town, and no one ever mentioned him again, probably because in every house there was someone who had passed through his iron bed . . . all these years and you, sir, are the first to ask about him, why do you want to know . . . had we spoken of money, thank you, thank you.

  3.

  That’s exactly how he was, the Venerable G., sir, if you want an honest answer, incidentally I don’t know if he had an ecclesiastical title, he had devoted himself to tempting women, but not all women, only wives, only faithful, obedient wives . . . and when they ended up in his bed sooner or later, he would not lay on a finger on them, he would start asking them why they were there, what they expected of him, what had prompted them to abandon their husbands and children, he talked about morality, oh yes, he was big on morality, he was; the woman would be lying undressed in his iron bed, and he would wag his finger in her face, talking, looking her over, asking . . . I’ve already reached the age when I have nothing to hide, so I’ll admit it, I was there, too, never judge wives too harshly, sir, we are wretched creatures, they force you into bed and you start giving birth every year and a half, as if racing against the cow in the barn and the pig in the pen, while Mr. G. was not like the local men and he wasn’t a local, he didn’t stink like onion, he didn’t swear at animals and children, he didn’t spit on the floor, and he read books . . . all the wives were crazy about him, I swear, so he didn’t really need to do much at all to land them in his bed, with all the risk that entailed back then . . . When it was my turn to lie in that cold room, I meekly listened to all he had to say, because sin really was circling over the bed, but when he was done I asked him straight out why he did this, wasn’t it equally unnatural and sinful not to lie with a woman whom you had called over, who had come to you, and who had stripped herself bare of everything, her husband, her children, all of Divine Law . . . he was amazed that I had the courage to ask him anything at all in my state, then replied that he was a natural scientist studying sin and infidelity, he wanted to isolate it in its purest form, to distill it, and when he saw that I didn’t understand much of his scholarly fiddle-faddle, he said—and I quote: You, woman, are the olive from which I press sin like olive oil.

  More than forty years have passed, but to this day those words give me chills, sir . . . his eyes when he said that looked like two dark-green olives, and again I tell you that I cannot judge him, the Venerable Mr. G., something terrible must have happened to him to make him do such things . . . he was an abandoned soul . . . never go into an abandoned house or visit an abandoned person, there are only owls and snakes there—that’s exactly how he was, if you’re looking for an honest answer.

  Oh no, I no longer need money. But what exactly is he to you, sir?

  . . .

  What exactly is Mr. G. to me? And what am I doing way back here in the year 1734? I’m buying stories under the guise of olive trading. What makes me better than Mr. G.? And aren’t we talking about one and the same olive oil?

  An old woman told me a story that her grandmother had heard from her grandmother about some guy who had possessed all the married women in these parts. That in and of itself wouldn’t have grabbed my attention if it hadn’t been for the name she uttered—a name that has been dogging me for some time now.

  Gaustine. The person who would easily cross over eras like a shallow river and would always find a way to send me a sign from one time or another. I will never really be sure whether he existed for real or whether I’ve thought him up, or whether I myself was thought up by him. His latest move, I must admit, has surpassed all of my expectations. For several years now a book under my name (in German translation) that I never wrote has been circulating around the web: Ding, Kunst, Kant und Zeitgenossen (Wieser Verlag, 2005). You can look it up.

  I’m waiting for his next book, under the name Gaustine, in which the main character will have my name.

  I once Googled him. Immediately some Angelina Gaustine came up, who is known to have died exactly in the year 1900 at the age of 70 and who is buried in the cemetery in Paoli, Indiana. The source was the diocese’s death records.

  In one family tree, a certain Lucinda Gaustine, born 1853, also turns up. In another place, there’s Molly Gaustine with a question mark after the name. Somewhere in Oregon we find one B. Gaustine. But everywhere the name exists only as a surname and never as a first, given name. Only his children were recorded in these books. A common, disappeared father.

  After returning from this story (it was a rough journey, I had to transfer from voice to voice, it was a third-generation story, and after all, it’s becoming ever harder for me to reach my erstwhile empathy), I dug into the archives around the place of the story, made various inquiries and indeed found confirmation. In one “Common Book of Births, Burials, Weddings, Debts, and Other Unusual Events,” the name Gaustine came up. The very same person had arrived in the town precisely in 1700 and three years later was written off “without the right to return to the city.” With three strange little crosses in the book’s margin, which in those parts marked encounters with the Evil One.

  THE UNDERGROUND ANGEL

  The story of the guy born with angel’s wings. The night before his birth, a messenger appeared in a dream and told his mother, okay, so this is the deal, woman, your boy is a gift from God, he will be an angel in human flesh. And as the rumor in town had it, the boy with the angel’s wings would possess incredible strength. “Strength” here was taken literally—lifting weights, beating everybody at wrestling, going head-to-head with a bear or slinging two bags of flour over your shoulder. Or lifting up a full cask of wine with your teeth at town fairs like the famous Harry Stoev. The only condition was that the mother not tell anyone.

  Now I’m imagining that boy like a classical angel, so different from everything around him, like the seed of an Italian pine or some other plant not found in these parts, blown in on a Mediterranean breeze. A gangly, skinny—here they’d say “wimpy”—boy who would be the target of taunts. His mom wasn’t supposed to say anything, but she got scared that her son would be different, so she started blabbering about it left and right and his wings disappeared.

  As kids we would secretly wait to catch a glimpse of him. He was a miner. Always somber and dirty. I would imagine him with big, limp angel’s wings dragging along behind him, black from the coal dust. He walked slightly hunched over and never took off his shirt. Perhaps the wings had kept growing under it? And he had to clip them every morning. Just like he had to shave. Or like how my grandma would clip the chickens’ wings so they wouldn’t flit over the fence, so they wouldn’t leave the yard. He wouldn’t leave it, either. His mother had chosen the son over the angel.

  As a child I despised that blabbering mother who had deprived her son of such power. But now I understand her. She refused to allow him to be taken away from the human species. Unlike Pasiphaë, the Minotaur’s mother. The miner-angel was morose, withdrawn, never said a word. As if by killing the angel within himself, in the end he had managed to obliterate the human as well.

  The underground angel’s son was a few classes ahead of us, unusually tall, he went to Sofia to play basketball, then left for America.

  THE UNDERGROUND ANGEL’S SON

  My father was a miner. In the dark, at five in the morning, he would go out to the mine. They would bring him back by truck at dusk. Both in the mine and outside—in the dark. He didn’t remember what day was. Only one time he didn’t go to work and lay all day in his room with the curtains drawn,
he couldn’t stand the light.

  That’s how I remember him, he would come home at night, gloomy, not saying a word, on the table a big salad and a bottle of brandy. As if he weren’t here at all. I’ve heard that story about the wings, maybe it’s true, mute as an angel. He would turn on the TV, but not watch it. He would eat the whole salad, and drink half the bottle. He never said anything. He’d go to bed. And start all over the next morning.

  The happiest day of my life was when the coach from the city came to see which of us would make good basketball players. They picked me because I was already a beanstalk, tall and wiry, with hands like shovels. My mother started bawling, my dad just patted me on the back. I got the feeling that he wanted to say something, he took a breath, but he hadn’t spoken in so long that the mechanism down there was most likely rusty, he cleared his throat, something creaked in it and he went to bed. The next day I took my duffle bag and left for the sports boarding school in the city. I trained like crazy, because I knew what awaited me if I was forced to go back home. I stayed late after practice, lifting weights, jumping rope, practicing free throws, everything . . . I didn’t have an ounce of talent for that game, actually I didn’t have an ounce of talent, but I just kept busting ass . . . like a miner. And I made the team, because I was ripped, I gave my all, I didn’t spare my strength. And when some guy showed up after 1989 from some amateur American club to buy up cheap Eastern European players, I didn’t hesitate to go. I knew I had no chance playing basketball there, I’d never make the cut. I just needed to get as far away from here as I could, from my father, from his bottle and his sullenness.