This book—and call it a shameless plug all you want—is by far one of the best books I’ve read in the last year, and has been on my personal Best Books of 2015 list since I first read it over a year ago. I can’t say enough or put the proper words to what the reading experience was like, but this is a phenomenal work, and if you’re not able to fit the entire book into your schedules, you should at least read one of the many excerpts posted across several online journals, including Little Star Weekly, which ran a of Physics over the course of March and April. Really, really, truly, I can not get enough of this book.

Izidora Angel is a Bulgarian-born writer and translator living in Chicago. She is at work on translating the multi-award winning “The Same Night Await Us All: Diary of a Novel,” by Hristo Karastoyanov, from Bulgarian into English. She was just recently in Rochester as part of a three-week residency for Bulgarian translators, sponsored by the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation. Here’s a snippet of her review:

Georgi Gospodinov’s The Physics of Sorrow was an immediate best-seller when it was published in his native Bulgaria in 2011, which is no small feat considering best-seller lists in the country are almost always dominated not by indigenous literature, but by a slightly schizophrenic gathering of translated literature of varying merit. To give an example, fellow best-selling books in fiction that year included The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Şafak (2010), and The Bastard of Istanbul (2007) by the same author, as well as, perhaps, the inevitable: Fifty Shades of Grey (2011). This points to the Bulgarian reader’s eclectic taste: the Dumas, Dostoevsky, and Remarque of her childhood paving the way for an enduring historical and intellectual thirst followed by mired fascination with an exotic, far-away America via its spiritual junk food.

As a writer, Gospodinov travels freely—physically and metaphysically—attempting to grasp the national fascination with chujbina or “foreign country,” along with the necessity of revisiting another quite foreign thing: your own childhood. The metaphor he utilizes in The Physics of Sorrow for doing the latter is a child Minotaur, necessary perhaps only for the natural resistance of Bulgarians for self-introspection.

In his native country, Gospodinov (whose last name essentially means “Sir,” giving him an innately superior status) is a literary star, celebrated for many reasons, one of which is his translation into over twenty languages. This kind of success doesn’t come without detractors. He has received death threats for essays he’s written and many decry what they perceive to be the contrived mass-hysteria that follows the release of his books in Bulgaria. But Gospodinov’s writing speaks for itself; it is effortlessly relatable and that, in turn, translates.

For the rest of the review, go here.

“Your bile is stagnant, you see sorrow in everything, you are drenched in melancholy,” my friend the doctor said.
bq. “Isn’t melancholy something from previous centuries? Isn’t some vaccine against it yet, hasn’t medicine taken care of it yet?” I ask.

Georgi Gospodinov’s The Physics of Sorrow was an immediate best-seller when it was published in his native Bulgaria in 2011, which is no small feat considering best-seller lists in the country are almost always dominated not by indigenous literature, but by a slightly schizophrenic gathering of translated literature of varying merit. To give an example, fellow best-selling books in fiction that year included The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Şafak (2010), and The Bastard of Istanbul (2007) by the same author, as well as, perhaps, the inevitable: Fifty Shades of Grey (2011). This points to the Bulgarian reader’s eclectic taste: the Dumas, Dostoevsky, and Remarque of her childhood paving the way for an enduring historical and intellectual thirst followed by mired fascination with an exotic, far-away America via its spiritual junk food.

As a writer, Gospodinov travels freely—physically and metaphysically—attempting to grasp the national fascination with chujbina or “foreign country,” along with the necessity of revisiting another quite foreign thing: your own childhood. The metaphor he utilizes in The Physics of Sorrow for doing the latter is a child Minotaur, necessary perhaps only for the natural resistance of Bulgarians for self-introspection.

In his native country, Gospodinov (whose last name essentially means “Sir,” giving him an innately superior status) is a literary star, celebrated for many reasons, one of which is his translation into over twenty languages. This kind of success doesn’t come without detractors. He has received death threats for essays he’s written and many decry what they perceive to be the contrived mass-hysteria that follows the release of his books in Bulgaria. But Gospodinov’s writing speaks for itself; it is effortlessly relatable and that, in turn, translates.

If the author’s Natural Novel (2005) was a novel of beginnings, then The Physics of Sorrow can be read as a query into the riddle of beginnings and endings; a narratively deconstructed account of life that is part metaphor, part memoir, part metaphysical labyrinth. It’s filled with episodic Bulgarian vignettes, contemplations on the meaning of alienation and memory, and cautious optimism about the collective conscience and the power of imagining the world anew.

Physics is gently human and not showy, masterful in its simplicity yet laugh-out-loud funny. Consider the author recalling attending a writer’s open-casket funeral:

“While alive, he had hay fever. Now he was lying there, piled with flowers, looking as if he would start sneezing any minute. An orchid was sticking its tip right up his nose. But clearly he was already cured.”

The image of the handful of unofficial mistresses (there is an official one, too) also in attendance and in the corner, with their ice-blue hair, is perhaps familiar to anyone who grew up in 1980s Bulgaria. But the humor, the absurdity of the scene, is universal despite the specificity of the locale.

The novel’s translation, for which Angela Rodel was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, renders Gospodinov’s poetic writing faithfully and elegantly into English, and, like the work from which it is interpreted, it is injected with gentle optimism. At one point, the author recalls hearing a story from a friend, Miriam, who, for a time, lives with a Buddhist. The Buddhist attempts to instill in her the notion that life is sacred and not to be disrupted. In this case, it means she cannot lay a finger on an ever-increasing swarm of cockroaches that invades their apartment. In Bulgarian, Gospodinov writes that Miriam accepts this roachy existence for an entire year because she is in love and she is, therefore, turpeliva, the direct translation of the word being “patient” or “uncomplaining” or “enduring.” But Rodel takes it a step further and goes for “magnanimous.” Humor is again a crucial component at the end of the episode: after the magnanimity wears off, Miriam grabs the roach spray, and to the devastation of the Buddhist—curiously, out to work at that precise moment—commits “genocide.” But the Buddhist too falls off his sanctimonious horse: he’s already taken another lover.

If stories like the cockroach saga revel in a sort of geographic haziness, the melancholy of socialist reality making frequent, subtly heartbreaking stops puts the geography immediately into focus. There are the images of the englassed balconies turned into kitchens that adorn every apartment building—that attempt to squeeze the most out of your allotted square footage; the starving years, when instead of eating, Gospodinov and his girlfriend read a cook book; the electricity regime in the ’90s (think two hours on, two hours off); the stretches without hot water (an old Bulgarian joke has Electricity and Water running into each other at the entrance of an apartment building. “After you,” says Electricity, “I’m only here for an hour.” “No, after you, I insist,” says Water, “I’m only going to the first floor.”).

For those coming of age in newly democratic Bulgaria, the promise of something better, something new often came and went. Writes Gospodinov, “Back in the day, everybody was always saying: it’s too late for us, but lets hope the kids will live a different life. The mantra of late socialism. I now realize that it was my turn to utter the same line.”

But the book does not suffer from a martyr complex. Its multi-generational appeal exists precisely because it can make fun of itself without fatal insult.

Says Hristo Karastoyanov, a fellow writer also from the city of Yambol (and whose book, The Same Night Awaits Us All: Diary of a Novel, I’m currently translating): “Last summer in Bulgaria, the president did a one-day, country-wide public reading initiative. I was asked to help organize the Yambol event in the square, and the whole day had an air of contrivance, except for one thing: A girl, no more than 14 years old, got up to read a page from her favorite book. And it was a page from The Physics of Sorrow.” No one told her to read that, she had chosen it, and to me, it said a lot.”

With the English translation of “Physics entering the world, Gospodinov is now in the position of being able to push Bulgarian literature if not to the forefront, then at least meaningfully forward. His appeal is genuine, infectiously transcending boundaries both physical and figurative.

Tuesday, April 8th, 7pm

Albena Stambolova and Virginia Zaharieva will be in conversation with Open Letter editor Kaija Straumanis about their books and Bulgarian literature as a whole.

PLUS, as a bonus, Kaija will be able to announce the winner of this year’s Contemporary Bulgarian Writers Contest during the event.

Sunday, April 13th, 3pm

Malaprop’s Bookstore
55 Haywood St
Asheville, NC 28801

Thursday, April 17th, 7pm

Hopleaf Bar
5148 N. Clark St.
Chicago, IL 60640

This event features Daniela Olszweska (Cloudfang::Cakedirt) along with Albena Stambolova and Virginia Zaharieva. Also, Hopleaf has awesome beer.

Friday, April 18th, 6pm

Seminary Co-op Bookstore
5751 S. Woodlawn Avenue
Chicago, IL 60637

First off, here’s one that the author of the recently published

Here’s Steven’s description of the book:

Angel Igov’s first book to be translated into English, A Short Tale of Shame, is a compact road trip novel with an even more compact story line. Boril Krustev, former rock star in Bulgaria and current businessman, has lost his estranged wife to death and his estranged daughter, Elena, to America. Adrift and in mourning, he picks up three hitchhikers embroiled in a complex ménage à trois: the headstrong ringleader Sirma, her friend Maya, and their young male paramour Spartacus.

The four wander to a beach, camp, find a hotel. Not much ostensibly happens, but the novel finds its richness in multiple layers of history. We see the threesome’s past, considered both individually and through their connections to Elena—which are not always pleasant and sometimes painful. We see Krustev’s past, longer and more full of regrets for things undone. We see the pasts of the hitchhikers, not quite sure how they got from there to the present. And we also see the history of Bulgaria, both in its recent transformation from Communist rule and in its deeper sense as a small country that has always been overshadowed on the world stage by bigger, louder neighbors.

These strands of history tie together with an ending that arrives with great tenderness and momentum, breaking live a perfect wave. Among the novel’s strongest points is Igov’s control of language—aided and abetted by translator Angela Rodel—that announces, from its very beginning, a seriousness of intent and a deep awareness of craft.

Steven Wingate: There’s also an old Europe/new Europe vibe to A Short Tale of Shame that shows up in a consistent discussion of ancestry—the distinctions between Phrygian, Daican, Thracian, Slavic, Illyrian, Macedonian. This suggests a Balkanization that runs even deeper than what we see on the recently redrawn maps of the region. Why is this important to the unfolding of your story, as well as to Europe today?

Angel Igov: Balkanization is a trend that the West has always been afraid of and thus relegated to the periphery of the continent. What’s more Balkanized than today’s Belgium, for instance? The term also masks the huge role the Great Powers played for the fragmentation and ethnic trouble of Southeast Europe, from the mid-19th century to the Kossovo crisis. A Short Tale of Shame draws a map that ironically reflects Western stereotypes of the region. To this day, many well-educated westerners would be hard pressed to tell the difference between Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, for instance. Then why not call them Thrace, Dacia, Illyria, whatever? Would it matter anyway? The attitude would remain the same: far away countries of which we know little, as Neville Chamberlain nicely described Czechoslovakia after signing the Munich treaty. [. . .]

SW: You’ve translated into Bulgarian a number of great writers familiar to English-speaking readers—among them Ian McEwan and Paul Auster. I imagine that the creative influence of writers you’re translating goes beyond what you get from merely reading them. How does that translation experience show up in your work?

AI: I love translation: it’s a pure craft, transposing linguistic material from one language to another, molding words and sentences with your own “hands.” So, first of all, translation makes you good with language, or so I hope. Style, sound, texture—these things are important to me when I write.

Then, of course, it is difficult not to be in some way influenced in your own writing by what you translate. The anxiety of influence is a common malaise of authors. However, if you channel it and manage to create original work even when getting inspiration from other authors, this can be a very useful and joyous experience. After all, no writer is an island; you work in a huge, huge network of texts. At various times Paul Auster or Ian McEwan, or Martin Amis some years ago, have been important to me as models of sorts. However, I don’t think I’ve ever imitated anyone—I just don’t find this interesting. And I also try to make each book of mine different from the previous one.

SW: Fans of the American and European experimental traditions will recognize some of what you do stylistically—your long paragraphs, for instance, and your choice to not use quotation marks for dialog but to fold into your narration seamlessly. What are some of your models for that kind of dialog?

I could name two very different authors: John Banville and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. At one point I realized Jose Saramago was also doing a similar thing. Certainly the lessons of high modernism were also important for me here, Virginia Woolf, for instance. The funny thing is when I started writing this novel, the paragraphs and the dialogue weren’t in any way extravagant, but it just didn’t work: straightforward storytelling had to me a weird tongue-in-cheek quality. I decided to skip the dialogue markers and let the sentences flow—so they flowed on. I like the effect of smooth continuity: after all, when we speak, our utterances are not isolated in quotation-mark cages or comic-book balloons, they are all the time intermingled with our own thoughts that we keep to ourselves even while speaking, we get interrupted by others and so on. For me, this way of writing is not in any way literary: on the contrary, it is much closer to what we do in the real world. I am working now on my next novel (which is set at the end of World War II) and, after some consideration, I chose a similar approach.

Be sure and read the whole thing here.”:http://fictionwritersreview.com/interviews/all-times-are-awake-at-once-an-interview-with-angel-igov

Are you a rereader? What books do you find yourself returning to again and again?

I don’t do much rereading anymore because I’ve been ill and feel that I’m running out of time. But recently I did reread all of Evelyn Waugh’s novels, and was pleased to find that he was almost as thoughtful as, say, Olivia Manning, although his snobbery sometimes grates. Also, I enjoyed “Lucky Jim,” by Kingsley Amis, all over again: the funniest novel I have ever read. Is there some Bulgarian equivalent, languishing untranslated? Probably not.

Really, Clive James? Really? That’s not just ignorant, it’s kind of insulting. (“In Bulgaria, funny book writes you!”)

And ignorant. Let’s stick with that one for a moment. Over the past two years, we’ve published Milen Ruskov’s which is extremely funny in a picaresque, Quixotesque way, and by Zachary Karabashliev, which is a bit more slapstick and American in its humor, but is also quite funny.

I’m sure James didn’t mean to insult all Bulgarian writers ever, and I realize he’s trying to say that there’s no Bulgarian book that’s as funny as Lucky Jim, but jesus shit does his statement come off as being dismissive in a middlebrow American sort of way.

What’s especially heartening is that Izidora Angel wrote a calling him out:

As someone born in Bulgaria, raised in America and educated in England, I can assure James that Bulgarian is a grammatically rich and unique language. Like the people who speak it, the Bulgarian language survived 500 years of Ottoman rule, and it is colored by Turkish, French and, currently, American and English words and phrases. Its slang is funny, touching and bittersweet.

Although Bulgaria may have given the world the Cyrillic alphabet, few of its notable works have been translated into English, except for a couple of classics from the late 19th century, like Ivan Vazov’s novel “Under the Yoke” (1893) and Aleko Konstantinov’s travelogue “To Chicago and Back” (1894). Gaining support to translate important Bulgarian works and commentary into English is an uphill economic battle. The Elizabeth Kostova Foundation is an important part of the effort.

I hope that rather than mocking a language and people he does not know, James will pick up a translation of Konstantinov’s “Bai Ganyo” and enjoy some Balkan humor.

BOOM.

And just to drive home my point about the arrogance and ignorance of his statement, I’d like to point out that James hails from Australia, a place utterly lacking in refined cultural humor. There’s no Lucky Jim that’s been written by a Australian, that’s for sure. Shit, the only thing they really have going for themselves humor-wise is Fosters and all the potshots the rest of the world can take at them, since we all know that the New Zealanders are a million times funnier. And prettier.

After deciding to take a semester off their studies to think about future plans, long-time friends Maya, Sirma, and Spartacus decide to hitchhike to the sea. Boril Krustev, former rock star and middle-aged widower who is driving aimlessly to outrun his grief, picks them up and accompanies them on their journey. It doesn’t take them long to figure out they’re connected to each other by more than their need to travel—specifically through Boril’s daughter, whose actions damaged each of the characters in this novel.

Co-winner of the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers Contest, A Short Tale of Shame marks the arrival of a new talent in Bulgarian literature with a novel about the need to come to terms with the shame and guilt we all harbor.

Click below to enter the contest!

Translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt. University of Oklahoma/Chinese Literature Today. $24.95

Jonathan Stalling of — which really probably definitely shouldn’t be abbreviated as “CLT” . . and yes, I am 12 — spent a good 10-15 minutes of MLA explaining to me why this book was so awesome. I forget all the plot details, but I do remember the bit about an executioner taking someone apart over a series of pages . . . So, to go along with the almost nauseating amounts of meat mastication in Pow!, readers coming to Mo Yan post-Nobel Prize also have the option to read about the “gruesome ‘sandalwood punishment,’ whose purpose, as in crucifixions, is to keep the condemned individual alive in mind-numbing pain as long as possible.”

I have to say, the more I read about Mo Yan’s books, the more I dig him . . . And I’m really looking forward to reading this before teaching Pow! in my Translation & World Literature class this spring.

Generally, I’m not a huge fan of book trailers, but I have to admit, the one that CLT did for this is really pretty elegant and cool in an anime sort of way.

I have more to post about Chinese Literature Today, but I’ll save that for later. For anyone interested in checking this out,

Translated from the French by Jody Gladding and Elizabeth Deshays. Archipelago Books. $18.

The only thing I know about Pierre Michon is that one of his earlier novels, Small Lives, which is also published by Archipelago, is loved by basically everyone.

For a while I was creating a playlist on Spotify of songs with numbers in them. Things like “Water” by Poster Children, or “Slow Show” by The National, or “Airplane Rider” by Air Miami (a personal favorite), or “Universal Speech” by The Go! Team, or whatever. I’m not sure why, but there’s something about people yelling out numbers (or referencing a particular age, as in The National song) that does it for me. It’s one of my “secret cues” that cause me to almost always love a song. (That and hand clapping. And sing-along choruses.)

I don’t think that same thing works for me with book titles. But Fifty Shades of Gray? Maybe this is some sort of subconscious tic . . . (Like A Thousand Morons! Or A Thousand Peaceful Cities.)

Translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel. Open Letter Books. $15.95

A few months back, Zack called Nate and I to talk a bit about plans for his book and marketing and all that. In the course of the conversation, he told us about his elderly friend who was anxious to get a copy of his book.

“She called me the other day and said she’s seen it on the table at the bookstore and was really excited for me. I told her that it couldn’t possibly be my book. That my book hadn’t been printed. But she was convinced. ‘No, no, it was your book, Zack. And it’s pretty dirty!’ Only then I realized she was talking about Fifty Shades . . . “

All books containing a number and the color “gray” are the same! If only we could somehow use this to our advantage . . . Should’ve included that choker necktie on the cover.

That said, Zack’s book does have a spot of banging in it. It’s more of a nostalgic, romantic book than an erotic one, but there is something sexy about a good number of the scenes. Especially the conversations between the protagonist and his now-missing wife that take place while he’s photographing her . . .

So yes, if your sister/mother/grandmother/aunt is done with that other series, recommend 18% Gray to them. Besides, is WAY hotter than (Although he might not be quite as loaded.)

This year’s winner is Bistra Andreeva, a freelance translator who has spent the past few years working at One Magazine, a quarterly publication for arts in culture, with expert Bulgarian translator Angela Rodel. In addition, Bistra: translated over ten film screenplays (frequently collaborating with Angela Rodel), translated pieces by Sam McPheeters and Tao Lin into Bulgarian, translated Selected Works and Events by One Magazine and Napalm Graffix into English, and participated in the “Literary Translation Workshop on Translating” put together by the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation and the Union of Bulgarian Writers.

Here’s an excerpt from Irina Papancheva’s Annabel, the project that Bistra applied with:

Annabel

A brief biographical note

Annabel S., 32, was born in a small European town. She acquired her secondary education at an art school and then completed an M.A. in Public Administration in the capital. At the age of 25, she started working for the state authorities. Currently, she is Director of the International Relations directorate at the Ministry of State Administration. She is single and lives with her partner Nikola. The beginning of the narrative coincides with the end of her one-week stay in the Netherlands on account of a project that she is coordinating.

1

As soon as she got off the plane and stepped into the Amsterdam airport, she felt a few butterflies in her stomach. For a second there, she had the sense of déjá vu. Thirteen years later, she was back. She took a breath, pulled together all of her will power and got down to business. Upon exiting the airport, she hailed a taxi to her hotel. It was a narrow five story building, squeezed between other narrow buildings, meaning a typical Amsterdam hotel. She handed her ID to the habitually polite reception woman, waited until she was checked-in and headed towards the elevator. She passed by an aging man and their eyes met for a moment. She noticed his were an intense gray.

A typical hotel suite, small, but nice – that was going to be her home for the following week. Yet another hotel home in the succession of trips and projects.
She pulled the curtains to let the day into the square living-room. After the whitish, rainish morning, the sky was clear, and the sun light was pouring unimpeded over the freshly wet city.

She had two hours and a half until her first project meeting. The hot shower stream was soothing. She put on her jeans and a shirt, and she left.

The hotel was in close proximity to the Van Gogh Museum and Rijksmuseum. She hesitated for a second and started in the opposite direction, slowly and aimlessly. During the week, Amsterdam was, for the most part, like any other city. The tourist crowds were gone and the daily routine was in the air.

She found it revamped, but unaffected at its core, it was like she had left yesterday. She had expected to feel excited, but instead she was unruffled. Maybe it was the circumstances surrounding her departure that had blunted her sensitivity. Or, maybe it was the circumstances in her life over the years that had detached her from her past in Amsterdam and before that, so much so that it was now difficult to reconnect emotionally. Impassively and indifferently she walked against the backdrop of her early youth.

She saw cafe tables by the canal and sat down at one of them. She ordered cappuccino. On the table next to hers, a boy and a girl were whispered to each other and laughed. To their side, an old lady was dreamily staring at the water.

Annabel took out her cell phone and switched it on. She had forgotten to do that right after she landed, which was unusual for her. She had a connection with her phone and her laptop that was stronger than the one she had with most of her colleagues. Six missed calls. Of them, two were from Nikola, one from Erika. The rest were from unknown numbers. She finished her cappuccino and headed back to her hotel.

Cosmopolitans Cafe

The winners were going to be invited to Amsterdam. Maybe that was what drew me to participate in the essay competition on the topic of “The New Cosmopolitan.” I could swing by Amsterdam any time I wished, and I had done it more than once, but somehow I saw more than a mere coincidence in the chance to participate in this discussion in that very city. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I was cooking up my new novel and I envisaged the plot unwind in Amsterdam. Maybe my taking part in the competition was going to flush me with a new wave of inspiration.

It was approximately at that time that my boss at the Information and Communications European Commission Directorate General assigned me to work on a European citizenship report. So I started to think about Europe, citizenship, the national, the cosmopolitan and the connection between all of them. And the connection between all of them and Amsterdam.

Once, during a lunch break, that connection took on the image of a woman. Beautiful, composed, with a nationality that was hard to pinpoint, distant, magnetic, unflappable. She was having lunch on her own, and although she was surrounded by many socializing people, she remained reclusive and she didn’t seem to notice them. Her eyes glazed over me with a disinterestedness, which was in no way offensive or personal. There she was – my heroine. Annabel.

That same day, in the early evening, I created my first blog.

Congratulations, and I’m looking forward to working with Bistra and sharing some of her experiences and work with all of you.

8. Fathers and Their Professions

Philip met Maria at a friend’s house. Although he never liked to admit it, he failed to notice her at first. She had been sitting in some part of the room, watching him. He had felt her gaze, although without being able to identify where it came from.
For a long time afterwards, he wondered why this creature stood there draped in black cloth, as if an extra in a busy film scene.

Philip was a pathologist and that caused him both annoyance and relief. He was the only one among his friends who could say in a word what he did for a living. For a twenty-seven-year-old man it made things easier. But when people curious about the nature of his work started asking questions, he was not good at explaining.

The voice in the receiver moved him so suddenly and profoundly that he nearly hung up. He couldn’t remember what they said to each other, just as later he couldn’t recall anything specific from conversations with Maria. He could remember situations in which her presence or her voice obliterated everything else.

No one could say no to this voice, which was now calling to him from the receiver. Why him and not someone else, he never understood. Here I am, Lord.

He proposed to her almost immediately, not knowing what he was doing. The one thing he did know was that he could not have done otherwise. She nodded, as if she had foreseen long ago that this was bound to happen.

Time seemed to be out of joint. The days were shamelessly short, the nights blended into one. Something was ripening in Philip; he could feel it in nervous spasms, but he ignored the signs. He was spinning with Maria in some kind of a whirlwind. He turned into a boomerang, always meekly landing at her feet, no matter what he thought, no matter what he did, and no matter who he went out with.

Before meeting Maria, he had been simply Philip, a doctor, a pathologist. He had been able to describe himself in a word.

After meeting Maria, his center of gravity was transposed out of his body and in the beginning this gave him strength. Strength that Maria absorbed.

9. The Hero’s Prize

There was no wedding. They only signed a marriage certificate. She never allowed him to see her passport. The civil servant could see it, but not her husband. He had no idea when she was born, or who her parents were or whether she had any siblings. Whenever he asked her about these things, she laughed, as if his questions were the most inappropriate thing in the world. He was surprised at how easily he could lie to his friends and his family when they asked the same questions. And he lied to himself, thinking that one day he would surely find out, as soon as Maria stopped playing this funny game. Then he forgot about it and remembered it again only when it was too late.

She did not simply give herself to him – she laid herself out like a gift, like an offering. He sank into her with the feeling that he had never experienced anything like this before. All thoughts and questions vanished. Maria became a world he inhabited. He knew he must have done things, at least he must have eaten food and drunk water. Later when the doctor asked him, he could not remember anything else, only that he had felt tireless and strong.

She stayed at home knitting sweaters. There was always something cooked to eat. Maria always had money and the food was always tasty. So tasty that after dinner, his only wish was to take her in his arms and bury his face in her long hair.

She became pregnant almost by magic. Philip was certain it had happened the very first time. If happiness meant being able to stop thinking, Philip was happy. Things just happened and he was part of the process.

The twins were born. A boy, Valentin, and a girl, Margarita. Philip could not remember ever having discussed what names to choose. It seemed like they were born with their names.

10. After the Fairy Tale’s End

Then Maria started to frighten him.

One night, he woke up and looked at his sleeping wife. He watched her for a long time. He was certain that she was not asleep. She lay perfectly still, as if absent from her body.

For the first time he wondered whether a human being had a beginning and an end. He could see her. Maria was sleeping naked, enveloped in her hair. Her breath was barely perceptible. No adjectives could describe her for him. He couldn’t say that she was kind, for example, or anything like that. This creature had simply appeared and in the face of this fact Philip was powerless. He was suddenly overtaken by despair. What were his or her feelings? Only star dust, dispersing.

Then he realized that Maria was staring at him. Perhaps everyone having just risen out of sleep had this look in their eyes. Maria’s look was evil. At last, something definite. Philip had come to know something and now he could see she didn’t like it. Her eyes stared unblinkingly, as if she had no eyelids.

He got up from the bed and left the room.

After this first onrush of fear, Philip tried to talk to his brother. What he heard was that Maria was breaking all accepted codes of behavior.

At first he could not understand what his brother meant. Gradually it dawned on him that he was being accused of disloyalty. Towards himself, towards his family, towards his friends. The sound of these trivial words, which he hadn’t heard pronounced for a while, unsettled him.

That same night, Maria refused to sleep with him, and he knew her refusal was going to last.

Philip tried to hide in his work. From then on, he often slept in the hospital, he worked night shifts and became better at his job. He was called more often for criminal cases. He discovered courtrooms.

But he also started drinking. And drinking brought back his ability to speak.