Читать книгу Everything Happens as It Does - Albena Stambolova - Страница 14

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, though without being able to identify where it came from.

For a long time afterward, he wondered why this creature stood there draped in black cloth, as if she were an extra in a bustling 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 on the phone had moved him so unexpectedly and profoundly that he had 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. But he could remember situations in which her presence or her voice obliterated everything else.

It was impossible to 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. He knew only 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 ignored it. He was spinning with Maria in a whirlwind. He had 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 saw.

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.