Читать книгу Everything Happens as It Does - Albena Stambolova - Страница 19

13.

Maria’s Baby

It was then that he discovered that his mother was also expecting a baby. And that a new protagonist, named Boris, had appeared on the scene.

Boris had already moved into his mother’s house. At first Valentin was resentful. His father was God knows where, behaving like a madman, and here was this new person with his glasses, only a couple of years older than himself, who barely even spoke a word. His mother and Margarita were not very generous in their explanations, either—Boris was a molecular biologist of international reputation, a genius in his domain, a vagabond wiseacre who had, however, ended up here with his two enormous black suitcases. Whatever Valentin had hoped for in his attempt to disappear, there was no empty wilderness to be found here. There was a new storyline just beginning to emerge.

Although it seemed somehow absurd, Valentin told his mother, more or less, about Raya and her baby. Maria immediately said that they were welcome to come here, the three of them, or the two of them, whatever they decided. Curiously, though, she did not say a word about the possibility of his coming to stay here alone. Valentin wondered for a while if this was supposed to mean anything, then let it be, deciding that the whole thing was too complicated. Yet he felt like a ship stuck on a reef. In escaping one all-devouring organism, he had landed in the hands of another.

On the other hand, given that Maria almost never left the house: how had she and Boris gotten to know each other?

The subject of marriage was breached only after Maria met Boris’s parents.

The old man and the old woman in their little house were like characters from a fairy tale.

When Boris brought Maria to meet them, they could hardly see her face beyond her enormous belly. She could not bend much, so she simply sat on the floor at their feet in order to kiss their hands. Her hair spread around her like a cloak.

Boris had never seen Maria’s eyes so clear. They were usually murky, like fog, but now they had a gray opal-like shimmer that was new to him. The expression in her eyes was also new to him. Maria looked at the old man and the old woman as if she had just recognized in them her long lost parents.

Boris left them and walked up the path to the chapel. It was the first time he had returned there since his christening. Since he had pushed the big door with his fingers and had seen, sitting inside the chapel, a tiny woman with eyes like fog.

This time there was no one inside. He walked in and sat on the floor opposite the door, which slowly closed before him. He sat down exactly on the spot where he had seen her. The moment his back touched the wall, he suddenly felt that he was her. That he was she, and she was that woman, and he was the baby she was carrying and she was his parents in their little house down the hill. There was a soft hum in the chapel that made him drowsy. He sat there for a while, or maybe it was just a minute. Sitting was timeless. He recalled the gaze of the dead boy’s grandmother, he heard his own hands chasing off the flies, he saw the little ballet dancer climbing down the wall, he became one with Maria, joined in holy matrimony.

When he came back to the house, everyone was asleep. He wished things could stay this way forever. Halcyon silence dripped from the trees. He felt strong like never before. The missing link with his parents was finally found. He could be their son, now that Maria was here.