Читать книгу Everything Happens as It Does - Albena Stambolova - Страница 8

2.

Christening

Then the eight-year-old grandson of the old woman died. She lived in the neighboring house and the boy used to spend the summers with her. His father and mother would drive him there in June; they would visit him, bringing some food, several times in July and August, and finally they would come and take him back for school in September. Boris and the boy were the same age and knew each other vaguely. But since Boris never played with other children, the city boy had more friends than he did.

Fishing occupied the boys’ time in the summer. The reservoir was thick with ooze and stale water but generations of carp lived in it. Boris could tell where the boys gathered by the smoke columns of their fires. The air smelled of dry timber and food. Or rather, of what they called “food”—their catch. Boris did not want to have anything to do with them. Neither the boys, nor the fish, nor what the boys did with the fish, appealed to him.

Nobody could explain how the city boy drowned. One evening he just didn’t come home to his grandmother.

Grief settled like a cloud over the entire summer. Boris’s mother took him to see the boy. Even later, as an adult, he still couldn’t understand why the child was dressed in white and laid in a flower-covered coffin, by which everyone in the village stopped to bow.

When Boris left a flower inside the coffin, as his mother had instructed him, he felt like this was a kind of punishment. People wailed over the boy’s death as if they had killed him themselves.

It was the first time Boris had seen a dead person. A child. He stared at the calm face and suddenly thought that the boy had managed to hide somewhere. He was pierced by jealousy, wishing he, too, could become invisible to others.

As usual, he never mentioned a word about this to anyone.

For the rest of the summer, the children were not seen in their playing grounds. The weather became unbearably hot. Storms rose every now and again, blowing down twigs and leaves. The old woman stayed in her house. Sent by his mother, Boris would occasionally bring soup and bread to her. The old woman would sit or lie in a small heap on the floor. All the doors would be open. But all the windows closed.

Boris liked visiting her. She didn’t look at him or speak to him. He never caught her sleeping. Whenever he entered, he noticed her opened eyes first. She looked past him into the distance. Her eyes were beautiful, Boris thought. Full of attention and smiling. She never appeared confused or scared.

He would leave another bowl and a piece of bread wrapped in cloth on the table, taking the old ones. The woman never touched them. Boris would then sit on the edge of the bed, chasing away the flies. For some reason the kitchen was much cooler than the rest of the house. Or it just seemed so to him. The old woman had also found a way to hide herself, and Boris wanted to know how. He felt good sitting with her, even better than with his bees. It was difficult to leave. Once, his mother came looking for him. He saw her coming into the garden and got up to meet her. If she had seen him sitting on the bed with the old woman, he would have felt ashamed. To sit with her was something that only belonged to him and he did not want his mother to know about it. He rushed outside, and his mother stayed in the house for quite a while.