A Spare Life
Описание книги
Zlata and Srebra are 12-year-old twins conjoined at the head. It is 1984 and they live in Skopje, which will one day be the capital of Macedonia but is currently a part of Yugoslavia. A Spare Life tells the story of their childhood, from their only friend Roze to their neighbor Bogdan, so poor that he one day must eat his pet rabbit. Treated as freaks and outcasts—even by their own family—the twins just want to be normal girls. But after an incident that almost destroys their bond as sisters, they fly to London, determined to be surgically separated. Will this be their liberation, or only more tightly ensnare them?At once extraordinary and quotidian, A Spare Life is a chronicle of two girls who are among the first generation to come of age under democracy in Eastern Europe. Written in touching prose by an author who is also a master poet, it is a saga about families, sisterhood, immigration, and the occult influences that shape a life. Funny, poignant, dark, and sharply observed, Zlata and Srebra reveal an existence where even the simplest of actions is unlike any we’ve ever experienced.
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1984
At the age of twelve, the only thing my sister Srebra and I, Zlata, were ashamed of was our names. Why would any parents name their children Srebra and Zlata—silver and gold—let alone children already marked by conjoined heads as freaks of nature in their community? These were the names of old women, cleaning ladies, or women who sold potatoes in front of the bakery. Whenever we complained to her about our names, our mother silenced us with the justification: “That’s what your godfather wanted: Zlata after Saint Zlata Meglenska, and Srebra after a woman named Srebra Apostolova who killed two Turkish beys in Lerin.”
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Just at that moment, before my face turned red, a flowerpot with a cactus in it fell from one of the balconies and shattered on our fortune-telling squares. We could hear curses and shouts of indignation. The dirt scattered all over the squares we had drawn; my square was the only one now even barely visible. My fortune said I would get married a year before Srebra to a boy whose name began with B, that he’d be a multimillionaire, we’d live in Skopje, and have one child. That was not Bogdan, because Bogdan was the poorest boy we knew, and I couldn’t imagine him being a multimillionaire. I thought only poor girls could become multimillionaires when they grew up and that boys were either poor or rich all their lives.
We raised our heads. On the second floor balcony stood a single woman named Verka who shouted in a voice husky from cigarettes and alcohol, “You killed my mother! You! No one else! But you’ll die, too!”
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