CREATIVE LITERATURE 

I Walk a Thin Thread (excerpt)

Slavcho Donkov

AFTER THE RAIN, THE TILES DRIED VERY QUICKLY. The roofs became rust-coloured stones - with an inviolate serenity as if the celestial downpouring was unable to permeate and soak them into defeat. The doves  above them glistened nacre-like. The ground below offered no opposition and the rain was quickly becoming an irritation. Fortunately it was stopping. The sun appeared briefly. Then the wetness immediately reappeared, the grass merged into a pale whiteness, now assuming a blue haze until the water-tight jacket slumped at her feet. The drops, inexplicable, but glowing and deceptive, threaded peacefully one after another, without trembling, without hurrying, as if bidding a good day, then merging with the dirt. Just like them, patiently and on time, without revealing its last secret, everything else seemed to be fading away. But the mind could not divine, and the eyes sought only the visible. The sky was growing dark, painted in grey and yellow, while the distant strip beneath it took on the appearance of a soft, velvety lip, slightly stretched and endearing.

Not because he was little, but because he felt he didn't belong to the others, and because he didn't want to withdraw to a room redolent of an empty, but at the same time sleepy sadness like them, the boy had found his own way to spend the day. Immediately after he finished eating, and ignoring the vaguest sense of febrility, he approached the large window in the corridor and stood there - his crutches stuck in the wooden frame of the floor, his spine bent backwards, his shoulders hunched, and his forehead glued to the glass. To one side of the window was the spreading large-leaved fig tree, the sofa with the removable backrest, adaptable as a bed in emergencies, and the long red hemp rug stretching from one end of the marble floor to the other. To prevent the patients from slipping, the rug was attached to the cement floor by means of rings. The walls were white with simple metallic and matte appliqué lampshades. The lights were kept on during the day. Behind the main door was the dining room. There​​ was always an aroma of sour food and cooking. This smell seemed to cover everyone, depriving them of the last chance for salvation.

This was probably the happenstance of fate, because here on the top floor, the clamour of the day was rarely heard, nor the​​ frenzy of the operating theatres and resuscitation ward, or the prosthetics workshops. You might even say that it was a heavenly echo of individual trepidatious sounds rising through the open window: the cooing of the pigeons on the ledge or the fluttering​​ of a sparrow that dared to rise up to this altitude. The roots of light struck the glass. The light created a sense of dominion of comfort and unity. Immersed within himself, he listened without looking at anyone, and with an​​ exaggerated courtesy waiting​​ for others to say that nothing was lost. But was it really? There was no need for an answer at the moment. The silent power of breathing filled him. He felt it as an inner tender touch, a deep and calm affection indistinguishable from his body.

When the sky was clear, in the distance the distant mountain resembled a broken cliff – an open quarry burdened with dust. The terraces along which the lorries travelled resembled loops. At the end of each one, an excavator was digging. When seen from the road, the loops seemed to descend – into a pit, a hole, a well, a shaft, as if to the centre of the earth or as someone had told him - to hell itself. At the foot of the quarry works, the remains of broken trees could be seen. A pile of fallen stones ascended towards​​ the top, floating in the air like grey, dark red and green smoke as they were tipped from the dump trucks. Bulldozers pushed them vertically and trampled them to create a road way. This road led to the sky.

Observing this from the window, he discovered mysterious nooks along its crest... ​​ - a pile of rocks with unfathomable enigma, a random uprooted tree trunk, ​​ furrows of gravel, spots of shadow, and at the summit of the crest the explicatory gesture of a palm.

He felt the insatiable desire to go towards​​ it and ascend to the top. Even when it was overcast, his yawn would reveal a bright crack in the lead-blue horizon. The crack would gradually widen until the sun bathed the entire slope. The crests of the loops shone in pink: but dark at the base, and quartz white, almost transparent at the top. It amounted to a burst of light, a real flame of underground fire. The glow reflected on the base of the clouds which now heavy, round and bloated moved far into the distance. Only then did the mountain slowly turn​​ purple and grow in size. This sight amazed him (who had gifted him the delight of seeing it?!), but at the same time it instilled in him the feeling of something forgotten – the cracking of ice, the flowing of water, and perhaps a pile of snow. He observed​​ the houses on the other side of the road gradually succumb to the darkness, as the sharp-tipped curvature of their roofs faded and ceased to waver. The mountain also began to calm.

But it could also awaken the elements. Incestuous lightning flashes struck​​ its sinewy shoulders. When had he ever seen such lighting strikes in the winter! The gloomy sky pressed upon the mountains, bathing it in a red glow, not allowing it to sleep. The entire mountain phosphoresced like a rose bathed in dew. Turned to face the​​ mountains, the houses stood with their backs to him - there was no façade visible, only ridges, smoothly plastered walls, front doors here and there, with high raised small windows. A group of tennis courts with a swimming pool stood out as something completely separate, divided by lines of trees - mainly birch trees, identifiable by their white trunks. The greenery of the branches had flown away with the autumn. The leaves had first of all been transformed into wind, and by now into earth, ​​ swept away into ​​ hell.

Somewhere in the middle, between the abyss and the sky, between heaven and hell, was their abode. It was purgatory. An elongated four-storey building with terraces surrounded by iron bars and wood painted in grey. The individual balconies were​​ separated by two-metre sheets of reinforced yellow glass.

In front of it, there was an attempt to create a garden with a fountain. The four plinths on which it stood glistened like marble. To the side there was  a surface of fine ballast. In the middle of​​ the grass base stood a cement pillar with severed wires. The down-facing cups resembled roped-together climbers. Sparrows nested in the hole of the ragged hanging lamp. A path cut horizontally through the alley way – in parallel to the slope and accompanied by rose bushes. There was no snow, but no grass either, you might say that this year was marked by ​​ a huge drought.

Twenty coniferous trees with gloomy, shiny, cold, metallic shoots: ​​ white and black pine, fir, spruce – almost denying each other space. They could not conceal even a deceptive freshness. They were tainted crowns, just like the inhabitants of T.....

In the western part of the back yard were the swimming pools with the rehabilitation suite, ​​ the paraffin rooms, the workshops and the doctors'​​ offices. Adjoining the main building, but connected by a tunnel, the tower was intersected on its third floor by a flat, slightly sloping roof, where the gutters connected in a closed quadrangle. There was a ventilation shaft in the centre of the opening.​​ However, the outer walls of the annex continued upwards in a zigzag, like battlements lined with sheet metal. There was no life on the galvanized metal. The only dark spots were the nail holes and the seams of the tin sheet. At the base below them, the road reached some stairs and disappeared. It clearly meandered to the side, but unseen, the illusion and falsehood remaining. However, the buildings stood erect with their own might... 

If he closed his eyes, he wouldn't need to open them – he knew what he would see, and yet examining everything with his eyes had become for him a sensation akin to yearning. Staring seemed to become part of the dream, it moved the day, removing the appearance of hardened clay, and connecting the light with the shadowy branches.​​ It was a resurrection which brought joy.

The landscape constantly moved away from his face; it was as if between him and the outside beyond the window stood something incredible holding them together in its arms like a living being, while at the same time​​ standing between them. Observing was the knowledge of everything, but also of nothing.

The city clock stood tall like the neck of a giraffe extending over the houses, with a lightning rod at the top, and one, not two horns on its head. Its chimes sometimes announced the sharp and unwanted appearance of the morning, sometimes a general quiet forgetfulness of the evening – the polyphonic peal​​ came and went quite distinctly. The chimes came in thrusts, while the air folded around them. An resounding wave of sound passed over the rooftops. The horizon softened. Sound was the tangible breath of time, in the infinite relaying of eternity. It resembled a string of drops dripping from a whittling spout, but also a tear, stars in the space of midnight coolness, or a​​ runaway cart. (One such cart used to stop in the backyard of the hospital.) And the greater the number of individual tones, the more things they recalled. He stood and listened to them. They hid greatness. After them came silence until the new leashing of​​ arrows.

The clock lived in the otherworld - a hint of a ghostly reality, omnipresent although only conscious. The chimes dived, surfaced and then soared...

Clinging to the grips, he listened silently to the exaltation of this clock chime. All he would have to do was to turn around, and the reverie would immediately fade. He lived among deformed people, with bent spines and twisted limbs. After losing their directions, and now frozen in tired tranquillity, their figures emerged sharply in the deserted hospital wilderness.

There were moments, however, when his fellow inmates seemed ridiculous to him, even though they appeared quite serious. A life manifested in nothing externally, they were useless to anyone. Neither winter nor spring would make them any different. Their immobile condition prevented them from even imitating each other.

Through the opaque glass of the doors, dead light entered the single rooms, and although it intersected the brighter light of the windows, it made the ceilings slightly green. He was already astonished by the angelic patience of those inside. It was courage and self-control. For anyone who did not set foot in here, the sight would be an incomprehensible story.

He didn't want to dwell too much on it, but nor could he forget it. He​​ tried to make some connection between them and himself. His legs were fine. This consolation contained a certain meanness, and he was aware of it. Deceptive innocence was also not to be preferred. It was best to think of the problem as non-existent. 

HE KNEW HOW THINGS CHANGED. He had once walked into a village after sunset. A mountain village with people hidden behind the doors, but the houses themselves emanated intimacy. The smoke from burning wood sweetened the air fragrant with hay. A cattle-beaten bowl was lying in front of one of the gates. The bleating of lambs. The village lay on a steep cliff and seemed to rise right in front of one's eyes. It floated in the twilight of the sky, and each street stretched upward like a magpie's tail. That night that village was his.

However, the experience did not spoil the familiar charm of the city of a million people, where in the evening there was a wall of light in front of every window – the ten-storey apartment blocks lived in their own times.

Now both​​ perceptions had drifted far away. His solitude was so great that he felt the need to interpret and explain it. The inner voice of things needed to be different. Doubt in everything which others said and their sympathetic looks were not enough for him. He had grown to despise these details over the years.

It was not by chance that whenever people came to visit his mother, he would go to the kitchen. He enjoyed watching the coffee boil. The change resembled magic – the water rose and fell, a bubbling spring in the middle, which then sank, and a necklace of bubbles threaded to the side along the circumference of the vessel. It was a friendly game. He would wait for the people in the living room to be overcome by a sense of awkwardness and then leave. They usually spoke loudly, then whispered in confidence – this could go on for hours. He as if they were walking on the edge of a precipice. But when the first word of thanks came – it was a sign that they were about to leave.

The ladies who came to visit were touching and sad, without any ingenuity. Was his mother not taking responsibility for them – hence her constant fear of everything and for everyone. She was just born to be a victim. Even though he knew that every misfortune deserves attention, he found herself​​ treating them with malice for her sake. The whispers turned into attacks on life and because they were not uttered aloud, they were striking with their inconsistency. To him they resembled simple cunning. The women were just bored, looking for failures beyond any reason. He stopped blaming them, maybe he had got what he deserved. He had done it to himself. He sense he would have to grow accustomed to the idea that he was more wronged than they had been. The awakening was unpleasant.

Now only the people around him became his admissible support, and he believed in its importance. There were few and they were chosen. They had been selected for the intensive care units. They usually lay on their beds dressed in blue robes, unable to make their usual movements.​​ There were five or six like him hanging upright on their crutches with their heads raised.

In the morning, as soon as the visitation was over, they began to move. At that moment, the day began for them. Ablutions, ​​ breakfast, and quarrels with the orderlies didn't count. The emotions they felt towards each other, were the same as those felt by people who had suffered the same fate. When he looked at them, he lost the fear of sickness. But whether this reassurance was a conviction or a desire to console himself, he didn't know. There was often a sense of fear in his head that prevented him from thinking. There was haste in the movements of the people in the wards on the floor. The eyes of each of​​ them was a secluded place where, if you were to stumble, you would respectfully slow down. It was only the visitations which filled their pupils with passion.

The visitors reminded them with sadness of the colourful spots in their gardens, the glass windows of their own houses, the strings of willows and poplars near​​ the towns from which they had come. They confessed it timidly. They felt that due to their admiration for memories, they had to be suspicious of the desperate attempts to return to normality. All the misfortunes that had befallen them in their short-lived​​ existence came to life. But if they recovered, they would, they were assured, put everything back in its place. There was no longer any reason to doubt. But seeing how difficult it was to move their awkward bodies along the extended rug, he became convinced of all the hopelessness of their fate. Imprisoned in suffering like in this corridor. If only their bodies disappeared, would light gain any space.

It was for this reason probably that the healthy people they met were treated with arrogance, as if their​​ disease was their greatness. It was as if in their own eyes they would pass for another part of humanity, distorted and tough. They behaved especially touchingly in the pool. As they descended the steps, they would hold each other's hands.

He fund such caution tedious. He jumped straight into the water. He dived, swam, and was overcome by an unbridled desire to play.

They tolerated him condescendingly. They even applauded him. Later he realised that they must have seen something half-hearted in his​​ antics.

This made him angry – how could he hope and dream in such an environment? Were they not mere interpreters of human misery?

After physiotherapy, he would deliberately walk around in an important and confident manner. The crutches passed for a casual​​ detail, while his fellow inmates from their nooks and crannies measured him with an anxious, alert expression. But the doors of the rooms slammed shut one after the other - their occupants were going to bed for their afternoon nap. There was such consistency in their action that they must have forgotten him in the same way. They probably accepted him not only out of habit ​​ – for them his presence here was natural. His eyes wanted to go out into the open, and this made him want to day dream. And so, standing by the window, he would lose track of time.

The hours passed imperceptibly.

The sky became cold and the mountain shrouded in shadows. The edges sagged, and in the verticality they pulled the mountain away from him. The dome reminded him of silence. The lorries were all in retreat. The hollows began to turn blue, and here and there the headlights of the early departing​​ trucks flickered,  while the summit of the mountain resembled a secret. The inviolability of which made him feel unbearably alone.

As soon​​ as they woke up, the others jumped out of the doors. They stood leaning against the door frames, like clothes hanging after washing. He watched them with lowered eyes, agreeing internally with each of them.

He could have walked the length of the long corridor like a lonely and silent man, but that no longer seemed permissible. He walked slowly and carefully. Long and unsightly, from up close the robes turned the upright patients into bulging bales. They had nothing to do and chatted with each other. Their faces seemed unclear, as if washed with brown soap. The light was weak, or as one of the female patients put it, strict. She was a professor and considered cleanliness a form of dignity.

He knew how lightly dressed she was, and wondered how she didn't catch​​ cold – there was a freezing wind and the unsealed cubicles were draughty. If it wasn’t for the sweater he wore under his pyjamas, he would have had blue cheeks. Compared to him, she looked as if she had rejected all the previous rules of life. But it wasn't like that, she was constantly interested in how he was walking. She had imported crutches, referred to as Canadians, with a protruding handle and a support under the elbow. She had a television and a coffee maker and was constantly breaking the rules. At night, if she didn't feel like reading (the top part of the partitions was glass, her lamp illuminated half of the floor and the other restless patients were constantly dissatisfied), the passing of time would be unbearable to her. She left her bed a mess. The senior nurse was always grumbling. The professor nodded understandingly, but never felt remorse.

He had noticed that one of her eyes appeared white ​​ - the result of advanced diabetes. She talked about going blind as if it was the easiest thing in the world without a hint of sadness. "It's not the first time I've said it," she repeated, but everyone knew it quite well and didn't listen. But whenever her personal rehabilitation therapist showed up, she would immediately cling onto her indulgence. The young girl's wrists were bandaged as a result of tendovaginitis from exhaustion.

 "I can't take a step without you. Let's try again!" She chanted. Beneath her robe, she was always in a bathing costume, ready to perfect every movement shown to her. "Without​​ your advice," (she didn't mention "without your hands") "I would be completely crippled."

She would smile enticingly at the girl's indulgence. She had been an art history teacher and knew about paintings.

"She's a delightful girl," she would say afterwards, "and yet so ordinary."

She didn't wear makeup, ash blond, and the first time she took leave, which she was entitled to, she added a reddish tint to her hair. She was obsessed about attractiveness, but no one was beautiful here. She didn't suffer from mood swings. She was neither sad nor disappointed. Professor Schlegel, from West Germany, a leading light of endoprosthesis in the world, would come for her control examinations. The doctor himself was strange. He had adopted four children. He suffered from joint diseases and always stated that he would never give himself a prosthesis, she would tell everyone. Was the specialist himself unsure of prostheses? No, probably in the hands of others. The patients suspected this. However, the surgeon was clearly quite contradictory. Why had he made such statements? Clearly a mistake of thinking. When he admitted his guilt, he would become the kindest and most considerate person – otherwise why would he have adopted the children.  For him to lose trust would be a catastrophe. 

Such fantasising bore blissful moments. It all came down to worshiping another person in the assurance that at any moment life could be changed by such people. It was not a fading ​​ joy, it was hope. The consolation turned into warmth, descending down the body, encompassing her wretched knee.

The lady professor had slender legs, and at her age slenderness was rare, and she knew it.

"Will I have to struggle a lot today?" She asked the girl, who would have liked to say: "That's enough now!", but she didn't because she didn't know how to resist. She identified with her profession. She would not say "No!" because she could not imagine the world without these patients praising her persistence ​​ — the most wonderful opportunity for pleasure.

Although he invented them himself, these assumptions were a very powerful influence. Another person's instability gave him a sense of panic. He thought himself weak and defenceless. A great burden, which otherwise he was pleased with — life should not make it easier. But​​ when he asked himself whether he was being unfair to himself or whether his surroundings were unfair, he immediately felt sad. Such feelings betrayed innocence, the purity of which he had no idea. He felt it necessary to be compassionate not so much to others, but to his presence among them. He immediately felt a pallor on his face, especially intense in recent days, and he felt shame. What sign did he expect from his blood, good or evil? A fear of the unknown trembled in his soul, as if on purpose, to humiliate him.

***