Batata (Story)

Translated by Todor Sirakov

He had been born Andrei – a boy from our neighborhood, about seven or eight years older than me.
I don’t know why – “Bata”!... Maybe he had invented it himself, in those childhood years when each of us​​ spoke our own private language. Perhaps “Bata” hinted at “batko” – “big brother,” or maybe something more – “the Father,” “the Patriarch.” But no one could really explain how or why he had christened himself that way.

What was clear to everyone, however, was that in that sublime moment when the Creator decides whether you should exist in this earthly world or not – for him, the Creator must have decided something different… as if He had forgotten or skipped a step.

That peculiar childhood cruelty, so common in cases like his, was absent when it came to Bata. He inspired in us a strange sense of cheerful respect.

Even back then, this neighborhood Muncho stirred in us – the kids of the street – an incredible sympathy, a feeling that he somehow carried truths and meanings that the rest of us couldn’t express. In the long and narrow labyrinths of our understanding, typical of the 1960s, he really seemed to be that “Muncho” who deeply believed in justice and order – and had chosen a special way to fight for them!

In those days our main pastime on the streets was football. We played endlessly, organizing all sorts of street and neighborhood matches.
But Bata didn’t play football. He couldn’t. He had been deprived of the joy of play. God had denied him normal coordination – his body was frail, skinny.

Lost in our games, we would often forget about him – until the oldest among us turned and said:
– Andrei! Will you referee the match?
The answer was always the same:
– Shъ fiya! (his way of saying “I’ll blow the whistle!”)

His fleshy lips, his too-many teeth oddly arranged in his mouth, and that perpetually swollen-looking tongue had turned him into a little fountain of saliva. Especially “juicy” were the sounds f and sh that came out of his mouth...

Bata’s eyes would light up. He knew his moment had come – the moment when, for an hour, he would become the Giver of Justice.
Then he would pull his precious whistle from his pocket – his most prized possession. His thin, bony figure looked like that of a Don Quixote among a dozen Sancho Panzas – striding with long, important steps.

He had mastered to perfection the gestures of a real referee: pointing to the guilty side, raising cards, blowing the whistle for penalties – all done so dramatically that we stood in awe, as if witnessing some sacred Ritual of Justice.

In his distribution of justice there were no bribes, no external “influences.”
Bata radiated a sense of pure Justice... the real kind.

Bata “left” this world unexpectedly. His mother had taken him to the seaside; he went into the water – and never came out.
God took him back. Like a Magician who had shown us his wonder for a brief moment from behind the curtain – then withdrew it again.

Today, years after Bata’s “departure” from this world, I walked again down our little street – the same arena of justice. Two boys were lazily kicking a ball back and forth. I stopped and called out:
– Hey, boys, got anyone to blow the whistle?
At that very moment, I could almost feel drops of saliva flying from my mouth...

The boys looked at me, puzzled, and gave the inevitable answer:
– No, we don’t...
Somewhere, that Sense of Justice had hidden away too...
I miss it – that Feeling – especially today. Bata is gone.