CULTURE

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“That was really not necessary,” the doctor tells Nadezda as he takes the box of assorted chocolates and places them on the side. She finds a certain dismissiveness in his gesture. They are past the Best Before date on the box, but he couldn’t have made that out so quickly.

“Thank you again for seeing me at such short notice,” she says, placing her hand on her heart.

He leans back in his seat. “Well, we had a cancellation. What seems to be the trouble?”

“I’m worried,” Nadezda says. “I’m getting tired easily. I can’t remember things.”

A young man, with an apron, stained from a just filleted fresh fish, storms out of the back entrance of a small restaurant to a crossing of Stamboliyski boulevard, sits in front and lights a cigarette. A gargantuan grey cat with what used to be a white patch around the neck, approaches him with a dancing step, and begins to rhythmically caress its face in his black leather ankle boots: now to the left side, now to the right.

Alex is 8 years old and loves walking in the forest, playing football with his friends and his swimming lessons. He dreams of becoming a football player one day. He is also a caring person and loves very much his family: his mother, father, brother and two sisters.

We had visited Bulgaria briefly and loved the rich history of the country, the traditional culture still honored and close to the surface, the welcoming people we met, the Balkan cuisine and the wines of the countryside. It was clear to us that Sofia is a delightfully liveable city. We came for a year in Bulgaria – we’re now midway in our fourth year. 

Wednesday morning

1

I remember her bloody, drained, and happy, her thighs trembling from exertion, spread open to the sides. And I'm holding a piece of living flesh in my hands and trembling with fear. Through my fogged-up glasses I see her torn pelvic floor still spitting blood. I shout, "Another unit! Quick!" and raise the slimy little body above my head – for everyone to see the tiny penis – and the midwife takes it. The entire operating room sighs, like a punctured bus tire. They hand me scissors, I grasp the umbilical cord close to the little tummy, and I cut it.

"Can I get you anything else, Bear Boy?" inquired the waiter of the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall café with an ill-contained smirk. 

The white Renault parked in front of the House of the Communist Party. The chauffeur rolled down the window to have a smoke. Dimcho took a few moments sitting quietly in the back seat.

I have a story in which the main character is a voyeur. It is called The Red Room. Every few months this guy rents a new place to stay in search of more and more new scenes for observation. One night, the lens of his powerful telescope falls upon a room flooded with intense red light. It is completely empty, except for the plain wooden chair in the middle. For days, weeks on end, our voyeur observes the room, but no one enters. The chair remains empty and the red light streams relentlessly into the night.