DAVID'S CHILD
Lyubomir Nikolov
Copyright©2011 by Lyubomir Nikolov
Smashwords Edition
PUBLISHED BY:
Lyubomir Nikolov
lpnikolov@gmail.com
Lyubomir P. Nikolov lives in Sofia, Bulgaria. He holds a Master's Degree in Psychology from the St. Kliment Ohridski Sofia University, and has done a specialization at the University of Warsaw. He has worked as a clinical psychologist at the Academy of Medicine and as a national coordinator of a EU project under the PHARE-LINE program.
His publications include several research papers in psychology, and short stories in various Bulgarian newspapers, magazines and anthologies. His collection of short stories Karoy the Rope-walker was published in 2009 and has been nominated for a national Helikon 2010 award and for the Book of the Year award. He is a recipient of the Chudomir 2008 award and LiterNet awards.
Table of contents
In the Beginning Was the Subway
Tree tales of a Very Windy Town
* David’s Child was awarded in 2010 - VIII National Bulgarian Competition for short stories organized by LiterNet & eRunsMagazine
*In the Beginning was Subway - awarded in the national SF short story contest held by the Human Library Foundation in 2008
I was roaming the basements near the Arts Academy, looking for David. From the depths of smelly holes pretending to be shops, chubby saleswomen shrugged me off. "Oh, David isn't here. Nobody has seen him since that woman butchered his canvasses.", said one. "Who knows, he may even be dead", opinionated another. Nobody knew a thing.
I was searching for David because a friend of mine wished to buy his paintings with the cross-eyed child. The very ones Sonya destroyed with a knife. Every one here knew the story - every painter, every one who sheltered in the basements, every saleswoman's lover heard it and passed it along further. During the second day after David's exibition opened, Sonya had sneaked into the gallery and cut to pieces the paintings with the cross-eyed child. It was their child with David, as she said. Most of the paintings were of her and the child. Sonya hugging the baby, or breastfeeding him, or pulling his hair, and even holding the child upside down by his feet. The baby was about a year and a half old, intelligent, with sharp, penetrating eyes. Eyes like fish-hooks - biting, drilling, never letting go. But the baby was cross-eyed. Just a little bit cross-eyed, Sonya thought, but in David's paintings there was a horribly cross-eyed child, painted without a trace of love, coldly, as if it was a still life composition, say, a carcass of a rabbit next to a bottle of Burgundy in a basket. When Sonya saw the old gallery guard napping on his chair, she ripped the paintings with a scalpel and ran away. The guard did not noticed.
The next day David went to the gallery and started stitching up the remains. He sewed them coarsely with a needle and tread, the way one repairs an old sack, not a painting. Now the baby looked even worse - more like a patient after brain surgery. The coarse stitches made mother and child ugly and painful, like people going through terrible suffering, broken down, beaten beggars. The visitors detain longer in front of restored paintings. People asked who the child was, they were strangely attracted. Determined to prevent new damage, David appointed additional security. He instructed the guards by showing the paintings to them: they had to watch out for the woman depicted. Had to remember her face, so as to be able to recognize her if she came again. Then the stupidest guard asked "And the kid? Are we to watch out for the kid too?"
"What a douchebag!", snapped David, "The baby barely walks yet and isn't mine."
© Vesselin Vesselinov, C. Hasbrouck, translated
In the Beginning Was the Subway
Night
It’s raining tonight.I can hardly wait for tomorrow.If only this night would be over.Sleep doesn’t come.There is no sleep for me; only dreams.Before today, when I felt good….No, no, you don’t understand.Really good.I used to have everything.Everything that could possibly be desired by an ordinary, muddled, neat, complacent, stuffed up, dieting, immoral moralist, a buttress of this rotten system, a girder of culturelessness, born to this world with lofty goals, and grown up within the mold of mediocrity.There are such people, you know.Everyone is like that.The world as we know it was made to these measurements, with those horizons, for such people, just like the sty for the pigs, and the coop for the hens.Will the pig sleep on a stick? Never! Will it lift its eyes to stare at the stars, sighing, or rather utter a grunt and bury its muzzle in the sweet, soft, warm mud, reeking of odors and safety? This is the way pigs are, you will say, and so it is! What about us, what is our own path? Far more intricate.There are modern fragrances in our world.You sniff, saying ooohhh, this fragrance is no longer fashionable this season; there are new fragrances for the active woman, for the contemplating poor-sighted man who may come to some potency any minute now.Fragrances for blind people; they are more sensitive you know.And this, well… this is a perfume for cats.
Passive fragrances for depleted souls, this is the trend, for we have seen everything, decadence both hideous and insidious, scornful of romanticism, underground in times of communism, tongue-piercing, countless films with violent chicks, traffic jams, and you sit in your brand new car, hours on end, waiting for some traffic light a mile away to let you through, counting seconds and causing you to feel like a second yourself, like nothing whatsoever, for each second you’ve got to finish something in a tenth of a second’s time, and you are supposedly busy, yet nothing, nothing comes out of this fragmenting into intervals.Some things take time, like a haircut, or a bath, and then you reflect.You have thoughts, because you have finally slowed long enough.Intricate thoughts for intricate people.At least until yesterday.A fully accomplished man, adapted to the environment, pushy where softer, tough with inferiors, a bit of a yuppie, a bit of a miser, generous to beggars (just a little bit; not completely).At night, we have to admit, with foundations slightly shaken, to a lack of sleep where dreams—annoyances perhaps, yet nevertheless important, despite the fact you inevitably forget them in the morning—remind you that something is not quite right, that this is just one possible scenario wherein you are sorry to die, and there is probably another one in which you have no regrets when you die.You are sorry again, sorry in general, because you are dying; it’s human to be sorry, but even as you are dying there are two seconds while you are technically dead and your soul takes a last look around, turns towards the future, to the ontogenesis of the corpse it leaves, and is content.This is that other scenario.Transition is difficult; when you die you have no choice, yet when you are alive it is very, very difficult.