The stranger was surprised at how long it had taken him to walk to reach the village hall housing the library and the mayor’s office. He wasn’t wearing a watch, but by the sun he knew it was approaching noon. The sun was even paler than before, weakened by a sorrow of its own.
As if it were consumptive, he thought. He had heard that this disease enhances its victims’ beauty before devouring their souls.
It had almost stopped snowing. You couldn’t tell if it was really happening or not. Random snowflakes swirled in the air, refusing to touch the ground.
The stranger was getting used to the sheepskin coat and was even enjoying living in it. It still felt heavy, but in a strange way, as if a treasure weighed upon him. From now on it would be his home and his shelter. As a bonus, it gave him a masculine presence, something he’d not had for a long time. He stood in front of the window of the village hall and took a good look at his reflection. The sheepskin coat made him look strapping and broad-shouldered. He liked that he was so handsome and even twirled like a lady to see if the coat fitted him so wonderfully from every angle. In one place the coat had ripped, and the torn piece hung down like a dog’s tongue, but that was far down near the hem, and it didn’t spoil his good looks.
Good job the old man remembered about the coat, he thought. Otherwise I would’ve met my maker long ago.
Only when he had fully delighted in his image did the stranger notice a weird creature staring at him from the other side of the window. At first he even thought it was his own reflection and became frightened. He knocked hard on the window to chase it away, but the apparition showed no signs of being disconcerted. It just looked at him and brandished a threatening finger. The stranger concluded that it wasn’t his own reflection he was seeing and calmed down.
The creature was equal parts man and woman. It was short and stocky like a man, but with large female breasts which pointed straight forward, leading its struggle for survival as if they were a new kind of sense. Unkempt hair adorned its head, which didn’t suit it at all, and under its nose lay the thick black moustache of a new recruit. The moustache was a perfect fit and gave the creature stature. Its cheeks were youthfully fresh and ruddy. It wore a shapeless apron with a checked collar and carried a bucket and a mop.
This apparition was the cleaner. The stranger rapped on the window again, a little harder this time. The cleaner took his measure, a hostile look in her shiny black eyes, and in turn rapped on the other side of the window with the mop handle. Then she decided that this warning was not enough and set off to deal with the intruder. She sprang outside and stood before him, barely reaching his chest.
‘Oi, simpleton, why’re you knocking, huh!’ she shouted and threw her head back so she could look him in the eye, all in attempt to humiliate him. ‘You’ll break the glass like that, won’t you! And then, huh? I’m gonna call the mayor now to give you a beating.’
But the stranger, even if he heard her, didn’t react. He observed her with a mixture of wonder and bewilderment, smiling blissfully.
‘And smirking on top of it!’ the cleaner snapped, but already with dampened zeal. She didn’t like that look at all and didn’t know what to make of it. Against her will though, she blushed deeply. Only her forehead remained white.
The stranger stepped back so he could take a good look at her.
‘Look at you! What are you?’ he whispered reverently.
‘Don’t you dare insult me,’ the cleaner uttered in confusion, though she suspected he was complimenting her. But because she wasn’t used to compliments, she thought it was better to growl just in case.
‘What are you?’ the stranger repeated, unable to summon the few other words in his dictionary.
‘What do you mean…what am I, huh? A municipal employee, that’s what I am.’
‘No! You’ve been bewitched. That one has bewitched you, just as she tried to bewitch me.’
The cleaner began to pay attention. No one had spoken to her in such an interesting way before.
He must be flirting with me, she thought. Maybe he isn’t a bad person. Anyway, even if he is, it doesn’t matter.
‘Do you fulfil wishes?’ the stranger continued.
The cleaner was outraged by this odd question but decided to conceal her emotions. She could already see that the man was from another world and surely a better one, because she couldn’t imagine a world worse than this. What exactly the wickedness in her world was she couldn’t tell, but she constantly heard people talk about it, so she believed it.
‘I do,’ she answered firmly. And waited.
The stranger fell silent. He was searching for a name for this fairytale creature but couldn’t find one.
Well, since it’s half man and half woman, it must find it easy to live alone, he thought. Apparently bewitched, but in fact blessed. If only it weren’t so ugly.
‘Go on, then, ask,’ she urged him.
‘Ask for what?’
‘A wish.’
The stranger shrugged his shoulders.
‘I’ve got no wishes. I was just checking.’
The cleaner was saddened.
‘You’re taking the mickey.’
He was already tired of talking to this fairytale creature. Now that he had had a chance to examine her a little more closely, he thought she was perfectly ordinary. The cleaner wasn’t keen to let him go yet. It wasn’t often that she met strange men.
‘I know you,’ she said. ‘You’re Boginya’s guest.’
‘What goddess?’ The stranger looked confused.
‘Boginya, the librarian.’
The man grew pensive.
‘I’m not Boginya’s guest,’ he said after a while. ‘She kidnapped me. I ran away this morning.’
The cleaner made the sign of the cross.
‘Did she do something to you?’
‘She poisoned me. She made me eat a lot of food. No one could eat that much on their own. I nearly died.’
‘Hmm, now I look at you, you do look poorly,’ she concluded. ‘Come in to have a rest. It’s cold, but if you wrap yourself in the sheepskin, you won’t feel the chill. That’s a nice coat you have.’
And then she led him to the bench, which kept calling him.
Without waiting for an invitation, he lay down, as he had done the day before. The cleaner tried to sit at his feet but there was no room. The stranger still remembered the old man’s words that before the day was over, a woman from the village would lure him, so he kept his wits about him.
‘A cup of tea?’ she offered.
‘Go on then.’
The cleaner disappeared somewhere. She used the postal service clerk’s tiny office because Boginya wouldn’t give her the key to the library. They shared a hot plate and a jar, which both women took turns refilling with sugar. There was a beautiful cup with a flower and a gold rim that belonged to the postal service clerk. The cleaner poured out the boiling water and dropped the tea bag in it. She picked it up with one hand and with the other took the jar of sugar and the spoon.
I should bring a little tray from home, she thought. It’ll come in handy.
But when she reached the bench, she saw that the stranger had fallen asleep. He had placed the book under his head for a pillow and his face had an expression worn only during deep sleep or death.
Out of pity she didn’t want to wake him up. She pulled up a rickety chair and sat watching him for a bit.
A man is a pretty thing, she thought. Much prettier than a human. A human is undefined, but a man is quite concrete. Even if he didn’t have a brain, at least he would still have a heart ready for love.
Then she sighed.
As she sat with the gold cup in one hand and the jar with the sugar in the other, the cleaner looked like a queen on her throne. Without realising it, the stranger had broken the spell and she had forgotten about her moustache. She felt young and beautiful. That was why she remained sitting for some time.
She left much later, long after the tea had gone cold. Just like the stranger, she wasn’t used to happiness. She had much more important and pressing things to do. She didn’t even suspect that something so big and insurmountable connected her to that man.
But the stranger wasn’t sleeping. He was waiting. Wasn’t that exactly why he had come back—for the road to find him? But the road wasn’t going to appear while other people were about.
Well, let me die for the world, he thought. And he died. His eyelids clenched shut for a long time until he no longer sensed the presence of the unseeing feminine. They clenched until his eyes forgot about the light of the day and no longer needed it. They clenched until the village hall’s chill crept into the warmth of his sheepskin to lie next to him like a fiancée, because it too found its purpose only when it was close to the human body.
The stranger was as taut as a bowstring. If someone were to place a bunch of flowers in his hands, they might hear Ave Maria. He sensed that his road was nearby, yet it continued to hide, watching him with caution.
Come back to me, he pleaded. Are you not the reason I live this life, that I believe there is more to it than just me?
Then he began thinking about the children. Together they had had some good days too. For him, the ‘good’ days were when no one was beaten up, no one died and there were enough cigarettes for everyone. He may have been mistaken though. Perhaps they should have considered ‘good’ the day they would disappear. But there was no such day. Even the most despondent among them knew it. There was a man who visited them from time to time. He had some connection to God but wasn’t a priest. They liked him because he wasn’t repulsed by them. He would hold their hands and stroke their heads with no fear. That man taught them that they were atoning for the sins of others. And that the more diligently they atoned, the better the sinful ones would become. But the children didn’t know what ‘sin’ meant. They thought it was something to be eaten and waited in vain for the man who was close to God to give them a treat. He came three or four times until he finally realised the error of his ways and never showed up again. The children forgot all about him soon enough. They disliked it when those who visited them didn’t bring them anything but words.
But there were other visitors too—people from the big town, and sometimes from other countries. They were always in a hurry and always surrounded by commotion. The moment word got round that they were coming (it was supposed to be a secret but it wasn’t) their bedsheets were changed the day before and the children were marched to the showers. All the while they were reminded not to slander their communal home and no matter what important people asked them, always to answer that they lived happily in comfort.
Otherwise, they were told, Mr Cane, the wooden director, would be very upset. And they knew what happened when Mr Cane was very upset.
Of course they knew. They also knew that Mr Cane was very sensitive and always found something to be upset about.
The stranger harboured a strong dislike of important people. They were kind and they jerked like aliens. Without exception, everyone was terrified of them. In his mind he called them ‘touring movie stars’ and spat with contempt every time he saw them. Once he even said so to one of their faces. The important person just smiled at him and jotted the words down. The stranger even saw him underlining the words in his diary. Inexplicably, he was secretly satisfied and felt like a schoolboy who’s just been awarded a top grade.
A few of my words, he thought back then, will stay in history, written on paper. Not many people can boast that.
The people who never came were the ones whose sins the children were supposed to atone for, as the man of God had taught them. Perhaps they didn’t even exist. The children never spoke about them among themselves.
These stories no longer oppressed him as before. He was moving away from them; he had the gift of forgetfulness after all. He didn’t need to remember when he could just make it all up. And the stranger did make it up: there were never any children, and he was on his own all the time. It was a weight off his shoulders. He knew that it was easier to atone for the sins of the world on your own, rather than one half of mankind atoning for the other half.
He sensed that the road had come even closer towards him and lay in waiting like a hunter. He detected its precious animal scent, the damp fur, the mouth foamed up from running. He felt its gaze in which life was already giving way to death, but despite this there was no plea for mercy.
Now, the stranger thought and opened his eyes.
Elena Aleksieva (1975, Bulgaria) is a Bulgarian writer and playwright. Her works have appeared in periodical publications and anthologies in English, German, French, Polish, Russian and Spanish. In addition to her own writing, Aleksieva translates between English and Bulgarian. She has been teaching translation since 2007 at New Bulgarian University. She began writing poetry in the 1990s before predominately publishing prose, which she has done since 2000.
Yana Ellis is a translator of literary and creative texts from Bulgarian and German to English. She holds an MA in Translation from the University of Bristol. She was chosen as one of the American Literary Translators’ Association (ALTA) Virtual Travel Fellows for 2022 and was shortlisted for the 2022 John Dryden Translation Competition. Her work has appeared in The Trinity JoLT, No man’s Land, The Common and SAND journal. Yana’s translation of Zdravka Evtimova’s The Wolves of Staro Selo is forthcoming with Héloïse Press in 2025.