As every evening lately, he was at the nearby bar. He smoked, drank beer and brooded. At his age – getting on for 50 – he ought to have been resting on his laurels by now, earning more money for less work, but with him it was the other way round. Because his failings had escalated – nerves, beer and cigarettes, with which he no longer wanted to torment his wife – he had decided to move into a rented place until he pulled himself together, but so far he hadn’t managed it.
His bitter thoughts were interrupted by a curious circumstance – two tables away sat a girl of about 20. Soon an older woman joined her, looking like a warden in a women’s concentration camp, who glanced around and fixed her searching gaze on him. She reminded him of a rather aged “Helga” from the cult comedy series “’Allo ’Allo!”.
A little later Helga got up, looked him over again – with and without her glasses – gave the girl a firm nod and left. He nearly burst out laughing at the thought that Helga was a bookie and had tipped him to the girl as the horse that would win the races on Sunday, and at very good odds too. The girl lit a cigarette. She drew on it greedily, like a man, and gave him a studying look. He felt awkward and headed for his flat without having dinner. Lately he had wished the world around him wouldn’t bother him with its problems – he had more than enough of his own.
“At home” he sat in the armchair and stared at the ceiling. He made himself cosy – beers, cigarettes and an ashtray within reach. Of one thing he was completely sure – the two women had been looking at him and no one else. But why like that – as if at a police identity parade? He had a feeling he might be getting mixed up in something.
In the morning he woke up stiff and grumpy. Last night he had fallen asleep in the armchair. He opened the project he was working on. His mind seemed to have stiffened too, and after an hour he repeated his favourite pun of late: “Today my work was beyond dispute. No dispute about it – I got nothing done again.” To keep pessimism from taking hold of him, he summoned up memories of his youth. Back then he had loved setting himself little tasks – roles, to try to outdo himself, which he called “my experiments”:
Once, out with some fellow students, he was carrying a tape recorder. It occurred to him to hold its cable and a lighter upside down so that together they looked like a microphone, and he told his friends:
“Go off to one side and just watch!”
He stopped two middle-aged women and introduced himself as a radio reporter. He didn’t need to look for anyone else – there was already a queue in front of him, eager to give their opinion on the standard of service and cleanliness. He barely got away.
Another time, with a bigger group in a café, he had offered to read the waitresses’ coffee grounds. After staring into their cups he would raise a thoughtful gaze and tell them one of his “universal” phrases, along the lines of:
“You are tolerant with people, but quite a few of them take advantage of it.”
“In love, your problem is that you give more than you receive.”
In the end the waitresses solemnly announced in front of everyone: “Your bill is settled in exchange for the coffee reading.” In his friends’ eyes he was like a god.
The memories cheered him up and gave him an idea of how to get over the main stumbling block in his project. In a few hours he did as much work as in the previous two weeks. Around 7 p.m. he felt like not going out. He had built up momentum and would have finished completely by morning, but he was hungry. He ate only in the evenings at the bar, and last night he hadn’t eaten. Before leaving he took a look at himself. From the mirror an ageing man with hair like a conductor’s gawped back at him, and he seemed to hear his wife: “Don’t go out looking like that! Have a shave, then take the scissors to those ‘horns’ sticking out at the sides of your hair and to the ‘graveyard flowers’ – the hairs poking out of your nose and ears. And cut your nails too – we women can’t stand men with long, dirty nails!”
The girl came. She shot him a glance and signalled to the waitress. A little later she looked at him again. He mustn’t put it off any longer. He stood in front of her table:
“Good evening. Forgive me, but I have to ask – were you looking at me? Maybe it just seemed that way to me. May I sit with you?”
She answered at once, with a smile that wasn’t mocking:
“Yes, sit down! I admit it, I was looking at you. Let’s introduce ourselves – my name is: She.”
“My name is: He. And what conclusion did you come to…after…the inspection?”
“I don’t know yet. And what do you like doing in your free time?”
“All sorts of things – hiking in the mountains, walks by the sea… Why?”
“I hope you’ll take me to some of your favourite places. I’ve set this week aside for exactly that – getting to know you. I hope you can find the time!”
It was like a bolt from the blue. With a dry mouth, all he managed to say was:
“You mean – the two of us go off somewhere so that you can get to know me???”
“Yes, exactly that! And if possible, He and She should be on first-name terms, OK?”
He stared at the ashtray as if expecting advice from it, then put out his cigarette and said:
“I need to think about it. I can find the time, but I’m very puzzled. Being ‘got to know’ would make sense if I were rich, a public figure, a producer, a director or a man about town, and you were a journalist or a writer. You’re too young to be any of those. And if I’m an engineer, does your offer still stand?”
“Yes, it stands, and for all your other possible professions too!”
“And what will you expect from me: to be a guide? The kindly uncle? A sponsor? I think you’re mistaking me for someone else and this is some kind of misunderstanding.”
“It’s not a misunderstanding! I’ll pay half of everything. Tomorrow I’ll be here at exactly 10 in the morning, ready for an excursion! If you don’t come, I’ll understand, but believe me, this is important to me. Try somehow to swallow your pride!”
The girl left before he could object. He watched her go for a while and said to himself:
“A very pretty girl. But I’ll be damned if I understand what exactly is going on!”
Again he didn’t have dinner. He went home, lay down and fell asleep at once, putting off the thinking until the supposedly wiser morning. He woke while it was still dark and drank “a bucket of coffee”. He decided to finish his project, but as soon as he got down to it, he remembered last night. Yes, “Helga” had nodded approvingly to the girl, and later the girl had firmly declared that this was not a misunderstanding, so clearly he was the subject.
But why? So far in his life women hadn’t queued up in front of him – evidently he hadn’t been a macho man and hadn’t given off all that many pheromones. The girl was a little older than his daughter. He had tried not to be harsh with her and his son, but he had made mistakes too. It occurred to him that this girl might be doing an experiment on him, something like his own from 30-odd years ago. Lately all he had wanted was peace and quiet, but it seemed he also needed a little madness to get himself back on track, and he said to himself:
“Better to regret doing something than not doing it!” He hurried to turn this into a firm decision before he wavered. He called his clients and his wife, took some money from the wardrobe, filled his rucksack and set off in the car for the bar:
“Come what may!” At the meeting place he daydreamed that She wouldn’t come, but a few minutes later the girl appeared with a rucksack and a smile, and there was no point asking whether she’d changed her mind. He suggested they go to a mountain hut in Stara Planina – “Kozyata Stena”. She answered quickly:
“If it’s one of your favourite places – OK!”
“The hut keepers know me there. I’ll tell them you’re my daughter.”
“It’ll be much more fun to call each other ‘Darling’ and ‘Sweetheart’!”
In the car he asked her to tell him something about herself, but She immediately reminded him that the aim of the trip was to get to know him, not the other way round. He tried to be ironic with her:
“I’m tickled by the thought that I’ll be the first tourist attraction to drive those wishing to see it to its own favourite places and, a week later, drive them back again. It’s rather futuristic.”
She didn’t answer. On the way, so they wouldn’t sit in awkward silence, he told her about his wedding. Two couples – the newlyweds and their witnesses – had gone to the registry office with nobody else. Afterwards they had gone on a week-long trek in Rila – their honeymoon. She was enthusiastic: “What a wonderful idea! When it comes to that, I’ll do the same!” They left the car in a car park at the top of the mountain pass and set off on foot along the ridge to the west. The girl walked without fussing. She definitely liked the two-hour route. There were no other guests at the hut, and the hosts invited them to dinner.
The next day they went to Ahtopol. They took long walks by the sea and stopped only to swim in wild, deserted coves. The girl didn’t moan at him that she was hungry or tired. She didn’t hide her delight at how she was spending the day, and he felt like a traitor – he and his wife had done the same in the same places. In the evenings they talked for a long time in the restaurant and went to bed late. In their room she fell asleep instantly, like a child, while he stayed awake for hours. Sinful thoughts crossed his mind too, but he preferred her to think him a “loser” rather than spoil everything with a proposition for sex.
The girl kept asking him about his life. He told her the plain truth, without embellishing it. She also asked him awkward questions:
“From everything I’ve learnt about you, I don’t understand why you and your wife are living apart now. You love each other – is it more convenient for you this way?”
“I admit it – for now, at least – yes.”
“I expected you to keep telling me pearls of wisdom, but you don’t – why?”
“At your age I didn’t take advice; it’s normal for you not to take it either.”
In bars She drank beer like him and smoked. He noticed that she started both only after he did, and He gradually cut down.
Once he had said to her with a smile:
“I’d be very grateful if you did tell me something about yourself after all.”
“I’m starting to study law at Sofia University. I’m an only child. I don’t have a boyfriend for now, unless we count you – but you’re something much more to me!”
“Oh, you too?? If you only knew how many women I’ve been something loftier than a boyfriend to – a Confidant, a Friend, a Rock, a Shoulder and so on. Only my wife dared lay a hand on my virginity! I wonder if I look like Plato himself!”
She had buried her face in stormy laughter:
“No, don’t tell me that – I feel like a user too, leaning on your friendly shoulder. You poor darling! Please don’t put me in that group as well!”
Soon he stopped asking himself what was actually happening. The thought crossed his mind that perhaps his patroness, the Virgin Mary, had sent him the girl to help him grab himself by the hair and, like Baron Munchausen, pull himself out of the swamp. Which made him feel guilty that She, the young one, was helping the grown-up, and that her invitation hadn’t simply been some strange whim of hers. He promised himself he would at least try to make it more fun for her.
In the Rhodopes and Pirin She walked even faster – like a little mountain goat. She often went into raptures over some view and made him close his eyes and hold hands with her. According to her the feeling was unearthly, and to him it again reminded him of his wife. Of one thing he was completely sure – he had shaken off his lethargy and wanted to live again.
The following Monday around noon they got back to Sofia and sat down in “their bar”. They avoided each other’s eyes and for the first time sat silent for a long while, each busy with their own thoughts. He’d had a classmate who used to hope a bomb would fall before every test. He too wished for something like that right now, so that the inevitable would be postponed. In the end She “dropped the bomb”:
“You can kiss me on my little forehead! Thank you and – goodbye!”
Back at his flat he got cross that he hadn’t asked anything before kissing her so meekly. Only the dead or children get kissed on the forehead. That was him all over – what he should have said, and to whom, at a given moment had always come to him too late. He unpacked, had a bath and lay down for a nap, but soon judged it best to take his mind off things with his project. By 7 in the morning he was completely done. He had worked for 20 hours without coffee or beer and with only five cigarettes – something unthinkable until a week ago. He thought: “Right, I’ve done that too. What now?”
At first, in the evenings at the bar, he looked around for the girl. A week later he went back home to his wife, who took him back without comment, seeing that his eyes were as clear as before. Their life got going again, even better than before. It was as if everything had fallen into place, except for the mysterious girl.
A year later he received a letter by post from the sender “She”, with no return address:
Hello, He,
I’ve thought a lot about our journey and about you. I felt sorry for you, wondering how you managed to put up with my “mysteriousness”. By way of apology, I want to reveal to you, very belatedly, “my secret”, which you may have been racking your brains over:
When I finished secondary school, I got into Sofia University. I was getting ready to move to Sofia. One day Mum told me that many years ago she hadn’t been able to get pregnant. The reason was my father. At the clinic in Sofia they offered her conception with a sperm donor. The nurses who carried out these procedures boasted to her that at the moment they had wonderful donors – two students – healthy, well-mannered boys, Bulgarian lads, which convinced her to agree. She had a woman from her home town working in another ward of the clinic – Auntie Miche – who not only managed to find out who the Donor was, but also got hold of his details and even saw him. She was the one who “recognised you” in the bar.
Mum was very keen for me to find you and to be able to count on you if needed – blood is thicker than water, she said. And for me to tell her something about you – she imagined you as good-looking as me. I secretly took a few photos of you and gave them to her. When I told her about our trip, she scolded me for being rather reckless – I could have messed up your life – but she didn’t hide her satisfaction with what she saw and heard.
Thank you for giving me the chance to get to know you – I liked and even came to love my biological father. I’m doing well and have no problems. I’m terribly glad that you’ve gone back to your family, which has completely put my conscience at rest.
Recently I had an idea – you should write our strange story into one of your stories; I know you write them. But I beg you not to present me as yet another user of your kindness who, like most women, didn’t even notice that you’re a man. Ha-ha.
With love: She.
