Zhenya Dimova

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I am 38 years old, never have been married. Never have explained why to anybody either. However, after those weeks spent with M. I feel like doing both.

M. has a dark gaze and cool hands. I like him because everything white, pink, and warm horrifies me. Also, Father died and it is time for that memory to return behind the corner of the dead-end street it came from.

Memories are incidental scenes that make up our essence. Our whole lives are a struggle with the memories we accumulated throughout our childhoods. As for myself, I know I wouldn't have been the same, if on that day in May we didn't walk through that location. The saying that fate leads your way - it is not true, because of the resistance you give in the aftermath, because of all the efforts to throw away the sensations that have become the main element of your chemistry.

It was the Holiday of the Rose in our town, during May. Father was taking me for a walk, I dressed in my pink little dress, enjoying how its folds jolted every time I jumped. We were walking amidst the two-way stream of engulfed in festive chatter crowd. Father was talking too, his lips stretching and rounding. His hand, warm and sweaty, tightly grasping mine, so I would not get lost.

Then I saw that man. A momentary picture from one of the side streets. He stood erect, outside the human stream, dressed in shabby clothes, with puffy face. With a tense expression, he was holding on with both hands to a ladder, leaning against a whitewashed wall. He was squeezing the rods as if trying to break a mortal enemy. Suddenly from his pink naked groins gushed white liquid, pouring over the ladder. He violently bit at the wood, and after a moment, another moment, after an eternity, shavings flew from under his teeth and his jaws froze in a painful, bestial lock. And, in the next second, he suddenly calmed, relaxed, turned his head and stared at me. The horrific secret of manhood strained off into my frighten eyes. My hand was burning inside Father's hand, the whole of me was burning. Only recently, in the hands of M., I feel I am cooling down. I think I am already capable of seeing the world in other colors too.

© Zhenya Dimova
© Vesselin Vesselinov, translated
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© E-publisher LiterNet, 01.08.2004, № 8 (57)