UNDER ATTACK

Valeria Christova

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Recently, deviant acts in public became more frequent. Educated men, clad in fashionable suits showing their important social positions, suddenly fell silent in the middle of TV interviews. And then they plunge to the floor, taking with themselves bewildered show hosts and various cables.

'Get down! Take cover! I am under attack!', they shout.

Doc specializes in idiots. Every so often a man who has made a fool of himself on national TV knocks on his door.

'Tell me, are they attacking you at night?', Doc inquires mildly. 'Are you making preparations? Did you dig a trench in the living room already?'

More and more people were feeling under attack, though. They were arming themselves. They whispered. They tried to muster some courage. They constantly looked for cover. They were seeing dark submarines emerging on the beach, right next to their flip-flops. 'I am under attack!' became a pandemic cry. So many, but not the old man. His was a different craziness: he wrote travelogues on places he never visited. He wanted to educate those, who failed Geography in school, he explained. He discovered that world problems come from those, who failed Geography.

The wars, the refugees, the terrorists, the assassinations - all that was only a result of failing Geography, he was never tired of pontificating. Earth was cracked like the heels of old peasants feet. These cracks were the borders between countries. But the Geography failures believed that the globe can be made wider. They desired to enlarge their own territory by blowing up Earth like a balloon. With every blow, Earth would get larger and wider, thus, enlarging their own parts of it. And reasoning in such way, they dropped bombs - their way of blowing-up Earth to the point of explosion.

'The stupid Geography failures are the biggest ecological danger', declared the old man.

Doc was looking at the mountain peaks lit by the sun surrounded by lazily floating July clouds. The clouds looked like exploded shades of white: sunny white, shadowy white, transparent white... and pure blue.

'Why bombs?', muttered the old man. 'Why aren't there any square clouds in the sky?'

© Valeria Christova
© Vesselin Vesselinov, Craig Hasbrouck - translated from bulgarian
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© E-magazine LiterNet, 01.09.2016, № 9 (202)