A cherry on a long thin stem
by Angelina Dicheva
[ fiction - november 05 ]
Translated by Zdravka Evtimova
I was reintroduced to my brother two months ago. Our parents divorced when I was seven and my brother was five. I remembered vaguely that he pulled at my favorite green truck - it had a horn, that truck, and moved by itself - then I hit him with other toys to make him let go of my truck.
The law court sent us both to our mother, but dad kidnapped me right away. New lawsuits must have begun. Then I was again sent to my mother. The decision of the court was “The parents’ rights of the young children are assigned to the mother. The father is entitled to take them each first and third Sunday of the month from 8am to 6pm and up to one month in summer at a time that does not coincide with the mother’s paid leave.” Then dad kidnapped me again. I was taken to the judge. He told me to go with my mother, but on the following day dad stole me again from her. He did that five more times.
Mother said my nerves would be ruined if that battle went on. When dad kidnapped me for the last time he warned me that mom was terminally ill, and if I went to her place I’d contract the deadly disease and my flesh would decay. I was most frightened by the threat that my nose would fall off. I remembered my fears were not so much due to the thought that I’d have to live without my nose; I was horrified the boys in our backyard and my classmates would laugh at me. At a certain time, I thought that if I met mom in the street I couldn’t run away and I’d contract that awful disease of hers. I thought: Let me die then my parents would be sorry all their life they tortured and killed their child.
At some point later, mother went abroad to build dams because she was a hydro engineer. My brother accompanied her, of course. She had written letters to me, so did my brother, but I had not received any of them. I received only the presents she sent me: dad collected the parcels and the small packages from mother’s colleagues.
I remembered the first pair of jeans my mother had sent me from Cairo. The wild joy I felt was followed by dull despair and horror that dad would take it away.
“Will you burn my jeans?” I groaned desperately.
“What?” my father was amazed. “You’ve already put the pair on. I don’t think you need it, anyway. You’ve always had good trousers... I’m not a vandal.”
“But... this pair of jeans is contagious...” I groaned again to remind him of the fact he was forgetting.
“No! What are you talking about,” he looked away. “Wear that pair of jeans and be happy.”
My jeans became me. Then I received other presents: a jacket, a pair of trainers, shirts, T-shirts, a camera, a tennis racket. I arranged everything in the big dark living-room that looked like a garage. My territory began from the middle of the floor and reached one of the windows: it was larger than a big room. The rest was my father’s territory. The “two spheres of influence” as he said, were separated by enormous easy-chairs and a bulky round table. A tree of life grew in my territory: a tall ornamental plant with a thick trunk and olive – green fleshy leaves, as round as coins. My desk and a small wardrobe were arranged by its side. My father and I had separate bedrooms. Grandma and grandpa had theirs, too, on the first floor.
Many years passed and I did not see my mother. Then, unexpectedly, she came to look for me at our school. I didn’t dare to shake hands with her; I withdrew my hand, remembering all my childhood fears. Yet, my mother looked younger than before, and prettier, too. She had lost weight and was elegantly dressed.
“This is my car, Borislav,” she showed me a dark-blue, brand new Lada. “Why didn’t you write to us? Your brother and I took turns writing to you, we wanted you to get a letter from us every day!”
“I didn’t receive them,” I said shuddering at the thought that quarrels with dad would begin again. “But I did receive the presents. Thank you.”
“Now I’ll have to buy bigger clothes for you. You’ve grown up. Yesterday, your brother was operated on, Borislav. That’s why we came back home and we’ll stay a month or two. The operation was a serious one, but the doctors say he’d recuperate very soon.
“What! What operation?” I asked but the question that tore me apart was “Can I see my brother?”
“I, too, will have to receive treatment. I have some trouble with my kidneys,” My mother looked me straight in the eye. “Do you remember us, Borislav? Don’t you want to come back home? We don’t live in such a big dwelling-place like... like your father’s. We ended up squatting in a small house that had been sequestrated. The place should have become a construction site. Nobody knows when building activities would start. The owners received another house, a temporary one, and we’ve been living here for some years. We moved in here, so to say, without a permit. We moved in and then went abroad. He hoped the municipality would provide a house for us. We’ve been waiting ever since, but they are in no hurry to offer us a home. Well, that’s better for us: I hope I can save some money to buy an apartment. We have only a room and a kitchen here. It’s as big as a wardrobe, but we don’t complain. Here is our postal address.”
She wrote it down in a small black writing-pad. I was so scared I might lose it that I copied the address on ten other sheets of paper. My father found one of them.
“You can go there, of course,” he said. “You can go if you promise to never come back here again.”
In the morning, dad and I started for the seaside. I visited my mother’s place after a month. She and my brother had left. I went to their small flat several more times. Once it seemed to me that other people had been there. I started visiting the place every day. There was no one there.
Soon, presents from my mother started coming to me again. Her colleagues constantly rang me up, bringing boxes and packages. They gave them to my father at the front door and went away, never setting foot in our silent fortress. I called our house and its dwellers “the silent fortress”. We all kept more and more silent - my father, my grandfather and my grandmother.
One day I noticed that my father received a parcel. My mother’s and my brother’s address was written on it and, in a careful, neat hand, the phrase “To Borislav” was added.
That day, I wrote a letter to them for the first time. I felt so confused and frightened my father would see me that I didn’t remember what I had written. Ten days after that he asked me, “Waiting for a letter, aren’t you? Expecting a response?”
“Yes, I am,” I plucked up courage and looked at him as firmly as I could.
“Then wait,” my father knitted his brows. It was evident he didn’t enjoy his victory for he lapsed into silence.
“Let’s see who of us can keep silent longer,” I said to myself and our home became “the extremely silent fortress”.
He could not endure that.
“What’s wrong Boris? Is there something new at school? Do you want me to give you money? You can to the cinema, to a football match or somewhere else. What’s wrong? Why don’t you talk to me? Are you angry with me?
My father’s face was unattractive, too small for his tall body, and at times, when he lost weight, it looked like a cherry on a long thin stem, beaten by rains, a poor thing that had never seen the sun. When he hadn’t got enough sleep or when he was sad, the cherry withered, became yellowish, and brown stains covered it.
We kept silent for such a long time that finally my father was driven almost crazy. He vanished from home times and again and finally married Aunt Nina who was ten years older than me, and was not as pretty as my mother. Our neighbors started gossiping, “He chose his first wife for her beauty and she brought him nothing good. He took her to Sofia, and she gave birth to his two children. Now he made a second mistake. Yes, he’s not an attractive man, but he has a house, he has a car, and he graduated from a university. He is a diplomas engineer...” They blabbered on and on until they were fed up with the story and we felt sick and tired of hearing it.
Now silence reigned again at home. It was Aunt Nina that broke it. No one answered her so she went into long monologues. Yet, there were changes: now I went shopping instead of grandmother who was angry with dad on account of Aunt Nina, I cleaned the dining room, which I called the garage, and I did my family numerous small favors because my grandpa was angry as well. I thought my father did all that on purpose: he needed reasons to be gloomy and to make me angry. No one could explain why Aunt Nina chose to marry my father and not a man of her age. She constantly wanted to go out for a walk with dad, and all the time she said she wanted to dance, but dad always declined. I thought Aunt Nina was bored to death: she was alone all day long, and she didn’t go to work either.
We all felt pretty depressed when a month ago my mother rang me up. My brother and she had been away for a long time.
“We’ve just arrived, Borislav. We won’t go away again. We invite you to dinner tomorrow night. I’ve brought presents for you: a pair of trainers, a denim shirt and trousers. Your brother...”
I felt my throat burn. “Will he be there, too?”
“Of course, he’ll be waiting for you at 6 pm on the corner of our street, in front of the supermarket. Can you come? Will you be allowed to?
I gave out a wild, inarticulate howl.
“Brother...”
It turned out my brother was too tall for his fifteen years. At first sight, he appeared to look exactly like my mother. He was bony like dad, but his shoulders were broader and stronger. His smile resembled father’s too. I remembered very well that endless smile of his, although I had seen it three or four times in my life. It showed so many teeth in his broad mouth that it seemed he wanted to tell me, “I don’t have a bigger smile that this one. It’s all I’m able to give you. And it’s not bad all as you can see.” My brother smiled at me like that. He looked spruce, free: a well taken care of boy. At first, I sprawled like a jellyfish, but he gave me a big hug, and he was not embarrassed that passers-by walked near us.
I fixed my eyes on him: I wore the same pullover, the same shirt.
“This way... brother.”
Their small house jutted out like a splinter in the cheek of the big white complex of condos. I did not remember the way the furniture was arranged, I just felt everything was luminous, very cozy, and complete.
I remembered, too, that there were many books, fairy-lamps, and the table was beautifully laid: the steaks, the salads, and the big cake. Not a crumb of food could pass through my throat, and it felt as though someone had plugged it. Our mother sat silent, a little pale, looking at us. Then she started telling me about Africa, about the jungle and their evenings there, and about the big European cities. I did not remember what exactly she said. At a certain point, she said she’d like to go the kitchen to get some sleep, and my brother and I remained by ourselves. We stared at each other and didn’t think about the food.
I left after midnight. My mother gave me a lift with her car to our house, so I could take home all the presents she had brought for me.Dad sat alone in his garage of a dining- room and read something, lost to the rest of the world.
“Well, how was it?” he asked without looking up.
“I had a good time,” I muttered padding to my corner of the dining-room. I was about to go to bed when I turned around. My father’s face looked like a white cherry beaten by hailstones, drooping on its thin stem.
I invited my brother to my birthday party. Five friends of mine and three girls, my classmates, would come, too. Dad cheered up, bought a cake, dried sausages, biscuits, soft drinks, pies. Grandma baked a home-made round loaf and stopped being angry altogether.
My brother showed up, holding a big cardboard box with a bouquet of dahlias lying on top of it. He was so fashionably dressed that everyone gasped. I looked at my father who stood at the door. The white cherry had frozen on its rigid stem. When my brother shook his hand dad’s face convulsed. They were equally tall. My brother gave Aunt Nina the bouquet of eleven glittering orange dahlias, and that was perfectly enough to win her heart. All the evening, she repeated he was a very nice and intelligent boy. When I opened the cardboard box I felt dizzy: a brand new National Panasonic radio cassette recorder lay in it. My hands shook while I took it out. I grasped my brother’s hand. All the other girls and boys were green with envy. I supposed my father did not even think that boys my age had cassette recorders, and that it was the best present I could ever get.
You could say the room sounded noisy and merry for the first time ever since I remembered it. In principle, my father did not like my classmates coming to look for me; they annoyed him. My brother was a very good dancer, and immediately fascinated the girls. At 11 pm he jumped from his chair and said he had to go. I tried to convince him to stay, but he whispered in my ear that mother would come with her car to pick him up, so he didn’t want to make her wait for him.
He left. I hoped I’d see him off by myself, however everybody followed us: dad, Aunt Nina, Grandma and Grandpa. They stopped at the front door, shook my brother’s hand, but no one invited him to visit us again. I saw Mother in the distance. She saw me, too. She got out of the car and waited by it. I hurried before my brother, searched for her hand in the dark, and muttered some words of gratitude, although I had expected I’d say something beautiful, something that waited hidden in my heart. I thought I could kiss her, but I was so clumsy... I failed to do that. What sort of people we all were... we thought that gratitude we expressed was weakness, humiliation, and the situation when we had to thank someone was embarrassing to us. We did not speak openly to people’s faces we felt confused and all that embarrassed the person we thanked. So, I mumbled how grateful I was and I didn’t kiss my mother: perhaps I felt ashamed or afraid of dad.
She stroked my cheek her hand remaining on it for a second then she ran her fingers through my hair. After that she stroked my whole face and neck, and gently patted my shoulder as if I was a little boy she wanted to comfort.
“Happy birthday, Borislav,” she said. “I wish you happiness. I am glad you liked the cassette recorder. Well, good night. I want to tell you I can’t struggle for you with your father any more. But you can come and live with me and your brother if you want. You’ve grown up and he can’t make you stay with him.”
She said that very simply and very warmly. Her eyes looked like two lonely birds. My brother waved at me.
“Come on, boy. I’ll give you a call. Drop in to see us if you want. You already know where we live.”
When I came back everybody had retired to their rooms. Only my father, sprawled in his chair, gasped and snored, but he was not asleep. He was tired. The next day we fixed the car and lay for hours under it. I asked him to go back home: he had taught me everything about cars and engines and I could handle the problem by myself, but he wouldn’t listen. He was much better than me at fixing things: he could dismantle a car then he could fit together all its separate parts. It was not only because he was a diploma machine building engineer, but because he knew a lot about technologies and appliances, and he never felt like stopping his work before he knew how a gadget worked. I was like that, too. I had inherited it from him.
In the night, he had a heart attack, and we drove him to hospital. I visited him every day there. He looked at me, his eyes like an old dog’s, and the dog was no good any more. The beast wanted to see in his master’s eyes when he’d shoot him. I wouldn’t tell dad anything about it, so I let him look on like that. I couldn’t speak to him, we had never talked like men would, and we had never sat at table facing each other to speak about us, about the future. I wouldn’t tell him that, but I’d stay with him. He had to have somebody by his side, somebody who’d stay there not because he was forced to. I had everything in the world, and he had no one... but me.
