The Physics of Sorrow. Georgi Gospodinov

tent (his master and guardian) begins his tale. An odd mix of legend and biography, honed over the course of long repetitions at fairs. A story in which eras catch up with one another and intertwine. Some events happen now, others in the distant and immemorial past. The places are also confused, palaces and basements, Cretan kings and local shepherds build the labyrinth of this story about the Minotaur-boy, until you get lost in it. It winds like a maze and unfortunately I will never be able to retrace its steps. A story with dead-end corridors, threads that snap, blind spots, and obvious discrepancies. The more unbelievable it looks, the more you believe it. The pale and straight line—the only way I can retell it now, lacking the magic of that tale—goes roughly as follows.

      Helio, the boy’s grandfather on his mother’s side, was in charge of the sun and the stars; in the evening he locked up the sun and drove the stars out into the sky, like driving a herd out to pasture. In the morning he gathered up his herd and let the sun out to graze. The old man’s daughter, Pasifette, the mother of this boy here, was kind and beautiful, she married a mighty king from somewhere way down there in the islands. This was long ago, even before the wars. It was a rich kingdom, the Lord God himself (their god, that is, the local one) drank whiskey with the king of the islands, they set store by each other, God even gave him a big bull with a pure white hide, which was a downright wonder to behold. So the years went by and God demanded that same bull as a sacrifice. But Old King Minyo (Minos, Minos . . . somebody yelled out) was feeling stingy and decided to pull a fast one on God and slaughtered another bull, again fat and well fed. But can you really pull a fast one on God? God found out, hit the roof, started blustering, saying, don’t pull this while-the-grass-grows-the-horse-starves business on me, now you’ll see who you’re messing with. He fixed it so that Minyo’s meek and loyal wife, Pasifette, sinned with that very same handsome stud of a bull. (Here a buzz of disapproval sweeps through the crowd.) And from this a child was born—a man in body, but a bull in countenance, with a bull’s head. His mother nursed him and cared for him, but that laughingstock King Minyo just couldn’t stomach the disgrace. He didn’t have the heart to kill the little baby-Minotaur, so he ordered it to be locked up in the basement of the palace. And that basement was a real labyrinth, a master stonemason made it so that once you go in, there’s no getting out. That mason must’ve been from around these parts, one of our boys, since here we’ve got the best, while those Greeks are lazy as sin. (A buzz of approval sweeps through the tent.) But afterward that poor old mason didn’t earn a red cent from the whole business, but that’s another story. They tossed the little boy inside, at the tender age of three, torn away from his mother and father. Just imagine what his poor angelic little soul must’ve suffered in that dark dungeon. (At this point, people began sniffling, even though they themselves did the exact same thing with their little snot-nosed brats, fine, so it wasn’t for eternity, they’d lock them up between the thick cellar walls only for an hour or two.) They tossed him there in the dark, the storyteller went on, the little guy cried day and night, calling for his mother. In the end, Pasifette begged one of those master masons who had made the labyrinth to sneak the boy out secretly, while they put a young bull in his place. But that’s not in the book, some know-it-all in the crowd chimes in. Let’s keep that between us, the storyteller says emphatically, so that old Cretan King Minyo doesn’t find out about the switch, ’cause he still doesn’t have the slightest inkling. And so they secretly freed the little boy with the bull’s head and again secretly loaded him onto a ship bound for Athens (the same one going to take the seven Athenian lads and lassies, supposedly for the Minotaur). The little Minotaur gets off in Athens, there an old fisherman finds him and hides him in his hut, looks after him for a year or two, and gives him to one of our boys, a shepherd, who goes down south in the winter to graze his herd of cattle, all the way to the Aegean. He took him, saying since he’ll never be able to live out in the open among people, hopefully the cattle will take him in as one of their own. Well now, that very same shepherd personally passed him on to me a few years back. The cows don’t want him neither, he said, they don’t accept him as their own, they’re scared of him, my herd’s scattered, I can’t keep him with me any longer. Since then we’ve been going around to fairs with the poor little orphan, abandoned by his mother and father, not man enough for men, nor bull enough for bulls.

      While he tells this story, the Minotaur bows his head, as if the story has nothing to do with him, only making a soft throaty sound from time to time. The same as I made with my locked lips.

      Now show ’em how you drink water, the master orders and the Minotaur, with visible displeasure, falls to his knees, dunks his head into the bucket and slurps noisily. Now say hello to these good people. The Minotaur is silent, looking down. Say hello to these people, the man repeats once again. Now I see that in one hand he is holding a staff with a sharp spike on one end. The Minotaur opens his mouth and growls out what is more likely a deep, raspy, unfriendly Mooooo . . .

      With that, the show ends.

      I turn around before leaving the tent (last), and for an instant our eyes meet again. I will never be able to escape the feeling that I know that face from somewhere.

      Outside I realize that my mouth is still locked shut, and my cap is torn. I dash toward the stand, but there is no trace of the sorcerer. That’s how I left the memory, or rather, that’s how I left my twelve-year-old grandfather. With locked lips and a torn cap. But why would he hide his visit to the Minotaur in his story?

      MOOOO

      I didn’t ask anything then, because he would’ve realized that I could get inside other people’s memories, and that was my biggest secret. And I hated the Yellow House, where they would’ve taken me, just like they’d taken Blind Mariyka, because she saw things that would happen.

      Nevertheless, I very secretly managed to find out something from Grandfather’s sisters, seven in number, who came to see him every summer until the end of their lives, skinny, dressed in black, dry as grasshoppers. One afternoon I cornered the eldest and chattiest of them and casually began asking her what grandpa had been like as a child. I had bought her candy and lemonade in advance—they all were crazy about sweets—and thus got the whole story.

      It was then that I learned that as a boy, my grandfather had suddenly gone mute. He had come back from the village fair and could only moo, he couldn’t utter a single word. Their mother took him to Granny Witch to “pour him a bullet.” She took one look at him and declared—this child has had quite a fright, I’ll have you know. Then she took a bit of lead, poured it into an iron mug, heated it up over the fire until it melted and started sizzling. In “pouring a bullet,” the lead takes on the form of whatever has frightened you. The fear enters the lead. Afterward you sleep with it under your pillow for several nights and then you throw it into a river, into running water, to carry the fear far away. Granny Witch poured the bullet three times and all three times a bull’s head appeared, with horns, a snout, everything. Some bull at the fair had scared him, said Grandpa’s sister, they’d go there to sell animals from the neighboring villages, buffalo, cattle, sheep, whole herds. For six months he didn’t utter a word, only mooed. Granny Witch came nearly every day, burned herbs over him like incense, they held him upside down over the crumbs of dinner to make the fear fall out of him. They even slaughtered a young calf and made him watch, but his eyes rolled up into his head, he fainted and didn’t see a thing. It cleared up on its own after six months. He came into the house one day and said: “Mom, come quick, Blind Nera has calved.” They had a cow by that name. And so his lips were unlocked. Of course, most of the details came from my smuggled entry into my great-aunt’s memory. Her name was Dana. She was hiding one other story, whose corridors I had already secretly slipped into.

      THE BREAD OF SORROW

      I see him clearly. A three-year-old boy. He has fallen asleep on an empty flour sack, in the mill yard. A heavy bee buzzes close above him, making off with his sleep.

      The boy opens his eyes just a crack, he’s still sleepy, he doesn’t know where he is.

      I open my eyes just a crack, I’m still sleepy, I don’t know where I am. Somewhere in the no-man’s-land between dream and day. It’s afternoon, precisely that timelessness of late afternoon. The steady rumbling of the mill. The air is full of tiny specks of flour, a slight itching of the skin, a yawn, a stretch. The sound of people talking can