"The MAG"

IVAN MITEV


A Tourist Guide
(To R. Starkovski)

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        He took out a pocket looking - glass from the drawer and peeped into it; he peered into the depth of his pupils. He sow himself whole - fired, unshaved, military boots and goat - leathet on taken out from the lowest shelf of the wardrobe.
        " I am getting old with every day", it crossed his mind, but his thoughts couldn't start running - an uproar which had appeared on the square, spreading under his window, took him out of his state. A group of students with umbrellas of different colours, their teacher's - in front - was huge and black, were approaching the entrance of museum. With his faultless sense the tourist guide defined that they were in the 7th class, a kind of a club in Drawing and that they were coming to visit the Ethnography exhibition.
        He knew - the porter would ring him up in three minutes to inform him about them.
        His mood reached the familiar octave beyond which there were no others; it was impossible to change it in any way - his eleven - year - old cat had disappeared the previous day - the only witness of the nights in his small room. The thousands of monologues after his divorce and the later ones when he started to live with a glass had passed through her years. He took the glass from a railway - station pub on a rainy afternoon, just like this one, and then he talked to it - about all the hands, which had folded it, about all the lips, which had pressed to its thin edge. The glass with gratitude presented him with insights, which he wrote down feverishly on different slips of paper, cigarette and match - boxes and after that he told about them to everybody who knew him. In the beginning his colleagues would look at him in amazement, later they started to offer him coffee even before opening his mouth. He kept on trying to intrigue someone on his way - taxi drivers, waiters in local pubs, but all would stubbornly turn their heads and would repeat the sum he had to pay. Finally he came across a group of pensioners - they would listen to him patiently in the lunch breaks in the café neighbouring the museum. Some of them would give him their memoirs to edit them and one had written a trilogy about after life. They suggested him what they wanted to hear by the verve with which they ordered a spot of drink for him. And they would hear him. Then they would try to direct his attention to the glass in which the ordered was served to him - they would claim that is was more inspiring than that which he lived with.
        But he knew too much about glasses.
        In the beginning it entertained him, then he apprehended is as his sweet outrage over them, but with change of seasons he became aware of that the excitement with which he touched his glass could kill him.
        In an evening like that it broke into pieces - shortly before he carried it to his lips. He was standing in front of the mirror in his room, surrounded by his books as usual and proposing a toast with himself and to himself. The wine from it splashed on the cactus, the only flower in the dusk, and the cat gave a mew and jumped towards the window.
        A moment later she heard his soundless laughter to which she had been accustomed long before. But this time it continued much longer than another time and it melted into the pillow on which her master fell asleep with the rest of his glass in hand.
        In the morning he was stunned to see that the cactus had diminished it had turned to jelly and the cat had gone." I am being left by all", he thought with his soul filled up with bitterness, "friends, animals, flowers. Yet, no one it this world does him best to put the things in order. No one … even if the cat doesn't come back, it means that this game is not necessary to anybody. But she will back", he said to himself, "become there is no other way. Neither for me nor for her."
        The tourist guide got up, put his pocket looking glass into the drawer and started limping to the hall before the telephone had rung.
        "Pay attention to these sheep bells", he was talking to the children huddled against him." The Bulgarian had always been accompanied by their sweet sound while he had been toiling in the field."
        "Can they be touched?" the teacher asked leaning on his umbrella.
        "No!" the tourist guide responded anxiously. "Nothing must be touched! There is an alarm system!"
        "It smells of sheep!" one of the girls said and looked up at him holding her nose with two fingers and giving a martyred air to her face.
        The children got noisy and he led them further. "Damn you little hooligans", he thought and stopped to look at them, all of them were in training suits of different colours, their wet jackets were pulsating with the gleams of a damaged lamp above them. The touching their brown and black felt hats jammed on their long hair - as if they had done their shopping in one and the same store. Only the hat of that girl who kept on holding her nose was broad - brimmed and of French Bordeaux colour.
        "It stinks as well as of naphtaline!" she sang, pressed to the tourist guide by her classmates. "Oh! And it is cold!" Some schoolgirls started to giggle. It smelt sweet of perfume from their heads as if they had had a bath in it.
        The tourist guide took several steps more. The teacher had remained by the sheep bells craning forward them.
        "This is a press for the production of vegetable oil from sesame. As you see, it is three meters high. Sesame is a plant to which a great attention was paid in our region in the past. You can see it in this copper; it had been poured with it under the plate of the press. The press had been put into motion by three robust men. They had often used donkey or ox power. The sesame oil was flowing out of that groove into the stone tub under it."
        "Rubbish!" the girl with the cinnamon hat said and raised her face towards the tourist guide. She had blue eyes, a mocking glance and hair with the colour of honey.
        "This ugly thing cannot squeeze even a drop!", she went on. The others got noisy again, started poking each other in the ribs with their umbrellas and went further themselves.
        The tourist guide followed them.
        "This carpet had been called "daybreak - twilight". Fix on its design…"
        "How horrible! Such a disgusting thing!"…He heard the tinkling voice very near to his heart.
        The children started to comment on the plaster models of ritual loaves of bread in a loud voice.
        "Are they real?", a somebody's voice asked.
        "If they were real the mice would eat them up!" that girl broke into a laugh again. And she spilled the heat of her glance straight into the eyes of the tourist guide.
        "There are no mice here!" he responded fluttered again.
        The children broke into cries looking around. Some made their way to the exit.
        The teacher approached and had a look at his watch.
        The tourist guide shrugged his shoulders.
        The hubbub around him grew unbearable.
        "These sheep - bells…" he scratched his bushy eyebrows, "I mean the bells… How do you supply with them?"
        "By redemptions, donations…"
        "Don't you wash them after that?" that girl asked again, this time pressed on his other side.
        The tourist guide took a deep breath.
        "This conversation…" he started, looking at the girl as if in a dream, "Can't we go on with it somewhere else?".
        The children quietened for a moment. The girl unstuck her lips, but before she could say something, the group turned and the museum guide saw the teacher's stretched hand in front of him.
        "Of course!" - he said, "We'll come again!"
        Then all filed out.
        When their voices died away, the tourist guide became aware that he was standing in front of the sesame oil press and that fragmentary wards were reverberating into his conscience.
        "We…" You who? Again…" Why…? Horror, ugly, nasty… It is so, it is so, and it is so. But there is something else too. There is. There must be.
        "Where are you?", he uttered aloud.
        "Why did you go away? Did you ever exit? At - all?"
        Then he sighed, took the copper and poured the sesame under the plate. He caught the long beam, pressed it and turned it round its axis. A sharp creak pierced the quietened hall.
        The tourist guide exerted all his strength. He didn't remember how long he had been pressing. An instant before his heart had been ready to burst, he left hold of the beam and kneeled in front of the tub. A single drop strained off from the groove, tore off slowly, fell on the bottom and froze there like a piece of amber.
        The man bent his lips over the stone.
        He was sure that his cat wouldn't come back.
        Never more would he take another cat either.

m.a.g.