VASSIL KINOV

CATHERINE

        
        She was lying in hospital shot by her latest lover. The doctors had extracted two bullets. One was close to the heart, the other had hit the head. She was in the intensive care unit coming back from the word beyond. Perhaps she had not stayed there for a long time. Her breath was imperceptible. Wires and tubes crawled over her enveloping every square inch of her body. As soon as the medicine was the docs would switch the systems off. She would stare with unseeing eyes wallowing in her own excrements. She well deserved this. She had made so many men fall head over ears in love with her. She laughed at them. She humiliated them. At her last vicious mockery the guy pointed the gun at her and shot. She had been sure he wouldn't do it. Well, she had made a mistake. He had pulled the trigger. That was all. Nothing could be repeated, one is incapable of controlling time. No one was interested if she was sorry for her life or not. That guy, her last lover, might be suffering now but she had already seen her abject death.
        Each story has a beginning.
        She was born enveloped by beauty inhabited by primitive and crude people. They lived with their false self-confidence and the illusion that the rotation of the Earth depended on them. Vulgarity spread like a virus disseminating poisonous seeds. In the little town where she grew up curses cost more than "Good afternoon" and playing dirty tricks on one another was the most ordinary thing. Some guys explained they were traitors because double-crossers had ruled their ancestors squashing their viscera, making their souls rot so the descendants hung around the world like blind animals unable to find their way.
        She was one of them: lacking a strong character, vulnerable, lazy, but sly, inventing millions of practical jokes. She wasted her time building castles in the air. She had met different people, too, but they seemed to live in a foreign country. She had grown up in the mountains, on the Balkans where insecurity was a trivial round, and the war - everyday threat. A place charged with basic instincts and groundless brutality.
        Now, lying in that smelly bed she avidly lived through the memories of the past maybe for the last time. She could not stop wondering why her lover had pulled the trigger. Didn't he really love her? Love and jealousy had concocted poison…
        She was seven years senior to him. Although he had hardly read two books in his entire life he possessed inborn intelligence and used it in the best possible way. He pretended to be an actor, a poet, a pimp, a fag, a businessman and was quite successful. In bed he made love to her passionately. Outside it he was just a pampered child. Several months ago he dragged an effeminate boy to her place and trying to piss her off he made the boy obey his most humiliating orders.
        "Take out the garbage! Make us coffee! Cook something for lunch!" he would shout and as the boy obediently left the room he would burst out laughing.
        "Is he your lover?" she had asked once and he had pursed his lips as if he was about to kiss the boy but not her.
        Her last lover, the killer, was called Martin. As she made love to him she addressed him Mattie. She dictated everything. She was accustomed to having her way and got what she wanted by weeping, by shouting and quarrels, or by little flattering words. She was born beautiful and remained beautiful after she was thirty. He promises herself a new life if she survived but she didn't know what sort of life she wanted. There was a time when she wanted to have a child but that was a short-lived caprice. Her selfish nature rapidly drove that thought away from her beautiful head. She was a great charmer: cheekbones attracting the most inveterate woman-haters, big blue eyes, naturally blond hair reaching the small of her back, high clever forehead, a voluptuous dimple in her shin and fine ears like silver mussels. Even now there were no wrinkles on her exquisite neck. Her body revealed a million advantages over these of the other women especially when she was moving. She walked like a wild animal: smoothly, fervently, every muscle participating in this unsurpassed performance. Her lightly tanned skin made her more tantalizing.
        "Beautiful women are unhappy," she repeated after the next disappointment but approaching old age and death frightened her. When she was young she believed she'd never get wrinkled and would remain forever the fair queen.
        When she was a child she danced on tiptoes in the middle of the room, she used to take dancing lessons, her mother and her friends clicking their tongues, whispering jubilantly, "Oh, isnt't she a cutie!" her father was guilty of gratifying all her whims. His heart rejoices, he was all smiles as he held her in his arms. "Cathy, dear, you are a treasure!"
He wouldn't allow anybody to scold her guarding like mad her pretty doll's face. She always had her way screaming so savagely that the windowpanes shook. Her mother and her grandmother grew numb paralyzed with the desire to be nice to her. Their faces turned sallow, their cheekbones froze. After the initial shock was over they rushed to the beloved child ready to satisfy her wildest caprices. Once she cut a wisp of her own hair then screaming she insisted on her mother's gluing it back in place. "Mum, the Devil made me do that! He's too bad!" Later in life she found excuses for herself again blaming the Satan.
"Kiss me! Kiss me!" she told men sometimes as she felt lonely. "A man either makes a name for himself, or destroys himself," a guy had told her once. She still wondered if he really was so wise or had just repeated some phrases from a book he'd red. Her whole life she had created, invented, fantasized things ruining them just as easily. The guy had told her as well that the person who discovered love discovered nothing at all, but at the same time found everything. In the hours of loneliness she often remembered this thoughts and although she passes for a wild and unpredictable woman she felt like a leaf thrown about by a fearful storm. A minute later, again in the center of everybody's attention, she turned into a beautiful witch enticing the man to follow her into the swamps of sin. "Kiss me! Kiss me!" she repeated sensing she had gone too far and had remained alone.
As a very little girl she played only with boys. She was taller than them standing on her long legs. She ran faster than they did. She often fought for the gang of their neighborhood. From a pampered little girl she was transformed into an uppity hoyden. This happened suddenly. She and a boy of their neighbor's family had hidden in the attic rummaging through the old things there. It was fun to search for the queer objects of long past times. The boy unexpectedly pulled down her panties gaping at the mysterious place. She was not scared and did not shout doing the same thing on him. As she saw his erect cock she grinned pointing her finger at it. The boy quickly hitched up his trousers his still childish face blushing wildly.
He avoided her a long time after that. At school he ran out of her way till one day she stopped him saying, "Let's go there once again. There are many interesting things to see…"
The boy could not speak for a while staying perfectly motionless then timidly nodded his head.
"Tomorrow!" she shouted after him as he looked around furtively as if he were naked. On the following day, in the attic, they stood in the twilight staring at the sun's beams squeezing through the cracks.
        "Do you want to pretend we are doctors?" she asked hoarsely. The boy nodded. "Come on, take off your shirt. I'll examine you first."
        He took of his clothes, she had found an old radio headset, put it on, then started knocking his on chest with her thin fingers. His body shook.
        "Come on, don't be so priggish, take off tour trousers. We are playing, aren't we?"
        The boy unbuckled his belt, an age passed as he worked on his first button but finally succeeded. He stood in his shorts before her as se went on examining him. When he took off his pants she stared for a long time at the thing she did not possess herself.
        "It's so funny," she shouted. "Is that the thing men make babies with?"
        The boy looked embarrassed and quickly put on his clothes.
        "It seems you are much more afraid than me. Don't you want to see my…?"
        He only nodded his head saying slowly, "I"ve already seen it. Why should I look at it again?"
        That was her first meeting with masculinity. The thing appeared so funny and weak yet it jutted out forward. Curiosity overwhelmed her and after that event she poked her nose everywhere hoping to learn more and more. On one occasion she rushed into her parents' bedroom finding them barely naked. Her father however succeeded in grabbing some bed-cover. It perched on their bodies like a big white bird.
        Curiosity scorched her. She was a very little girl when she caught a bus shouting with joy and excitement, drinking in the sights changing rapidly behind the window. The passengers were so enchanted by the child that nobody thought of asking her whom she traveled with. As people got off the walking out through the door some pinched her white cheeks, others caressed her blond locks. Finally she remained alone. The driver, a man wit a big moustache and a head like a soccer ball looked at her surprised.
        "Who are you traveling with, little girl?" His moustache drooped and Catherine laughed. - "Come on, tell me."
        "I think I lost my way, Mister,"
        "Oh, My! Weren't you travelling with someone? Your relative will look for you."
        "I traveled by myself."
          "Come off it, child. You'll drive me crazy. What shall I do with you now? I'll go back in two hours!"
        Catherine shrugged her shoulders and froze in that position. Her little head was tilted to one side. A genuine dolly! The driver took her by the hand tugging her with him. An hour later he was almost breathless clutching two enormous packages full of tit-bits and toys. The little girl dragged him at times to some shop, at others to the marketplace thinking she were in Paradise. As she tractably admired everything around her second in second out she invented new mischief. Either a diligently arranged pile of apples collapsed "unexpectedly" or a child started screaming after her aggressive caresses. The driver was at a loss. He was a patient man. He was accustomed to mischief: his own wife surpassed tenfold this naughty child's wickedness. To crown it all she was as barren as an empty barrel. The man started thinking. The meeting with this strange, wonderful kid suddenly gave him an impetus to make a fateful decision. He had to kick out his wife. In her earliest years Cathy left Sodom and Gomorra in her wake. The small marketplace was soon on edge after she was there. Cathy wondered why the man with the moustache didn't scold her, even encouraged her.
The girls trembling voice did his heart good.
        On the way back the child sat proudly by the driver imagining she was making a tour around the world. Monkeys, elephants, loins showed up past the buss, semi-clothed people ran by, enormous rivers flowed far and wide, roaring oceans threw large ships about as if they were safety matches, snowy mountain tops propped the sky. After a year, she had to go to school but she already knew many things. So many fantastic images took hold of her that she could not understand where she was: in heaven or on the earth. The bus flew through the world and it didn't have wheels but wings. More and more quickly, deeper and deeper into the kaleidoscope of fairy tale images. An enormous evil dragon swooped down on her but a knight all in silver armor stuck his spear in the monster's fiery mouth, then the hero bent before her kissing tenderly her hand. She shyly lowered her eyes. After a second she imagined she was riding a white stallion through meadows strewn with wondrous flowers. Thousand heroes followed her ready to obey her orders. As the bus-horse flew and flew it suddenly came to a halt. She caught a glimpse of her father running to her, then she saw her mother in teas lagging behind. Everything around her started moving slower, she turned to the driver and kissed his cheek then slowly got off the bus. Her father hit her and she did not feel ache, then he held her to his heart.
        "Oh, child, I was about to die…"
        "My daughter! She's alive!" her mother screamed chasing away Catherine's fantasies. She stood between her parents at a loss for words. As they grabbed her hands about to lead her away she turned waving to the driver. He jumped with joy and she slowly said, "Yes, I am already a grown-up child."
        The following year they went abroad, to Arabia. Her father was a civil engineer and using all his connections and much intercession convinced his boss to send him there. The situation in the past was exactly like that, if you were not a communist you were worth nothing.
        The years spent in Iraq were disastrous for her although she learned to speak English and French and after a while she'd read avidly everything written in these languages that came her way. The children of the Europeans and the Americans thought her to fight like a boy. Growing tall quickly, she was skinny but tough, agile and aggressive. Her early grown breasts protruded on her boyish body. In the evening when she wasn't permitted to go outside she sat bent in two making crazy plans. She would come back home and would organize her friends in a club. She'd call it the club of the hysterical virgins. Here, abroad, she was interested in nice looking guys. At the same time their swaggering, haughtiness, and stupidity made her despise them. As some pubescent teenager asked her how she was staring idiotically at her swelling blouse she grabbed his chin lifted his head answering him in a loud voice, "I am fine!"
        In her club, the women would win the man they wanted in a duel. Men, too, would have to fight for the girl they'd chosen: a mortal combat as it happened sometimes in real life. In Iraq, she understood how strong the hatred between religions was, between races, beggars and the ones chosen by God. Although she grew up under communism she shared nothing of its ten red commandments, which it had borrowed from Christianity. She disliked being led. She did not want to be a part of a stinking mechanism, of an imaginary society of equal people. In childhood and adolescence morality was spoken about as of an obligatory issue. The leaders imposed it under a form that was advantageous to them. Thus they kept the uniform rabble in a uniform grayness. But the rabble was an ocean…