Absinthe 17 Preview: Zdravka Evtimova

This is the eleventh in a series of posts that will preview the upcoming issue of Absinthe, our 17th, focused on Bulgaria. In this post we present an excerpt from a short story by Zdravka Evtimova.






From Kuncho

"Don’t waste time. Come to my place quickly! I’ll treat you to a piece of Kuncho as soon as you arrive,” my friend Dara said to me on my mobile. I listened, hesitating. Yesterday, my husband bought a big knife and said he’d use it to slash my throat. I wasn’t too impressed to be honest with you. Let me first explain the way the whole picture looked.


Kuncho was a 21-year-old donkey whose proud proprietor was Dara’s father, Uncle Pesho. The man prepared his cart, then took Kuncho and went to steal tiles, scrap iron, sawdust, plus everything else one could lay his hands on in these parts. I was one of the few who knew the truth about the old donkey and I didn’t take pride in that knowledge. To cut a long story short, it was Uncle Pesho himself who turned Kuncho into minced meat and subsequently into sausages. I was well informed about the substantial role these sausages played in our small town.

Uncle Pesho was stealing scrap iron when Kuncho fell on his belly and started hiccuping and sighing. Then suddenly the animal’s back stopped twitching.

“Why are you doing that to me, man?” Uncle Pesho said to his beast. “Who shall I steal with now? My wife is an old rail like the rusty ones at the railway station. My daughter (he meant Dara, of course), will never get married because no one wants her. The two geese are both so lazy they’d rather kick the bucket than do a stroke of work. I am old and worn out like your horseshoes, Kuncho, but I go filching. Can’t I get a drink like an honest man instead? And what can I steal, my friend? Everything worth stealing has already been stolen. I go out thieving and who do you think I meet? I meet my competitors. They’ve gone out to pilfer something or other, too. So what happens when I see them eye to eye, I ask you? Do we steal the way we should? Not at all! We all sit down and get drunk together. Tell me, Kuncho, didn’t I give you a chunk of my bread all the time? I did! So don’t die, man. Are you leaving me with the slothful female pair, with the old one and the young one? Are you? You can’t die now!”



READ MORE by ordering Absinthe 17.

Learn more about Zdravka Evtimova and Bulgarian literature at the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers site.

We're late congratulating Bill Johnston on winning the Best Translated Book Award for Wieslaw Mysliwski's Stone Upon Stone. Congrats Bill!

Absinthe 17 Preview: Emiliya Dvoryanova

(c) Lilyana Dvoryanova

This is the tenth in a series of posts that will preview the upcoming issue of Absinthe, our 17th, focused on Bulgaria. In this post we present an excerpt from a novel by Emiliya Dvoryanova.


From Passion, or the Death of Alice, translated by Lubomir Terziev


Never speak ill of the dead — my grandmother used to say, and so it has been accepted indeed; in the past they’d spit right into the mouth of anyone who would speak ill of a dead man so that when they swallow they’d take back their words into their throat.

But now I’m a witness in this case and you’re telling me that as my duty I must speak the truth, but the thing is I know such nasty stuff about the young lady that it makes my hair stand on end and I get them stomach cramps, God bless me, but this being my duty and being a citizen, despite the pangs and creepy though it all is, I’ll be telling you what you want me to — from the beginning, and about the end, nor will I spare the disgraceful details, though I’m filled with shame, but then again, I’m curious enough to know more than I need to know — one finds out about all kinds of human stuff, unwittingly, and sometimes it’s all too human for you to want to find out, because there’s no bounds to oddities and when one of them crops up, you pull yourself to the next, and you produce such a tangle that there’s no telling where it will all end. Well, I might have seen many an awful thing, but never did I predict such an end, and that morning, God bless me, I was summoning up some thoughts about the young lady while I was trying to unlock the gate, which had begun to stick months before, so every morning I had to shove in the key and turn it this way and that way, and at that very moment I thought I’d better not get in at all, it was a peculiar day, after all, a Holy Good Friday, and on days like that one must tune oneself in for God rather than be incited to evil thoughts and fickle feelings at the expense of the soul, and if I were to be strict and Orthodox by the canon, I shouldn’t have worked that day at all, telling the young lady as an excuse that I won’t do no cleaning until she has this rusty piece of iron oiled – I’d told her a hundred times and she would just laugh and then she goes like, well, yes, she’ll ask someone to pour some oil on it.


READ MORE by ordering Absinthe 17.

Learn more about Emiliya Dvoryanova and Bulgarian literature at the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers site.

Absinthe 17 Preview: Stefan Ivanov

This is the ninth in a series of posts that will preview the upcoming issue of Absinthe, our 17th, focused on Bulgaria. In this post we present a poem by Stefan Ivanov.

a list for my father


the sound of cracking hazelnuts and walnuts
of pounding the meat that will become a steak
the firm manly handshake
playing tennis or football and skiing
the contemplative humming and calm whistling
the indifferent talk of money
the honesty with people
the desire to help whenever possible
the ease with which he does things both simple and complex
the childish wonder in his eyes when he is surprised
the loud laughter the hard sneeze
and
the silence in which he reads in bed
and it pains me to see him grow old
grow closer
to the black and white window with three names dates and a picture
to the silence of statues sitting on a bench
the day when I will be in his place


Translated by Maria P. Vassileva

READ MORE by ordering Absinthe 17.

(c) Yana Lozeva

Learn more about Bulgarian literature at the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers site.

Absinthe 17 Preview: Krassimir Damianov

(c) Sasha Damianova

This is the eighth in a series of posts that will preview the upcoming issue of Absinthe, our 17th, focused on Bulgaria. In this post we present an excerpt from a novel by Krassimir Damianov.

from Diary of a Butterfly, translated by Angela Rodel


1.


For a long time I couldn’t find myself a girl after you. I kept looking for your type, your height, your elegance, your screams, your eyes, your voice . . . My eyes often played tricks on me, your slender silhouette would suddenly appear at the end of the street, in the elevator at a store, in the flickering of the streetcar or on the steps in front of the university. I mistook the Vietnamese girls for you — there were lots of them in Sofia at the time — because of your petite figure or I would simply imagine that it could be you with your slanted eyes. Even though you didn’t fit with the cold or the slushy snow on those frosty mornings. Once, as I rode home on trolleybus number two, slightly tipsy, at around eleven o’clock at night, I pressed up against a woman in front of me. Unconsciously at first, there were lots of people on the bus, but then — I sensed her like an animal and felt that she sensed me, too — completely deliberately, with the desperation of a condemned man! Because it was you, your scent of seaweed, your warmth, your body . . . I missed my stop, one, two, and three more. . . Finally we ended up alone in the empty trolley, stuck together like Siamese twins, skin prickling, without speaking, without thinking. As I got off the bus behind you I saw that you had a limp, a heavy limp. . .You stopped, turned around, looked at me with contempt, noticed my shock, and continued wobbling your way along the dark path between the apartment blocks in the unfamiliar neighborhood.  READ MORE by ordering Absinthe 17.


Learn more about Krassimir Damianov and Bulgarian literature at the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers site.

Absinthe 17 Preview: Theodora Dimova

This is the seventh in a series of posts that will preview the upcoming issue of Absinthe, our 17th, focused on Bulgaria. In this post we present an excerpt from a novel by Theodora Dimova.

From Liya, translated by Francine Giguere


It’s a disgrace! This country is an absolute disgrace! A fresh perversion — made in Bulgaria! A complete depravity of the mind! Yet another humiliation of artists in Bulgaria! Do you understand what that means! Do you understand what they want to force me to do! Intellectual, artist, man of letters — these are nothing but dirty words in Bulgaria! And because some of us still manage to preserve our integrity and not wade up to our necks in excrement, well, they’ve found another way to deal with us: we’ll carve them with a fine chisel, they think, they’re made of thin ice, the better to get at them perfidiously, in depth and from behind! You bastards! You bastards! You bloody bastards! You’ve destroyed us! You want to wipe us out completely, is that it!? You want to crush us?  READ MORE by ordering Absinthe 17.


Learn more about Theodora Dimova and Bulgarian literature at the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers site.

Absinthe 17 Preview: Kristin Dimitrova

(c) Mira Dimova

This is the sixth in a series of posts that will preview the upcoming issue of Absinthe, our 17th, focused on Bulgaria. In this post we present an excerpt from a novel by Kristin Dimitrova.

From Sabazius

I didn’t expect to see him again. I thought he was dead but perhaps that suited me better. The truth is I went to him myself.

He had chosen an old house in downtown Sofia for an office. As I walked to the place and counted the numbers, I already knew which house that might be. When I was a boy, I used to pass by it regularly on my way to my music classes. An old woman with long fingernails was continually standing at the ground-floor window, keeping record of those who crossed the barrier of her gaze. Her presence was so inevitable that for me the house, the woman and the stench that radiated from her window melted in a trinity of body, spirit and soul. In the hot summer days the smell of hair, unwashed for years, and wetted clothes, unchanged since the last time a caring neighbour donated her old rags, mixed with the deep odour of cellar coming from inside the rotten walls. On seeing me, she would catch me with the hooks of her eyes and start jabbering about receptions with ambassadors and stuff like that. She was eager to tell everybody the stories of her wild past and croon moldy tunes. No one really stopped to listen, except maybe me. She somehow paralyzed me. The house was overgrown with ivy, and if at places the falling plaster wasn’t visible, that was because the green leaves crept like a skin disease all over the walls and hung in garlands down the façade. Around the old lady’s window they wound a sort of a lifelong wreath.

The violin lessons lasted until my high-school graduation, so I witnessed the slow disintegration of the old woman. Come to think of it now, I wasn’t quite sure of her age. White locks of hair dangled over her tight skin and everything blended in the common grey background of filth. Her stories gradually fell into pieces which got jumbled up, forming strange new combinations, like centaurs, mermaids or fauns.  READ MORE by ordering Absinthe 17.


Learn more about Kristin Dimitrova and Bulgarian literature at the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers site.

Absinthe 17 Preview: Dimiter Kenarov

This is the fifth in a series of posts that will preview the upcoming issue of Absinthe, our 17th, focused on Bulgaria. In this post we present a poem by Dimiter Kenarov.

The Goat


Milking her, I had to watch out for her dung.
On occasion, lost in some metaphor, I wouldn’t notice
how her anus opened like an eye and beads
of obsidian rolled out from inside: large black tears
in the warm milk. Bitter sugar. At first I was mad
and wanted to punch her in the flank, give her the boot,
because pain is the deepest memory, the most
beastly. Like that time two blokes beat me up in England
and I was bleeding all over and every blow was like a stamp
in the soft wax of my face – a way to remember, to remember,
because there’s so little left otherwise, so little,
and how, while they were beating me, I thought how good
it’d be if I bled more often, if they rolled my face in shit,
so I wouldn’t forget the taste, the stench of life.
Either way, I never punched the goat. Either way
this world overflows with suffering like a clogged toilet
and the air stinks, but no one is paying attention –
one gets used to suffering, when it is daily
like a croissant with a glass of milk. We gulp it down eventually.
And the goat? Would you believe me how,
when I slit her kid’s throat, she didn’t eat for a week
and looked up long at the sky with her feline pupils,
as if that vacant azure could deliver her
from her loss? Then everything went back to its place:
she got the idea that I, who had slaughtered her kid,
was her kid. The imagination of pain is infinite.

Translated by Maria P. Vassileva and the author

(c) Elif Batuman

READ MORE by ordering Absinthe 17.

Read more about Bulgarian literature at the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers site.

Absinthe 17 Preview: Milen Ruskov

This is the fourth in a series of posts that will preview the upcoming issue of Absinthe, our 17th, focused on Bulgaria. In this post we present a brief excerpt from Milen Ruskov's novel Thrown into Nature.

from Thrown into Nature, translated by Angela Rodel

There is hardly anything more natural than hating Nature. Yet people don’t realize this due to their crazy ideas. For example, many think that this world is ruled by the Devil. As some of the ancients put it, the Devil saw the Kingdom of God and tried to make something similar. He is a sorry imitator, by their own admission. Yet not entirely inept, they add, and mighty cruel, too. But all of that is stuff and nonsense. Others reckon that the world is God’s doing. If this is so, then He is not who they think He is but just some moronic mad scientist. All that is stuff and nonsense, too. But if it’s not the one, nor the other, then what is it? — you may ask. That is a stupid question. This is what: the world is simply mad Nature’s work. Which is precisely why it looks the way it does, since it is her work. She is absolutely mad, the incarnation of chaos, a game of blind chance. I feel a deep-seated hatred of Nature. Yes, I do! If there is something I deeply and truly hate, it is Nature. Is there anything more endlessly energetic, more lavishly fertile and at the same time crazier than she? Of course not! If Nature put on a human face and strolled around the streets of Sevilla, she would have long since been locked up as a dangerous maniac, perhaps even burned at the stake by the Inquisition. She would be of the female sex, of course, giving birth to a child every five minutes, laughing and jumping about at the same time, and impregnated without a visible agent, as if by the wind itself. Yes, Nature is absolutely mad!…. READ MORE by ordering Absinthe 17.

Thrown into Nature was published in 2011 by Open Letter Books.




Read more about Milen Ruskov at the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers site.

Absinthe 17 Preview Video

Our assistant editor, Logan, again helps us to introduce the new issue of Absinthe. Absinthe 17 is a our special issue focused on Bulgaria and features great poetry and prose from seventeen Bulgarian writers.

Learn more by watching the preview video below or at YouTube here: