Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

georgi gospodinov

the elementary particles of the past, I was gripped by a gnawing suspicion, which I tried to defang by turning it into a supposedly made-up story. He opened his eyes with the vague sense that he was awakening into another dream. Could his empathy, which has shown no sign of itself over the past twenty years, be reawakening? Outside he could hear the high school marching band, sounding exactly like it did back then, he could have sworn that they were playing the very same instruments he remembered from his school days. He himself had once played the tuba, standing in the back row next to Nasko with the cymbals, Nasko the Candy Nut with the Blubber- Butt, as his full nickname went . Mr. Blubber-But t

was always a split-second late, a hundredth of a beat behind, which was almost inaudible to the ears up on the platform, but which set Comrade Brunekov, the singing teacher, on pins and needles, and all of us in the band registered that alarming pause, that crack in the music. In the end, the cymbal would nevertheless crash and the simultaneous sigh of relief added yet another note to the march. But that was so many years ago... Now the music was again thundering down below, all guns ablaze. In the end, it seemed that he had managed to do what he had been trying to do for years—to bring back part of the past, just a little slice, to enter into it and never leave it again. Your body can’t escape from the

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