Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

the physics of sorrow

I’m standing there, and my grandfather is standing there, the two of us in one body. Whoosh, a hand grabs the cap off my head. I’ve reached the sorcerer ’s little table. Easy now, I’m not going to cry, I know very well what will happen. Now there’s the sorcerer’s finger coming out the other side of the cloth, man oh man, what a hole. The crowd around me roars with laughter. Someone smacks my bare neck so hard that tears spring into my eyes. I wait, but the sorcerer seems to have forgotten how the rest of the story goes, he sets my torn cap aside, brings his hand to my lips, pinches his fingers and turns them and, horror of horrors, my mouth is locked. I can’t open it. I’ve gone mute, the crowd around me is now roaring

with laughter. I try to shout something, but all that can be heard is a mooing from somewhere in my throat. Mmmmm. Mmmmm. Harry Stoev has come to the fair, Harry Stoev has come back from America... A husky man in a city-slicker suit rends the crowd, which whispers respectfully and greets him. Harry Stoev—the new Dan Kolov, the Bulgarian dream. His legs are worth a million U.S. dollars, someone behind me says. He puts ’em in a chokehold with his legs, they can’t move a muscle. Well, that ’s why they call it his death grip, whispers another. I c lear l y imagine the strangled wrestlers, tossed down on the mat one next to the other, and start feeling the shortage of air, as if I’ve

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