THE GREAT POWERS

Krassimira Zafirova

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Her fingers looked swollen, but they were not. Just ordinary fingers, perhaps a bit larger than those of Anna Komnin, but clearly able to hold tight any scepter.

Gina didn't think of her fingers, nor about the pouring rain, biting the earth as if trying to extract from it the secrets of the survival skills of the grass. Nor did Gina think of Professor Baevska, wearing her authority like the armored door of shabby apartment, containing only a single armchair in the style of 'Lonesome'. Gina happened to be present at this round table, dedicated to the unification of Slavdom, in the menial role of a waiter. Since the menu consisted of only coffee and water, Gina felt completely free. The scholarly debates went for four hours and all that time Gina was just comfortably sitting on a brownish chair at the end of the hall, near to the decorative mural of a bouquet of yellow poppies, a symbol of unity perhaps. Naturally, Gina did not pay more attention to the art then she paid to the discussions - she had other problems to think of: to find a way to help her daughter, in arrears with her mortgage payments; to go and talk to her son's teacher of Physics - the boy was not doing well at all.

Professor Baevska was laying down the fatal changes of 15th Century, giving birth to a whole plethora of injustices, eventually dividing the world between the Great Powers.

Gina was not one of those wasting time on mere speculations and empty talk. The world, good or bad, was a fact and for a long time too, so it was entirely unnecessary, even plain stupid, to look for possible causes and imagine some other world. It was very, very simple: one had to make regular mortgage payments and talk to the teachers of her kids.

At the end of the session, Gina couldn't even comprehend why the 15th Century was so scary: she imagined it as no more than part of her youth, a slippery part, which only ran down between her fingers. Those fingers, appeared to be swollen, but were not, in fact: fingers so strong, they could hold any scepter firmly.

© Krassimira Zafirova
© Vesselin Vesselinov, Craig Hasbrouck - translated from bulgarian
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© E-magazine LiterNet, 01.09.2017, № 9 (214)