NO-LOVE

Kamelia Milenkova

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And my eyes, like those of the whole village, captured them like that for ever: he and she always returning together in the evening, after the end of the shift. He walks her home and then continues to his own, two houses down the same street. She - a widow with two daughters and lots of debts. He - a widower with two sons and lots of moonshine in the basement. After dinner, as soon as the kids go to sleep, he is waiting for her and they go on the path to the river. Gone for no more than an hour. Then he walks her back and at her door embraces her at the waist.

That was what we saw. And that was why we were asking ourselves: why he does not take her home? Let them get together - their love needs a hearth...

But we were not seeing his hand dropping ten bucks in her pocket - money, she was giving to her children. And how, disgusted from the little walk to the river, she was falling asleep next to them.

© Kamelia Milenkova
© Vesselin Vesselinov, Craig Hasbrouck - translated from bulgarian
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© E-magazine LiterNet, 01.09.2015, № 9 (190)