Height

And it was then I am struck by what you might call a brilliant idea. And I shout to Assen: “Hand over Old Times.” He be quick on the uptake, and immediately guesses that I mean Rakovski’s magazine Bulgarian Old Times – I had the one and only issue in my bag. He rummages and gives it me.  And I open it at the very beginning, where there be a preface, and I point out that place to the Frenchie where it’s written:

“Here’s what a scholar has written in a book:

La philosophie Indienne est tellement vaste, que tous les systems de philososophie s’y rencontrent, qu’elle forme un monde philosophique, et qu’on peut dire a la lettre que l’histoire de la philosophie de l’Inde est un abrege de l’histoire entiere de la philosophie.”

And in other words, like it’s explained underneath:

Indian Philosophy is so vast, that all philosophical approaches meet in it; it represents an entire philosophical world and it can be said that the history of Indian philosophy is precisely a summation of the whole history of philosophy.

E-ey I’m showin’ this to the Frenchie, it’s even written in his own lingo, and it en’t nothin’ terrible, you’ll say, just philosophical stuff, and he’s lookin’ at me like I’m a horse with three legs, or I don’t know what.  I say to ‘im:  “We’ve come for your good don’t you get it? Get it? You nincompoop”

And he just waves and mumbles somethin’  fast –“jwa, mwa” – no idea what – he makes as if to leave and so I hev to grab his lapel.  “Ey,” I shout out to Assen.  “We landed on the stupidest Frenchie in all France.”

But Assen says, “How you think we goin’ to understand each other what with all the differences in the lingo, boy?”

But I hev wiped out all thoughts about this from my noddle. “Here’s what we do” I say. “We’ll knock him on the bonce with this here pistol-but and be finished with all this.  The bloke don’t understand us anyways.”

And all the time the Frenchie’s proddin’ my purse and pointin’ at his jacket and sayin’ somethin’ “Oh mon…” this an that.

Well, I stretch out and I give him a crack on the forehead with the gun-stock, takin’ care not to wound him, and he pull back and scream out somethin’, but he don’t fall, ‘cos I tapped him too weak. I hev to give him another crack, this time harder, and he falls, knocked senseless to the floor like some sack of somethin’. And Assen jumps up over him, looks and cries: “Uncle Gicho! If you en’t damaged the bloke.  I surely hope not”

“He perfectly all right!” I say. “He’s a European bloke.  He’ll soon mend.  There was no other way to make ourselves understood.  Don’t you see  he’ll lie down a little and he’ll get better.”

Not that I was really sure, but what can I say?

Afterwards we pulled off the Frenchie’s jacket, and pin striped trousers, the shirt as well. I saw a cravat and hat hangin’ off a hook and I nabbed them. Finally we took off his shoes. Forget the other stuff. The trousers, after you turned ‘em up a little, fitted me perfect, as though some tailor had measured me up exact, but the shoes were a little big for me and that’s it. The bloke was a bit bigger than us. That’s the way of it because he’s from the German folk. They’re big people, high and mighty, fuck them in their leather boots.

“We need somethin’ to put here,” I say to Assen, “to stuff the heels.”

He lookin’ about, poor boy, but suddenly his face lights up and he says, “Let’s rip the stuff out of these pillows.”

We each take a pillow and start guttin’ it, but afterwards It hit me, so I say “Boy why we doin’ two when one’ll do for us.”  And we leave one to the side and we took the feathers from the other and pushed them in here and there, as needed and so my feet stuck to the shoes  like they’d been poured into them.

Then I ponder a bit, and I leave two gold pieces on the table.  Fuck them, they be two hundred pence .  If it don’t cover all the clothes it must be almost there. Otherwise you’d say he can’t haggle, and if he can’t haggle, where’s he goin’ in this world?  Anyway you hev to bear in mind, these be used clothes, worn.  Two hundred pennies may be too much. Well let it fall on my head, so I get through the Araba-Kokashki pass safe and sound.

Apart from that I carefully fold up my clothes, so I leave them, in case he en’t got nothin’ else to put on, though I doubt a bloke like him wouldn’t hev a spare set of clothes.  But who can tell? Don’t want him wanderin’ the streets in his underpants. I just keep my heavy boots and stockin’s, I might be needin’ them in the mountains, or somewhere else.

Then I look at the Frenchie, as though I hev it in mind to bid him farewell, but he just lyin’ spark out, his mouth open, like he sleepin’ like an innocent baby. But his heart is beatin’, as I check his chest, he’ll be right as rain.

“Ey,” I say, “If there was anythin’, forgive us!”

“If there’s anythin’, there’s nothing,” Assen pipes up.

 

This is an excerpt from ‘Height’ (Vazvisheniya) by Milen Ruskov (Janet 45, 2011)

Milen Ruskov (born 1966) is a Bulgarian writer and translator. His third novel, ‘Height’, won the Hristo G. Danov Award and the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture’s Golden Century Award. His second novel, ‘Thrown into Nature’, won the Bulgarian Novel of the Year Prize in 2008.

Christopher Buxton is a published novelist and translator. He taught in Bulgaria in the 70s and fell in love. He aims to popularise Bulgarian history, literature and culture throughout the English speaking world.