a Hemingwayesque
Please, say something.
Tell me what to do, what do you want me to do. Deliver it with the smile that solves everything. The smile I loved you for.
You stare ahead and say, “Have you heard that story about hills being like elephants?”
Heard? I’ve translated it—word by word from your tongue to mine—for the degree that led me to the job that led me to you. But why do you ask? Is it because you’re The American and I’m The Girl? Or because of this miserable pub and the nameless station behind. It could be forty minutes or six hours until the next train to Sofia. This could be where I was born.
I follow your gaze. Numbed by drought, the Ogosta slithers across the belly of the valley. Two rusty bridges stitch up the hills where the river has cut through. The sun is heating the silence between us.
Please, look at me.
You shift in your chair and say, “The hills in Colorado are rolling, green.”
Suddenly I’m furious with your tongue-curled r’s and how once I found them so alluring. Go back home then, where everyone’s so civilised they leave things up in the air. Unspoken. Unborn. We like our hills as they are—heaving under the sun, powdered with dust the colour of flour gone mouldy. Can you hear the crickets? Are there crickets in your green hills, deafening crickets gone crazy for love?
Were you ever crazy for me?
A raspy tune from the radio inside drifts through the open door. Behind the fly-strip curtain, a woman scrubs the tables. I sense the sour breath of the pub, the sticky cement floor. The possibility of that woman being me.
I can’t risk losing you.
My fingers crawl under your palm and curl in there. You like that. Won’t you smile? Instead, you frown and look at the door. Your hand is unyielding, heavier than how I remember it on my breast, on my stomach. Stubble glistens on your chin, your mouth is set. I don’t want to kiss it. I don’t.
Why did I love you?
You lean over and call out as I’ve taught you, “Dve biri, molya!”
I squeeze your fingers and lift your hand up, like a victor. “Bravo! You sound like a true Bulgarian.”
You don’t notice my praise. I already know that about you, how you focus on what you want. On lovemaking, my language, Ogosta. “You can’t buy a whole river,” I said. “Why not?” You didn’t smile, and your pressed lips drew the line I wasn’t allowed to cross. Like now.
The woman brings the sweaty bottles. Cold droplets roll down the brown glass, tracing paths to nowhere. I look at the hills, their curved spines malleable under the hard-blue sky.
“I know the story,” I say. “Hemingway, right?”
“Don’t know. Never read it.” You scratch at a mosquito bite and drink your beer.
Did I ever love you?
Published in Ponder Review, shortlisted in Flash 500 and Brilliant Flash Fiction
Rostislava Pankova-Karadjova 