The Girl from Malesh

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The Girl from Malesh

I even told them there. I don’t remember, I said. Would you be able to recognize him? No, I wouldn’t. Then that’s too bad, go away, they said to me. We made a report. Just in case, they said… Why don’t you take it, eat it, eat, please.
And you, why don’t you eat?
Leave me alone. I just want to look at you. If only there were somebody to come to me… It was dark, how could I recognize him? And besides, he disappeared quickly.
He didn’t tell you anything? He didn’t say anything tender to you?
Oh, come on. Something tender! I just saw his shadow as he was leaving…
The girl started crying. She covered her ugly face with her tears and moaned. Here, she said then, I’m burning inside. She caught hold of my arm and wouldn’t let me go. The pupils of her eyes dilated from the fear of being left alone now, when she had most hoped that she could talk as much as she wanted. But now, heaven help us, nobody could stop her.
Anna, you should come, you should come sometimes, she says… I’m like that when I’m alone, I cry sometimes… It smells of mold, here it’s not something you can clear away, mold is mold, it stinks… Thank God you’re here… Eat, if only for my sake… My father died, didn’t you know? I bathed him alone with my own two hands as if he were just born and I put him in the grave…
She wipes her tears and sniffles. She has become very ugly, uglier than she used to be. Only you, she says to me, were good to me. And your father was a good man, your mother was… Then she stops talking.
I see her in front of me, she sniffles and shudders. In a way she still looks as she did several years ago, and in a way she doesn’t. I remember when she came to our home for the first time. She sits in one corner of the kitchen, she doesn’t show that she’s tired; she’s quiet and she looks at her bowed legs. Sometimes she dares not actually to look at us, but just to look away secretly to the extent that she can see part of the floor and our feet swinging under the kitchen table. She was clutching a small bundle in her lap. Empty, we saw later – there was nothing in it. It was a piece of cloth she carried with her from the mountains to the town, maybe instead of a bag, or something similar in her imagination.
At one time we tried to free ourselves from the helplessness which had come over us and which had been transferred to us from the girl. My mother tried hard to start a conversation with the girl. She asked her whether she had any family, a mother and a father, a brother and a sister, whether she knew how to do housework. She, our future help in the house, just kept quiet. At one moment my mother got up, she was slightly angry, she said she was going to make some coffee. Then I saw the girl shrink and bristle like a small animal ready to defend itself against attack. We all saw that. My mother had rather delicate nerves, she couldn’t control herself. She began to make a noise with the dishes and to arrange cups on the table.
The girl’s body was wrapped in a cheap dress that didn’t cover her knees, and her feet had been put into rubber shoes. Her face, like everything else, was ugly. It was exhausted, but not pale. Her lower jaw was small and drawn in, and her upper teeth fell onto her lower cracked lip like a rake. My mother used to say later: she looks like a little boar.
Suddenly the girl moved slightly on the chair and sniffed. We all looked at each other and, honestly, that cheered us up. This was the first sign of freedom our future help showed. I offered her some coffee. We looked to see if she would warm up and start moving. But she refused. She made a little noise between her teeth, which meant she didn’t want any. My mother let out a sigh. Then she took the girl with her to show her where she was going to sleep, how to turn the tap on and off, how to pull the chain in the lavatory… when the help got up, we saw that her right leg was crooked. Her foot was turned out at the joint under the ankle, and when she walked it was flung right out to the right. I ought to say, too, that then we noticed that the girl was also a little hunchbacked. Several days passed, but we never heard her talk.
And now I look at her, and she can’t stop talking. Such an extreme, such torture. She has a thin line of froth on her lips, she wipes it away constantly, but it appears again. The mold from this cellar has also spread to her face, and it has become even moldier and even grayer.
Stay, dear Anna, the girl says to me, stay, she says to me, let me kiss you. She leans toward me and I get goose bumps; it seemed to me that her damnation, all her misfortune, will stick to me and my face like a contagious disease. I want to move away, but I already feel her dry lips on me like embers. Is it true, she says to me then, that you’re going to buy me a present…? So, she says, let all my enemies know what a friend I have… You’re going to stay, aren’t you? Please, stay… What magpie can live without a tail, and what woman without a man! That’s what they say, and I’m without a tail… Slavka has one, she got married, now she avoids me like the plague. You remember – what made her better than me? She was also a maid and ugly. But, no, the girl says, I don’t marry, that is my fate. Oh, it’s burning me up. Touch me here, it burns and pricks…
I remember, one morning we had all gathered for breakfast, and the girl stands bent over in a corner of the kitchen. My father, who had been away during those first days when the girl came, met her for the first time that morning. He didn’t know about her quiet temperament. He was a lively man, or, to be exact, other people knew him as such, while my mother accused him of inconstancy and tyranny. Now my father turned to the girl and said to her: Where do you come from, girl, he says.
From Malesh, she answered quickly.
How surprised we were then! We felt joy and relief as if after a victory long fought for. She said the words clearly and loudly, but rather quickly, as if she had been preparing this answer for a long time. We admired my father. This came as a confirmation of his reputation for knowing how to win people over. While we were all in a state of excitement, my father remained impassive. He addressed her again: Is this the first town you’ve been to? – he asks her.
The girl didn’t answer. That would be too much after all. She lifted one of her legs and rubbed the other one under the knee with the top of her rubber shoe. Is this the first time you’ve been in town? My father didn’t give up. Not from obstinacy, but simply because he wanted to talk to her. I’ve been to Palanka, the girl said, and I saw several dark red lines deepening on her face. We had nothing more to expect of her, our joy was complete. We had breakfast as usual, because "the conversation" was flowing. So, she had been in Palanka at some time, but why that particular little town far from the mountains where she had lived up to then? That we couldn’t make out.

AuthorDimitar Baševski
2018-08-21T17:23:59+00:00 February 1st, 1999|Categories: Prose, Literature, Blesok no. 07|0 Comments