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the archive(s):
issue no. 4:
Bad Brandy / Zdravka Evtimova
It was only natural that her husband had to look for some job in Spain or Italy so one day he, together with dozens of men like him, dressed in denim pants and thick cheap padded coats, boarded a very cheap buss to Madrid. Although Zina quarreled with him in the evening, in the morning she gave him a little money before he left; she lied to him and said it was the last she had and spoke about the debts he had left her. She had to live through days which were darker than the bus he had boarded; her life took her to the gloomy room which she pompously called "my office". She was a ticket collector.
She had eagerly expected the minute she'd remain by herself. She was going to have the time of her life; she'd be free from his sour face and his constant grumbling.
Her sons, too, should beat it and look for jobs somewhere in Spain. They were like him: blabbermouths who never found a good enough pace for themselves. Both were constantly broke and made their best to wheedle a lev (40¢) or two out her. She hid her money so they grubbed around the house and delved in her old clothes, but most naturally found nothing. She kept her money at the office in her desk drawer. There she kept the banknotes stuck in old notebooks. When her sons' big backs sunk into the cheap bus, bound for Cordoba, she heaved a sigh of relief.
It was wonderful at home during the first week alone: the silence and the TV set took turns to entertain her and she could not get enough of it. Then suddenly evenings and the wind began to annoy her. Actually, nothing was better excluding the fact her sons and her husband had left.
She should ask somebody in for a chat, she thought; she didn't care who that person would be. After a week of neatness she had enough of her TV set. She bought a bottle of wine and drank half of it. Zina was a strong woman unlike the irresolute gasbag, her husband. She went to her neighbor who lived in Entrance C of their block of flats.
She had not seen him for ages, but disliked him all the same: he and her husband would be out boozing in the cheap pub hours on end. The man made you think of the fence of a deserted house: heavy, battered, rickety. In the evenings, Zina saw him leave the pub staggering on the way to his apartment, some stray dogs trailing behind his back.
Stoyan, that was how the man was called, looked very surprised when she saw Zina at the door of his home. She stood there, disgusted with his baggy pants.
"What do you want?" Stoyan asked. He didn't care he should hitch up his pants: the brown saggy skin of his belly glistened like a muddy puddle in the dim light. She hated the thought of entering his flat. Neither did she want to go back home and stare at the TV or at her sons' photographs. Even from their photographs on the wall they wanted money from her.
"My husband asked me to take care of you while he's in Spain," she lied.
"What?" If he had finished with only "what" she could have lived through it, but the man swore and Zina hated dirty words.
"I've cooked some potato soup."
"I don't want your potato soup," Stoyan reached out a hand to slam the door in her face.
When Zina thought of "men" she meant her own husband. She was convinced all men were as identical as the blotches on the windowpanes in her living room. She could handle them.
"I've got good plumb brandy," she said. She had no good brandy at all; there was half of bottle of swill her husband had failed to drink because she had hidden it in the box with a pair of old shoes. She would have hidden the whole house from her husband if she had the chance.
"You are lying about the brandy," Stoyan said as he pushed her to the door, a hesitant stream of hope oozing out of his voice.
"It won't hurt you to come and check how it tastes," she said.
Zina descended the stairs. She was right: he was scuffing his heels behind her, his slippers slow and unenthusiastic. She did not like men in slippers. Zina wondered where she would bring him: not in her sitting room. His smell could kill her flowers. The kitchen, yes, she'd take him to the kitchen.
She took out two old tumblers that she had tucked away in the closet. Stoyan didn't deserve a decent glass.
"Why are the glasses so small? I am not ill," the man said flopping down on her couch. She had washed the bedcover a week ago, and the greasy stains on his pants made her sick. "Give me that one," he added, his forefinger pointing at the only glass on the table, the one from which she had drunk milk in the morning.
Unwillingly, she gave him the glass and produced the bottle of brandy. In fact it was a not a bottle, but a demijohn, its plastic cover long gone. Stoyan stretched across the table for it.
"Wait!" she stopped him her tone of voice exactly like the one she used as she talked to her husband. Stoyan rose from the couch, his pants slipping down the brown pool of his naked skin. She was afraid he might beat it so she hurriedly poured some brandy into his glass. Stoyan snatched at it.
"Give me an appetizer," he said. "You had me fooled about the brandy. It's rotten."
"I don't have any appetizer," Zina answered. She calculated that if he went on boozing like that she'd soon have to face the dry bottom of the demijohn. She was mad at herself: she had to hide part of the brandy in advance.
"Give me bread then," he said stretching his legs. Before she could cut a slice of bread for him, Stoyan grabbed at the loaf, tore a big chunk of it and gobbled it down. She stiffened hardly able to conceal her disgust, then tore a little piece of bread and chewed at it slowly, deliberating. She had some cheese in her fridge, of course, but no, no cheese for him. Anyway, she could produce some appetizer after all. She opened the fridge and took out a jar of small green peppers that were so hot they could kill half the town. She took one pepper out of the jar and nibbled at it. Stoyan caught hold of the knife, tried to stick it into a pepper, failed, and thrust thumb and forefinger into the jar. She poured another glass of brandy for him a stingy, half full one. The man, however, took the demijohn, filled his glass and gulped it down, watching her closely. After awhile, he bit off another chunk from the loaf, tried to chew it, but choked on it.
Zina made up her mind it was about time: she wouldn't let him drink all her brandy. She reached out her hand and touched the place where a patch of his brown skin gleamed: hard skin, pierced by a wiry black hairs.
"What the hell are you doing?" the man snarled, but she paid no attention to him. Here and there, the elastic of his pants hung loose, torn from the cloth. Zina would not let her husband put on such lousy pants. Not upon her life. A thought crossed her mind; she had already squandered so much brandy. That sobered her.
"I fell for you years ago," she told the man. Her lie seemed barefaced and made her uneasy. She took the glass from Stoyan and poured the rest of the dreggy brandy into her mouth. It tasted horrible. His skin, like sand paper under her fingers, felt itchy but there was no going back. She filled another glass for him. Actually, Zina did not let him have the booze to himself. She was more clever than that. "Your pants. . .take them off," she said.
He gaped at her, spilling some of his brandy on the floor.
"I. . . I am friends with your husband. . ." Stoyan mumbled.
"I don't mind that," Zina said.
It was pleasant, quite as nice as with her husband.
"Slow down," she said, entirely forgetting about his belt with the rusty buckle she disliked. It felt good, yet she had the feeling that there as so much dust in the cracks of his skin that if she threw some seeds of a weed, the weed would strike roots right there in his hands. The man muttered a word, but Zina paid no attention.
"You'll be all right," she said, calculating it was about time she poured more brandy for him.
"You are g. . . g. . .great. . ." Stoyan breathed.
She couldn't care less how great she was.
"Don't breathe in my face," she said.
The man, big, his skin hard, tried to sit up. She stopped him and looked him in the face.
"My husband is your friend, isn't he?"
"Well..." he started.
"He's your friend I'll take care of you while he's away," Zina said. "Come to me tomorrow at 7 PM."
"But. . ."
She hated men who said "but."
"Maybe we shouldn't. . ." he stammered.
"Bring some food," she said as she rummaged in the pocket of her dressing gown. When her husband was at home she used to put a list of groceries that he had to buy from the supermarket. She had prepared a similar list earlier in the day.
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