Nov 132013
 

Everything Happens Cover

“Night Vigils” comes in the middle of Albena Stambolova’s new novel, Everything Happens as It Does (Open Letter Books). This chapter is a sample of Stambolova’s idea-rich and scintillating prose. The reader doesn’t need to know much context to make this chapter complete, save that Margarita and her father have not seen a lot of each other lately, and, for the most part, she is a rather odd young woman. I think my favorite aspect of this chapter is the way Stambolova can write about such commonplace scenarios and make them sound surprising and intimate (perhaps even intrusive). Through the eyes of Margarita, Stambolova manages to convey the authentic nature of experience as a surprising and unsettling encounter with otherness.

— Jacob Glover (see NC’s review of the novel here)

25.

Night Vigils

Margarita tiptoed between tangled legs and arms, tilted lamps, overturned glasses and all kinds of remnants from hours of sitting, smoking, talking and listening to music. She saw a couple kissing, their lips sunk into each other with such riveting force that she could not take her eyes off them. Worn-out desperate things had a strange effect on her. A threadbare blanket, for example, or this hopeless kiss, beautiful like a dead rose’s petals dripping with their scent of hysteria. She decided to walk around them, bumped into a sleeping body and the solid surface of an armchair, finally reached an emptier space with enough room for both her feet and managed to steady her step. Where could she have left her coat, her oversized, long black coat and her gigantic bag? They must be here somewhere. The figure of a man holding a candle appeared out of nowhere. Nothing ever happened the way one anticipated it. Come to think of it, even tonight, earlier in the evening, she had tried to explain that she didn’t have the time, but it turned out that she did have the time, she had lots of time. And what birthday were they talking about, no one had a birthday. At least she couldn’t see anyone who had a birthday.

For the first hour or so, it had been only the three of them—the boy who had brought her and who seemed to know her very well, and the girl she had assumed was the hostess, as she had changed into different clothes at least twice. They had all been sitting around a low coffee table when the girl had stood up and walked away, and just when they had almost forgotten about her, she reappeared wearing something like a transparent nightgown over her naked body. She looked beautiful in the dim light. Then more people came and Margarita lost sight of the girl, only to see her later in a different outfit, which made her doubt for a moment that it was the same person.

Now she was looking for her coat and her bag, and she was starving. Finally she stepped into a room with piles of coats thrown on a bed, and she buried her hands to search for hers. She recognized it by the touch of her fingers, like a blind person, and pulled it out, overcoming the resistance of the soft mass of clothes around it. Her bag was on the floor and she almost tripped over it. She flung it on her shoulder, continuing to tread carefully toward the exit.

Once outside, she could see only machines; there were people, but the people were all inside machines—trams, buses, and cars. She didn’t feel like going home, and decided instead to visit her father. The trams’ jangle and dazzling threaded lights did not seem inviting, so she headed there on foot, her heavy bag on her shoulder.

Walking gave her the satisfaction of work well done. Work that was pleasant and amusing, squeak-squeak-squeaking feet on the snow. Gliding, slaloming between the parked cars, stopping at traffic lights, standing upright like a soldier.

At night the city looked like a picture. Spaces look indistinct, the houses are surprising. At night the city lets you be; it lets you in, in all of its places, which, you then realize, belong to the city and not to you, a passerby. If you are brave enough, it will let you in even deeper, to places invisible in daylight no matter how hard you look for them. Night people in the city know this, they belong to the city, and that’s why they are scary and others are frightened by them.

Margarita was not thinking about these things. She never thought about anything at all. Thinking for her was like floating down a babbling stream, gently propelled by the drift of her unusual perceptions, until someone broke the spell by speaking or asking for something. No one had ever heard Margarita herself ask for anything. If she happened to feel like “asking,” what other people would call “asking,” she just let her feet take her to a place where whatever she needed simply happened to her. If she ever felt scared by something, she would run away and no one could stop her. She had thus gone through a number of schools, special schools and ordinary ones, she had started many classes and abandoned many, until one day Maria decided that she deserved some peace. Margarita read books, children’s stories and other books, she went out with people, to the cinema or elsewhere, but how far her knowledge of things extended was a mystery. She did not seem depressed about not fitting into a normal category, and the doctor, Mr. T., whom she was seeing about once a month, had himself come to a standstill in observing her perpetual state. Valentin would sometimes drag her with him for weekends or holidays with friends, and Margarita would blend in, in her own dazed way. At the same time, she never forgot faces or people in general. Her memory, free as it was from all other things, recorded words, faces, situations—gathering an endlessly abundant material that would make quite a few film directors happy.

Now she strolled about the city and registered no signs of danger. Every once in a while she felt the weight of her bag and moved it to her other shoulder. What was in that bag, only she knew, whatever to know meant for Margarita.

The window of her father’s apartment gleamed like a beacon. He answered the door almost immediately, dumbfounded to see her. So much so, that for a moment he did not invite her to come in, but let the smell of something burning reach her nose in wafts through the open door.

Are you alright?

Margarita smiled at him happily and he stepped back. He knew that she perceived things differently, but all the same he felt uncomfortable that she could see the remains of his lonely midnight dinner in the black frying pan. He chased away the thought of Maria’s ability to prepare something tasty out of anything, her oven turning out unbelievable dishes as if by itself.

Margarita looked at the piano, but her father waved his hand—not now, people are sleeping.

I’m hungry, dad.

Straight away he put a plate and some bread on the table, poured her a soda drink and took a salad out of the fridge. Margarita began to chew heartily, while her father wondered how he could possibly tell her that he was worried about her.

He asked about Valentin, but quickly hit some barrier and concluded that he needed to find out what was happening at his wife’s house.

Margarita finished eating, suddenly looking sad. He shouldn’t have spoken to her about Valentin. He took a sip of his beer and asked her about the baby. Margarita’s reaction was calmer, her mother and the baby were fine. And dear Boris? She hadn’t seen him for a while.

Her father felt anxious, the way he did every time he received news from Maria’s house. Margarita stirred from her seat like a restless bird before a storm. She wanted to go to bed and her father drove her home. He kissed her goodnight, lightly, as if this was something he did every night.

When she climbed into her enormous boat of a bed, her grandmother’s lamp was still lit. She couldn’t tell if there was anyone in the house.

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StambolovaExcerpted from Everything Happens as it Does by Albena Stambolova

Trans. Olga Nikolova from Bulgarian

Pubished by permission of Open Letter Books

Nov 122013
 

Stambolova

Everything_Happens_as_It_Does

 

Everything Happens As It Does
Albena Stambolova
Translated by Olga Nikolova from Bulgarian
Open Letter Books
120 Pages, $10.16
ISBN 978-1934824849

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Everything Happens As It Does by Albena Stambolova is a 120-page novel broken into 54 short, individually-titled chapters. The title of the novel comes from a quotation from Wittgenstein that Stambolova uses as an epigraph: “All propositions are of equal value. The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does: in it no value exists—and if it did exist, it would have no value” (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.41). Though the novel is not simply an exploration of this utterly Wittgensteinian sentiment, we ought to take note of this idea as we dive into this rich and intellectually dense world Stambolova has created.

In a way, Stambolova invites us to begin her novel by not ascribing value to anything, or by ascribing equal value to everything. She suggests: “This story considers itself the story of everyone… It is simply the story of women and men who are mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, loved ones and friends… or, in a nutshell, of people who are tigers and lions, oranges and lemons. This story is neither funny, nor sad. It is simply a story that takes place somewhere on the border between the world we know and the world we are no longer very sure about”

Most importantly, this novel is a story. Structurally speaking Stambolova has no less than eight major characters from whose perspective we get a glimpse of the world. Or, put differently: she presents us with eight different worlds contained by individual, yet occasionally overlapping, perspectives. The story of the novel seems to exist somewhere in the midst of these eight characters. In a way, the meat of this story or narrative comes out of the concatenated life-worlds Stambolova presents us with. I’m tempted to use the word weave here, but really the suggestion that Stambolova “wove X with Y” detracts from the real artistry of her play with presence. She is presenting us with these lives, which happen, as any two or three lives will do, to be mingled, mixed, or articulated together. The narrative begotten out of this articulation renders but a snapshot of these lives proper, yet it is only within the articulated whole that we find our story.

Now: What story? We begin and end with Boris, but Boris is by no means the main character or the protagonist. He is a strange child with a predilection toward what smacks of existentialism but often comes out as boredom. We stay with Boris until he is a young adult just delving into the world of computers. Then, Stambolova switches gears and introduces Philip, Maria and their twins Margarita and Valentin. We get a glimpse of this family for a few chapters until Philip leaves, and Valentin begins to date Raya and gets her pregnant. Then Valentin gets himself kicked out of Raya’s house. He goes back to his mother Maria’s home only to find Boris there and Maria pregnant with Boris’ baby. It turns out that Maria is getting divorced—from Philip. The lawyer is named Mr. V., and we now begin to follow his life and meet his family. Fanny is his wife’s daughter, but not necessarily his daughter.

By the time we meet Mr. V’s family, all of the characters have been introduced. What follows is a series of descriptions of the same Christmas Eve from different perspectives (all third-person limited). It is possible to say this series of descriptions constitute the climax of the narrative, however it would be a slippery argument because it is only in retrospect that this appellation would make sense. We get a description of three or four or five even Christmas Eves—depending on how you count them. Fanny, Valentin, and Margarita are all together, but Mr. V joins them. Boris is unaccounted for. Philip is depressed and drinking. Maria and her baby are driving to Boris’ parents’ home in the country. And Mrs. V is home alone waiting for Mr. V. These Christmas Eve scenes are quite beautiful and, I think, set out important ideas in the novel. They are about human interaction and the way we live together.

Fanny’s kitchen was busting with life. The spell was lifted from the appliances, pots and pans chittered on the hot stove, cabbage was being chopped on thick wooden boards and sprinkled with paprika, platters were being arranged with pickles and dips, glasses were being passed hand to hand, drinks were being poured generously. All guests, feeling truly welcome, had an air of devotion, regardless if their work was contributing to the common good.

After Christmas Eve, there is a lull of sorts, but we are aware that something has happened to Maria. Christmas morning she walks into the woods in the deep snow, but we are not sure if she makes it back. By New Year’s Eve forces have assembled, and it is confirmed within a couple of days that Maria is dead. This death which just barely happens on-screen is the climactic point of the novel.

The rest of the novel seems to resolve in some way after Maria dies, but it is important that we notice how much of the resolution is not directly related to Maria dying. Valentin, Fanny, Mr. V and Mrs. V, Philip, and Boris all in some way have a resolution prior to the discovery of Maria’s death. But in the chapter Philip tells Valentin that Maria is dead, we get this exquisite passage:

While [Maria] was still with them, her absence, which kept everyone at a distance and made her different, used to scare them.

Now, when she was no longer with them, they had to somehow domesticate her absence. Now the three of them had to make it — Maria’s life.

And maybe there were other lives to make, too.

So Valentin and Margarita and the baby have to learn to live without the oddness of Maria, which somehow grounded their worlds for them. Stambolova plays with this Derridean idea of presence and absence more than just in relation to Maria’s death. And it seems telling that Maria is often emotionally inaccessible, yet she remains defined fully in her presence or in her absence. There is a sense in which Stambolova’s novel is an experiment in presence vs. cognition/conceptualization. Even objects remain mysterious and enigmatic, e.g. Boris’ tapes, Margarita’s bag, even the baby.

Maria is somehow central, but she is also the character we know least. One is tempted to compare Maria to God. Possibly this is ingenuous or reductive or both, but Maria is intentionally complex, and her similarities to the divine are narratologically relevant. And this characterization of the divine Maria over-flows with a beautiful sort of mystico-biblical reference.

It was impossible to say “no” to this voice, which was now calling to him [Philip] from the receiver. Why him, and not someone else, he never understood. Here I am, Lord.

We first meet Maria on the day of Boris’ christening, though we don’t really know it’s her til later. Boris walks into the chapel as a young boy and sees “a tiny woman in black, whose eyes he was to meet again years later.” This is a fascinating moment for us as readers because it is explicit foreshadowing. But of what? Maria’s eyes, her gaze, become a motif throughout the novel. Boris doesn’t encounter Maria in the chapel as a person but as her awareness of him; he encounters her only as her gaze upon him. This image comes up again later when we read Philip’s first encounter with Maria:

Philip met Maria at a friend’s house. Although he never liked to admit it, he failed to notice her at first. She had been sitting in some part of the room, watching him. He had felt her gaze, though without being able to identify where it came from.

Maria’s name, of course, echoes both the mother of Jesus and the temptress-turned-apostle Mary Magdalene. And, in the language of the novel, she seems to conceive the twins immaculately: “She became pregnant almost by magic.” Her very presence seems to explode experience and stop time.

But [Philip] could remember situations in which her presence or her voice obliterated everything else.

And:

[Philip] proposed to her almost immediately, not knowing what he was doing. He knew only that he could not have done otherwise. [Maria] nodded, as if she had foreseen long ago that this was bound to happen.

And yet again:

The woman, having emerged from the numbing cold, sleeping baby in her arms, simply sat next to [Mr. V] as if her place had always been there. [Maria’s] presence, impossible to reference or classify, transfixed him.

Maria resists worldly definition because her presence is only determined in her absence. That is, only after Maria dies do we clearly see just how she wove meaning and cohesiveness into the stories of the other characters. In the chapter of Maria’s death, the only chapter from her perspective (again, third person limited), we get this revealing line: “Maria was not thinking about it, she was watching it. She was watching the world, and it was watching her.” Maria represents a way of relating to the world that neither assigns value nor conceptualizes (thinks), a way perceiving that simply happens without the distinction of subject and object (and thus, in the discourse of religion, is an analogue of the divine).

Everything Happens as It Does is a novel which operates under the maxim: “The world allows descriptions. And resists thought.” We should remember that in this world of happenings, we are part of that happening; we occur alongside every other occurrence; and our value and significance only comes out of these happy moments when on Christmas Eve, for example, we happen to be happening together.

 —Jacob Glover

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Jacob Glover

Jacob Glover is a pursuing an MA in Classics at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

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