WINE FOR THE DEAD
The first snow started falling down, and the tramp shuffled his feet towards the graveyard. He had been doing the rounds of the dustbins the whole day long without much luck. A street dog tried to trail him, but he shooed it away at once. He had always wondered why the others let the stray dogs hang about with them. They drew attention to themselves that way and made an even worse impression on passers-by. Yes, but when the night comes they curl up beside you and keep you warm, the others replied. Besides, dogs are always on the alert and raise the alarm every time someone comes near your temporary shelter while you sleep.
He made a grimace of loathing at the idea that he should befriend street mongrels and expect help from them. There was a totally different way to warm yourself up. It was called wine, and he usually found it in the graveyard; it was left there for the dead in bottles, quite conveniently, uncorked.
That is why he was heading there this evening, as he usually did. He did his best to remain unseen by guys like him because he kept his “wine cellar” secret. The thought cheered him up, he smiled slightly, his chin hidden inside his tattered overcoat. Even if you have sunk to such a level, you can still show some personality – another thought that lifted his spirits.
He crossed the street under the light of the street lamp. Here the big flakes of heavy snow looked fatter and the cold snatched the eyesight. Involuntarily, he hunched even more as if to keep the warmth inside. He had to hurry because the temperature was falling down markedly, and the wind seemed to grow stronger. It caused a chill that went through his overcoat, the layers of baggy sweaters, and finally through his undershirt. It reached his sickly, pale skin and cut through his flesh to the backbone.
He looked round - there was no one. The streets were deserted, just like the pavements, just like everything else that his eyes could pick out. It was the same in front of him - not a living soul in sight; everyone huddled up somewhere warm; only a lunatic or a wretch like him would roam the city on such an evening. He hurried on. There was a long way to go down to the end of the city, and after that - about one kilometre more, until he reached the graveyard. He stopped only once - at a dust bin, over which someone had conveniently flung a tattered knitted shawl. It was a woman’s shawl judging by its colour, but now, with the winter raging outside, a man like him was beyond such considerations .
He wrapped it around his neck, tightening the collar of his coat. That would certainly do the trick. The warmth of his body stopped evaporating from his thin neck. He even felt quite cosy for a moment, and this, in turn, improved his gait. Observed from a distance, through the thick cords of heavy snow and the murky reflected light, his silhouette strode with the air of a workman speeding to the warmth of his home.
When he neared the graveyard, he made for its far side. On this side was the main entrance, here were the undertakers, sheltered inside a construction wagon which served for their office, as well as their bedroom.They mustn’t see him or else they’d chase him away. He was, however, well aware of the danger, and up to that moment he had never had any problems. It would never occur to them to set out on a midnight walk just for the fun of it. He had only to climb over the fence at some remote place, and then he could stroll around undisturbed.
And he did exactly that. His overcoat caught on something and got even more torn. Worse though, was that his fingers froze when they touched the metal rails of the fence. For a moment his fingers stiffened like wood. “ It seems it’s dropped well below zero now,.” he thought and cut through to the first row of tombstones. He could already taste the sweet warmth of the wine which would run inside his body with his blood and warm him up.
The first graves looked like they had not been visited for a long time. He wandered among the rows, sometimes stepping off the alleys. The gravestones faced him, then fell away behind him; all to no avail. There was no wine.
He stumbled around in vain, the names of the deceased running in front of his eyes in the hundreds.
He stopped, breathless, the steam of his mouth rising from his mouth, frosting his eyebrows. His eyes, damp from the cold, stared ahead, yearning for the dark silhouette of a bottle against the background of white snow and marble. There was no way there wasn’t even one bottle left. Frankly speaking, in most cases the wine put aside for the dead was a bit sourish, but for him quality was not such a big issue. Had he walked all this way in vain?
He shivered inside his overcoat, for the cold was able to get past all those layers of clothing.
He dragged his feet along the alleys. He stumbled a few times. Had things gotten so bad there wasn’t wine for the dead anymore ? Not that there was anybody who cared for him, for that matter; about him who was still among the living….
The wind swirled around and whipped him in the face. He turned his back to it, but the moment before completing the movement he realised that he found what he was looking for. He craned his neck, he squinted at the heavy snowflakes that stuck то his face. There was no mistake. Only two graves away, the silhouette of a bottle stood out clearly against the whiteness.
He rushed towards it. He rushed towards it, while the blizzard whirled around him. He grabbed the bottle, lifted it to his face, and sniffed at it.
His spirits rose at once. Now he had to find a place protected from the wind. The wind made the cold unbearable.
He sat down for a while in the lee of the horizontal marble tombstone, leaned against it and took a long swig of wine. He was not in the mood for looking at the name written on the other side of the platestone, but he silently thanked the deceased.
He must not hang around here long. The cold was extreme, the marble behind his back and the concrete beneath him were sucking the warmth out of him.
He stood up and strode to where the rows of marble slabs ended. Now, around him, there were only fresh piles of dirt covered with snow, wooden crosses sticking out of them, wrapped with black shawls that flapped in the wind. These looked like birds, clawing deep into the crosses, fluttering their wings to withstand the blasts of the blizzard.
He walked past them.
Save for one huge heave heap of junk, before him lay an open flat field; there was no shelter. Weariness pressed down upon him, but he took another sip of wine and felt better. A few meters ahead he spotted a heave pile of dirt and the freshly dug hole at its side waiting to become another grave.
For the time being, this could serve for a shelter.
He did not climb into the hole, he just rolled into it.
He sat at the bottom of the pit, drank from the wine and looked up.
In the black frame above him, icy daggers were chasing each other, the wind was howling, but it was all right down there. The bottle was more than half full; perhaps it would be enough to carry him through the night. The thought struck him that, although he had always been able to find wine without much effort, there might be an end to this, that would have to let mongrels hang around him as he traversed the city, dust bin after dust bin.
Then he relaxed, trying to recall nice memories from the time when he was not forced to endure such a humiliating life.
The wine poured sweet warmth into him, and, sip after sip, the howling of the wind unobtrusively turned into a lulling, hypnotising sound. He gave thanks once more for the wine of the dead and drifted off.
When the undertakers went out to get rid of the empty bottles taken from the graves and harvest new ones, they found the corpse of a tramp.
In a freshly dug grave, he was clutching an empty bottle and was smiling at them with a blue smile.
Translated by Hristo Dimitrov / Edited by Tom Phillips
The Bulgarian text first appeared in ‘Wine for the Dead’, GAIANA book&art studio 2013
