Free The Physics of Sorrow by Translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel Georgi Gospodinov Page B

true, I’m kin to all you all
            The first true bull in our damned house was Zeus; recall
            how he seduced the fair Europa, dam to you
            from Grandpa Zeus I got my bullish form so true .
            His very spit and image, to my curving horns ,
            As Cretans crones in tales so love to wail and mourn .
            A god was he, while I am but a freak; but know
            O Minos, father dear, you wanted bulls like snow
            so white far more than my sweet mother ever hath
            and now you cringe disgusted by your son their calf . . .
            Minos: The court will now break for a recess . . .
            Moooo . . .
            Take away the defendant . . .
            Moooooo . . .
            oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
            oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
            oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

III.
    THE YELLOW HOUSE
    A SYLUM
    A yellow, peeling building, far past the last houses, long and low, with barred windows, the fence girded with barbed wire. An “asylum for the mentally ill,” as they officially called the place, which everyone in that Podunk southeastern town simply called the nuthouse. Rumor had it that the fence was electrified at night and that several people had been fried. I was afraid, yet at the same time it was precisely this fear that drove me to hang around nearby.
    One evening, passing by there, I heard a chilling howl. There was something excessive and inhuman in that howling or bellowing, something from the mazes of the night Ooooooooohhh . . . That endless Oooohh dug tunnels in the silence of the early November evening. It was Sunday. The fallen leaves blanketed the whole street, still emitting a faint scent of rot and acetone, which preceded the corpse of autumn. Only the light above the gate scattered the damp dusk. The nurse had gone home, while the head doctor only came once a week in any case. The porter more or less had to be there, but he was probably dozing drunk in the doctor’s office. In this case, that saved the howler, who would otherwise undergo the traditional ice-cold shower under the garden hose. It was said that they sprayed them with water directly in their rooms (“cells” is the more precise term) through the bars of the window, as a natural curativeprocedure for cooling down demons. The head doctor had long since made peace with the fact that he would end his career here in this Podunk town. And he didn’t worry about any inspections or sanctions, just as a man who finds himself in hell is freed from the fear that something worse could befall him.
    I walked around the yellow house on that Sunday evening, the gloomy corridors of that howl sucking me in ever deeper. I was afraid to enter it, whatever was inside was not fit for the human eye and ear. But my body continued to move mechanically in a circle, I sensed that I was beginning to slip away from myself. Just a bit more and I’ll enter the corridors of the scream, I’ll crawl along the furrows, I’ll embed myself in the body of the screamer.
    Just then a hand grabs me firmly by the shoulder; startled, I return to myself like a snail withdrawing into its shell. My father.
    Neither of us can hide our surprise at seeing the other in this place. Neither of us has any business being here. And neither of us asks the other what brings him here at this hour. We turn toward the city without a word and sink into the November evening, far from that cry.
    I knew that I would never again free myself from the tunnel of that Oooooooohhh. The howl would pursue me throughout the years with varying degrees of doggedness. Appearing and dying away in unexpected situations. Sometimes it would quiet down, I would lose it in my happiest moments, in joyful gatherings with people amid their deafening chatter . . . But in the next moment of silence it