MOTHERS, an excerpt from a novel

ANDREA

She watched her descend the staircase, as though in slow motion, with her second-hand white clothes, she wouldn’t accept the clothes Pavel bought her—because Pavel doesn’t give me money to buy my own but comes with me to the shops—the second-hand white clothes she couldn’t even be bothered to wash, so it exuded the distinctive smell of poverty, of misery, of foreignness, of destitution, of the superiority of those who gave away their clothes, of the superiority of Europe’s rich, the clothes’ heavenly scent, their luxury fabrics, their perfumed self-confidence; her clothes were white with some sort of logo stamped on the front of the T-shirt, a bit like the hippie symbol from a million years ago, the same symbol she had marched behind and perhaps mistaken for the one on the T-shirt, it’s probably why she’d bought this T-shirt in the first place and paid all of two lev for it, because she’d mistaken the blurry print for the hippie symbol. But if Andrea were to call her out on it: you thought it was the hippie symbol, didn’t you, that’s why you bought this T-shirt? Nonsense! Christina would have retorted, goggling at her with her big blue eyes and the even bigger bags under them, don’t be silly, Christina would’ve carried on, how could you possibly know the hippie symbol, you fourteen-year-old squirt, what do you know about hippies, I know all about them, Mum, Andrea was going to respond, I know everything, their sloppy clothes, their crappy jumpers, how you didn’t even have jeans, just the school uniform they made you wear, how they sheared you all at the school entrance like a herd of sheep, I know about your secret smoking parties, the Stolichnaya vodka, which I cannot fathom how you could even drink, the places they let you go until eleven o’clock, how T-shirts didn’t even exist, no vinyl records—you called them platters in those days. Platters, Christina exclaimed, that’s it, Mum, platters, I know you’d say: ‘I got the latest Bad Company platter’ for example, how the hell do you know about ‘Bad Company’? I do, Mummy, I know from talking to Dad about it, from hearing it from your friends, when people come round or when we go somewhere, after a certain point in the evening, that’s all you talk about, Mum—platters, secret parties, uniforms, communism—Mum, please don’t go out. Why? Christina asked, staring into space, in one of those scary lulls during which Andrea couldn’t answer, she felt that her mother had died during those few frozen seconds, she never knew if she would move again, why shouldn’t I go out tonight? Christina asked again, startled, as if nothing had happened, I’m just going for a walk, she said with a puzzled look, I’m just going to stroll around the night streets, you know that, I know, Mum, Andrea responded, and I’ll follow you and hide and I’ll be terrified of the night streets you’re walking in, I’ll go down with you to the subways, slink behind you in the parks, lurk, track, turn my back to you in the 24-hour shops so you can walk past without even suspecting I’m there, I’ll watch you sneak a glance and put a bottle of vodka in your pocket, then look again, so frightened so small so tiny, blue-eyed huge bags under your eyes, I’ll be worried sick they might catch you, I’ll watch you sit on a bench, take a sip, light the first cigarette, all those weirdos walking past you and you offering to share your bottle, some of them will sit next to you, stoned, drunk and you’ll drink together, then I’ll get tired of hiding in the dark in the bushes behind a tree, I’ll get tired of tracking you, I’ll start hating you, I’ll start hating you so much my stomach will begin to hurt and I’ll fight back tears, I’ll manage to stifle a scream so it won’t pierce the silence, the night, I’ll only be a few meters away from you and your dubious companions, why, why, when God gave other children mothers did He give me this wreck, this wastrel whose soul is afflicted with an incurable disease, why can’t this loser manage the blight on her soul, when all the other mothers do, why does she pour so much alcohol down her throat, what is she missing, what does she want, she has me and Dad, her work, isn’t that enough, what more can a person want from life and where did her illness come from, all this misery oozing from her, the wreckage, the decay. Why do you suffer, what is it you’re missing, Andrea once asked her, aren’t you happy that we have everything, Dad works and earns enough, why are you so sad, Mummy, why don’t you laugh, why is your face so terribly drawn, tell me why, please, tell me, I’m begging you. When I wake up in the morning, I feel like I’ve been pulled out of a tar pit of sorrow, Christina said, I struggle to breathe, I’m as exhausted as if I’ve worked all day long and everything, everything is black black black, I don’t want to get up, I don’t want to breathe, nothing brings me joy anymore, every thought weighs on me more and more and pushes me deeper into the pit of sorrow. Don’t I bring you joy, Andrea asked. No, you don’t bring me joy, Andrea, not at all, you know, the older you get, the more I regret having you, I regret marrying Pavel, I regret being alive, even having been born, you and Pavel weigh me down, I have to admit to you, my darling, a secret I keep even from myself: sometimes I imagine a tram running you over, both of you, myself crying at your funeral, in dark sunglasses, but deep inside I’m actually happy because now I can, finally, and in peace, kill myself, without having to worry that it will burden your soul, your life, your future. But Mum, how can you possibly say that, Andrea asked, running a hand over her mother’s long blond curls, how is it possible to be so beautiful and so unhappy, Mummy, how? Do you really think I’m beautiful? Everyone thinks you’re beautiful—Dad, your friends, your colleagues, Dad always says that back in the day, everyone was in love with you. Back in the day, back in the day, repeated Christina, back in the day, but not now, now they don’t give me their phone numbers, now they don’t open the door when I knock, they don’t answer when I call them, they just stand and stare when I happen to talk to them, where did this unhappiness come from, Andrea, this lack of joy, this is an illness, Andrea, this unwillingness to live, this denial of the world and of heaven, I don’t know, Andrea, I’m thinking of paying someone to shoot me, to hire a contract killer, you can’t talk like that to me, Mummy, you don’t have the right! If you agree to shoot me, Andrea, my child, it will be the best thing you could do for your mother, do you agree to it, Andrea, you’ll be proud you’ve done the best thing you possibly could for your mother, please stop, crying stresses me out, you know you don’t get anywhere by crying, only by killing, this whole business with the crying is nonsense, there’re pills for crying, you’ve already been crying all night long, if you carry on I’ll give you one of my pills, they kill tears, in the same way I’m asking you to kill me! If you kill me, Andrea, if you kill your mother, it won’t be a matricide, you’ll be a matrisaviour, I’ll make you a plan to do it, of course, it’s better if I hire a professional, but you see your father doesn’t give me a measly five lev, you think I haven’t tried, I haven’t made the right connections, I have, Andrea, I have tried—five thousand euros, half before the murder and the other half after the murder, in my case, full payment in advance, Christina says, crawling out of bed, suffocated by sobs, eyes reddened, drowned inside her tears, the amnesia that follows immense crying and the sorrow it brings, erasing all reason, that sundering, as if Christina had managed to break off a piece of her daughter’s soul after struggling for a long time, had finally broken it off and was now devouring it, gleefully chewing on it, gnawing at the piece of Andrea’s soul, perhaps to give her strength or at least to infect her daughter with the same sickness so they’d suffer together, together enter and leave the pit of sorrow and doom and misery, as if Christina bore a cross others could not see, as if she were atoning for a sin incomprehensible even to her. The voices of Pavel and their friends echoed in the hallway where Andrea was letting her mother go off on her insane night time trajectory, the one she had walked for many years now, dreaming of her death, her movements lethargic from all the medication, she held the banister firmly, stopped on the landing by the lift, then opened the door, not enough energy to squeeze in quickly, nimbly before the lift’s huge metal door hit her, made her bow and she staggered, Andrea watched from the top of the stairs, her heart aching with pity for her mother, because of her medication, because of her nocturnal wanderings, because the lift’s metal door hit her and made her hunch her shoulders and she wobbled, turning guiltily towards Andrea, her eyes saying: I’m sorry, forgive me for being like this, for being unable even to get into a lift like a normal person, then she pushed the button and plunged downward.

Yana Ellis is a translator of literary and creative texts from Bulgarian and German to English. She holds an MA in Translation from the University of Bristol. Yana is drawn to narratives that explore issues of identity, immigration, and the representation of the ‘other’. She was chosen as one of ALTA’s Virtual Travel Fellows for 2022 and was shortlisted for the 2022 John Dryden Translation Competition. Her work has appeared in The Trinity JoLT, No man's Land, The Common, SAND journal and Trafika Europe. Yana’s translation of Zdravka Evtimova’s The Wolves of Staro Selo received a PEN Translates award and is forthcoming from Héloïse Press in 2025. In July 2024 Yana was one of three literary translators in residence at Sofia Literature and Translation House as part of Culture Moves Europe programme.

In February 2024, the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation launched an open call for English-speaking translators to join the inaugural edition of the Bulgarian to English Literary Translation Academy. The Academy was designed to connect experienced translators with emerging talents in literary translation, fostering the growth of a new generation skilled in bringing contemporary Bulgarian literature to English-speaking audiences. Over a six-month period, mentors Angela Rodel, Ekaterina Petrova, Izidora Angel, and Traci Speed guided three mentees each, working across genres including fiction, children’s literature, and poetry. By the program’s end, participants had developed substantial translated excerpts to present to publishers, authors, and partners, and to use in applying for translation grants, residencies, and other professional development opportunities. The Academy has also enabled contemporary Bulgarian authors to have significant portions of their work translated, which they can present to literary agents, international publishers, and in applications for global programs. You can find more information about the Academy participants here. The Academy is made possible through the support of the National Culture Fund under the Creation 2023 program and in partnership with Vagabond magazine.