Embrace me, fire. Allow my bare feet to go over the glowing embers unburned and triumphant. Help me, Lord. Give me courage and daring.
I make one step… then another…For my soles which are not used to (or rather, have lost the habit of) treading barefoot, even the grass is merciless. I can hear the embers cracking, crackling, whispering to each other. But I don’t speak their tongue. I am tense, thirsty, and perhaps mad. What if I wake up their dormant flames and tempt them with my naïve nakedness?
Is it true, I ask myself, that it is just a matter of courage to clench one’s toes tight and rearrange the scorching embers with bouncing feet? But how could it be so desperately simple? Could the laws of physics have something to do with my crazy wish? To lull to sleep the eyes of fear and leap into the fire-breathing disc?
It is enthralling to watch the glowing embers under a starry sky in the company of crickets. You might even say: “Lord, what a breathtaking sight!” – like a little-big philosopher said once while he watched the storm raging in the ocean from a safe location. Now I am asking myself: What made me long to shorten the distance? I want to grasp the essence of everything, said my kindred, Pasternak. But this essence is scorching hot. Perhaps that’s how “Don’t play with fire” came to existence. Maybe my “dark-eyed great-grandma, in silk shalwars and a turban,” as Bagryana put it in her poem, did not elope “with some alien chivalrous khan in the middle of the night.” Maybe my blue-eyed ancestor grandma sneaked out in the dead of night. And she danced wildly wearing a white robe, clutching the icon with trembling hands. Her long braid was dancing, too – as a snake licked by the heat. Her throat crying, “Wugh, wugh, wugh!” And the piercing sound of the bagpipe was soaring in the air. While the drum was calming it down. Or made it even more penetrating: slow-low-low, slow-two-three, in the 7/8 beat.
None of the people sitting by the embers that night had a drum. But my heart was beating so loudly that two drums would have been overwhelming. One foot… The other… And again… Goodness, the fire accepted me! My feet didn’t burn! I feel great! Different, pure, untainted, quivering with excitement.
A year later, the embers again cast their spell over me. And I sense the familiar tremble to lull the eyes of fear and lay bare my feet in a challenge.
Musicians start to play the nestinari tune, and it does not take long before music “grabs” me.
If I were asked what is so elating about that music, I would answer thus: Imagine, my friend, a pool that swirls at a maddening speed, driven by some unknown force. Yielding to the temptation, you dip your toe into it, and within a split second, you melt into the whirlwind of sound. And you can no longer step onto the shore. For there is no shore.
The house we, the students, inhabited was nearby. In a minute, I ran to my room, in the second, I dressed in a white robe, and in the third minute, my long braid was twisting like a snake licked by the fire…
Who are you, my ancient great grandma?
—-
Published in Bulgarian in Literaturen Vestnik Newspaper, No. 24, 20-26 June 1994, p. 13)
Initially translated into English by Shtiliana Halacheva-Rousseva (1994), revised by Daniela Nyberg (2022).
Included in Мирис на вода, The Scent of Water. 2005[2004] Poems. Bilingual Edition, Bulgarian and English, Sofia: Ab Publishing House.
