11 Bulgarian Love Songs
Bulgarian Love Songs
She came back with breakfast: two rather toasted croissants, a baguette, half a pound of smoked mortadella sliced on the spot, and three peaches she thought were at their peak. Paulina had gone down to buy breakfast, and before entering a bakery, she looked for a phone booth to call her cousin.
Jean-Pierre had insisted “S’il te plait” that she call from the apartment, that she not put it off any longer because Julie must be anxious.
But Pau needed time to think about what she would say and, above all, to draw up her speech, since she could feel her life falling apart.
Anyway, she felt embarrassed having to explain things in front of Jean-Pierre.
She didn’t want to talk about him in front of him, and she didn’t want him to overhear her getting caught in some lie or a half-truth, the coward’s way of evading.
“Honey, are you okay? Where the hell have you gone? It’s been agony!
Do you know what time it is? We’ve been waiting for you.
Alain and I spent the whole night worrying.
He even said we should call the gendarmerie.
I thought of calling Jean-Pierre’s apartment, because you are with him, huh?
Just say yes or no if you can’t talk. Look, yesterday, I noticed something in you when you left the house.
I don’t know. The shirt and the jeans, you had fixed yourself up in a certain way .
. . I saw something in your eyes that . .
. We’ve been like sisters for too many years.
We can’t hide anything from each other. I won’t ask questions.
You tell me whatever you want, or whatever you can, and I won’t judge you.
But Paulina, please, be careful with Jean-Pierre . . .”
“Why should I be careful?”
Paulina, who had endured Julie’s tirade, waiting for the end of an interrogation from someone who had had a sleepless night, suddenly snapped.
Before going back up to the dreamlike apartment on rue du Trésor, she wanted to know why she supposedly needed to be cautious with Jean-Pierre.
What was she getting into that she herself couldn’t see?
What did Julie know, if anything at all, that she hadn’t told her yet?
Her cousin was suddenly silent. She wanted to make Paulina believe that her “be careful” didn’t mean anything exact, that it was just a vague, general warning, a manner of speaking. But she had thrown a stone and, with the strategy of someone who was jealous, was now trying to hide her hand.
“Are you mad, Julie?”
“Me? No . . .”
“Is it because I didn’t tell you I wasn’t coming back? I’m sorry, it slipped my mind. Or is it because you think I’m with Jean-Pierre?”
“I’ll get over it. I’ve been up all night and I’m not in the mood to . . .”
“Don’t wait up for me today. I’m letting you know now. That way you won’t worry. You two do your own thing and I’ll manage.”
“Yeah, it’s quite clear you’re ‘doing your own thing.’”
She was very upset. But Paulina didn’t want to make a scene.
She hung up, went into the bakery, ordered two well-toasted croissants, just the way she liked them, and thought no more about it.
She wanted to get back to Jean-Pierre and have breakfast with him in the kitchen with the windows open.
The window overlooked that interior courtyard that gifted them the proud blooms and scents of late spring.
On the way home, she thought that by day rue du Trésor was far more charming than at night, when she had arrived in a rush and with an unfamiliar feeling that burned through her—that strange mix of excitement and dread—that had already hinted at what might happen.
She thought that cul-de-sacs had something of an impasse, a calmness, an intimate mystery.
This was even more true when cars weren’t allowed.
From the café Les Philosophes at the corner to the entrance to rue du Trésor to the unremarkable white fountain that blocked the view at the far end, the street was full of small restaurants with shaded terraces and discerning decor shops.
White hydrangeas overflowed from the planted beds so densely they imbued the scene with an exotic, glorified air.
Jean-Pierre was waiting for her with a kiss, a freshly squeezed orange juice, strained with care, and an awareness of knowing that it was not a moment for questions.
What had been said between the cousins stayed between the cousins.
And it was entirely Pau’s choice to share with him whatever she wanted about matters between the cousins.
“Why is it called rue du Trésor?” Paulina was the one with a question. “I’m guessing they must have found some treasure . . .”
“A small chest, yes. With gold coins. They knocked down a hotel, and in the rubble, with one blow of a pickax, a chest full of gold coins was found. It belonged to a king. John the Good, I think.”
“And here I thought you were the treasure.”
They sat down at the nicely set table and had breakfast in silence. Jean-Pierre quietly slipped a cassette tape into the stereo system.
“Let’s see if you like it.”
“What is it?”
“Something unusual.” He didn’t want Paulina to see the label. “I’m warning you. It’s peculiar.”
The first track was a women’s chorus that seemed to be singing a cappella in a language Pau couldn’t recognize. She let the second song play before she ventured to guess that it might be Indigenous music or from some Eastern European country, or maybe . . .
“They’re Bulgarian love songs.”
“Wow, I was close.”
“Do you like them?”
She thought it over before saying anything.
“They’re original.”
“I heard them in a church in Plovdiv. On the way out, I bought the cassette that the women were selling at a little stall.”
“Do you know what they’re saying?”
“Not a clue.”
“They do sound like love songs, once you know it. More so than funeral dirges, of course.”
“Songs of amour. And the more you listen to them, the more you hear it.”
Jean-Pierre had just peeled a peach. He sliced it, wiped his fingers on a rag, and set the bowl in front of Pauline.
No one had peeled a peach for her in maybe twenty years.
Back at home, her father had always been the one in charge of peeling fruit for everyone.
Since then, nothing. Until Paris. Until Jean-Pierre’s kitchen the morning after a passionate night.
She savored the peach, listened to the Bulgarian voices, and looked into Jean-Pierre’s eyes, eyes with a back room to them, more green than brown, an interesting wrinkle beginning to show at the outer corner.
His eyebrows were thick, brushed from the inside out, without a single hair rebelling and daring to go astray.
Her eyes in his eyes. Her emotions overflowed.
The peace, the quiet. Bulgarian love songs, his trusting gaze, and there was no need for words anymore.
If only that moment could last forever. She would never forget it.
Always, never. Paulina knew that absolute adverbs had to be used like salt—sparingly and at the right time.
They didn’t want to speak until the tape ended.
“Will you teach me how to light a pipe?”
“You?”
“What’s wrong with that? I want to.”
These were days for trying new things. She could never have imagined herself doing this.
She found it sensual the way Jean-Pierre, with the skill that came from routine, shredded the filamentous tobacco from a square, pressed packet of cut tobacco, and packed it into the bowl.
First he let the tobacco sit loose inside the chamber.
Then, with his pinkie, he pressed it down toward the heel.
In just a few days, Paulina had seen him with two different pipes.
Pipes are like friendships. Sometimes you have to let them rest, Jean-Pierre explained, surprised that Paulina wanted to start smoking.
One pipe was made of briar root, the other of cherrywood. Both were straight, flat, with a perfect right angle that matched Jean-Pierre’s facial lines.
“They’re more comfortable. Bent pipes weigh more. You need stronger teeth, and a stronger jaw, to hold on to them. And these flat ones are easier to clean. You see?”
In no time at all, Jean-Pierre opened the briar pipe. He removed the stem and ran a small brush through the smoke chamber. He gave it a sharp, dry puff to clear it before screwing it back onto the body of the pipe.
“Do you dare?”
Paulina took apart the tobacco and followed Jean-Pierre’s steps, each of them with a pipe in hand. He let her fill the cherrywood one, the only Dunhill he owned.
“The mouthpiece is a bit chewed up,” he apologized.
“It doesn’t matter.” In fact, she liked seeing that Jean-Pierre trusted her with something so personal.
“Do I have to do it with my pinkie?”
“Not necessarily. Whatever works. Actually, there’s a tool for it that I don’t have that . . .” This was new for Jean-Pierre too. He had never shared a pipe with a woman. He liked Pauline’s innocence and her appetite for adventure.
“And to light it?”
“Blow out and inhale. It’s instinctive. There’s no trick to it.” Using a Zippo lighter, he lit both pipes. “Blow out and inhale without swallowing.”
“Oh, it’s working . . . How do you hold it between your teeth?”
Everything was a game with Jean-Pierre. Pauline got up, took a couple of steps while swaying her hips, perfectly aware how nicely those jeans fit her, and, pipe in hand, sat down on his lap.
“Have you ever kissed a woman who smokes a pipe?”
The Bulgarian voices, with a kind of alpha-Gregorian undertone, had hypnotically fogged the morning.
Or maybe it was the tobacco smoke? It wasn’t long before they lay the pipes to rest in the kitchen ashtray.
Pauline kissed him all over, while unbuttoning his shirt.
She liked that strong, well-built body. She slowly tousled the white hairs beginning to appear on his chest. She lingered at his belt buckle. Once undone, she knelt in front of him.
“Can I?”
A question or a plea. She looked up—a plea—playfully.