Time Shelter

by Georgi Gospodinov

Switzerland was the ideal Bulgarian village of my childhood, the village that never existed.

The rakia is gone, but the winter is still here. Now, there’s the whole existential novel of a people for you.

They’re already selling electronic cigarettes, tomorrow you’re going to be shoving electronic rakia in my hands, fucking electronic motherfuckers … Well, now, that’s what the TV is, electronic rakia … so there, take it back, a 32-inch screen for 30 liters of rakia, a liter an inch, I’ve giving you a deal. Thirty liters of rakia for a month more of life, maybe even a month and a half if we’re economical about it. Only rakia is honest, goddamn it. It doesn’t lie to you like the TV, it doesn’t try to pull the wool over your eyes, it doesn’t blather on and on. It hits you in the nose, burns your throat real good, then it goes down and warms up all that stuff down below that has long since gone cold. Rakia is the Bulgarian sublime, the Bulgarian television at long last.

God is not dead. God has forgotten. God has dementia.