Time Shelter

by Georgi Gospodinov

Something has changed, something is not the same. I hear its dragging footsteps, heavy breathing. It wasn’t like this before, there used to be rhythm, dancing, running. For a moment, between the shadow of the leaves I catch a glimpse of the tired light of yesterday or of a forgotten afternoon years ago. Something seeps in, drop by drop, the sediment of other times. On my palate I sense the taste of ash, with my nose I catch the scent of something burned. Like stubble or a forest that has set itself alight … Something has changed, something is not the same. With my fingers I touch another skin, cold and grainy. Before, it was warm and smooth, alive like a person’s hand, now it is like the shed skin of a viper. You stroll through the hot afternoon in August and suddenly out from behind some bush the stench of rot hits you. A corpse, of a rat most likely, but still a corpse. Something has started to go rotten, go bitter, to stink, to go dark, and to grow cold, I feel it with my five senses. Something has changed, something is not the same. But what if time has already stopped? How will we know? Will the clocks stop? Will the calendars be stuck on one and the same day? Hardly, they actually don’t feed on time, they do not live off it. So what feeds on time, then? Everything living, of course. The cats, cows, bees, and water snakes, the thistles, the lizard hawks and the lizards, the squirrels in the park, the earthworms and the fruit fly, the blue whale and redfish—everything ...