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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nThe Detective<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCheck out the police station\u2014why\u2019re all eight windows lit? Something definitely, gotta be a big accident in the tunnel, or maybe some hikers came across a mine in the mountains.\u201d \u201cNah, think bigger\u2014the whole side of the station\u2019s lit up, too. Nice that the station\u2019s up high, from down in town you can tell right away if something big is happening. Remember when the Duma speaker\u2019s son was arrested with a glove box full of cocaine? But now everybody\u2019s been caught and put away, so I\u2019m not sure what to think. This town of ours has been quiet lately, just what you might call surprisingly quiet, our Little Bliss, although it\u2019s gotta be overflowing with guns, the war didn\u2019t end all that long ago.\u201d \u201cBut guns\u2014that\u2019s not the main thing. The main thing\u2019s the desire to shoot the guns. And not a single person in Little Bliss has that desire. Except when somebody has a baby, and then they go out on their balcony and fire into the air. So now everybody knows immediately: if there\u2019s shooting, there\u2019s a baby.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n *<\/p>\n\n\n\n Something had happened, and this is what: a young teen, an eighth-grader at the Bliss middle school, had gone missing. His name was Aron, and he\u2019d vanished without a trace, so surprisingly, inexplicably, and instantly that they knew they had to start searching for him just as quickly, or else he might never be found. \u201cNow people, please,\u201d said the detective to everyone, including the volunteers, \u201cdon\u2019t go out into the fields, and don\u2019t go into the woods outside of town, either, because those mines out there haven\u2019t gone anywhere. Okay, Dede, tell us what you saw.\u201d Dede was in the same class as the missing Aron, they were good friends, and they\u2019d been kicking the ball around with friends three minutes before Aron\u2019s disappearance. The other soccer players couldn\u2019t add anything substantive to Dede\u2019s statement and were let go, while swarthy, rail-thin Dede, the missing boy\u2019s best friend, sat hunched on a rickety chair, answering the same exact questions for the third time, holding the bag for the rest of them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n *<\/p>\n\n\n\n The name Dede was popular in Little Bliss, mostly because of Dede the Great, whose birthplace this was, but also, that Dede had actually been named in honor of an even more ancient Dede, the local saint. Monks had begun cultivating the valley again after a few centuries of post-Roman abandonment, and they were the ones who called the harsh locale blissful, and who named the river accordingly, and among them was this one guy who had the mind of an eight-year-old boy, with the size to match. Saint Dede\u2019s hagiography proposes that we believe the following: that he made friends with wolves, and preached to grapevines, and that wine didn\u2019t make him drunk, and that bees brought him honey. Saint Dede was responsible for all the little things in the world, due to his size, especially for every sort of small joy, for example, for the pleasures of simple food and moderate drink; for the modest fertility of the Little Bliss valley (it\u2019s all for the best!); for labor resulting in at least some kind of fruit\u2014in short, he was a real positive guy, so it\u2019s no wonder that it was mostly premature babies who were named in his honor, to help them get a foot in the door of this life. We know that Dede the Great was a preemie, too, and he was named Dede, so see? There you have it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n *<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, so the detective was asking Dede, \u201cWhen did the sun go down?\u201d \u201cAfter he disappeared. We noticed almost immediately.\u201d \u201cWhat about the streetlights?\u201d \u201cNo. The streetlights weren\u2019t on.\u201d \u201cThat can\u2019t be. And the spotlight at the tunnel probably wasn\u2019t on either, huh?\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d replied Dede, lifting his gaze conscientiously to the ceiling. \u201cThe spotlight wasn\u2019t on. The streetlights either. I\u2019m sure. Nothing was on.\u201d \u201cThat can\u2019t be!\u201d The detective tossed the last remaining sludge of coffee down his throat. \u201cDede, remember harder.\u201d \u201cI remember. I\u2019m sure. Neither the streetlights nor the spotlight.\u201d \u201cBut look\u2014that just doesn\u2019t happen. It\u2019s always on a set schedule, yesterday was the eighteenth of April, sunset was at exactly six thirty PM, the streetlights had to have been on. Which means Aron went missing before that.\u201d \u201cNuh-uh. We\u2019d just left the school building at six thirty. And I definitely remember that when the ball flew off into the blackberries, cars were driving along the winding part of the road with their headlights on, but there were no streetlights. That\u2019s why it was harder to see the ball.\u201d \u201cWhat the hell is this crap?\u201d Dede shrugged. \u201cWhat about the ball? You two crawled into the blackberries to get it, didn\u2019t you?\u201d \u201cWell, yeah. The ball went right in there, where the blackberry bushes are thickest. Aron went in to look for it, and I went in almost right after him, but it was a thicket, and thorny, and it was dark, too, so I crawled back out, but Aron didn\u2019t.\u201d \u201cCould Aron have come out with the ball while you were in there going after him?\u201d \u201cNo, I came back out right away, and there\u2019s no other way to come out, the wall of the school\u2019s right there and then on the other side there\u2019s just brush and the cliff over the highway.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTell me this, then, Dede: where did Aron\u2019s backpack go?\u201d \u201cAt first we called him a few times. We thought he had his phone with him. Then we hear the phone ringing in his backpack. So I brought the backpack to his house to give it to him. His mom was there, completely sloshed. I gave her the backpack and left.\u201d \u201cThere\u2019s no backpack at his place. And his phone\u2019s off.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s off!?\u201d \u201cDoes that mean something?\u201d \u201c\u2026\u201d \u201cCome on, out with it.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s just that\u2026 Well, Aron was saying he\u2019d be on the news soon.\u201d \u201cOn the news? Did he mean on TV? Did he say why he was going to be on TV?\u201d \u201cNope.\u201d The detective went around the room kicking chairs. The smell of ramen, wisteria, coffee, and gasoline hung in the air. Dede was still sitting the same way, hunched over on the chair. The detective went over and sat down right next to him. \u201cNow don\u2019t you lose hope. You\u2019re best friends, aren\u2019t you?\u201d Dede nodded. \u201cYou\u2019re a real good friend. We\u2019ll look for him, and we\u2019ll find him.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n *<\/p>\n\n\n\n The town of Little Bliss, despite its negligible size\u2014a population topping out at ten thousand\u2014is famous throughout Europe, mostly as a symbol of the unbelievable resistance it put up against the joint forces of the imperials and terrorist groups during the five-year war that ended fifteen years ago. But obviously that\u2019s not the only interesting thing about Little Bliss. To start with, the way it\u2019s situated is extraordinarily impactful. It \u201cseems to climb up the side of a valley so steep it defies imagination,\u201d while along the valley floor flows the Bliss River, \u201cthe fastest, coldest, and cleanest river in Europe.\u201d Twisting and turning, the river\u2019s rapids foam with \u201cwater such a bright blue it looks dyed\u201d and from the Bliss bridge it looks like \u201ca tube of neon, filled with glowing strands tightly woven into thick shining braids.\u201d Overhead beams \u201cthe hot sun, shining down on a plethora of lush, multicolored grasses and plants that would be any botanical garden\u2019s pride and joy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n *<\/p>\n\n\n\n Furthermore, Little Bliss is the central chronotope of the monumental masterpiece of the modernist-slash-conservative chronicler of these parts, Nobel laureate Afon Tertsy (The Tower and the Bridge<\/em>). Schoolkids trudge their way through all six volumes, moaning and groaning, but what they\u2019ll read is actually not at all for children: it is a narrative that\u2019s epic and smooth as silk; cruel and bloody; loquacious and sneakily persuasive; it is a story about the earth, about war and fate, about the taste of water and the smell of foliage, about the smoke of hearths and arson. With an iron grip the master drags his audience through descriptions of beech groves, rapes, family gatherings, slaughters, yearning, food, and births, pulling readers through his own verbosity as well as the Little Bliss and Dole dialects to arrive at doubtful and incontestable conclusions, and if you\u2019ve lived more than a year in Little Bliss, you get that The Tower and the Bridge<\/em> knows you better than you know yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n *<\/p>\n\n\n\n Few non-natives live here that long, though; this area has never surrendered to anyone, except the day-tripping tourists, primarily Germans, who stop in to Little Bliss exactly once, on their way to or from the sea. They spend money and pass on, never to return to this bliss, though they always see it in their dreams. Christmas and Easter are usually when the Germans dream about Little Bliss. No taxes, no terms and conditions, just the merciless sun, the river glinting as it winds through the rocks, the abrupt pitch-black of night, the scent of wisteria, acacia, oleander, magnolia. The Germans forget their blissful dreams the moment they wake, and they never go to Little Bliss again, just as they never again return to their mother\u2019s womb. <\/p>\n\n\n\n *<\/p>\n\n\n\n But for the people who live in it, Little Bliss isn\u2019t blissful at all. Firstly because they\u2019re surrounded by mines, in the mountains, fields, roads, groves, the sides of the roads. One false step and you\u2019re not even a dead body, you\u2019re half a dead body, or just shreds. Sure, people come and do some demining; sometimes it\u2019s these folks, sometimes those; sometimes it\u2019s the government, sometimes international philanthropies; but to completely demine this whole place would take seven hundred and eighty years. That\u2019s the calculation. Unless some new demining method is invented, of course. And secondly, Little Bliss\u2019s climate is just like its past: extreme and uncompromising. Either searing heat, or chills, mist, and mold. The molds of the Little Bliss valley are unique in that they are astonishingly varied (with a multitude of independent, unrelated origins or modes of being). Some kinds of mold grow in the corners, others on ceilings, some grow outside, some grow inside\u2026 So, yes, mines and mold. And that\u2019s why lots of folks in Little Bliss sort of live with their eyes shut\u2014that is, it looks like their eyes are open, but they\u2019re actually not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n *<\/p>\n\n\n\n What all the day-trippers who come to Little Bliss want to see most is the waterfall jumpers. There are always five of them, five jumpers, like five fingers on a hand, except that unlike fingers, the jumpers are identical: stocky and deeply tanned, with caps of the absolute thickest curly hair\u2014typical representatives of \u201cthe Blissers\u201d (as opposed to \u201cthe Dolers\u201d: pale, mealy, and tall, with the typically Dolean little round chins\u2014but that sort never go out for jumping because their bones aren\u2019t right, consistency\u2019s too soft, they just smash like pancakes against the hard, sharp waters of the Bliss). The waterfall jumpers, footloose and fancy-free in their colorful shorts, spend whole days lounging on the bridge guardrails, setting an example of a life of nonchalance for the daytrippers, who stare at them and spend twice as much as they meant to. The jumpers sit on the guardrails, cadging coins off tourists and jingling them loudly in colorful tea tins, and every forty minutes or so, depending on the quantity of tourists and coins they\u2019ve collected, they take running jumps off that same bridge into the waterfall, because that little bridge crosses the Bliss exactly over the place where the river surges over the edge to fall thirty-six meters straight down, and the bridge itself is already thirty meters above the river at that point, so the resulting height is mind-boggling, and the double tumble, the double risk, feels like an impossible feat, it feels like the human body isn\u2019t capable of withstanding something like that. It\u2019s unbelievable: first of all, the jumpers manage to land in the water, not on the microscopic roofs, the unseen rocks, the thick undergrowth of weeds, or anything else, and secondly they manage to not smash to pieces against that hard swirling water that always looks bluer than the sky, but rather to merge with it, become it, as they are carried down by the waterfall, and then on top of all that they also manage to not freeze in the Bliss\u2019s supercold water, which, though it does soak up the unnatural color of the sky over the Little Bliss valley, never absorbs its warmth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n *<\/p>\n\n\n\n Seems like these carefree circus performers everybody can admire up close and personal just live to hurl themselves down like little rubber balls, with perfect accuracy, even though they don\u2019t even bother looking, several times a day. Many tourists do idly think something like \u201cI wonder what they\u2019re like when they\u2019re not jumping,\u201d of course, but these thoughts somehow fly off, bounce away, turning the jumpers into flat, ideal projected objects, into paper clowns, into pure music. There goes another jumper, plummeting, turning into a little stone, merging with the waterfall as he skims just the right spot on its surface, and now there is is, already bobbing up out of the water way down there, in the foam swirling on the Bliss River\u2019s bright-blue icy waters, and now, another thirty seconds later\u2014you can\u2019t take it any longer than that\u2014he climbs out onto the shore. The tourists, who aren\u2019t so much amazed as spellbound, snap up souvenirs, including the ones that Little Bliss schoolkids display on the bridge\u2019s marble steps. The production and sale of souvenirs is a normal thing for the local kids, and there\u2019s not even that much competition between them, because business will go great as long as it\u2019s a nice warm day, and, as Wikipedia states, there are one hundred and eighty nice warm days a year in the Little Bliss valley. It is true that a lot of the kids\u2019 parents take their money away, because it\u2019s completely inappropriate, it\u2019s absurd, for kids to make that much money, especially in a town where earning money\u2019s not even that easy for adults. Although some kids\u2019 parents don\u2019t take their money away, because they can\u2019t, or because they\u2019re absent, and even if they are around, the parents, that is, then they often have neither the time nor the energy to pay attention to their kids\u2014and they didn\u2019t want to spend their free time cutting down the thickets around the Little Bliss school, either, no matter how hard the school principal begged, and look how that turned out: in the middle of broad daylight\u2014although it was admittedly getting toward sundown\u2014it was in those exact thickets that a whole live boy went missing, the eighth-grader Aron, while he was just kicking the soccer ball around. <\/p>\n\n\n\n *<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it had been during the first few years of the current mayor\u2019s term, then maybe some of the parents would\u2019ve responded to the school director\u2019s request: that\u2019s how high the level of enthusiasm of Little Bliss residents was back then. But over the next several years the mayor, nicknamed Dumpling, \u201cfell into a deep depression,\u201d that is, he developed a fondness for the shot glass. His shaky health had something to do with that, though that\u2019s not the half of it; after all, he\u2019d been a partisan during the war, he\u2019d displayed\u2014well, you could say desperate courage, him and the rest, and they defended the city in spite of everything, in the face of everything, by the end he was just one big bloody mess, so what do you expect, Dumpling may look strong, but he\u2019s not immortal, after all. And while he may\u2019ve been a whirlwind of activity in those first years of his administration, doing so much to rebuild Little Bliss that you couldn\u2019t hardly recognize it\u2014and all the rest of the residents pitched in with a will, too, cleaning, and repairing, and scrubbing, and painting, and demining\u2014lately everything\u2019s also started kind of sagging, too, and peeling, and getting overgrown, and at least no new mines appeared, but the ones that were already there just laid around quietly until some hapless dumbbell stepped on them, because, really, nobody but a dumbbell would get the idea of wading into the bushes and wandering unbeaten paths. And although the flow of tourists picked back up again after the pandemic, it was obvious that it wasn\u2019t the same, it just wasn\u2019t the same. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And that\u2019s why the thicket of overgrown blackberry bushes around the Little Bliss school, the one in which the eighth grader Aron vanished without a trace\u2014along with the school\u2019s worn, scuffed, and peeling soccer ball, but not along with his backpack, and not in possession of his phone\u2014never did get cut back, even though it\u2019d been demined ages ago, and maybe that\u2019s why nobody was able to determine the exact destination or origin of Aron\u2019s disappearance that evening. <\/p>\n\n\n\n *<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that\u2019s why the authenticity of the Little Bliss bridge, even though it was a masterpiece of ancient Roman architecture, was a bit dubious for some, while others doubled down on their conviction. Because during the war, fifteen years ago, the imperials in the mountains had targeted it, raining Grads down onto it, and that\u2019s why there wasn\u2019t a stone of that bridge left standing, but all those stones hasn\u2019t just vanished into thin air, after all, they just fell down into the river, and after the war, the Soros-funded humanitarians came out and put it back together, piece by piece, making the cement with an ancient Roman method (using egg whites and cocaine). The imperials fired ninety rounds at the bridge, they didn\u2019t hold back in shelling this pointless but pretty bridge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Back then it seemed that the region had good economic prospects and that\u2019s why it was worth fighting for it, but after the war, it turned out that, unfortunately, regardless of how zealously and diligently they\u2019d fought and regardless of how close to miraculous their victory was, it did nothing to stop the total disappearance of any and all prospects and any and all significant economic potential. And as far as the next bridge upstream was concerned, that was where the imperials held their mass executions of partisans. Over three hundred bodies blocked the dam; they weren\u2019t counted until after the war, when it was time to repair the dam. The bodies were not solely those of Blissers, there were also bodies of Doleans who took a stand for Little Bliss\u2019s independence; not all Doleans were for the Empire, far from it, even though they were the minority in Little Bliss. <\/p>\n\n\n\n *<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s obvious, by the way, that the defenders of the Little Bliss valley and the town itself defended this little spot of earth in defiance of rationality and implacable logic, in defiance of the enemy\u2019s superior strength, in defiance of any politics, these defenders who were the emblem and epitome of insane, pointless courage, these inhabitants of Little Bliss whom John Major himself visited, shouting out of a helicopter with a megaphone, trying to convince them to give up and let the helicopters evacuate them, but who, nevertheless, didn\u2019t blink and didn\u2019t give anything up (the famous retort \u201cWe don\u2019t need a way out, we need weapons\u201d) and who really did secure that victory, which can by no means be called pyrrhic, because nothing\u2019s higher than freedom. Nothing\u2019s worth giving freedom up. Obviously these people weren\u2019t thinking about economic potential, they weren\u2019t thinking about anything at all except victory and freedom, victory-freedom, they saw these things as reciprocally conditional, and once the sun of peacetime dawned, once it illuminated the looted, devastated, blood-drenched valley of Bliss, nobody even thought the words, much less uttered them aloud: \u201cIt wasn\u2019t worth it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Although maybe Arius thought them, up there in heaven, the poet Arius, Little Bliss\u2019s other famous writer and native son, who a century ago \u201cwas sent by his father to the business school in the capital, but fell into a melancholy and took up with those cursed poets.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n *<\/p>\n\n\n\n That night the detective thought an earthquake was beginning. He couldn\u2019t quite tell whether he\u2019d woken up or not; he was sleeping right on the couch, he hadn\u2019t gone home; it was neither light nor dark out; the wind moaned in crevices and pipes, stove dampers flapped and vibrated, keys turned in their locks like weathervanes, but that was just his imagination. Triangles and strips of light quivered on the parquet floor as though the police station were a train. But it wasn\u2019t an earthquake at all, it was nothing but the wind\u2014that is, as long as you don\u2019t count the fact that there is an earthquake continually happening underneath Little Bliss, and that\u2019s what makes all the space, time, and thought around here vibrate imperceptibly and delaminate. Suicide, the detective\u2019s dreams whispered. Aron killed himself. A hundred percent. As soon as the detective woke up, he thought: Suicide. That\u2019s probably what it was, alas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I was seven when the war started; my brother was eleven. We were always getting woken up by the sounds of shooting and explosions, but we grew up in that chaos, we didn\u2019t notice it. I remember how, just before the shelling began, the bright-red rockets would light up the sky, then they\u2019d fall to earth with little parachutes. We\u2019d run to get the rockets and play with the parachutes. We messed around with them, played with them like free toys. We knew what they were for, but the real significance of death didn\u2019t hit us. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n *<\/p>\n\n\n\n People killed themselves often in Little Bliss, very often, especially teens. And nobody\u2019s going to know more about that than a detective. He tried it himself, once, thirteen years ago; the war had just ended, and the future detective, still a teen back then, was often resentful, especially of everybody who had it better than him, but also of everybody who had it worse than him\u2014after all, things weren\u2019t really all that bad for him, though his life couldn\u2019t get any crappier. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mom was a nurse and never talked at home about what she saw in the hospital. I counted it up one time and in five years of war, mom wasn\u2019t home for two years. My brother and I were left to our own devices. It might seem strange, but we spent whole days just playing and wandering around. No homework, no parents to get on our case\u2014it was a kid\u2019s dream. Even though the war was right there, and our town was surrounded, we felt happy and free. When the sirens went off, we didn\u2019t go to the shelters; after all, it meant there\u2019d be no school that day and we could run around outside. We didn\u2019t think about the danger. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n *<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the war, the future detective went around bumming Rodopi cigarettes until he had fifty of them. His plan was to smoke them all in one go, one after the other. On the twenty-fifth cigarette the air around him suddenly went splotchy and he couldn\u2019t smoke another cigarette, then or ever. So not only did he not kill himself, he made a valuable investment in his health. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I was twelve the last year of the war, and my brother was sixteen. I remember the last time we had breakfast together. I remember splitting a chocolate bar from American rations with him. I remember his bloody watch. I took it and didn\u2019t wash it for several days. The war is the divide between before and after for most people, but not for me; for me, it\u2019s his death. People say there was a ceasefire that day, but there\u2019s no such word in the imperials\u2019 military regulations. <\/em><\/em>Anyway, the detective considered himself a specialist in suicide prevention. But in Little Bliss, committing suicide was almost a sport, you might say, one that a whole lot of people played, mostly by jumping off the Sky Flyer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Ksenia Bukshatranslated from the Russian by Anne O. Fisher The English translations of the excerpts were made possible thanks...","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4058,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4057","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n