A fake brick in the wall to the right of the old boiler.
My fingers dialed the code without thinking.
Four digits.
Catherine’s birthday.
Inside – folders with half-burnt protocols, photos from the lab, copies of a police investigation, bank statements from accounts that my father had never talked about.
I read and two lives intertwined before my eyes:
of a girl running barefoot on a panel balcony in Pazardzhik, and of a woman who signs documents for dangerous experiments in sterile white corridors.
Both mine.
Julian’s death
Two days after I listened to the tape, Julian died.
Quiet, no scenes. He fell asleep in the window armchair, with a book closed in his hand.
Doctors wrote “stopping the heart in a general deteriorating condition.” I read “a man who has done his job.”
The synaptic bridge was completed.
My nights were already full of scenes that weren’t mine. I could see Catherine in the lab, I could hear him scolding him for not buckling his coat, I was feeling the taste of the wine I had never drunk.
At the same time, I also remembered how my dad was buying a patty in front of school, holding my hand when we were crossing.
Two universes, packed into a skull.
At Julian’s funeral, I was standing next to the coffin in a black dress, with a look that I don’t know whose it was.
My father was there – upright, healthy, in color in the cheeks, which I had not seen for years. He was wearing a new suit he couldn’t afford before.
There were tears in front of the people:
