NOTHING SIGNIFICANT (English Translation): Short Stories by Roumen Tchernev
They’re demolishing our house. They marked it as part of the city plan to build apartment buildings in the neighborhood, or, to be precise, a substation for a future apartment building. A brigade of agile, low-paid construction workers nimbly crawled on the roof, sliding the shingles down a wooden trough to the ground. I stand aside and watch. My feelings are asleep. I have no memory of the roof. Only my reasoning reminds me that the roof symbolizes a safe and secure home.
That is all. I am aware of what is coming…….”Hey, get out of there quickly!” A construction worker, seemingly the foreman of the destroyers, rapidly approached me. The bulldozer quieted its rumble, and the workers surrounded me.
“You have no business being here, my friend. What is this purse? You can’t take anything from this site.”
“This used to be our house,” I replied. “I bought this purse.”
“Sure, sure, it is worthless from what I can tell, but we still have to open it up to see what’s inside.”
………..He begins to pull out my school report cards one by one: honor roll awards, a sash folded in half reading Honor Student, those same report cards, awards, and sashes that belonged to my brother, his poems, our letters from the military, university, travels, and navy tours, all starting with “My dearest mom and dad,” as well as pictures from our weddings and photos of the grandkids…
“There is nothing significant in here,” says the construction worker. “You can keep it.”
I stuff all that “nothing significant” back into the purse and walk away…….Memories flood my mind, and everything around me fades away. …..Then she kissed us both and tucked the purse away. We never saw it again.
“Nothing significant,” said the foreman of the destroyers.
Download Nothing Significant by Roumen Tchernev while it’s free on Amazon April 2 – 5.
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