\u201cWhy me?\u201d I was able to ask.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause I need a wife, not a mistress,\u201d he replied calmly. \u201cSomeone who is by my side when things get\u2026 heavy.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when I thought it was a disease. His age, his visibly worn body, the slight forgetting in the conversation\u2026 Everything was screaming \u201cAlzheimer\u2019s\u201d or something.<\/p>\n
I was sitting in front of the blank sheet, and I knew that if I signed, I would get my father out of bed. If I don\u2019t sign, I\u2019ll bury him.<\/p>\n
I signed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
The Mansion<\/h2>\n
Julian\u2019s mansion was about an hour behind Sofia, deep in the mountains. Old, heavy, with wooden paneling and portraits of people looking as if they were about to get off the frames.<\/p>\n
The first night he greeted me with a glass of champagne and a strangely calm smile.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s one more little detail,\u201d he said as he showed me around the rooms. \u201cThe house is old, the air is humid, full of spores, and God knows what.\u201d You have to take a pill at night to feel good. Personally, I took it for years.<\/p>\n
He pulled out a small glass bottle in which bluish tablets swam.<\/p>\n
At nine in the evening. Always at nine.<\/p>\n
Internally something shrank.<\/p>\n
What are those pills?<\/p>\n
Vitamins. A little nootropic. For memory. Nothing special.<\/p>\n
This \u201cnothing special\u201d scared me the most.<\/p>\n
But the next day my father was transferred to one of his clinics. The procedures have begun. I saw him get him out of bed, how he could hold the glass alone again.<\/p>\n
And when at nine Julian put the pill in my palm and handed me a glass of water, I swallowed it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The first nights<\/h2>\n
The first few nights, everything seemed like a stronger sedative.<\/p>\n
The pill had a metallic taste, as if a mixture of sugar and rust. After ten minutes, the room slightly began to smudge along the edges. The lamp next to the bed glowed more yellow, the wallpaper was breathing, the shadows on the ceiling were reaching out.<\/p>\n
After a few more minutes, I just\u2026 I was out.<\/p>\n
Not like a normal dream. There were no dreams, there was no \u201cI fall asleep, I wake up.\u201d
\nThere was \u201cI\u2019m here \u2013 I\u2019m gone \u2013 I\u2019m here again.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the morning I woke up with a terribly heavy head, and after a whole night of control in mathematics, which I do not remember a single task.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ll get used to it,\u201d Julian said as he saw I closed my eyes. \u201cYour brain is working more than before.\u201d That\u2019s good.<\/p>\n
I had made a deal with the devil. I had no right to complain, was I?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Side effects<\/h2>\n
After the first month, the real horror began.<\/p>\n
I began to wake up with thoughts that were not mine.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m lying in bed, and the first thing that crosses my mind is:
\n\u201cI have to check the lab results of yesterday, otherwise the neural bridge experiment will fail.\u201d<\/p>\n
Except I don\u2019t work in a lab. I never am.<\/p>\n
I go to the kitchen and take a breath on the way \u2013 and suddenly there is a smell of expensive French perfume in my nose. I can recognize the notes: jasmine, orange blood, musk. I\u2019ve never worn one in my life.<\/p>\n
Sometimes my hands curl up like they were playing the piano. I knew how the fingers were stacked, how to press a key, how the tree vibrated under the wrists. And I don\u2019t have a single piano lesson.<\/p>\n
It was more terrible.<\/p>\n
When Julian took me to Sofia for examinations or meetings, strangers sometimes stopped me on the street.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy God\u2026\u201d a woman with white hair and a refined scarf whispered once. Her eyes filled with tears. \u201cThat can\u2019t be\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry, do we know each other?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo\u2026 sorry\u2026\u201d he turned and almost ran away.<\/p>\n
Such moments were becoming more and more. Strange glances, trembling lips, smiles that stop in the middle.<\/p>\n
They looked at me like they were seeing a ghost.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Who\u2019s Catherine?<\/h2>\n
One night, while I was fixing the library in his office, I dropped a book. It fell, the pages flew over the floor, and a photo burst from the inside.<\/p>\n
On it \u2013 a woman around the forties, with her hair up, in a white laboratory apron. He holds a test tube in his hand, smiles slightly. Beautiful, intelligent face.<\/p>\n
On the back \u2013 inscription: \u201cKaterina. 1999.\u201d<\/p>\n
My stomach curled up like a fist.<\/p>\n
I recognized the smile.
\nBecause I saw her in the mirror every morning.<\/p>\n
The same slightly raised corner of the lips. The same tiny wrinkle on the left when the smile is semi-ironic.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d seen her on the portraits on the walls, but I always thought I was suggesting.<\/p>\n
That night, when at nine I took the pill before I \u201cdisappeared,\u201d a word appeared in my head that was not mine:<\/p>\n
\u201cBridge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just one word. But heavy as concrete.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The plan<\/h2>\n
The next day, when Julian left \u201con business\u201d in the city, I started looking.<\/p>\n
I may have been naive sometime, but I wasn\u2019t stupid. I graduated in biology, worked for a year in a laboratory, I knew how documents are arranged, how they hide clues, what no one can completely erase.<\/p>\n
In the suede headboard of the bed there was a slight, almost invisible slit. I put a small voice recorder there \u2013 a gift from a journalist friend who had been forgotten in the drawer until now. I set it to turn on in a sound.<\/p>\n
I took the pill again tonight.
\nI disappeared again.<\/p>\n
In the morning, when Julian went out for a meeting with his lawyers, I waited for the car to move away and pulled out the voice recorder. My hands were shaking so hard that I could barely press \u201cplay.\u201d<\/p>\n
I expected\u2026 I don\u2019t know what. Heavy breathing, whispering, maybe something much uglier.<\/p>\n
I heard\u2026 crying.<\/p>\n
A male, choked, raw cry like I\u2019ve never heard of him.<\/p>\n
\u201cNight one hundred and twenty-second\u2026\u201d his voice hoarsely whispered. \u201cThe synaptic transfer is sixty percent.\u201d Her brain takes the data better than any simulation. Its neural networks are\u2026 fertile ground.<\/p>\n
My heart is frozen.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat night he smiled in a dream,\u201d he continued. \u201cHe smiled just like Catherine as the lilacs bloomed in the western garden.\u201d For a moment I forgot that I was looking at a stranger.<\/p>\n
Catherine.<\/p>\n
That portrait in the hallway, the smoky pictures in frames, the yellow newspaper clippings in his files. Katerina Zlatarova\u2010Tarneva \u2013 a famous neurologist who died in a \u201claboratory accident\u201d twenty years ago.<\/p>\n
I sat on the edge of the bed, clutching the voice recorder, and the sound kept hitting me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know you hate me, Clara,\u201d Julian heard himself again, but this time he spoke as if he were bent over me. \u201cI know you see in me a monster, an old, rich freak who buys foreign daughters.\u201d But I\u2019m dying. My memory is falling apart. Alzheimer\u2019s eats everything \u2013 her voice, her laughter, her formulas, even the way she tied my tie. I can\u2019t let Catherine die a second time.<\/p>\n
His voice broke.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I can\u2019t keep it in my head, I\u2019ll keep it in yours.<\/p>\n
My breath stopped.<\/p>\n
The pills.
\nNights without sleep.
\nForeign memories.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t put me to sleep.
\nHe was recording me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Greatest Sin<\/h2>\n
The voice in the voice recorder became even more broken, almost inarticulate.<\/p>\n
\u201cI must confess my greatest sin, the one who bound us the three of us,\u201d said Julian. \u201cYour father\u2026 Ilian\u2026 did not fall ill by accident.\u201d<\/p>\n
My blood stuck in my ears so hard I could hardly hear.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was Catherine\u2019s partner in the lab. Her most trusted man. He made that \u201cmistake\u201d in the contest. He locked the door outside to save himself and\u2026 the papers. He came out almost unharmed. She\u2026 no.<\/p>\n
A torn sobbing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you signed our deal, I already knew everything. I know how he hid the money offshore, how he bought silence, how he kept silent in front of you. I know that without him, Catherine would be alive.<\/p>\n
My fingers got into the voice recorder.<\/p>\n
Julian continued:<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t marry you to punish you, Clara. I married you because only your DNA is compatible with the prototype of the Catherine Neural Bridge. I give you everything \u2013 not only the memories of her, but also the truth about your father. And his sins. Let at least one person in this world know what actually happened\u2026<\/p>\n
The recording ended with a long, desperate cry.<\/p>\n
I was sitting in the silence, and my head was roaring.<\/p>\n
My father \u2013 the man for whom I married an unknown old man, the man who had sung lullabies to me when I was little \u2013 turned out to be a saboteur.<\/p>\n
The life he had given me was bought with someone\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
And the pills\u2026<\/p>\n
They weren\u2019t just obliterating me. They filled me with his version of the story. With his love, pain, anger. With every sound of that explosive day that I hadn\u2019t experienced, I already remembered.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The safe<\/h2>\n
I don\u2019t know how I got into the basement. The feet themselves took me \u2013 as if Catherine\u2019s memory, of Julian, of this house were pulling me.<\/p>\n
I knew where the safe would be before I saw it.<\/p>\n
A fake brick in the wall to the right of the old boiler.<\/p>\n
My fingers dialed the code without thinking.
\nFour digits.
\nCatherine\u2019s birthday.<\/p>\n
Inside \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
I read and two lives intertwined before my eyes:
\nof a girl running barefoot on a panel balcony in Pazardzhik, and of a woman who signs documents for dangerous experiments in sterile white corridors.<\/p>\n
Both mine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Julian\u2019s death<\/h2>\n
Two days after I listened to the tape, Julian died.<\/p>\n
Quiet, no scenes. He fell asleep in the window armchair, with a book closed in his hand.<\/p>\n
Doctors wrote \u201cstopping the heart in a general deteriorating condition.\u201d I read \u201ca man who has done his job.\u201d<\/p>\n
The synaptic bridge was completed.<\/p>\n
My nights were already full of scenes that weren\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Two universes, packed into a skull.<\/p>\n
At Julian\u2019s funeral, I was standing next to the coffin in a black dress, with a look that I don\u2019t know whose it was.<\/p>\n
My father was there \u2013 upright, healthy, in color in the cheeks, which I had not seen for years. He was wearing a new suit he couldn\u2019t afford before.<\/p>\n
There were tears in front of the people:<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was our savior\u2026 Thanks to him I am alive\u2026<\/p>\n
I squeezed the bag with the folders inside and told myself it was the last time any of us told this lie.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The clash<\/h2>\n
After the funeral, we were left alone next to one of the stone columns of the cemetery. The wind blew my veil, the rain sticking my hair to my face.<\/p>\n
\u201cTough day, huh?\u201d my father said, hugging me. \u201cBut from here on out, it\u2019ll be better.\u201d There is a legacy left. We\u2019ll start fresh.<\/p>\n
His touch, which had brought me comfort before, was now causing me physical disgust.<\/p>\n
I inhaled. Two scents were mixed in my memory \u2013 its cheap aftershave water and the smell of laboratory burning, ozone and melted plastic.<\/p>\n
\u201cDad\u2026\u201d I whispered.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, dear?\u201d<\/p>\n
Do you remember that night in the lab?<\/p>\n
I felt his body freeze.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2026 what are you saying?\u201d<\/p>\n
I leaned over to his ear so that no one else could hear:<\/p>\n
It smelled like ozone. On smoke. It was so hot that the glass was bursting on its own. He pressed the lock button outside and heard her screaming your name before it exploded the core of the reactor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
He stepped back, his eyes widening.<\/p>\n
\u201cKlara\u2026<\/p>\n
I remember everything, Dad. I saw it through his eyes. I heard it through his ears. I read the papers you signed. I saw the bank statements.<\/p>\n
His face turned pale to greenish.<\/p>\n
He\u2026 he poisoned you! These pills\u2026 you\u2019ve brainwashed you!<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d I said calmly. \u201cThe pills gave me his memory.\u201d And the safe gave me the evidence.<\/p>\n
He began to look for words, his hands waving:<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t understand!\u201d I was young, scared! They were pushing us! You have no idea what kind of world she was moving in! You have no right to judge me!<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the contrary. I\u2019m the only person who has a point. I live with the consequences of your choice of twenty-two years.<\/p>\n
I looked him in the eye, not as a daughter, but as a judge.<\/p>\n
You have his money. You have your health. But from today on, you will live with one thought: you do not know when I will call the prosecutor\u2019s office. Today, in a year, in ten\u2026 you don\u2019t know when someone\u2019s going to knock on your door.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou won\u2019t\u2026\u201d he whispered. \u201cYou\u2019re my daughter\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTo a woman you left to burn to save yourself,\u201d I said softly. \u201cThere is your blood in me.\u201d And his memory. Trust me, this is a combination you don\u2019t want to argue with.<\/p>\n
I let him stand alone between the graves, grayer and older than I had seen him in the hospital.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After that<\/h2>\n
Julian\u2019s house is now mine. That\u2019s what the will says.<\/p>\n
In the evening, I walk past the bedside table, open the bottom drawer and look at the small glass bottle with the blue pills. There\u2019s half left.<\/p>\n
Sometimes my fingers flinch towards her.
\nA part of me wants to continue taking the pills \u2013 to keep alive his voice, his love for Catherine, even his anger.<\/p>\n
Another part wants to pour them into the toilet and watch them dissolve.<\/p>\n
So far I\u2019m not doing either.<\/p>\n
Because I realized something:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
Julian wanted to keep Catherine.
\nMy father wanted to erase Catherine.<\/p>\n
I stand in the middle.
\nWith their memory and my own life.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m no longer just the girl who married to save her father.<\/p>\n
I am the archive of truth.
\nThe living hard drive of a love, a crime and a deal that should never have been signed.<\/p>\n
And as I walk down the hallways of the house, I feel the rain outside slamming the windows.<\/p>\n
I once believed it was raining for us.
\nNow I know:<\/p>\n
The rain doesn\u2019t cry.<\/p>\n
We are the ones who need to cry the truth.<\/p>\n
And my biggest release was a little blue pill, which I refused to drink.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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