The Black Box

By Alek Popov

The Black Box is the latest satirical novel from one of Europe's funniest and most exciting emerging writers.
In 1990 two Bulgarian brothers, Ned and Angel, receive an unusual package from the USA: a black plastic box containing the ashes of their late father. But can either of them be sure he is he really dead? Fifteen years later, as the brothers forge new and very different lives in their new home in New York, some answers begin to emerge . . .
A darkly comic tale of disillusionment, The Black Box explores the nature and logic of our Western neo-liberal capitalist system and how so many of us are all driven to acts of greed, imprudence and recklessness in the pursuit of money and wealth.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Owen Publishers
• Release date: Apr 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9780720618402

Alek Popov

ALEK POPOV is the prize-winning author of widely translated collections of short stories and novels. His first novel, Mission London, has been translated into 15 languages and was adapted into a hugely successful film that broke Bulgarian box office records. The Black Box is his second novel. A third, The Palavei Sisters, was published in 2013. Alek Popov was elected as a member of Bulgarian Academy of Science in the field of Arts. He serves on the board of Bulgarian PEN Centre and is part of the editorial body of Granta Bulgaria magazine.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

I cannot believe my father is inside that black plastic box that just came from customs. No way. The box is now sat on top of the table in our sitting-room, and everyone is staring at it. Absolute horror. I don’t know exactly what they expected. A box like any other box. A delivery box. I lift it. It is heavy. A trickle of dust is coming out of one corner. My father’s ashes, I assume. I run a finger through the dust on the table, then I smell it. I’m tempted to lick it, but somehow I feel the others’ growing disapproval. On the lid, in small letters, my father’s name is written.

In a flash, it dawns on me that it could be any name.

Then, suddenly, all of them start running around, setting the table, placing flowers and bonbons and a candle, digging out a portrait of the deceased, and the domestic altar is ready. Later, other things are added: an icon, a cross, my father’s books, a diploma, a medal. My grandmother insists on highlighting my father’s social standing. Mama is pretending to do the housework, concentrating on the details, but actually she is on some other planet. She is trying to see through the dense fog that separates the world of the living from the world of the dead … People start to arrive; they stare at the black box and nod. Everything is so unexpected. Not long ago they were drinking together, and now he was gone.

The death of my father is shocking for many reasons. First of all, he was young, only fifty. Second, he was endowed with a brilliant brain, which is now lost for ever. Third, the tragedy occurred in the butt-end of nowhere, somewhere in America, which makes us all feel even more helpless. Fourth, nobody knows exactly how the tragedy happened, which enshrouds the incident in a sinister aura and fosters all sorts of ludicrous myths. Fifth, these events are, in principle, tragic. Sixth, there are probably many other reasons I cannot think of right now.

Almost an entire year has passed since the fall of Communism … I always thought something like this would happen to him sooner or later if he carried on the way he did … My father, that is, and his drinking. He did carry on, though, drinking like an Olympic champion, and the only thing we could do was to cross our fingers. I had no clue what on earth he was trying to prove the rest of the time. All those integrals, algorithms and theorems he was producing – well, I hadn’t the slightest idea what all that was about. I was never into maths. My maths results were appalling at school. I cannot say that he was helpful either for that matter. He felt pity for me. I felt pity for him, too, for having to deal with this non-gratifying material. In some paradoxical way I was so bad at it and he was so able that, at the end of the day, we found ourselves in the same position. The length of the equation is of no importance if you cannot solve it. The only difference was that I didn’t give a toss, and for him it was a matter of life and death. Fucking integrals – they look like fishhooks. You bite one, and that is the end of you. And who, I wonder, is casting those hooks in the pond called Science to catch the carp?

There comes my brother Nedko, a battered postman’s bag around his shoulders. Last year he couldn’t get into university, so according to some stupid law he had to work for six months before he could take the entrance exams again. The State is looking after the country’s youth so they don’t hang around jobless. I suspect the law will change soon. But right now he has no choice.

I say to him, ‘We have a parcel from America.’

Nedko blinks. Confused. Then he notices the black box and a guilty smile appears on his face. His work for the postal service has turned him into a cynic. His bag is overflowing with letters, newspapers and magazines, and I bet they won’t be reaching their addressees any time soon. It is an unfortunate coincidence that he is responsible for our area, too. It is the reason the letter announcing the tragic arrival of the black box turned up two weeks late.

Nedko is trying to make it up to me and shoves the latest edition of Ogoniek – a liberal Soviet magazine that specializes in publishing blood-curdling revelations – in front of my face. Now, however, I am not in the mood for gossip with a Stalinist twist. I stare at that box, and I wonder how on earth I can be sure that the ashes inside are my father’s and not some tramp’s. I communicate these suspicions to my brother and he shrugs, as if asking where I’d got that crazy idea from. Where indeed? Well, you don’t need to have a fertile imagination to figure that one out. But he seems not to have one. The transportation of the body from the USA to Bulgaria would have cost two thousand dollars, a sum we could never have afforded. The insurance company had been messing about. The university had not been willing to pay. The Bulgarian Embassy had also not been keen on footing the bill for repatriation, so the only remaining option had been cremation. Given the fact my father was an atheist he wouldn’t have minded. So, his ashes travelled as a regular parcel.

A parcel from America.

‘You said that already.’ My brother is frowning.

‘There is a short story with that title’, I continue, ‘by Svetoslav Minkov.’

The story was published in the 1950s in a propaganda journal, and it aimed to expose and discredit the bourgeois value system. A middle-class family has relatives in the States that regularly send them parcels. Transatlantic goodies trigger unbelievable enjoyment and give reason for endless showing-off and commentaries along the lines of how great the West is and how rotten our own light industry is. On one occasion, though, an unusual parcel arrives. The parcel contains a sealed metal box with nothing written on it. When they open it they discover it is full of mysterious dust. They sit down and they wonder, What is this? What is its purpose? In the end the father decides to be brave and puts a spoonful in his coffee. The effect is revitalizing, and they decide that it is some sort of vitamin. They start drinking it for breakfast, and in the meantime they find all sorts of uses for it in their daily lives. When they run out of the miracle substance they decide to write to their relatives and ask for more. But then they receive a letter. This letter was meant to arrive with the parcel, but apparently it ended up in the bag of someone like my brother … In the letter he relatives announce the death of an aunt and that they are sending her ashes to Bulgaria to be buried. Following this the family stops glorifying the West so much.

‘Clever,’ my brother says.

When there is an plane crash everyone rushes to locate the black box. In this box all the navigation data is kept, together with the data for the technical condition of the systems, the crew’s conversations, the orders of the pilot and so on and so forth. The device allows events before the catastrophe on board the plane to be reconstructed and analysed for potential causes. My father’s black box does not contain anything; all the information has been erased, transformed into ashes. Suddenly I realize I did not know him at all. I did not understand his work. I detested his drinking. I trembled in the face of his rage. I loved it when he was away. I was afraid he would not come back, and that is what happened.

One event slips through my memory like a postcard from the afterlife. Wide beach, hotels and palm trees on one side and the Atlantic on the other, dark and threatening. An advertising blimp is navigating the skies, a huge banner, ‘Myrtle Beach’, trailing behind it. We are in America, and the year must be 1986. My father was sent to teach two terms at the University of South Carolina, and our State nobly gave him permission to take his family with him. I was in my third year of university and very keen on emigrating there – on principle, not because I liked the place that much. My father was unwilling. We talk about it on the beach. The only serious conversation we ever had. I do not remember the words. The breakers are muffling them. My mother and brother are walking at some distance ahead of us. I contemplate our shadows galloping next to each other on the sand. He is a tall, well-built – even overweight – man with a big head and short hair. His belt crosses his belly in the middle. I find that funny. I am skinny with a bushy hairstyle. My trousers hang below my waist, just at the point of decency. Two days ago I spotted Aerosmith’s lead vocalist wearing his trousers in just such a fashion on MTV, and I found it extremely chic. My father is explaining why he doesn’t want us to stay in the USA. It is not that we can’t or the thought hasn’t crossed his mind but because there are things far more important than the shops full of goodies. Respect, for example. Man should have a certain weight; an immigrant is always an immigrant, lightweight. Even here, in America. Now they are treating him as an equal, but if he decides to stay here as an immigrant people’s attitudes towards him will change. I know it is difficult to explain, he says as he puts his arm around my shoulder (or he doesn’t; I don’t remember any more). His arguments reach my brain in a highly fragmented way. In fact, I do not care whether we are going to stay or not. The most important thing is to have more than one choice, he continues. To have the guts to say no. An immigrant cannot say no. Then he talks about his students in Bulgaria – the boys, as he calls them. It would not be the same without them. Naturally, he can always keep the regime as an excuse, and everyone will understand. His relationship with the Communists has never been easy. He achieved everything in spite of the regime, which makes his success even more valuable. But even regimes change … I hear him mentioning the name of the Soviet leader Gorbachev, but all my attention is taken up by a girl with a ring through her navel. For the first time I see such a miracle. The ring flashes blindingly on the whiteness of her belly. My jaw hits the floor. I feel myself going back a hundred thousand years down the evolutionary path. What Gorbachev? What perestroika?

My father does not notice anything …

I’m thinking, if you had noticed that ring, man, you could have been somewhere else now, not in this fucking box. Life is not only integrals, hypotenuses and vodka. Now it is too late to preach reason to my father, though. It is too late for the desire to know him better. We can’t even go for a beer together any more. End of story. He is in his box now, comfortably settled, and doesn’t give a damn about anything. I mean his ashes. I do not know about the soul; it could easily be wandering round the States, riding an invisible Harley-Davidson and screaming with joy, ‘I got out! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’

But we are here to stay. Literally and metaphorically, we are. To cap it all, the insurance company refuses to pay out on his policy. They insist on DNA tests. But he has already been cremated. The fucking idiots calculated we are too far away to do anything about it. We are about to lose one hundred thousand dollars.

That happened fifteen years ago.

1

ANGEL

Eighty-six kilometres to the final destination, the monitors above the seats informed us. Temperature, minus 15 degrees Celsius; altitude, 3,500 metres. On the screens the map of the western hemisphere emerged. The plane’s trajectory was marked by a white arrow starting in Central Europe, passing over Scotland, crossing the North Atlantic over Iceland, turning towards Labrador and entering the USA at a steep angle similar to that of a ballistic missile. Its point is almost touching the spot labelled New York.

I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. I hadn’t slept a wink the whole trip. The luggage racks above my head were loose – it rained bags, clothes, plastic bags. I didn’t understand all the rush. America isn’t going anywhere. It’ll continue to sit on the other side of the ocean and soak up waves of individuals driven by the idea of personal happiness for at least another twenty years. Without noticing, I had dozed off. When I opened my eyes the queue between the seats hadn’t moved. I had no idea how much time had passed. Sullen, sweaty people, bags between their legs, were complaining loudly.

‘What’s going on? Why aren’t they letting us out?’

‘Ladies and gentlemen, there is a minor medical problem on board.’ The pilot’s voice sounded dispirited, like a guy whose plans for the evening have fallen through irreversibly. ‘We ask you to be patient until we have clarification of the circumstances surrounding the incident. We apologize for any inconvenience.’

A minor medical problem! The passengers slumped into seats with glum expressions and began to take out their mobile phones. At the front end of the plane people dressed in brightly coloured biohazard protection suits and gas masks started to appear.

Now we were in for it!

The guilty party behind the commotion was the snotty brat who hadn’t stopped throwing up for the last few hours. Clearly that had aroused suspicions of biological attack. The team milled around the boy feverishly, checking his pulse, his heart, taking blood samples. The mother was sobbing. The father, a Middle Eastern type with a thin greasy lump of hair stuck to his pate, was nervously crushing an empty crisp packet. Beneath the surface of this minimalist gesture however, lay the terror of an ordinary man thrown into the heart of global chaos. From time to time the commander of the flight said something to calm people’s nerves. The guys with gas masks carried suitcases full of equipment back and forth. But things were taking their time. We sat cooling our heels, stress having already given way to bored indifference.

I hadn’t set foot in America since the thing with my father. (I catch myself always referring to ‘the thing with my father’ instead of ‘he died’, ‘passed on’ or ‘kicked the bucket’, as if any word for ‘dead’ would be taboo.) The excitement surrounding my desire to travel across the Atlantic popped like a bubble-gum bubble, sealing my daydreams of emigration within its sticky pink stamp. It took years before I could think of it again. Even then, it was as if some invisible prohibition continued to loom over that part of the world. That didn’t apply to my brother, who had accepted my father’s death with no questions asked. Nedko went to study in the States several months after the tragic accident. He did an MBA, and naturally he stayed there, except for holidays. Then he stopped coming back even for those. Now he worked on Wall Street, and I supposed he had every reason to be pleased with himself. Actually, in some way we both stayed: one in the States, one in Bulgaria. Not that I was complaining. That was the situation. Nobody forced me to stay. I chose for myself.

I had just finished my English degree, and there was a place for me at the university, but I preferred to dedicate myself to business. Times were such. Anyone and everyone was registering firms, buying, selling … At the beginning of the 1990s publishing looked like a way to get rich. There was a hunger for books unavailable until now. People still had money; they were grabbing whatever crossed their path. We sold an inherited property. Half went on my brother’s studies, and the other half I invested in business. I released about a dozen not-bad crime novels, money flowed; I bought myself a secondhand Opel and married young. But the business climate went down the drain, and I ended up in the shit, big time. I continued to churn out a title or two, just to keep up the façade, but I felt it wasn’t going to last. I was also fed up with chasing warehouses and printers or going after various distributors to collect my miserable dues. I was making ends meet translating for other agencies, mainly thrillers and science fiction, which I liked.

The family climate wasn’t all that sunny either. My wife and I didn’t get along, although we’d gone out for a whole year before we took our vows (what a phrase) and got married solemnly in a church with various important people and promises of till death us do part. It is as though that screwed the whole thing up from the start. The box we stuffed ourselves into, that of a happy young couple from a mattress catalogue. In the end the realities of such a life took over. Utter banality. Sex going downhill. She was an artist, but she was bread-winning in some advertising agency where, for no particular reason, they gave her only sausages to draw. She tried to do some covers, but it didn’t work out. But sausages she could do. She even won an award for them once, at some international exhibition, after which she was invited to go to Italy. Let’s get divorced – I don’t remember who said it, but neither party made an attempt to counter it. We didn’t have children, nothing to divide – apart from the opel, and its wheels had been stolen. She gave it to me. And left. Now she’s most likely drawing salami – but for a lot more money.

Everybody scrambled to save themselves, like rats in the bilges of a sinking ship. Most of my friends moved to Ireland, Spain and Germany, even to Portugal, from where, as a rule, the Portuguese themselves are trying to get away. In the end my mother shifted herself, too. She had just retired from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, where she had worked for over twenty years, with the fabulous pension of about a hundred euros. She went away to take care of some old guy all the way over in Wales. It was set up by some former colleague of hers, who had developed a whole network of carers for old folks in the UK. She’s been there for three years now, in some small town I always forget the name of, famous for its amazing natural beauty and Celtic monuments strewn across the landscape. I’ll stay, she says, as long as I can. She even sent me money after that fiasco with the little penguins. I never had a good feel for children’s literature. But the agent persuaded me that those penguins were a huge hit right across Europe. Ten series with pictures. The rights cost me a fortune, and the printing expenses even more. I printed ten thousand of them, but hardly sold a single one. That was the end of my publishing career. Wherever I looked, only dust, idiocy, stray mongrels and hopelessness …

Then I asked myself why I didn’t shift my ass somewhere. I mean seriously, not like half the Bulgarian population who like the idea after they puncture a tyre in one of the countless craters in the roads. It took me almost a year to motivate myself. Maybe because I wasn’t dying from hunger – after all, I had a roof over my head, when I felt like a screw I always found someone, and when I felt like a drink I was never left dry. I often lied to myself that things weren’t all that bad. But I knew that path only leads further and further down the road to physical and mental degeneration, and I wasn’t even forty, and my whole life was ahead of me.

At least that’s what they say.

And, yes, I played the lottery with at least a million fellow potatoes looking for more fertile ground. I didn’t believe anything would come of it, bearing in mind my brother’s experience. He would send envelopes like a madman until finally the company he worked for sorted the work permit for him. But the lottery is a national sport in Bulgaria. Play, it might happen. When you do win, though, everything goes to hell. One powerful imperative sweeps away your former life: you’ve been chosen. Here fate gets involved. You’ve been given a chance, the door has been left ajar for you and whether you go in is entirely up to you. Everyone deserves happiness. And now there’s no way out. If you don’t answer Uncle Sam’s bugle you’ll be whinging to the grave. The ulcer of doubt will eat away inside you even if everything turns out fine. And if, God forbid, your life takes a downturn, you’ll be pulling your hair out thinking of your wasted chance. The clash with domestic reality, so routine and unavoidable until now, suddenly acquires tragic dimensions. You screwed up again, you idiot will ring in your head like the echo of a nail being hammered. You screwed up again.

My brother was frequently away on some project, and his apartment sits empty for most of the year. So it’s no problem for him to accommodate me, at least to begin with. If I could get myself out of here, of course …

The air-conditioning and air-purification systems had been switched off to slow the spread of the suspected infection. The air inside the plane was hot and heavy, saturated with the smell of bodily vapours. Some of the passengers held napkins to their faces. Just my luck. When the gates are finally opening for you, the Green Card is in your pocket and you, so to speak, are in the full pocket of America; some sneaky virus could be breaking down the walls of your cells to remind you that the lottery of life and the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program have nothing in common.

I imagined how I’d be spending the following months in quarantine in some secret camp, outside US borders, behind electrified barbed wire. Under the pretext of curing us, some murky department of the CIA that deals with biological investigation conducts macabre experiments on some of the detainees from the more second-rate countries. My body is covered with ulcers, and I’m dying in unbelievable agony. Victim of international terror. As far as I know, in this case insurance policies generally don’t apply. They quickly cremate my remains to cover the traces. One fine day my brother receives my ashes in a black plastic box like the one in which my father arrived.

Welcome to America, dude.

2

NED

For a long time I thought I was happy – or, if not exactly happy, then at least content with my life. Objectively speaking, I am not lacking for anything. I am officially in the category of Successful Bulgarians Abroad, SBA. Unofficially, though, things are slightly different. Happy I am not; neither am I particularly content. The only consolation left is that I am an SBA – which, unfortunately, is not enough. In this life one needs something more than the jealousy of the NSAB, the Non-Successful Asses stuck in Bulgaria.

And that something more is what I lack.

I think I always knew this but stubbornly hid my head in the sand. I tried to look at the situation positively, like they taught us at university. When your salary jumps around 10 per cent a year that’s not particularly difficult. You progress through the hierarchy. You learn new things. You travel. Until one day things start to repeat themselves. As do the destinations. The lavish evenings on your company’s credit don’t do it for you any more. Neither do the luxury hotels. Nor the flights in first class. Imperceptibly, but irreversibly, you begin to understand.

You’ve reached the peak of your possibilities.

The ceiling is as transparent as a glass floor. You see the people walking above you clearly, you even hear the squeak of their two-thousand-dollar shoes, you can look up their wives’ skirts as much as you like, but you can’t join them up there. I don’t fool myself any longer. The ladder I was climbing ends beneath their soles. When you understand that at fifty it probably doesn’t matter. You’ve already flowed through the system’s sewers, and you float around the edges until the tide erases the memory of you like it would an oil spill.

‘Do you feel successful?’

The question is launched by a Bulgarian journalist, who is making a series of ‘portraits’ dedicated to the phenomenon of SBAs for a big Bulgarian newspaper. I have no idea how she got my details. She