I knew from the very start that my going to yoga would turn out to be an experiment. It began with me getting the stop wrong—the one where I was supposed to get off—and I ended up in the completely wrong place.
The hotel from which my brother ended his life by jumping from the terrace now seemed very low to me. After all these years, it is hard for me to believe that he took his own life from that very spot—and that even the emergency services, whose building stands on the opposite sidewalk, could not save him.
The mix-up at the bus stop was a sign I missed at the time. It wasn’t until the next day that I understood its meaning.
Finally, I found the hall and managed to arrive just barely on time. I entered the dusty gym almost at the same moment as the instructor—a woman in her forties whom I had happened to strike up a conversation with in the elevator, after years of passing each other in silence between the floors of the building where I’ve lived since the last century. And that, by now, is an eternity. Even eternity gets tiresome.
She greeted me and told me to hurry up. By “gear,” she meant shorts or leggings. I looked around the room. There were four women, aged somewhere between forty and fifty.
The session began with the “Sun Exercises,” as the instructor called them. I performed them almost flawlessly. I knew them. And why did I know them? Because I had been through this, too. In my youth, I had practiced yoga.
My fondest memory is from the home of my grandmother, with whom I was living at the time. She would constantly ask me not to stand on my head. I could hardly do that now; these days, I sometimes struggle to stay on my own two feet. Thirty years had passed—a terribly long obstacle over which I had tripped up my life.
The exercises followed one after another, becoming increasingly difficult. I grew more and more bored with all the twisting and contorting, and then the pain set in. I was already regretting not using my MultiSport card for the swimming pool.
“And now, it’s time for relaxation,” the instructor said.
Just then, two of the women—nothing particularly remarkable about them—got up, rolled up their mats, and left. Either they were sufficiently relaxed, or they had decided they were better off remaining tense. Perhaps, after yoga, they would down a couple of glasses of wine or pick a fight with their husbands. And if they didn’t have husbands—well, they would return to the dead silence of their own homes.
I stayed.
I let the instructor’s voice guide me. First, she took me through a forest filled with birds, then transported me to the seashore.
But the noise inside me refused to fall asleep. My mind darted in every direction like an escaped hummingbird. It took me back to that young man from thirty years ago—the one who went to yoga not to find himself, but to escape his life.
After the workout, we left together. It turned out she lived on the thirteenth floor of my apartment building—a building half-filled with complete strangers.
On the way, she mentioned that I had really tried to perform the exercises correctly. Then, like almost any woman, he asked what I did for a living.
I replied that I work for a gambling company, in the administration department. I couldn’t exactly tell her that I actually sit at the reception desk and act as a sort of doorman. Well, sort of.
She told me about herself. She worked in finance. Yoga was her way of escaping boredom. In the mornings, she’d chase it away with Spanish lessons; in the evenings, with yoga—and for the rest of the day, she sold cars on lease.
An elevator isn’t the best place to meet someone. That’s what I thought that same evening, just before drifting off to sleep, as I reflected on what hadn’t happened.
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Rossen Jeliazkov
Translated by Dessy Tsvetkova
Picture Nick Victor
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