I had arrived on a bus from Sofia early that morning, a four-hour wobble east to the middle of nowhere. "You wait here," the driver had told me, "for the bus to Klisura. It comes around noon. A blue bus. With a big sign. To Klisura. Will you be able to read it?" He'd spoken to me the way people speak to foreigners, drunks, or dim-witted. I'd smiled and nodded and wondered which of the three he'd thought I was.
"Beg all you want," he said. "For all I know, you have no grandfather. You certainly acted it for year."
"I was busy with school. Preoccupied. But I always made time to call you."
"My erections are more frequent than your calls."
What very useful information, I said.
“You'll never live to be as old as me,", he said. "Whatever you think of doing, I've already done it. Wherever you think of going, I've already been and returned. And it was nothing special.”
The bus arrived with great Bulgarian punctuality - an hour and twenty minutes late.