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through his mind—turquoise, sapphire, ruby, gold, malachite, onyx. What else? Nothing. It was something alive looking at him in the mirror. It was like an ephemerally divine gift for infidels. For the wretched . A gift to make them pause, stunned for a second. A handful of time.
    A handful of precious stones. Valentin stared at the other face of his sister. The one that was not his own.
    Other faces crowded around them. Other voices gathered, saying pleasant things. The din was becoming denser and denser.
    The two remained frozen.
    Until Margarita pulled herself away and ran out.
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19.
Forward and Backward
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    Margarita often filled her black bag with things and went out.
    No one knew where she went. No one knew what she had in that bag. She carried the heavy thing everywhere with her, and like the weight on a pendulum, the bag always brought her home.
    One evening Valentin found a laptop in the bag. A magnificent little machine, a real gem. Where could she have gotten it from—had she stolen it? In answer to his questions, at first Margarita calmly repeated that it was hers. Then she flew into a rage and threw something at Valentin. In the end, she grew sad and shut herself up completely.
    Valentin insisted and Maria was obliged to go to Margarita’s room. When she entered, Margarita was asleep curled on the bed. Maria lifted the object tentatively, as if its weight could provide an explanation. She held it up for a while; too long, Valentin thought. Then she placed it back, took Valentin’s hand and pulled him out of the room.
    He could not accept the sudden and inexplicable appearance of this object. Finally, Maria, kindly enough, told him that if Margarita had stolen it, they would be charged with theft and that was it. What was this, some kind of irresponsible accountability? This was his own mother. Margarita didn’t just conjure up the damn thing, he screamed at her, slamming the kitchen door and locking himself in his room.
    He was angry for several days. When he saw Margarita hanging her bag over her shoulder and leaving again, he decided to follow her, sneaking noiselessly behind her. Margarita changed multiple buses and tramways, most of the time traveling in a circle. Finally she got off and headed with a firm step up the steep boulevard toward the crossing called Krusta. When she reached the top of the hill, she stopped at the traffic lights and stood there for a while. Then turned and headed for Hladilnika.
    Valentin was getting annoyed. This was probably useless. For a moment he thought of catching up with his sister and helping her carry the heavy bag. It would have never crossed her mind that he might be following her. He was also getting tired, but now his legs seemed to be doing the walking alone. There was nothing to be done; he had to continue what he had started this morning. He had to follow the mysterious itineraries his sister was walking and protect her from unimaginable dangers.
    When Margarita finally reached the first tram stop, he was cursing her for having walked for miles. With astonishment, he saw her climb into an empty tram going in the opposite direction. On the other hand, trams could not go in any other direction from here. She sat down, rummaged through her bag, and, in that long and empty tramcar, took out the computer, opening it on her lap like a first-class traveler on an airplane. Locals and residents from other parts of Sofia were filling the tram, so he hurried to take the seat behind her and look at the screen. No one else was paying attention to what Margarita was doing.
    She was playing a rather complex game of solitaire, which looked like Clock Solitaire, but the cards were not arranged in a twelve-point star. At first it seemed that she was moving the cursor randomly across the screen, but then he realized that she was wielding the in-built mouse with impressive skill. And all of a sudden the game was over and she had won. The tramcar, already