"I want your sixty acres of land by the river!" Anna said, unperturbed.
"What?!" my father fumed. "You must be crazy! I'd rather lose my son...."
"You surely will," she assured him. "If in a day I don't start my treatment, Boris'll swell up and kick the bucket!"
"We'll wait and see..." my father barked mulishly.
My hands swelled like pillows, an ambluance came to take me to Sofia, but who would drive it. None of the three drivers in the whole district dared do that, for everybody believed I was just about to croak. Two of them said they were sick and the third had run away to Greece. Anna was again sent for.
"Sir," she said to my father, "it's a little late for me to cure your son, but I still can promise you that on the twenty-fifth day of the treatment he'll..."
"I'll give you everything!"
"Your sixty acres of fertile land by the river and I insist Boris marry me when he's safe and sound!"
"You rag!" My father shrieked, cussed and rampaged as though somebody was tearing at him. My mum and my grandma started crying, father raged and brawled and kicked until he broke a cupboardful of saucers. At the end he gave in... So, my parents took me to Anna's dilapidated hut. The neighbours told me later that the town priest was on the alert, ready either to absolve me from all my sins if I were to die soon or to pronounce us as husband and wife if I survived...
I still wasn't in my right mind when the priest bent over me offering me the golden cross to kiss. I didn't know what I was kissing but I caught a word or two he was mumbling under his breath. The man was obviously congratulating me on my best of luck.
You've got a magnificent bride, Boris! I'm sure you'll be happy with her! May God bless the two of you and may you have many children as pretty as she is!"
"What are you talking about?!" I asked him, flabbergasted.
The priest was a little deaf and went on telling me that Martha Popova, my ex-fiancee, and her divorced tobacco merchant had gone together to a resort on the Black Sea coast to enjoy the fresh air and scenery there. I wished her good luck. So, all of a sudden, I found myself married to Anna!
"Strangle her!" my father kept on advising me. "If you are not strong enough for that then poison her!"
How could I poison Anna? She was expecting our first child, the one she conceived when I committed my sin on that red-hot summer afternoon. How could I poison such a prettyy woman?! Anna's little finger was prettier than all my father's acres, dairies, wineries, horses and dogs, let alone Anna herself! And you can take my word for it. There was a secret I haven't told even Dancho the cop about, though I felt I should have done so.
A week before my first son was born, Anna said she wanted to have a word with me in her room.
You can recognize this, can't you?" she asked, waving gently a string of yellow beads before my eyes. I gaped, breathless, shocked. The yellow beads I remembered so well! "I beat you, Boris, then I cured you. It was your child that saved your life. I don't want your sixty acres. Now, you may take all your things. God bless you."
For years, this yellow necklace hung on the wall of my room next to the calendar. Anna wanted to throw it out but I wouldn't let her. We had three sons, but it was our fourth child, my daughter, that I gave the necklace of yellow beads. I hoped she would grow up as beautiful as her mother.
I had kept my secret so far. I was the only living soul who knew about the famous cop's fiasco. Thanks to Dancho's failure to apprehend my attacker, I married Anna.
Today I am an eighty year old grandpa, but still thank God and all his angels that Dancho the cop could not find the string of these cheap yellow beads. I sometimes put a bottle of my finest plum brandy by his grave hoping his soul can have a drink in heaven and see that I am deeply indebted to him.
Ends