The October Circle

by Robert Littell

  “But it is not at all true,” Valyo tells someone else, his lyrical voice wafting to the far corners of the house. “I adore mezzo-sopranos, even the ones that don’t sing well. They have the two physical qualities which one most admires in women: long necks and large breasts.”

  “How were the mezzos at La Scala?” a man shouts.

  Valyo taps his tuning fork against his knee (without apparent muscular reaction) and cocks his ear to it. “Four-forty — what a comfort in this world of ours to have a standard that never changes. La Scala? There was nothing at La Scala this season except music, friend. And the music has lost its edge; this is the price one pays for being a professional. Pieces that once reduced me to tears no longer move me. Only performances move me, and, then, usually only my own. La Scala, I tell you in all humility, was redeemed by my rendering of Verdi.”

  “He’s delicious,” Melanie whispers in the Racer’s ear. They are standing together on the fringe of the crowd. “He looks more like a defrocked priest than an opera singer.”

  “He almost became a priest once,” Tacho whispers back. “But he decided he couldn’t give up women.” Tacho raises himself on tiptoes. “Tell again about your audition at La Scala, Valyo,” he calls. “There are some here who have never heard the story.” And to the girl he whispers:

  “Listen carefully.”

  “Our Racer wants to hear about my audition at La Scala. Good god, one hardly remembers, it was so long ago. Dawn of history, practically.” Someone hands Valyo a glass of champagne and he sips it zestfully. “I was young then, of course; what they call a babe in the woods.” Valyo chuckles to himself. “They had never seen a Bulgarian before; god only knows if they even knew where Bulgaria was. When I said I had trained at the Sofia conservatory, one of them actually laughed. I stood on the edge of that stage and looked out at the maestro. He was wearing a black cape and sitting in the last row, off to one side, quite alone. And I called out to him that there was only one thing on trial in the hall: his ability to recognize a great talent when he heard one. When I finished singing, the old man came forward slowly. He tapped his cane on the floor and nodded and told me he had passed.”

  “Did you get all of that?” Tacho asks the American girl.

  She nods enthusiastically. “He’s quite a character, your Valentine Barbovich.”

  “Try Valyo,” someone shouts.

  “Yes, Valyo can do it if anyone can,” a woman adds, pushing a man out of the crowd. It is the Scream Therapist, the one who was at the table next to Poleon’s the night before.

  Valyo leans forward. “Do what?”

  “Scream,” the Scream Therapist explains. “I’m taking a kind of survey: I’m trying to see if I can get anybody in Sofia to emit that peculiar sound commonly referred to as a scream.”

  “But scream for what?” Valyo inquires, puzzled.

  “Well, actually, for love. I subscribe to the theory that it is the need for love, and not sexuality, that is supressed in children; that when the child is screaming, he or she (as the case may be) is screaming for love, if you follow my meaning. I’m trying to get adults to duplicate this scream. Would you, eh, care to try? I warn you, so far nobody in Sofia has been able to, eh, to scream.”

  Valyo is clearly disconcerted. “But surely it is easy — “

  “Not so easy as you think,” the Scream Therapist asserts. “For you it will be especially difficult. You’ve spent your life learning to control your vocal chords, and I am asking you to free yourself of control. Go ahead. Try. All you have to do is open your mouth and scream!”

  Valyo looks around uncertainly. All right. Give me room.” Motioning everyone back with his hands, he fills his lungs, opens his mouth so that his soft, pink uvula is plainly visible and — closes his mouth again. “This is ridiculous,” Valyo decides. “Of course I can scream if I want to, but this makes no sense.” Valyo shrugs and laughs, and a few people, out of politeness, laugh with him.

  “How about you?” the Scream Therapist demands, looking directly at the Flag Holder, who is sitting quietly on a stool in front of the bar. A full glass of cognac, untouched, stands before him. A cigarette dangles from his lips. He looks gray, preoccupied, angry almost; his friends, sensing his mood, have steered clear of him at the party, and with good reason. For the Flag Holder has detected, on his way to the Dwarf’s house on Vitoša, a certain uneasiness in Sofia: people talking quietly in knots, all the lights burning after working hours in the Ministry of Defense, twice as many militiamen as usual on the streets. “What’s the matter with you?” the Rabbit whispered early in the evening, and when Lev didn’t answer she turned irritably to Octobrina and told her so that he could hear:

  “He has a low threshold of pleasure; he can’t take too much without feeling guilty.”

  Now the Flag Holder looks back at the Scream Therapist and shakes his head once.

  The Scream Therapist doesn’t ask him again.

  “I’d like to try,” volunteers Poleon’s ex-wife. She thrusts through the crowd until she stands facing the Scream Therapist. “What’s the prize? What do I get if I do it?” she laughs, playing to the audience.

  Poleon leans against the bar next to the Flag Holder. “If anybody can do it, she can,” he snickers. “She’s had a lot of practice.”

  “The trick is to think of someone you hate,” the Scream Therapist advises Poleon’s ex-wife.

  “Oh, that part’s easy,” she calls over her shoulder. The crowd applauds in delight.

  “Close your eyes and imagine that the person you hate the most in the world is in this room now.”

  “I don’t have to imagine,” she throws at the crowd, giggling wildly.

  “You feel anger and resentment welling up inside you. Now open your mouth and scream and expel the anger. Go ahead, scream.”

  Poleon’s ex-wife shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath. Her breaths come faster. Her mouth contorts in anger. Her nostrils flare. Suddenly her facial muscles sag. She starts to say something, then shakes her head. “I need a drink,” she mutters, moving off toward the bar.

  “Would anybody else like to try?” the Scream Therapist demands.

  “Could you do it?” Melanie asks the Racer. “Scream, I mean?”

  “I suppose so,” Tacho replies.

  “Go ahead, try. I dare you!”

  Tacho laughs off the dare. “Let’s get some air.” He takes a firm grip on her arm and leads her into the garden.

  “This place is enormous,” Melanie gasps. “How did the Dwarf get a whole house to himself? I thought you were limited to so many square meters a person?”

  “You forget he has fifteen Hungarians living with him. He had himself declared their legal guardian. All of them together are entitled to this much living space.” Tacho looks up at the house. “Angel says it was built after the turn of the century for a mistress of our King Ferdinand. Did you notice the inscription over the wrought-iron gate when we came up the path? Free your mind — move your ass.’ Angel swears Ferdinand had it put there, but a lot of people think Angel did it himself. Ferdinand fled the country after the First World War, and his mistress disappeared soon after. The house was used by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the summers for a while; Sofia gets quite hot this time of the year, but Vitoša stays cool. Sometime in the nineteen thirties — does all this interest you?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Sometime in the nineteen thirties it became a house of prostitution; Angel says it was run by the Foreign Ministry for foreign diplomats, but I think he’s inventing that; it was probably private enterprise. At any rate, when the Communists came to power in nineteen forty-four, we expropriated the building and divided it into apartments, which were sold at low prices to retired workers. When Angel began making a great deal of money, which was in the early nineteen fifties, he started buying up the apartments one by one. Each time he bought an apartment he brought in another Hungarian and had himself declared her guardian. When they grow taller than he is, usua
lly when they’re thirteen or fourteen, he sends them back to Hungary and brings in a substitute.”

  “But your government isn’t fooled by all this?”

  “What can the government do? Angel is known all over Europe!”

  “Still, there has to be a limit to what he can get away with.”

  “Of course there’s a limit. It’s just that the Dwarf hasn’t reached it yet.” The Racer laughs out loud. “None of us has.”

  Tacho leads the girl around to the front of the house. “Look — you can see all of Sofia from here.” The front lawn slopes away toward the city. “There’s the TV tower; see the blinking red light? And you can just make out the gold dome of the Alexander Nevsky — see there?”

  They stand for a time in the cool, dark shadow of the crest of Vitoša, the soft damp earth underfoot, Sofia spread out at their feet. The city seems like a model in the window of a department store. Streetlights dance, the headlights of cars flow through the thoroughfares, but no sound of traffic reaches their ears.

  A burst of laughter comes from the house behind them, and someone turns up the volume of the phonograph again. Half a dozen figures spill onto the lawn and begin dancing wildly. A few of them take off their shirts, but it is too dark to see if they are men or women.

  “Come,” Tacho says, and he leads the way to an octagonal white structure on the rim of the property.

  “Angel’s gazebo,” the Racer explains. “This is where he spends most of his time in the summer. Here” — Tacho snaps on an overhead bulb, throwing latticework shadows onto the grass around the gazebo.

  “Oh, it’s a child’s room!”

  “No, it’s the Dwarf’s. And the Hungarians — don’t forget they are children. Everything is scaled down to size. Look how low the light switch is.”

  Wide-eyed, Melanie takes in the gazebo from the threshold. It is filled with children’s things: dwarf chairs and tables, potted Japanese dwarf trees, a beautiful painted rocking horse, even a doll’s house filled with miniature chairs and tables. On one latticework wall of the gazebo hangs a framed color photograph showing the Dwarf, in full clown regalia, standing before a bleacher packed with laughing children. His back is to the camera, but he is looking over his shoulder directly into the lens, smiling as if he knows something that everyone else can only guess at.

  The Racer settles onto the floor with his back to the wall and his knees drawn up to his chin; his knees feel better when they are flexed. Melanie tries out the rocking horse. “Cow-boy,” Tacho says in English, and Melanie laughs at his pronunciation. She wanders around the room fingering the toys strewn about, and finally sinks down next to Tacho.

  “It’s funny,” she says. “My father never wanted to be a bike racer. He wanted to have money, and racing was the only way he could think of to get it. What about you? Did you always want to race?”

  Tacho leans his head back against the wall. “There was only one paved street in Melnik when I was a child. I spent most of my time riding up and down it on an old bicycle my father got for me. For a long time I thought he stole it, but then I found out he paid for it by guiding pilgrims up into the mountains to a monastery on his days off.”

  “But did you always want to race?”

  Tacho kneads his knees with his fingertips. “As far back as I can remember, I wanted to be a bicycle racer. But I wanted the racing to be something more. I wanted to get someplace.”

  “But you are someplace — “

  “No. Wherever I am, I have the feeling I’m passing through. Atanas says the present is a small village through which we are passing on the way from what was to what can be. I don’t know. I’d like to be someplace, instead of in transit.”

  The girl leans over to touch his hand. He takes her hand in his and holds it and looks at it, as if he is making up his mind about something. Then he looks up and reaches awkwardly for her breast and twists around to kiss her. She stiffens at his touch; she tries not to pull away, but she can’t help herself.

  Tacho leaps to his feet.

  “Please — “ Her voice is softer than a whisper. “I’m not used … you must understand … it’s not that I don’t want … please.” She holds her breath and says, “I’m sorry.”

  Melanie sits still after the Racer leaves, listening to the crickets, listening to her pulse, trying to sort the thoughts from the feelings, trying to place them in separate piles and assign some weight to them. After a while she gives it up and starts to think about leaving Bulgaria.

  There is the rustle of steps coming toward the gazebo; for an instant Melanie thinks that Tacho has changed his mind, has understood, has come back. But it is the Rabbit who walks in. She settles herself sidesaddle on the rocking horse and regards the American girl.

  “Did Tacho send you?” Melanie asks.

  Elisabeta smiles. “He told me you were here, yes.” She studies Melanie and sees the contrast between the passivity of her face and the intensity of the fear in her eyes. “He likes you, you know,” she tells her suddenly. When Melanie doesn’t respond, she says again:

  “Tacho, he likes you. He could have the pick of Sofia. He is very famous.”

  The American girl says nothing. “Do you understand my Russian?” Elisabeta asks. “I speak it with difficulty.”

  “I understand you very well.”

  “Then how is it you don’t answer to me?”

  “I don’t answer because you didn’t ask a question.”

  The Rabbit runs her thumb under the bra strap on her shoulder. “I envy you — not having a brassiere. I don’t have the nerve.” Then:

  “The Flag Holder is very famous too. More famous than the Racer. You have seen his photograph? There, a question for you.”

  Despite herself Melanie smiles. “You can hardly be in Sofia and miss it.”

  “Yes, that is so. It is also in the textbooks of our schoolchildren. It is also displayed on huge banners on nine September, which is the anniversary of our liberation. The man on Lev’s left in the photograph is the Second Secretary of our Party, The man on his right is our Prime Minister.’’ Elisabeta pauses, as if gathering herself for a leap. ‘Did the Racer tell you that he and I were lovers once?”

  Melanie’s expression doesn’t change. “No,” she says evenly. “Isn’t it awkward for you, the two of them being so close?”

  “It is no problem for me, loving at various times the two of them. They are opposite sides of the same coin.” She hesitates. “Did you know that Tacho was married once? There, another question!”

  “He hasn’t told me much about his personal life.”

  “I will tell you then. It came about soon after he set the record of two hundred kilometers an hour. He was young and beautiful and all the people were in love with him. We are a small inconsequential country, and Tacho gave us the gift of feeling important. He married our most beautiful actress. She was older than he was, a queen and a crazy lady. A few months after the marriage she took off her clothes and walked into the Black Sea. The fishermen on the beach saw her write in the sand before she swam for the horizon. But the tide came in before someone with the ability to read could be brought to the beach. And so Tacho lost the message too.”

  The story creates a bond between them; they meet in the no man’s land between the listening and the telling. And so the silence that follows is not at all awkward.

  After a while the Rabbit suddenly smiles. “From now, perhaps you will answer my questions without my having to ask them.”

  Melanie nods gravely. “I’ll try.”

  There is a commotion at the back door of the house. “They’re starting,” a woman shouts in an excited voice.

  “I’m coming,” a man calls back, and another woman begs, “Button this for me, will you?”

  “Hurry up or we shall miss the fun,” Elisabeta urges. Together they run across the grass and crowd into the large front room on the main floor, the Rabbit alongside the Flag Holder, Melanie alongside the Racer. Their shoulders touch and he looks down
at her and she slips her arm through his.

  The over head lights dim. Talk dies down as if before the opening curtain of a play. There is the amplified sound of wind blowing through a tunnel; someone is blowing the dust off the phonograph needle. Then the solemn notes of “The Wedding March” fill the house. An array of spotlights bathes the long flight of steps leading from the first floor in cruel white light. The houselights go off completely and a mildly pornographic film is projected, from behind, onto the movie screen that has been set up near the bay windows. The film shows the Dwarf’s Hungarians, naked from the waist up, fondling each other. They keep giggling and looking at the camera out of the corner of their eyes.

  “Good camera work,” Poleon mutters, but he is drowned out by a chorus of “Shhhhhhhhhs.”

  Popov starts down the stairs. On his arm is the Dwarf’s “bride.” She is dressed in white voile, through which her gangly legs and a sparse patch of pubic hair and her nipples are visible. Her face is heavily rouged; that plus the high-heeled shoes make her look like a little girl dressed up in her mother’s clothes. When Popov and the girl reach the movie screen, they turn and, using the screen as a backdrop, face the audience.

  Behind them a title card, the old-fashioned kind used in silent films, flashes on the screen. It says:

  “We live in a fool’s paradise.”

  The music fades. There is a scraping sound at the top of the stairs. Then something steps off into the white light. First the feet, and then the body of a puppet come into view; it is the spitting image of Mister Dancho. Behind it, manipulating the strings of the puppet, comes the Dwarf. He is dressed in white leotards which emphasize the deformities of his body — his bulging chest, his broad hunched shoulders, his foreshortened torso. A bright red sash circles his waist. His face is grotesquely made up with false eyelashes and blue eyeshadow and rouge. As he slowly descends, all the time working the puppet down the steps ahead of him, it becomes apparent that he has black strings attached to him. And behind him comes Mister Dancho, holding high the crossbar to which the strings from the Dwarf are attached, working Bazdéev down the steps as if he were a puppet too.