He threw the paper over his shoulder with disgust.
He sighed and went on, but his ire seethed underneath his ostensibly dry tone.
“As he understood things, the most horrifying thing about censorship is that it destroyed Voltaire’s words forever: ‘Je ne suis pas d’accord avec ce que vous dites, mais je me battrai jusqu’au bout pour que vous puissiez le dire.’ But now we have Jesus’s nationalized ‘qui non est mecum adversum me est et qui non colligit mecum dispergit.’ Or the even easier: ‘Начальство лучше знает’—the administration knows better. Full stop. And if anyone questions it, the uniformed art critics show up at your door. It’s true, my dear gentlemen, up until now, the only thing threatening the writer was starvation, now the threat is physical. I would not be surprised if they started murdering over poems and short stories.”
The Englishmen continued to fill their notebooks and likely didn’t even notice how Mila’s eyes grew darker and darker with worry and awful presentiments.
16.
[Tuesday, July 23, 2013]
Mila felt strange about Death. She’d nearly seen Death herself with her own eyes on the twenty-first of August, nineteen eighteen, when, after his extensive surgery inside Dr. Vayer’s basilica-dark field hospital, they brought her husband, patched up by Johanes Esser’s magic hands, back by ambulance to the exquisite Vereinslazaret Cecilienhaus hospital, located on Berlinerstrasse, originally designed by Walter Schpikendorf and Rudolf Walter as a women’s hospital and maternity ward, used now as a military infirmary. The building at 137 Berlinerstrasse: the first of their many, many future addresses.
She had trailed on foot after the enclosed vehicle with the large red cross and the two horses in front of it, mournful like angels, and until the end of her life she would not forget the feeling she had as she walked. She felt as if she were walking behind a hearse. That she, together with this carriage of death, had already entered the world of the dead. It had been all too terrifying and all too real a sight: long trains of brutally maimed soldiers—victims of the still raging war—as close to death as you could get and suffering from the final indignity of not yet knowing it. Even the green veil she wore
[Wednesday, July 24, 2013]
resembled a mourning veil. She loathed Death for this reason. Regardless of whose death it was.
But she mostly despised Death because of her husband, because she saw Death every day—when she cleaned his porcelain eye, when she saw the pulsating blue veins below the deceptively whole skin on his forehead, or when she simply watched him trip over a threshold. He’d forbidden them—her and her sisters-in-law—to make any mention of his lost vision and of the small abyss behind the blackened right lens of his glasses, and they never spoke a word of it. But this didn’t chase Death away.
Mila didn’t know what the Englishmen may have thought, but she nearly fainted. For a second she saw herself a widow, and her children—orphans.
“He’ll be all right, knock on wood!” she attempted to joke with the three men, but her voice was raspy and the joke fell flat: Death was already peering mockingly over her husband’s shoulder.
[Wednesday evening, July 24, 2013]
[From: Hristo Karastoyanov [email protected]
To: Georgi Yanev [email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2013, 19:53:14 EEST
Subject: Mila Geo Mileva
My Dear Mr. Director Yanev,
I have turned the entire world wide web upside down, but I have as yet been unable to find so much as a grain of information about Mila Geo Mileva’s death. Isn’t that strange? I find it rather strange. Do you happen to know anything on the subject?
I also wonder how she raised her two little girls—where they lived and how they lived after their father’s death. Things of that nature.
Eternally Yours,
Karastoyanov
•
From: Georgi Yanev [email protected]
To: Hristo Karastoyanov [email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2013 23:10:13 EEST
Subject: Re: Mila Geo Mileva
My dear friend Karastoyanov,
Mila Geo Mileva-Keranova died on March 10, 1969. This is what it says in the obituary we have at the museum. I have no idea why the people inside that Internet don’t know this.
As far as where she resided following Geo’s death . . . in different apartments throughout Sofia. They moved frequently. She provided for her children alone, tutoring rich people’s kids in four different western languages; she also worked on translations constantly.
After Geo Milev’s disappearance, she began to work at the traveling theater of Nikola Ikonomov, who had been the best man at their wedding. It is how she was able to support her family. She hired a woman to take care of the children. In 1927, she went to work for her brother, Dimitar Keranov’s troupe, where she joined a theater tour of Northern Bulgaria as the lead actress. However, the children were about to start school, and I am sure you can understand how Grandpa Milyo must have looked upon his daughter-in-law being written about in the papers for the types of roles she was taking . . . So Mila made the categorical decision to end her artistic career and to support her family from then on doing what I described above.
As to her personality, I have heard about it through her daughter, Leda. According to her, her mother was an incredible optimist. Unflinching. She’d laugh, recounting a story about the three of them renting an apartment from an affluent Jewish landlord. One day, he knocked on their door. Leda and her sister Bistra were by themselves, as their mother was away giving a lesson. The landlord politely informed them that their mother had not paid rent in two months and announced he’d give them until that evening to pay up—but no more than that.
“When Mom got home, we told her what had happened with sinking hearts,” said Leda. “She only laughed and said ‘There’s a lot of time until tonight! We’ll come up with something.’ And she did! At dusk, she grabbed me by the hand and took me to the landlord’s apartment. He let us in, and offered us coffee and chocolates right away. He was apprehensive as he began to speak, but Mom interrupted him. She said she was here to ask for a big favor. The landlord leapt to his feet, ‘Of course, anything!’ Mom explained that she had temporary financial difficulties, but was awaiting payment on her lessons. She asked him for a short-term loan, if possible. She even mentioned the exact sum she needed—one hundred leva. But, Madam, of course, he jumped from his chair again and pulled a drawer then counted several large bills and gave them to Mom. She took the money, counted a few back to him and told him that this was the rent money. The rest she would return very soon. We sure did treat ourselves splendidly that night!”
At one point Mila agreed to look after her sister’s daughter as well (her sister died young). Her brother-in-law, Ivan Radoslalov, was a weird type; he lived in Plovdiv, where he worked as the library director, leaving his daughter alone in Sofia. Mila took her in and the girl lived with them for many years.
You should also be aware that before the Socialist Revolution of 1944, she harbored people on the run from the authorities without blinking an eye—anarchists, communists, agrarians. Who knows, maybe Mila had something of her mother’s personality—her mother had been a highly energetic and lively woman, who loved to sing Russian romance songs, wonderfully, I might add, and had, at one point, been an actress; aside from that she was a socialist—not a communist, but a real socialist—which likely means she was a right-wing socialist.
Leda recounted that once, “Our mother asked us if we’d agree to take in a little girl to look after. She said they were giving a hundred and eighty leva for her. Mom reasoned that that way we’d help the girl and we wouldn’t have to worry about food.” So they became a kind of foster family to the little girl, and she grew up alongside Leda and Bistra, and Radoslavov’s daughter like a sister. They paid for the girl’s education and even threw her a wedding.
Now, comrade Karastoyanov, can you see why Geo Milev
loved this wonderful and resolute woman, why Sheytanov trusted her, and why she in turn loved the former and remained in awe of the latter until her dying day? And if you only knew how stunningly beautiful she was, too . . .
An incredible lady she was, Mila Geo Mileva.
I leave you, and wish you good health!
Yanev
•
From: Hristo Karastoyanov [email protected]
To: Georgi Yanev [email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2013, 23:53:14 EEST
RE: Mila Geo Mileva
And so it is, Yanev, and so it is. We leave pale shadows of our former selves and we are forgotten by the ninth day. Shakespeare said it best:
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interrèd with their bones.
Thank you and I hope to see you soon!
Karastoyanov]
17.
[Thursday, July 25, 2013]
The Englishmen promised to relay his words verbatim, swearing not to use his name under any circumstances, but he only shrugged. He gifted each a booklet with his poem and saw them to the precipitous stairwell with its seventy-seven steps.
Markham stayed back and waited until the other three were already at the lower landing before admonishing the poet with a whisper. He was perhaps wrong to have spoken that way in front of the foreign gentlemen, and didn’t he remember how Lyuben Karavelov had told the foreign journalists, “Bulgaria does not kill its people!” But the poet hissed back indignantly:
“Yes, of course, let them ignore us. Why don’t we erect another silencing wall along the border to drown out our screams completely! Please don’t give me advice I don’t understand and even more, don’t need.”
Three days later, Wedgwood and his partners left Bulgaria, and as soon as they arrived in Vienna, the first thing they did was call a meeting with the journalists at the Hotel Sacher, that famous gathering spot for dynastic spawn of decaying empires, politicians, and international swindlers.
The hotel confectionary became a veritable babel—three weeks had barely passed since news flew around that a monstrous explosion had shaken Sofia’s St. Nedelya Church, and news from the bloodied capital was still on all of the front pages of the newspapers in Europe.
Amid the din of the magnesium lamps and the buzz of the cameras, the MPs described their impressions of Bulgaria.
“There is no peace in Bulgaria,” they said, “It is bloodshed. The victims are in the thousands,” they said, “People in Bulgaria disappear without a trace. In Bulgaria,” they said, “it is war.”
The journalists leapt up, demanding to know if were they certain about what they were saying.
“What you are telling us is completely at odds with what your Prime Minister Baldwin said,” they pressed on. “How can we be sure this isn’t just the party line, that the subject of Bulgaria isn’t just another reason for your leader Macdonald to squabble with Baldwin?”
The three replied that Baldwin would be judged by God, and that everything they were laying forth here they’d heard from a man they had no reason to distrust.
“And who is he?” the journalists demanded to know. “What does he do? Is he a communist?” they yelled. “Why won’t you tell us who your source is? It’s same as saying nothing at all! We’ve had enough of unidentified sources.” They were screaming from all sides. “Give us a name!”
They yelled over each other until the MPs gave up.
“Our source,” they said, “is neither a politician nor a communist. We heard all of the information from a Bulgarian poet . . .”
“The name, gentlemen, the name! No more melodramatics. We want the name.”
It was then that Lieutenant Josiah Clement Wedgwood, bearer of the Order of Merit for his services to the army, distant grandson of Darwin according to the family’s meandering genealogy, member of the king’s secret council, opened his mouth and said:
“His name is Geo Milev!”
[Friday, July 26, 2013]
The newsmen jumped from their seats, dashed to the telephone and telegraph booths and frantically dictated what they’d just heard to the people in their editorial offices. That same afternoon, the name of the poet was already in all the evening papers as well as all the next day’s early editions—from Vienna to Berlin and from Geneva to Paris.
[Saturday, July 27, 2013]
The news from Vienna reached Sofia like rolling thunder and infuriated Prime Minister Tsankov, as well as Minister Roussev, and Valkov, the other minister. In the ugly three-story edifice on the corner of Rakovski and Valkovich Streets, Tsankov hurled newspapers at their heads and screamed his head off—they’d only just managed to convince Europe and now this! How had they allowed such a thing to happen! In his office inside the National Assembly, Grigor Vasilev, the MP, was already writing an indignant letter to England, demanding to know whether the three men had been an official delegation or whether they’d visited Bulgaria as civilians, and was Lieutenant Wedgwood perhaps secretly a Bolshevik sympathizer, after all. One block over from the Council of Ministers, on 6th September Street, inside the Ministry of Interior, Chief Secretary Josef Razsoukanov was not about to stand on ceremony. He didn’t mince words and pounced on the head of the police department, Skordev, and on that of Public Safety, Chemshirov, and they, in turn, got all of their subordinates up in arms—police guards, secret agents, everyone without exception—to seize any and all foreign newspapers they laid their eyes on, regardless of what newspaper it was or if it even contained anything about what the poet had said inside. Were they to spot a foreign alphabet—directly into the truck, and from there—directly into the furnaces beneath the Police Directorate!
Only thing was, they were too late: the people had already purchased their newspapers en masse.
And they all saw the poet’s photograph, with his forelock of hair above his smashed-out eye, and they all read what he had told the Englishmen.
And the people whom it all concerned—were never going to forget it . . .
And so it was.
18.
[Tuesday, July 30, 2013]
Winter returned in March of twenty-five, after the short-lived, craven February spring. Snow fell again and the mothers put their babies in their strollers and headed out into the freezing cold to the Borisova Garden, because some new method to toughen up babies propagated by the government said they should do so: it was how the children would grow up to be strong Bulgarians.
Then came the endless rains.
[Saturday, August 3, 2013]
The last time they saw each other, at the end of April, the rain had seemingly stopped, the frigid, silver sun had seemingly begun to shine through from behind the clouds, even the tulips across the street in front of the bathhouse had blossomed, crimson and impatient, but at dusk, somewhere around the edges of Sofia, distant thunder grumbled yet again. It had all been too strange—as if some sort of bad presentiment weighed over the entire ostracized country that spring.
At that time, the poet’s main worries centered on a labor of love—the anthology he was editing. He’d proposed the project to Philip Chipev right after the New Year, and Philip Chipev had been a man of his word. They arranged all the details in a flash—the size, the paper, the font, the honorariums—all of it. Metzger, efficient as ever, sketched the authors’ portraits, as well as one of the editor himself—nineteen portraits all in all. They constructed the engraving plates and only two weeks later, and the presses started sometime at the end of January. They were mounting the last quire on the big machine when Chipev noticed that the poet had not included himself in the anthology. And as publisher, he’d given specific instructions that the poet include some of his own work—which is why he’d asked Metzger for a portrait. “What’s happening?” he asked every other day. “Where is your work, Milev? The only reason I agreed to publish this anthology was to include your work!” The poet waved his hand—no problem. “My work is still in the queue, Chipev, don’t worr
y about it.” So it was. And when they did mount the last quire onto the press, and the poet’s work was still nowhere to be seen, and Chipev again began to yell, “What are we doing? What are we doing?” the poet roared with laughter and replied that this was how it should have been done. It would be embarrassing for the editor of the anthology to parade his own work on the pages of the very anthology he was curating! Chipev yelled and screamed in protest, but to no avail—the big machine already rumbled and thundered . . .
[Wednesday, August 7, 2013]
[Would you look at that . . .
Daily horoscope: When you make plans for the future, keep in mind your past plays a very important role. Connect the two, and only then decide on the best way to go forward.
Jesus, the past plays a big role in your life, apparently.
Fuck your dumb horoscope!]
[Saturday, August 10, 2013]
The Anthology of Bulgarian Poetry was praised by many, but the big blow came from the least expected source—his own brother-in-law, Radoslavov, who took up an entire five-page spread in his magazine, Hyperion, to tear apart the work. He wrote that the collection was happenstance, unsystemic, politicized unnecessarily through the publicism apparent inside the authors’ introductions. He wrote that the editor, Milev, likely hadn’t even the slightest idea what a literary trend might even mean, since he’d introduced Peyo Yavorov as the founder of some European literature or other. To top it all off, his brother-in-law declared the anthology a capriciously contrived collection. Collection! Not an anthology, but a collection. That part hurt him the most.
And the poet decided this person was dead to him. The man had rubbed salt into his wounds and he would cross him out of his life.
The Same Night Awaits Us All Page 19