He thought of Hristo Botev’s words:
“As if being all scabbed up wasn’t enough for the donkey, now the flies wanted a piece of him, too.”
But so be it.
[Sunday, August 11, 2013]
Sheytanov appeared in the late afternoon. He did not come in, he suggested the two of them go out and walk around a little bit, despite Mila’s courteous protests that he so rarely graced them as a guest, that she had not seen him in so long, would he stay for a chat and so on—and the two exited the gloomy red and brown building on Maria Louisa Boulevard.
[Friday, August 30, 2013]
They crossed Banski Square, continued on Turgovska, turned on Dondoukov, and ended up going into Rosa—situated right across from Chipev’s old bookstore. The streets were nearly desolate, but that didn’t keep them from running into three separate patrols, whose cops had looked them up and down probingly. As they walked, the poet recounted that on the previous day he’d given a lecture inside the university’s largest auditorium, the one at 145 Tetevenska Street: some young people from the neophilological association had invited him to speak, and even arranged for an honorarium. They charged students and school-children three leva, city residents five leva, and although they never paid honorariums, made an exception for him.
“They must know of my dire straights, the silly fools,” he snorted contently. “But never mind that, I didn’t refuse, obviously.”
The students wanted a lecture on The Art of Poetry by Boileau, so he gave them one. He could speak on any subject, why not? They’d all loved it, and how could they not, all of their professors gave their lectures in French, while he spoke in Bulgarian. At the end, the treasury secretary counted out two hundred fifty leva for him.
“That’s why today, it’s on me!”
He added that the day after tomorrow he was going to Kazanluk to speak in “Iskra” on Russian poetry; they’d promised to pay him a fee there as well, so Sheytanov shouldn’t worry about him. Then he triumphantly pushed open the door to the confectionary.
[Saturday, August 31, 2013]
It was far too quiet for this hour inside the confectionary, a place one could barely find a seat otherwise. They climbed the steps into the gallery—the poet led the way and affected a confident swagger, but Sheytanov saw his foot searching for the step. The poet’s good eye was dimming ever so quickly and Sheytanov knew it.
They sat at a small marble table, ordered, and tried making small talk, but the conversation felt awkward. The poet was tense and absent-minded and Sheytanov understood why: Plamuk had been halted immediately after its January issue, and although the last booklet of the previous year contained an advert and call for submissions for a new magazine—Zhar—the eponymous ember never did catch fire . . .
[NB! In reality, the whole thing had been far messier. October’s double issue contained an editor’s note from the poet stating that all queries from subscribers as to the future of the magazine were baseless—the magazine had not halted publication, nor was it, thank God, terminated by the authorities. “The publication,” it was written, “is absolutely guaranteed to come out!” “Plamuk,” it said, “will continue to come out next year; and we can guarantee the following: it will do so with absolute punctuality and regularity, with no dependence whatsoever on the whims of printing shops or other “rogue agents.”
It was this issue in particular that was even more fiercely confiscated down to the last one.
Because it contained the poem.
The issue that followed, now in December, had the following note, clear and imperturbable, on the back cover: “Plamuk will cease publication.”
What would there be to be happy about?]
The poet lost it. He didn’t yell, he didn’t slap the marble on the table, but Sheytanov knew him so well that as soon as he saw the poet’s upper lip start to quiver—that otherwise imperceptible tic—it was a surefire sign his mercurial ire was about to rise. Indeed, the poet suddenly grunted. Why was everyone all up in arms over “The people this, and the people that!”—who, exactly, were “the people”? A pitiful handful of dogooders, an absolutely indiscernible minority drowning in milquetoasts and bastards.
Sheytanov refrained from interrupting; he let the poet go on. Here we were, almost half a century after Bulgaria was seemingly liberated from the Turks, out of the Yoke—five hundred years of slavery—yet the slave remained a slave. And if you robed the slave in power, the only thing he was capable of doing was committing outrages over others.
“Did we not see all too clearly what the slave is capable of in these last four years, did we not see what the slave could do when you hand him a bat? Goddamn it,” he said, “in the end, it will be the slave inside our souls who proves ineradicable.”
The poet recalled the long, painful conversations with his father from before the wars, when he feverishly contended that a people is something pure and bright, something pristine and angelic, but his father mournfully challenged him, was Gocho Kuymuyra pure, pristine, and angelic? At first the poet had no idea who the old man was talking about, but one evening before he set off for the military academy in Kniajevo, his father finally told him the story . . .
“And now allow me to retell this very same story, Sheytanov,” said the poet while they sat in Rosa. “The Russians got to Stara Zagora sometime around July tenth, eighteen eighty-seven. But Suleiman wasn’t to return until the nineteenth! Hence, between the eleventh and the eighteenth of July, the Bulgarians ruled, just as people like Hristo Botev had long dreamed of. But here’s what happens. Someone named Gocho Kuymuyra is made a guard. And this Gocho, this Kuymuyr, is then given a gun. He takes his gun, and he goes to the house of some higher-ranking Turkish guy. And he tells him something to the effect of, ‘They’re asking for you at the tent!’ The Russians’ marquee, in other words. Our Gocho takes the poor man, makes him turn down some crooked street, and kills him. Then he goes back for another. Liberty, right? Down with Turkey, right? There you have it. Take that, Turkey!”
He emptied the last of the vermouth down his throat and pointed his empty glass toward the waiter.
“My father always wondered,” he went on, irately. “Wasn’t the old Slaveykov—Pencho’s dad—in the city administration, did he really not have any idea what these Kuymuyri were doing?”
He went quiet for a beat.
“Come to think of it, I’m not sure he was wondering. Not at all.”
[Monday, September 2, 2013]
His father had then told him about Nanuy Dimitrov, too. This Nanuy was a teacher at the time, a well-read man, knew a bit of Russian, so they made him a translator at the Russian état-major in Gabrovo. The Russians had just destroyed Veissel Pasha in the battle at Sheinovo, and took his entire central army as prisoners—three pashas, countless European-educated officers, and twenty-two thousand soldiers. It was then the Russian generals Fyodor Radetzky, Sviatopolk-Mirsky, and Mikhail Skobelev himself sat down and decided that this unprecedented number of war prisoners must be sent to Russia. They call Veissel and his entire staff and tell him all this, and Veissel just mournfully nods. Then he asks if the hostages could be officially convoyed by Russian soldiers on their long trip to Russia, because he knew what would await them, had they given them over to
[Tuesday, September 3, 2013]
the Bulgarian army volunteers.
And Nanuy the translator kept on translating and translating.
What did he end up translating, you might ask? He translated—very convincingly—that the Turks wanted to be convoyed by the Bulgarians, because the Bulgarians knew Turkish and this way, the captured soldiers would be alleviated on their long journey into exile. The Russians just shrugged and said, whatever Veissel Pasha wants, Veissel Pasha gets. And they turned all those thousands and thousands of poor souls over to the Bulgarians.
On that January day the endless column of men lined up to embark from the snow-covered Gabrovo, Nanuy came out to watch the Turks take off for Siberia. The poor wretche
s now saw all too clearly what would ensue; many officers were already crying, and Nanuy watched in horror as one of them pointed directly at him.
Years and years later, this same Nanuy told the poet’s father that he could never forgive himself this heinous deed and he wasn’t even sure how he was going to answer to God, and Milyo Kassabov then in turn hollowly explained to the poet that Nanyo was right to agonize over his soul: before they’d even reached Turnovo, just forty-five kilometers from Gabrovo, the road was already paved with the corpses of the Turkish soldiers; by the time they reached Russia, only half remained, even as little as a third . . . “This is what you can expect,” his father had said, “from that slave, the Bulgarian.”
[Wednesday, September 4, 2013]
“That’s what you can expect,” the poet repeated, “from that slave, the Bulgarian.”
“You know,” Sheytanov spoke emptily, “what I find to be the most repulsive part of that law to be? It’s obscurantist, it’s fascist, it’s all of that. But for me, the most horrifying part of that law is that it is a dishonorable law. It’s antihuman, my brother.”
“Joseph Herbst calls it dissolute,” the poet added.
“It’s all the same,” Sheytanov sighed. “You know better than anyone, and you just said it yourself: Bulgaria’s Law for the Protection of the Nation is contingent upon the slave mentality of the Bulgarian. It isn’t even that dependent on guns as much as it relies on our servile little souls. The first ever law to egg on earwigging. Anyone who might be aware of a premeditated, imminent criminal action breaking this law, and does not inform the authorities . . .”
“. . . will be punished with solitary confinement,” the poet finished the sentence. “From the new article, Article 18. Lest I forget.”
“I know you know it,” Sheytanov nodded. “Never mind the fact anyone can just point you out to any random cop on the street.”
“That too!” the poet grumbled again. “Any member of a pack who turns himself in before any planned criminal activity, and also turns in his accomplices and points to their whereabouts, can walk! To hell with this piece of shit law.”
“Curse all you want, it is what it is,” Sheytanov added, even more emptily than before. “A law to make brothers eye each other with suspicion, a father to rat out his son. . .”
“. . . is a law that might as well announce the Bulgarian is ready to be a slave once more!” the poet concluded. “I know this too.”
He started to light up yet again, but the lit matchstick in his hand kept missing the cigarette.
“I know you know,” Sheytanov agreed again. “But the worst part is, this law is now a precedent. From here on out, whatever happens in this country, each successive repressive law will persecute non-informants. Mark my words! Anyone who comes into power will by any means necessary punish non-informing as a crime against the nation.”
They looked out toward the deserted boulevard, where only the trams swung back and forth either west toward St. Nedelya Church, or back east toward Ferdinand, and the poet suddenly remembered how two months earlier, right in the middle of the day, just a few streets over—right outside 17 Dondoukov street, which was right across from the First Men’s Academy—they had assassinated Nikola Milev. The poet had gone to see the ordeal with his own eyes, but by the time he arrived at the scene, the stretcher-bearers had taken the body away. Only the blood still remained on the pavement, making the boulevard seem even grimier than other days. And even the iced-over puddles had been turbid and pink that Wednesday.
He couldn’t resist asking Sheytanov whether he’d heard of the story, and who may have taken it upon himself to kill the professor.
“Some are saying one thing, others another . . . what have you heard?”
Sheytanov stood quiet for a second then answered nonchalantly:
“I haven’t heard anything,” he shrugged. “Zhelyo shot him. Zhelyo Grozev. You ought to remember him. I introduced you once.”
“And you’re telling me this like it’s no big deal?” the poet was amazed.
“Why?” Sheytanov asked dryly. “You don’t feel sorry for that piece of shit, do you?”
The poet did not mourn Nikola Milev in the least—he’d had far too many headaches courtesy of the man’s newspaper to pity him in the end—but he’d been stunned by the nonchalance with which Sheytanov had dropped the information on him, as though the murder were nothing but a fact of life.
Sheytanov gestured dismissively with his hand and recounted having gone to the university with Zhelyo to hear one of Nikola Milev’s lectures. The two were quite eager to hear what he had say to the students, this same man who—regardless of his position as chair of the Union of Bulgarian Journalists—stood as the real inspirator of a law whose sections, letters, and subparagraphs dripped with blood. They heard exactly what they thought they would hear. “Dear students,” the professor had said from the podium, “colleagues! The anarchists in this country, as you know, are scoundrels and criminals. And such people ought to be exterminated like rabid dogs!” He put it in those words, more or less. The students sat in guilty silence, but Sheytanov and Zhelyo just looked at each other and later intercepted the professor right outside the high school. Milev, of course, was flanked by security on orders directly from Minister Roussev, and the two bodyguards strode respectfully two steps behind him. Zhelyo and Sheytanov stopped Milev, and Sheytanov greeted the professor and informed him the two had just been at his brilliant lecture . . . “Yes, and?” the other said, while his two bodyguards seemed at a loss for what to do: Zhelyo and Sheytanov were elegantly dressed, well put together, speaking politely to the professor . . . they could neither intervene, nor stay away.
“And so,” Sheytanov shrugged, “I said to him, ‘We just listened to what you said to the students—that anarchists should be exterminated like dogs.’ The man felt we were up to something and looked over at his security detail, who were startled and reached for their holsters, but I went on, ever so politely, ‘Well, isn’t it strange, dear professor, that you call anarchists rabid dogs, just as the late Stamboliyski did. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Stamboliyski your mortal enemy? Would you be so kind as to clarify for us, professor, which of you, exactly, borrowed the political term of endearment from whom?’ But before I even finished the sentence, Zhelyo had already shot him in the head and I took care of the two guards. And that was that.”
On the boulevard outside, a red tram passed with a consumptive rattle, strewing sparks into the descending Sofia dusk, and Café Rosa’s vitrines and the chandelier above both men’s heads clinked quietly.
“All this, right on Friday the thirteenth,” the poet spoke up, “and they tell me not to believe old wives’ tales . . .”
He suddenly came alive and waved his hand in the direction of the bored-looking waiter.
“I’ll take some boza and something sweet for the kids!” he said.
He then grinned heroically and added:
“And ten crème caramels for me.”
[Thursday, September 5, 2013]
They went in opposite directions. The poet took Turgovska Street back, with a paper bag in one hand and the bottle of boza in the other. He strode with impatience, thinking the kids were likely in bed by now and he and Mila could devote themselves to doing that which would bring his wife to that blessed, regally glowing state borne out of the new life growing inside of her. And he did not doubt, not for a second, that this new life would be a boy.
When he’d first met her, he hadn’t dared make an advance for a long while—even during all those months in that field hospital in Cecilienhaus in Germany, crammed with those excoriated unfortunates. He’d been such a savage in his passion that even on their wedding night on June thirteenth, nineteen nineteen, he’d jumped on her like a young soldier inside their tiny apartment at 14 Tsar Samuil Street, so that nine months later, Leda would be born—just as God and nature had intended.
Mila had gradually taught him to appreciate the prolonged sw
eetness of these things.
[Friday, September 6, 2013]
Sheytanov, in turn, took off along the quieted Dondukov Street, turned on Stara Planina, and went straight to see Anton Strashimirov.
[Sunday, September 8, 2013]
He found him just as he’d always been—with his gray coat thrown over his always-cold shoulders, slouched over his table with its green lamp and the books, with the scattered notebooks, white sheets, chewed up pencils, and that same obituary, which read, “They’ve killed my brother, Todor! May God save us all!” The only difference was that now, his pugnacious Don Quixote beard hung bedraggled and crestfallen. He was a little over fifty, but he already looked befallen by a premature old age, his blue soldier’s eyes paling.
He was happy to see Sheytanov for a second, but his face quickly turned anxious, and he warned him something awful was coming, that he ought to get out.
“Look, Georgi,” Strashimirov said, “You’re a man held in high regard. Run and save yourself!”
“Run from where, Bai Anton?” he laughed. “Do I look like someone who runs?”
“Don’t laugh, boy!” Strashimirov scolded him. “Now is not the time for laughter and heroic ballads. Get out of Bulgaria! You’ve crossed the border illegally so many times anyway. Here’s ten thousand leva, run and save yourself, my boy!”
“Bai Anton,” Sheytanov suddenly became serious. “I appreciate the gesture, but I don’t want anything. I’m not leaving. It’s a little late for me to become a deserter, don’t you think?”
Strashimirov let out a slow, heavy sigh and shook his head for a long time.
[Sunday evening, September 8, 2013]
[Who can say if that’s how it happened? But I imagine it did indeed happen so.]
[Monday, September 9, 2013]
[NB! Before I forget. This is important: When Geshev officially begins working for the police in May, Bulgaria’s Law for the Protection of the Nation has already been amended twice—once on March sixteenth and again on April twenty-ninth; a little bit later, on July fourth, the Law for Administration and Police is passed. The Police Directorate is erected during that time, built on the Austrian model and under the expert guidance of General Edmund Heidenfeldt of the Viennese gendarmerie. Dogs are brought in—again from Austria, directly from the Vienna police factory—and their trainers educated in their craft. Somebody named Yordan Petrov Schwartz (I couldn’t find him anywhere), was, in turn, in charge of the trainers.
The Same Night Awaits Us All Page 20