What Belongs to You (7 page)

I lay there after he left, feeling my fear, which grew more intense, so that for a minute or perhaps for two or three I couldn’t force myself to move, not even to close the door. I observed, as if at a distance, my quick breathing and the pain I felt, not an especially bad pain, maybe there would be no bruise to explain away. Finally I hauled myself up, surprised by how unsteady I was though so little had happened, everything was fine, I said to myself, I was safe now. But as I turned the latch on the door I realized I wasn’t safe, that the thin tongue of metal between the two wooden wings might easily be forced, it offered almost no resistance at all. And the latches on the windows were flimsy too, a push would be enough to snap them. They were large windows, big enough to pass in or out of, and some of them faced the street, which meant there wouldn’t be any need to enter the courtyard to gain access, anyone could avoid the supposed watchman sleeping in his glassed-in porch. I paused then and looked at those windows, realizing that I was visible to anyone peering in through the ill-fitting drapes. So the crisis isn’t past, I thought, using that word, crisis; I was right to still be afraid. I was frozen in place, pinned where I stood, a feeling I remembered from childhood, when stillness was the only response to the terror I often felt at night. It was all I could do to reach out and turn off the lights, listening for any noise outside as I thought again of the face Mitko had shown me, his real face, I thought now. He had so carefully arranged our trip; maybe he had chosen this hotel not because of price or its nearness to the sea, but for a different set of reasons altogether, its ease of access and the inadequacy of its locks. I thought of the many friends he had introduced me to, some of whom he had encouraged me to invite into our room, where I would have been, it now occurred to me, completely vulnerable; I thought of the boy he called
brat mi
, who had been so obedient in the bathrooms at NDK, ready to do Mitko any service. They were probably together at that very moment, walking the streets as Mitko waited for the right time to come back. All of Mitko’s proposals seemed to me now like snares, the invitation to the thermal baths, even to his home among the
blokove
, both of them places where Mitko might have become any of the hypothetical selves he had listed, might have become all of them at once.

I was convinced now, there would be no sleep for me in that room, and so I gathered together my things and went out into the central yard. The attendant emerged from his booth to meet me; he was the same man who had greeted Mitko so warmly the night before, and surely he had seen him leave. He was full of solicitude when I told him I wanted to change my room, though he did ask me why;
Ne mi e udobno
, I said, unable to say more, it isn’t comfortable for me. He shrugged at this and smiled, and then showed me to a much smaller room with a single window that faced the courtyard, looking almost directly at the attendant’s porch. He helped me transfer my things, made sure I was satisfied, and then looked at me expectantly, as if knowing I must have more to say. The man who was with me, I said then, burning with shame to say it, he shouldn’t come back here, he isn’t welcome, he’s not my friend. At this the man’s face brightened, not with malice or the scorn I had feared, but with comprehension, and also with a sympathy I hadn’t expected. I understand completely, he said, don’t worry about anything, I’ll watch for him and if he shows up here I’ll make sure he won’t bother you. He was briefly silent, and then, It’s a shame there are such people in the world, he said, you have to be so careful, you pay them, you have your fun, and then they should leave—but sometimes they don’t leave, they want more than you agreed. It’s a shame, he repeated after a pause in which it was clear I had nothing to add; I was paralyzed with humiliation and wanted only for him to go. But don’t worry, he said as he opened the door, this is a good room—and here he reached over to arrange the curtains so that the glass was more fully covered—you’re safe here, don’t worry. Then he was gone, finally, and I locked the door behind him and lay down on the bed, feeling relief now but also the anger of having been subjected to something, an anger like the dry grinding of gears. Maybe it was an anger that Mitko knew well, I thought suddenly, that he knew better than I. I closed my eyes as I lay there, though it would be a long time before I slept.

I woke early the next morning. There was an eerie quality to the light seeping in around the drapes, and when I pulled them aside I saw that the air was full of snow, though the flakes were fine and not yet sticking to the ground. In the bathroom I studied my face, tilting it back and forth in the light, relieved that I could hardly see a bruise. I stepped out of my room, giving a wave to the watchman, who must have been coming to the end of his shift, and turned toward the Sea Garden, wanting to see the water again. The park wasn’t deserted this time, despite the hour and the snow; as I walked I passed old couples strolling briskly, men with their dogs, even cyclists, all out for a morning’s exercise beside the sea. Just past the entrance on the left there was a huge casino complex, from the depths of which I could hear the driving beat of dance music; there must have been a disco there, where even in the off-season the morning had yet to come. I wanted to see the water, but not just to see it; I wanted to be close to it, to imagine if not to feel the unearthly cold of it. And so I walked more purposefully through the garden, bypassing, as best I could, its more winding paths, and when I reached again the line of hotels and bars and, beyond them, the road, I didn’t retreat, I crossed the road and held my face to the wind, though it was biting and filled now with snow. Three long walkways extended from the beach into the sea, branching out at their ends into three separate promenades, like the arms, it seemed to me, of a snowflake as drawn by a child. I walked to one of these piers, which unlike the park was deserted, as was the sea, except for the gulls and, far out in the water, two huge tankers that sat unmoving at the horizon. At the near end of the pier there was a large stone sculpture, two stylized figures in robes, who might as easily have been monks as sailors and who seemed to be embracing although they were looking away from each other, one toward the sea and one toward the shore, an image of irreconcilable desires. The stone was pocked and scarred, already dissolving in the abrasive air. I walked the length of the pier, which was lined with huge stone objects shaped like jacks from the children’s game, a defense against the heavier element of the sea. I walked to the farthest point of the pier, to its very edge, and spent some time looking at these stones and at the white froth surging between them. I felt the pressure of the water striking the stones and the steadfastness of their resistance, of what seems like their resistance and is simply a slower giving way. The snow was easing now though the wind was still fierce, the air tossed the birds as wildly as the sea. I could already sense remorse gathering, it was distant and abstract still but I knew it would flood in, that it would be terrible, and as I watched the motion of the sea I accused myself, thinking bitterly oh, what have I done. I stood there until I was chilled beneath my clothes and my face was numb with cold. Then I turned and walked back toward the shore, stamping my feet a little to quicken the sluggish blood.

II

A GRAVE

I was in the middle of a sentence when there was a knock at the door and a woman entered my classroom without a word. I knew her, of course, she worked in the front office of my school, but there was something in her manner that checked my greeting before I spoke it, perhaps her silence or the oddly formal way she carried the single, unfolded page in her hand, so that she walked toward me through an atmosphere strangely ruffled or unquiet, in which my interrupted sentence still hung. The students perked up at her knock, not that they had been to that point bored exactly, but any interruption is welcome, and especially when it suggests some hidden drama, as when this woman, whom I considered almost a friend, who had always been kind to me and who surely thought she was doing me a kindness now, walked quickly but with a subdued manner to deliver me what she held. I found myself flustered as I took the page from her hand, standing awkward in front of students to whom a moment before I had been speaking freely, even eloquently, rehearsing thoughts that had burned for me once and that now were a repertoire of dull gestures, a custom. It was mid-September, the very beginning of the year; the sun beat down and the room, which was high and received the brunt of the morning light, was almost unbearably hot, despite the windows we had opened. It was toward these windows that I longed to look, not toward the page now in my hand but toward the trees and the field beyond them and the road and, though I had only a glimpse of it, the mountain that hovered beyond the huge blocks of government buildings. But of course I did look at the page, an e-mail that had been sent to the school’s address and that this woman, my friend or almost friend, had printed out to deliver by hand. She stood beside me as I read, still without speaking, and her silence inspired or inflicted silence upon the students as well, who were aquiver with interest, sensing it was news of some import and hoping it was news of freedom, or at least of a break in routine. And it was such news, there would be no more class that day, or not with me. My father had fallen ill, I read, suddenly and gravely; he was in danger, he might be dying, and he had asked that I come to him, despite the fact that we hadn’t spoken in years. When I read this I looked helplessly at the woman next to me, unable to speak. She reached out her hand, saying It’s all right, go, I’ll stay with them, that’s why I came, speaking in Bulgarian as she always did in front of students, she was embarrassed of her English. I managed to thank her, I think, and I murmured something to the class, an apology perhaps, I’m not sure, and then I left the room, the woman, the students eager for news, the sentence that now would never be taken back up; I left the room and descended the broad stairs and stepped out into the scorching day. Though it was September and fall already the sun beat like a bell upon the streets, the grass was dry, the trees seemed withered in their shells; but I walked without thinking, barely noticing the heat. I must have passed the august, slightly crumbling buildings of my school, the Soviet blocks of the police academy, the gate with its guards, the dogs curled in the shade beside it; I must have passed them though I have no memory of them now. I was seeing something else, images that burst in on me, scenes from a childhood I hadn’t thought of for years; I had worked hard to forget them but now they came all at once, too quickly to make any sense of them. It was only after I reached Malinov, the main boulevard, with its lanes of cars stalled miserably in the heat, that this procession of images began to slow and settle, resolving into more distinct scenes of the life I had left behind. I saw my grandparents’ farm, my father lying in a large field used as pasture, I saw myself lying beside him. It was late, and I think it was summer, the night was cool but I could feel the ground releasing the day’s heat beneath me, its long exhalation. I remember the freedom I felt, awake far past my bedtime, and my father too was free, having set aside for once the work that filled his days and nights. He was the only one in his family who had gone to college, he studied law and moved to the city, and though it wasn’t far from where he and my mother had been born, it was a different world. He hated going back to their small town, to the poverty and dirt he had worked so hard to escape; he only visited once or twice a year, though my mother took us to see her family often, it was important to know where we came from, she said. Her family were small farmers, poor, and though I loved visiting them I knew my life would always be different from theirs, my father made sure I knew it. After the summers we spent on the farm we came back speaking like them, my brother and I, we’d say ain’t and y’all and my father would snap at us, angry in a way I didn’t understand; Don’t talk like that, he’d say, I didn’t raise you to talk like that. When we complained about how often he was gone, how much time he spent at his office or away for work, he told us to be grateful, he said we were lucky he worked so hard, we didn’t know how lucky, he was giving us a better life than what he’d had. It was rare for him to set aside his work as he did that night, lying with me in the field, when I was still young enough to be a part of him, to touch and be touched by him. It must have been summer, the night was vivid with sounds, with insects and frogs and the low murmurings of cattle; they were familiar sounds and yet every night I was surprised by them, by their density and nearness, like a heavy quilt drawn close. It was dark as it never was in the city, and if I had been alone I would have been frightened, I think, I wasn’t a brave child; but my father lay beside me, large and warm in the grass, resting his head back pillowed on his hands. I mimicked this posture as I listened to his voice direct me to the stars and their patterns, which I could never pick out, the patterns and the names that I loved, some of them strange and others homely, Cassiopeia, I recited, the Big Dipper and the Little Bear. I was in my father’s confidence, I felt, in the warm thick of it, and so it didn’t frighten me to think of the stars and the millions of years it had been since that light was made, even the very light that rained down on us now; nor did it frighten me to think of the dark through which it passed or the dark (my father said) from which it had come, the star itself having gone dark already, perhaps, having ceased to produce the light that reached us and would continue to reach us for millions of years; or maybe then (the voice still spoke but not I thought to me) it would fall where there was no one to receive it, the orphaned light, maybe it would rain on barrenness, our human kind having gone somewhere else, or maybe having disappeared altogether. Surely I only imagine now, from this distance, that there was longing in his voice as he spoke, surely I didn’t hear it then, when I turned to him and put my arms around him and buried my face in his chest, as I was still young enough to do, when he wrapped his arms around me in turn, holding me even as I could feel him withdraw into his own reverie or contemplation. But I do hear it, the longing I think he felt as he drifted away from me and from the scene we inhabited together, which must have seemed so different to him, for whom it was the life he had escaped. It was only six months or so before the day when I left my classroom and walked into the September heat that I learned fully both the extent of his longing and the full measure of what he had fled. My sisters had come to visit me in Sofia, my half sisters, the two daughters my father had with his second wife. They were more than a decade younger than I, and I had always felt an overwhelming tenderness for them, which competed with the envy I felt of the love my father showed them so freely. This was especially true of the youngest, G., whom my father loved as he had loved none of the rest of us; he delighted in her swiftness when she was a child, the way she sped about the house, quieting only when he caught her and gathered her in his arms. It was G. who one night told us the stories he had shared with her, stories I couldn’t remember ever having heard, though occasionally some note in what she said struck as if at a distance a familiar tone. We hadn’t seen one another for years, and in that time my father’s second marriage had failed, ending what had always seemed to me my sisters’ good fortune. One of them was just out of college, the other still studying, and I was shocked at the sight of them; they were competent and adult, elegant, with a sophistication I could never dream of having. We were in the main room of my apartment, the common room and kitchen, surrounded by the detritus of a gathering we had had; we sat with half a bottle of wine, two of us at the table and G. alone on the couch. We had let the room go almost dark, only a few candles were still burning, and through the windows the lights of the neighboring
blokove
were lovely, now that the gray of their concrete had faded into the night. It was my birthday, we had all been drinking, but G. with an abandon I watched with concern. She had arrived a few days before my other sister, and each night we spent alone together she stayed up drinking long after I had gone exhausted to bed. There was a note of defiance in how she drank, an assertion of adulthood, but also something desperate, I thought, an escape either from or to. Her estrangement from my father was recent enough that the loss still held a kind of electric charge for her, so that at times as we spoke I thought I could see her jerk with the pang of it. All my life, she told me in those first nights we spent together, speaking with the wonder of someone for whom the examination of life still offers the promise of revelation or escape; all my life I’ve lived to please him, she said, every choice I’ve made has been his choice, it’s like nothing I’ve ever wanted has been my own. So what do I do now, she asked, how do I even know what I want to do? She had always been driven; as a child she worked harder than any of the rest of us in school, she excelled at sports, she was the president of her class, in everything she did she was exceptional. She questioned all of it now, she said, everything she had done, everything she had wanted, not just these public ambitions but also more private needs. We had never talked about sex before; she was so much younger and I had always shied away from it, though she knew something about my own history from the poems I had published, which she searched out and read with an attention they seldom, probably in no other case received. I just wanted to get it over with, she said about the first time she had sex, it was a relief, I didn’t want it to be a big deal. She was fourteen when she started sneaking out at night, she told me, boys would wait for her, their cars running on the next street over; they were always older guys, she said, first seniors at her school and then college students she met at parties. I’d lie about my age, she said, I’d say I was sixteen or seventeen and they’d believe me, or maybe they just pretended to believe me. It’s not like there were that many of them, she said, seeing the dismay I felt, I didn’t even have sex with all of them, I just liked being with them, I liked the attention. I don’t know why I cringed at her stories, when I had done so much worse at her age, having sex in parks and bathrooms, dangerous and indiscriminate sex; but I was troubled that her history seemed to parallel my own, that we shared what I had thought of as my own gnawing affliction. And I knew she would outgrow the satisfactions she had found, that soon she would desire other and more intense experiences, drawn forward by those appetites we share, that humiliating need that has always, even in my moments of apparent pride, run alongside my life like a snapping dog. Even these desires, I thought as I listened to my sister, seemed to descend from my father like an inherited disease. It was my father we spoke of that night after our party, as we always did when we were together; but now my sisters’ anger had changed, their mother had told them about my father’s cruelty, about his many affairs and her sense of abandonment. But G. already knew about those affairs, she said, she had known about them for a long time. She was very young, she told us, when she discovered my father’s infidelities, which already were unsettling her life, accounting for so much of the tension and noise around her, her parents’ incessant quarrels. She was thirteen or fourteen when she came upon the cache of Internet sites and chat rooms he visited; he hadn’t even bothered to hide them, my sister said, there wasn’t any password to crack, she had found them really without looking, less curious than bored as she clicked through files. It was his computer, but she was allowed to use it from time to time, so it wasn’t exactly forbidden territory she wandered when almost by accident she stumbled upon images he had saved, hundreds of them, she said, showing men with women, or two women alone. It was as though he had filed them by some logic of progression, the images growing ever more obscene and upsetting, little pageants of submission and need. It never occurred to her to go to her mother with what she had found, she said; she had already been enlisted in her parents’ battles, subjected to the cruelty of sparring adults in relation to their children, a cruelty that reduces those children to tools or weapons, to weapons of a particularly brutal kind. He had made her his partisan, her first thought was to protect him, and so she wasn’t only aware of what he was doing but implicated in it, that was the word she used, implicated. But it wasn’t only that, I imagined, it wasn’t just keeping his secrets that implicated her; I thought there must have been another fascination too as she told us how she went back again and again to his store of images, tracking how it changed, its additions and substitutions. And soon she wanted more, she became devious, she installed a program on his computer that recorded everything he typed. What, she said, seeing my surprise, it’s easy, there are a million of them, you just download one from the Internet, and I had to laugh, despite her story and the disquiet I felt. She could follow his tracks now, she went on, she had the passwords for the pages that had been locked, chat rooms and hookup sites, and not only that; in these new records she could pull up transcripts of his conversations, or not conversations exactly, since she could only see his side of them, a solitary voice calling out its desires. She read his profiles, the various selves he fashioned, all of them a mixture of the real and the ideal. Sometimes he said he was single, sometimes he lied about his age, in one he used a picture that was a decade old. It was ridiculous, she said, who did he think he was kidding, you could tell it was an old picture. There was one site that was for married men, there was a market for them, she said, can you imagine? It was on this page that he came closest to telling the truth about his life, and among his enticements he listed his children, our accomplishments, the good schools and awards, the ways we had all sought to please him; all of it was laid out like grotesquely splayed plumage. But what she went back for, she said abruptly, as if catching hold again of her thought, were the transcripts her program produced, their record of each key struck. She read these lines with fascination and disgust, she said, watching my father’s fantasies played out before her in skeletal form, the pleading tones, the boasts and commands clear even through the poorly typed lines, the symbols and abbreviations of Internet chat that make such language seem so much like a process of decay. As I listened to her, I imagined (imagining myself in her place) that she couldn’t help but provide the missing voice, inventing the invitations and evasions that his own lines responded to or provoked, until it must have felt as if she had become part of those dramas, I imagined, how could she not. She followed his conversations for months, she told us, checking them every few days. I should have known it was going to happen, she said, I mean I did know, I guess I was waiting for it, but she was still surprised when it became clear that he had taken one of these conversations offline. He was actually fucking one of them, my sister said, grimacing at the words, he wasn’t just dicking around online. And now, since she still hadn’t said a word about what she knew, she didn’t just feel complicit, she told us, but guilty of a crime. She became more difficult with her mother, they fought all the time, she said, she felt pity and disgust for her, she wasn’t sure which she felt more. He never just chatted with one woman, she went on, he was always chatting with several of them at once. He was polite sometimes, sweet, but he could be rude, too, he was rough with some of them, it was like he was a different person with each one. It was like that for me, too, I thought as I listened to her, it’s one of the things I crave in the sites I use, that I can carry on these multiple conversations, each its own window so that sometimes my screen is filled with them; and in each I have the sense of being entirely false and entirely true, like a self in a story, I suppose, or the self I inhabit when I teach, the self of authority and example. I know they’re all I have, these partial selves, true and false at once, that any ideal of wholeness I long for is a sham; but I do long for it, I think I glimpse it sometimes, I even imagine I’ve felt it. Maybe it’s an illusion but I think I did feel this wholeness in the field with my father, alone and with the night surrounding us, and my father was necessary to it even as he withdrew into his own longings, as I imagine now, contemplating the stars that I contemplated beside him, though I was contemplating him perhaps more than the stars. His withdrawal didn’t diminish our closeness but deepened it, it was a sign of vulnerability and trust, like an animal turning its back. I emerged from these thoughts to find myself on a small street deep among the