Georgi Tenev - Party Headquarters

And from deep inside I saw his skull — there really was a person there, either real or an actor. Some extra, an impostor, left to stroll in the lamplight, to throw shadows on the curtains, in the windows glowing in the night like eyes.

In the end the bonfire collapsed in on itself, the last dying spark of the five-pointed star fell into the ashes. In the morning, after nights like this one, there remains only cold, clumped dust, like black talcum powder on a photographic negative. And the sense of something unfinished.

The path to justice somehow turned out to be long and painful. Contempt grew during the long stretch before its realization — but not contempt for K-shev, but for all the others who delayed the decision. Rather deep contempt.

When I leave the stone atrium of the burning and hissing Party Headquarters, I find myself in the Empty Space, where just moments ago there had been a crowd in the mood for revolution. There were still people there — after all, I wasn’t alone in rushing inside, weren’t they rushing in right alongside me? But now I come down the steps, look around with wide-open, sleepy eyes — and there is no one on the yellow-paved square. No one.

That’s what I really hate, their running away. K-shev didn’t run away anywhere, he didn’t scamper off to save himself from uncomfortable questions. He is not anonymous, in fact, he is the focus. He really is a construct, yet his name still does the trick, as a necessity or a threat.

And they got scared all right, they jumped right out of their skins when he began to flare up — from the inside, from his idolatrous, hollow womb. Because they didn’t have any fire of their own to fight him with, they turned their backs and hid in the darkened streets, to avoid being melted down. Lugging stolen things — cups, food, chairs and televisions, bottles of sunflower oil. Even in the night’s fake flames, reeking like burning rubber and gasoline, even then some yellow suns managed to turn their wheels. The people ran, saving themselves from the overwhelming heat. The sun was shining from another place . The isolation of the darkness stretched between it and the square, yet it was as if we suddenly sensed its breathing. The other side of the sun. The dark side of things. It gaped for a second and blinked like the eyelid of an unknown colossus. So as not to process what they had seen, everyone simply gasped. And since most of them were drunk on top of everything, they simply swallowed their tongues.

I remember. I hate. I despise them. If I had the chance, I’d punish them over and over again, every time with the same thing: fear that transforms into horror. But I don’t think even that would be enough. Those two guys should have raped her in that crappy apartment, without a second thought. They should’ve kicked my ass — who knows, maybe even killed me. I should’ve burned up in that building, released by someone like a rat into a maze, along with all the rest of them. The firemen who kept not showing up. The victims who became perpetrators — without necessarily wanting to, without wanting to at all — simply out of curiosity. I don’t remember very well: was I, too, carrying a blazing torch made of rolled-up Party newspapers? If they wanted to, they could probably convince me of it. For my part, I would admit it — not for their, but rather for my own personal, satisfaction. I would confirm every act of participation and non-participation, of aggression or passivity, with which or without which the revolution took place. Because the revolution itself is also a fabrication: there was no revolution. No change was brought about, K-shev simply changed his country. Meaning that he packed his bags to go on vacation, to go take a cure abroad. Now I am familiarizing myself visually with his destination — on the way to the clinic, running.

On the way to the clinic, in a sprint, which finally makes me vomit.

Vomiting

This is the fifteenth kilometer, the physical limit, the barrier. The stomach erupts, the diaphragm sucks air downward and purges everything. I didn’t stop in time, I didn’t cut short my sprint, maybe I even wanted it to happen like that, to fall to the pavement, trampled by the athletes who move through Hamburg’s morning haze in deer-like bounds. But I don’t fall, training is training, after all: my palms slam onto my thighs of their own accord for support, my kneecaps rasp over the joints. On the ground between my shoes — a splotch of stomach acid and wetness; sweat drips from my face. I haven’t eaten since last night, there’s the little dead ball of airplane food, swallowed up and tossed back out gain.

But I still can’t breathe, the ellipses just outside my field of vision are still quavering. I’ve still got half a minute to go, within thirty seconds my ribcage should have recovered from its collapse. The muscles that expand and contract the ribs — let them come back into action. “Let breathing commence,” commands the national sports medicine doctor, Comrade K-shev, who, despite being in a coma, continues to wait for me. And for that reason I don’t want to faint here, ironically, on this path, which runs into the first street next to the coastal road and where a sign hangs right above my head:

A. S. MAKARENKO-STRASSE

Go to hell, Anton Semyonovich!

Lexicon

of one boy’s personal aversions to K-shev

1) He wasn’t handsome, he didn’t look like a good guy, not even like a bad guy — in short, he just wasn’t handsome. He wasn’t ugly, either. He didn’t possess that certain something that inspires love/fear in the heart of a child.

2) He never smiled; instead, he snickered frequently.

3) He wasn’t tall enough to be a giant. He wasn’t short enough to be a dwarf.

4) He clucked his tongue like he was trying to remove something stuck between his teeth. What?

5) They say he loved pork and tripe and garlic. Why?

6a) He liked having people listen to him sing, but it was unbearable. He sang in the shower. His voice gurgled through the pipes.

6b) So why didn’t he ever arrange for the repair of the drainage and sewer systems? The city reeks, especially during the summer.

7) He didn’t send his daughter to the same school where they sent me.

8) He hid her from everyone.

9) He beat her.

9) Maybe he did something else to her?

10) What?

The first time we did it absolutely unintentionally.

We were driving through the foothills of the mountains. It was early, she was driving, I was flopped back on the passenger’s seat, dozing. She drove steadily and beautifully, as always, and I drifted off. She was breathing quietly, almost noiselessly, there was only the noise of the motor. As if I were going down the road all by myself, savoring memories of the night.

Some sudden movement startled me, the car veered to the side. Then I saw the guardrail and the frozen stones wrapped in snow and spattered with mud. I saw a pile of gravel, quite close. With painful effort the windshield wipers dragged themselves to the right, trembling, then to the left, and in the cleaned-off embrasure we saw once more the gaping edge of the ravine. I saw her hands turning the wheel. We spun around once more and the wheels locked back into the tracks.

There was some big sedan, black as a bull, in the rearview mirror. It was riding our bumper, trying to muscle past us on the narrow, slippery road. I didn’t shout, I didn’t say a single word, and better still — I left her to deal with it on her own.

Again, a horn — she glanced at me for a second, then looked straight ahead. There was nowhere to pull over, to the left was the ravine, to the right a wall of snow. At the next bend the black coffin-like silhouette once again jumped into the mirror and passed us, flashing its headlights. It almost scraped our door, but she kept the car steady and didn’t hit the brakes. “Pig!” she shouted in a shaking voice and wrapped her fingers tighter around the wheel, helpless. I got a look at the guy: driving alone, a dark silhouette behind dark windows. The glass and the black shiny body of the car were freshly washed, you could even see the license plate — special issue with sixes at the beginning and end like all the gangsters.