Georgi Tenev - Party Headquarters

A heavy truck appeared from around the bend, sanding the highway. The black car was blocking the road, driving straight down the middle without budging. The truck began to honk hoarsely, from the bed a guy in a hat with earflaps angrily waved a shovel. At the last second the car swerved to the side, its right tires jumping onto the icy embankment. Then it plowed through a piled-up snow bank where the top of a wooden bus stop sign was jutting out. The driver of the black car laid on the horn, as if he had had the right to do all that, and then disappeared into the falling blanket of snow.

The truck had stopped, its driver was cursing. She slowed down; I told her to pull over and stop, too. We pulled over where there was a small shoulder and just sat there, without getting out. Directly in front of us I could see the battered sign that the guy had mowed down along with the snow bank. We each smoked a cigarette. We drove on.

We saw him a few miles further on. He had stopped, again smack in the middle of the highway. He was pissing, but he hadn’t waded into the fresh snow between the trees. It only now occurred to me that he might be drunk. But I couldn’t tell, he was standing still. He was simply a silhouette in a black leather jacket against the silhouette of a black car.

I saw it all clearly, I realized that we would pass him and in a little while he’d be riding our ass again. But what I did at that moment wasn’t premeditated. What I’m trying to say is that I did it as knee-jerk hooliganism, not as a way to get rid of him in the following miles. Whatever it was, something just came over me and I quickly rolled down the window. The sound of the motor came in along with the white snowy air, but somehow it was still quiet. She was also silent; she just looked at me. I picked up the bottle of water that had been rolling around at my feet. It was heavy and full of ice, having frozen underneath the seats overnight.

I stuck my arm out the window and swung — so hard that my elbow smacked into the doorframe. The bottle went flying and, without my having taken precise aim, hit the windshield of the man’s car. It shattered and turned white, crumbling into pieces. “Drive,” I said in a small voice, rolling up the window as fast as I could. She hit the gas.

In the following moments I thought I would die. My arms and legs shook wildly, but my brain worked like a machine. The broken glass and the oncoming snow, the wind — there’s no way he’d be able to drive with all that whipping in his face. He wouldn’t be able to, or so I hoped. She passed a semi that was spewing fine icy ash out from under its tires, mixed with salt and sand. No, without a windshield he wouldn’t be going anywhere, the snowstorm was our ally. Just like the sheet of ice covering the car that also hid our license plate number. I looked at my phone, no reception. So there’s no way he could call and have somebody lie in wait for us. Besides, he was alone — hadn’t I seen him through those tinted windows?

It wasn’t easy to calm down, and I failed to do so in any case. My heart was pounding painfully, but at least I refused to be scared of what would happen. I felt a pleasant warmth wash over my whole body. It seemed like the car’s feeble heater was roaring, I took off my jacket. She looked at me from time to time, smiling.

I think she drove more recklessly than she ever had. That morning on those icy curves even sixty miles per hour was too fast, but she somehow managed to get us to the city in less than an hour.

Like I said, that was the first time. But no matter what we tried after that, she painstakingly guarded me from the thought of K-shev, from the transformation of the game into reality. That meant sacrificing herself constantly, coming between me and him when he got in the way, if only as an image. That is, him as an image, not her. Her as a body, absolutely real. From the very beginning.

We pushed our way through the swarm of cars in front of the underground garage. Above us the ventilation pipes were spewing out steam, the melting snow was dripping, the hoods of the cars were smoking. Early risers were coming out of the garage, only we were going in, underground. The lowest level was the cheapest, we followed the ramps downward for a long time. Most of the spots in the checkered space gaped empty between the dirty-white lines. She parked, turned off the engine and the lights. The automated light on the cement ceiling went out, leaving only the faint bulbs above the exit and the illuminated arrow pointing to the stairs. She leaned back against the seat and turned her head toward me.

“Take off your clothes,” she said and closed her eyes.

I hadn’t moved, I was just sitting there when she leaned in and looked at me up close:

“So you think you’re really brave, huh?”

“No,” I answered in a voice that I myself could barely hear.

“Shut up!” she said and grabbed my chin between her fingers. “Do you know what could’ve happened? They could’ve beaten you like a dog. Cut you up into little pieces and dumped you somewhere. And me, too. Me, too!” She wrestled out of her jacket, pulled up her shirt, and squeezed her breasts in her hands, right in front of me, in front of my face.

Before, when we were on the highway, and afterward, I clearly realized what could happen. But in that split second, which remained the most real moment of the whole incident — in the darkness underground, in that darkened, hollow crypt with a flat ceiling — there the horror of it all suddenly came together in one place. It thickened up as if in a syringe and gushed into all the corners of my body, right down to the core of my bones. Instead of fear and panic, however, I felt something impossible. It couldn’t be stopped, at that second I wasn’t afraid that I was crushing her violently in my arms. And she pulled my hair so hard I could hear the roots creaking inside my skull as if they were being torn out of the skin. I think that no matter how hard she bit my neck and shoulders, even if she had done it harder, I still wouldn’t have felt pain, only the dizzying rocking we were locked into. She slapped me across the face, for an instant her nails scratched me — and between every slap she kissed me. She whispered in fits and starts, barely pausing for breath: “My darling!. My darling!” And her teeth bit into lips, mine or hers.

“He also made off with a lot of money, right?” The question was posed voicelessly, but she had heard it before, from my very self, from inside. She shuddered, but the jerk with which her body suddenly pushed me away didn’t let on to what she had felt.

New gangsters had now seized K-shev’s cars, they had taken control of the entire black automotive fleet. Today they enjoy the luxuries we all railed against in unison on the cold nights of the protests. With a husky blow of its horn, a somber sedan passes by the frost-covered cars of the fugitive wretches, the secret lovers who have snuck out of the city, incognito.

I won’t deny that the thought of K-shev sometimes also transformed into the idea of money. But that wasn’t the main thing. Truth be told, there was no main thing . If you’re expecting me — and rightfully so — to talk about a crime, it’s still very difficult to clarify the basic motive.

Interrogation/Lexicon

1.) What’s your favorite color?

Red.

2.) Whom do you love?

Blood.

3.) Not what , but whom .

Don’t you get it? — I love, down to the blood.

I toss a few more scraps of paper into the fire, pages torn out of lined notebooks. The light blazes on her face, like a smile.

I tell her: “We’ve had a fun, easy time lately, haven’t we?”

She nods. That smile on her lips. I really could swear that she is the most ordinary girl in the world, simply sitting there, motionless, enjoying the sun made of flames. We’re out basking in the sunshine.