Georgi Tenev - Party Headquarters

I tell her: “The only thing I have any regrets about is that there’s no way for us to reach the very end, there , together.”

“Where? The sea?”

“Not the sea, the sky,” I reply after a short pause.

This isn’t love, I know, and words have begun to take on far too much significance.

“You know what?” she says, “I want to go home.”

Fine. I stand up. I pick up the backpack and sling it onto my back. I’ve got a long descent ahead of me. “Don’t leave me now,” she says, “don’t go.”

“Where would I go? Just listen to yourself.” I stroke her neck. I trace the curve of her ear with my fingers. She leans her head to the side and squeezes my hand between her shoulder and cheek.

“What’s wrong? Did I upset you?” I whisper, while trying to catch her face between my palms, but she keeps turning her head from side to side. As if she’s playing, she’s smiling, but I can see tears flowing from her eyes. From under her motionless eyelids, sealed shut with Band-Aids, these droplets are creeping out — when I lick them, they taste like a camp drugstore, like a bandage.

Now that’s it, today I can finally say that I’ve perfected my notion of the face of a girl who is suffering and who is beautiful because of it. In its pristine whiteness, her hidden gaze cannot reflect me, this angel can’t see me, I’m not here, for a moment at least I don’t deserve my well-deserved punishment. And for that reason her perfect body attracts me twice as strongly. I slide my hands under her shirt, she hiccups and sobs in a choked voice. But the rope wound around her body digs into the skin beneath her breasts, I can’t reach any farther down.

This isn’t love, of course, and it’s starting to get out of hand. Nevertheless, something always has to be done about desire. The rope is wrapped around the tree trunk, a few loops and a firmly tied knot at the end. Only her legs are free. “Goodbye,” I tell her, as if wanting to escape my own presence. Then I jerk apart her ankles, her heels, which had been planted on the ground on rubber soles.

I sink into her, just as I am, backpack and all, we collapse into each other, but this time I don’t sense the stalking that always trips me up before the end — the gaze, the eyes from the portrait on the wall. When we had tiptoed in, without knowing, however, that we’d have to break the silence even if we didn’t want to.

Her eyes are sealed shut, her hands are tied, she can scream if she wants, I purposely left her mouth free. But she doesn’t even make a sound now, she’ll only scream at the very end. For the first time since I’ve made love out in the open and consciously, it happens: everything in me manages to focus itself straight ahead and to the end. We come inside each other, fused, numb. She screamed at the end after all, simultaneously in despair and ecstasy.

The idea of bringing her to the final control point, CP 0, was not, in fact, new; it had crossed my mind before. I’d thought about it — as I had with most of the others, by the way. But I had never done it with any of them until now — never, not since I had discovered the zero point within the system of coordinates. The place where everything begins and ends.

Time, during which we’re sufficiently free to be able to play K-shev. With no qualms, at that. But now, at this age, games have become dangerous.

Interrogation/Game

1.) What’s your name?

You know it.

2.) What do your parents do?

C’mon, cut it out.

3.) How old are you?

How old am I? — I’ve reached the age when girls become a threat. You afraid?

“No,” I reply after a pause.

Hopefully she won’t be able to figure out whether I’m afraid that she started on her own, that she started first. Or whether I’m happy about it.

“C’mon, ask, I know you want to.”

“Fine. Why did they send us there? That time, back then.”

“Where?”

“You know where. For the tests.”

“They were preventative measures.”

“But why didn’t everyone go, why only me?”

“We couldn’t send everyone. We didn’t want to stir up mass panic.”

“So why me in that case, since it wasn’t dangerous? And what about the others, tell me about the other people’s kids.”

“I did it for my personal reassurance, I had to be sure.”

“I remember how they would bring us food, only milk and bread for a whole month — from a village, from somewhere really far away, right? ‘Clean food,’ that’s what you called it. But what about the others? What about their children? Was their food clean?”

“I had to make an important decision, I had to be sure. I needed to know that everything was okay with you.”

“They ran through the grass, they walked in the rain, they were all out at the May Day demonstrations — couldn’t you have at least spared them that, was it really necessary?”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

“Would it have been such a big deal for you to tell people not to drink milk and not to pick anything from the trees? To at least forbid them from swimming in rivers and the sea until the danger had passed?”

Silence. She begins again: “Do you think you’re going to get away with it? Do you think that nobody has found out about it and nothing is known about it? Don’t try to tell me that they didn’t inform you, don’t try to tell me you were misled — who sent me there for a check up? Why don’t you just admit that you did it on purpose — which means you had your doubts, you were afraid! Even back then you wanted it to stay a secret, you only wanted to take care of yourself.”

“I didn’t take care of myself.”

“To take care of yourself only and others like you, as for the rest — who cares what happens! It was a Sunday, you purposely chose Sunday, when there were no other people at that institute. They stripped me naked and put me through some machine. ”

“They didn’t put you through any machine.”

“At the Institute of Radiology — did you think I didn’t understand anything, did you think I couldn’t read? Do you think I’m just a child, you’re counting on that, right? Me being a child and not understanding.”

“You’re not a child, of course. Children don’t speak that way to their parents.”

“Shut up! Shut up, just stop talking, you’re making me sick. All you do is talk and talk and stroke your chin like that, making that face. I’m not like the rest, I’m not like the others — I know you. I know, get it? And the others know, how do you think you’re going to wriggle out of it, to get away with it? You’re hoping to get away scot-free after committing a crime!”

If only she could move her arms, I tell myself, if only she could hit me.

“You’re imagining things, you’re making things up. Tell me, do you really believe that I’m a criminal, that I could do something to hurt someone? And if so, what?”

“Don’t use me as an excuse.”

“Just tell me what!”

“Don’t try to use me. You always do that — you use me.”

“You know I’ve always only done what’s best for you. If you stop to think about it, if you finally learn to think, you’ll realize that everything I’ve done was for you and because of you.”

“But I don’t want that!”

“Think about it.”

“I don’t want to think!”

“See, what did I tell you?”

“Don’t start with that again. Don’t keep telling me to think, don’t keep tormenting me.”

“Who, me?”

“I can’t, I can’t do it like this. ”

She can’t think like this, I know. Her thoughts break up, get cut off, they short-circuit.

“You can’t do this anymore, I forbid you.”