Georgi Tenev - Party Headquarters

In this vortex of ions, under the rasping of the file with which the universe crafts the galvanic globe of the stratosphere and sands away the calluses from the cosmos’ feet as if with a galactic pumice stone — amid the physique of the cosmic bodies, nothing will remain of K-shev’s body (nor even his ashes, I hope).

“And that’s why, Comrade Todorov, astronautics hides more symbolism than can be seen on the surface of its realistic principles. That’s why flying is so beautiful.”

I hope that he understands me, finally.

The desire for freedom, that is at the root of everything. As long as there’s a law, it doesn’t matter what law, freedom does not yet truly exist. Lawlessness is the only absolutely free territory, there rules are created at every individual moment and only last that long.

In that sense I believe, Comrade Todorov, that the first of all natural laws best summarizes this tension: the law of gravity versus the freedom to overcome it.

Leaving, becoming distant from yourself, that’s at the basis of weightlessness. When you break away from your earthly stance, when you leave your orbit as well, the planets shrink in the portholes. Your individual body becomes the center of all attraction. You spin in the vacuum-womb like a stellar baby, who is the beginning and end of everything, just as it is its very self.

But I am nevertheless the product of the pedagogical and educational system in which I was raised. For that reason, even at the moment when I can already imagine that I myself have turned out to be the great and supernatural Prime Mover, the omnipresent factor behind the Big Bang, the Great Attractor from physics textbooks — even then, I still keep thinking about him, worrying about K-shev. What more could he possibly want with us? Hasn’t all his power over me been toppled, along with the repeal of the principle of the Party’s supremacy?

Yes, that’s how it seems at first glance. But after all the old norms have been obliterated and you have been left and are left on your own — with the mechanism of pure causes and effects — then the only working principle remaining comes to the forefront. And that is the Law of the Right of the Firstcomer.

Today I judge him for things that he probably wouldn’t do if he could see them as I do — from the position of time. My accusations would be part of his conscience, if only everything could be given a new order. If I could be him , or vice-versa — he could be me . It looks very simple, a question of chronology in time. The bodies with which and over which we battle — his, mine, hers — are, in fact, the battlefield.

One critical, criminal question hangs over everything, however: Why am I rehashing all of this? Why, through her purifying body, the body of K-shev’s daughter, am I approaching the very same place where her father also is — the narrow transitional space of death? Could it be that the most horrifying part has already begun, the part I have always feared exactly as much as growing up? Has the process of transforming into K-shev begun?

Going Back

So for that reason I go back to earth, to his bedside, amid the signals of reality. Outside a truck relieves the dumpsters of trash with a steady hum.

In the end, I have to reach out — I take the envelope sitting on the nightstand. There’s a name written on it. Even in the cramped letters of the sickly script I recognize that his hand has written it:

“A letter to my son.”

His Son

“I wanted you to love me for what I am. For that reason I never pretended. Was that terrible? Now I’m dying, dying of a disease that I almost brought on you, too. Forgive me.”

Blah-blah, and so on. He’s sleeping now and will probably never wake up again. So he must’ve fallen asleep for good, since he finally decided to write. He’s fallen into those forms of the words “eternity” and “sleep” that are used in obituaries. Is there any point in reading any further? Why, for something new that I don’t already know?

“Of course, first of all, that unnatural Article One had to be repealed. But a change in the law still doesn’t mean a judgment. Once my leading and fatherly role has been rejected, you both can invite someone else into the vacant position. Anyone else. My end is near — I assume the two of you won’t wait much longer. There’s money in the briefcase. More than a million, I hope it’ll be enough. I don’t have any more, that’s all of it. Don’t be afraid, go ahead and take it, stow it away somewhere. I don’t need painkillers anymore, the drugs are useless at this point.

I’m now looking at my hands. Believe me, I can’t feel anything anymore. If someone comes close to me, even very close, I can’t feel it. I touch the sheets, I can still move my fingers, but it’s as if I’m not touching anything.

I’m on the bed, half-turned on my side — that’s how they leave me during the day. For a long while now I’ve spent all my time lying down and hungry, because I can’t swallow any food. They don’t feed me, they just give me nutrients through the IV. But I’m still hungry, I’m hungry. They inject some chemical so I don’t feel the hunger, so I won’t want to eat — but I’m hungry, my stomach is empty. They say it’s already gotten thinner, burned up or something with the intestines. I don’t know what it is, but I feel hunger. My teeth are falling out, the holes are numb and empty, but I still want to chew. I’m hungry, come and feed me, or nurse me — with bare gums, toothless, I can suckle from your breasts. Can’t you see how much I need you, my girl?”

“Filthy old man!” I feel like telling him. “You’ve got the wrong address. Shut up, you make me sick!”

Then: Shhh.

The shushing comes from behind my back.

“Shhhh, be quiet,” she whispers and takes a step forward.

Unbuttoning the buttons just above her breasts.

“Don’t do it,” I tell her, don’t , I beg her.

“Shut up,” she waves her hand, brushing me aside. “Leave, or if you want, stay. Watch, but be quiet.”

I see her, I see him. He opens his mouth, I see it — his lips open thirstily.

The fusion that splits you into halves — yet a strange wholeness is somehow achieved along with it. Something made up of its own parts, but in a different configuration. This connection is predatory— it is the predator — and that is precisely what is so painful for her.

She wants to feel the supercharged particles — how they change the shape and contents of the cells with the invisible vibrations of their heavy neutrons. They shove aside the cell membranes, warp the mitochondria’s soft form, and derail the nuclei from their orbits. She wanted — at least on the day of those May Day demonstrations, on the bright white day of Chernobyl — to change something. She sensed a great opportunity to correct the genes: not mine, not his, and if possible, not even her own anymore. And in this way she is not mine, not his. Free, finally.

“You want to run away,” I hear K-shev say.

He is speaking both to me and to her, simultaneously. “You’re striving toward this illness, I realize, as if toward salvation. I’d have let you go, you know, if it had been possible. But it wasn’t.”

“Why? Why?!” I scream voicelessly with my eyes, since she has forbidden me all sounds and words. I scream as they fuse together, and I know that she feels him in her stomach like a knife:

“Why?”

A simple answer, thus terrible and unnerving:

“Because I love you too much.”

I don’t know who is guilty, but I do know who’s going to pay for all of this — the price was a question of time. Our horror ends in one and the same moment, spread out like a roll of thunder. Her flat, still childlike stomach. The wall against which my waves are doomed to break.