Garth Greenwell - What Belongs to You

He returned to the main room and sat down again beside me. That’s serious, I said, I’m sorry, and he shook his head in agreement. Then he looked at me. Have you had any problems, he asked, anything like this? Me, I said, taken aback, of course not, no, nothing at all. At the clinic, he went on, they said I’ve had it for a long time, that’s what I came to tell you. You need to get checked, he said, and I nodded in consent. All right, I said, I will. I wasn’t very worried: it had been two years, and I hadn’t noticed anything to cause alarm, certainly nothing so dramatic as Mitko’s own symptoms. But it was also true that I hadn’t been tested for anything in years. The terror I had felt constantly when I was younger had given way to something like carelessness, which I knew was irresponsible, though I mostly took the usual precautions, and anyway it was an easy enough thought to avoid. Lots of guys wouldn’t have told you, Mitko said again, they would have said what do I owe him, he can fuck himself. But I’m not like that, he went on, and you’re my friend. I’ve never stopped thinking of you as my friend, he said, shifting the pitch of the conversation just slightly, making it more intimate. This too was a different tone, one I hadn’t heard from him before, retrospective, almost regretful, though I didn’t really trust it, I doubted it was his conscience alone that had brought him back to me. Are you sorry, he said then, deepening this tone still further, are you sorry that you came to Varna that time? I didn’t answer at first, remembering how frightened I had been that night, and thinking too of the whole false history between us, falser now that I’ve turned it over so often. No, I said, I don’t regret it, and as I said it it was true. And you, I said, and he drew his head up in a single quick jerk, not quite a nod, Ne, ne suzhalyavam. For the first time since he had arrived he smiled, not the eager smile I remembered from before but something that lightened the mood. Radvam se , he said, I’m glad you’re not sorry, and then he placed his hand on my knee, not meaning it as a seduction exactly, the fact of his illness dismissed any thought of it, but as a reestablishment of contact, I thought, a suggestion that at some point we might begin again what we had halted. Mitko, I said, I should tell you, I have a friend now, and I paused, not sure how to clarify what I meant, the Bulgarian word allowing for so many possibilities; imam postoyanen priyatel , I said finally, a constant friend, the awkward phrase the best I could manage. I wanted to make things clear, to draw firm lines, but I realized even as I spoke I was taking for granted the fact that Mitko would come again to my door, that almost certainly I would let him in. Is he Bulgarian, Mitko asked, catching my meaning, and I said he wasn’t; we met here, I said, but he’s Portuguese, he lives in Lisbon, and then I stopped, feeling I shouldn’t say more. I wanted to keep my relationship with R. to myself, and the thought of him gave new urgency to Mitko’s warning. How would I forgive myself if I had infected him, if I had dragged him into the world from which (as I thought of it) he had lifted me out?

Yasno , Mitko said, drawing back his hand, I get it; he seemed happy to let the subject drop. I had noticed his eyes flick once or twice, as if involuntarily, toward the pan still lying by the stove, and I stood and relit the burner, asking him if he was hungry. It wasn’t really a question, and he didn’t pretend to consider it. While the food was warming he turned back to my laptop, logging on to Facebook and, I was sure, the Bulgarian hookup site I remembered from before, and then he closed the computer and sat with me at the little table. I was surprised that I couldn’t remember our ever having shared a meal before in that way, quietly and seated and alone. We didn’t talk at first; Mitko dug into the food and I watched him eat, surprised by how happy I was to have him there. I wondered how much this feeling owed to him, to his company or the pleasure he took in the poor meal I had made, and how much it depended on some gratified notion of myself, my willingness to set aside the past and a generosity I knew he would call on before he left, which was real generosity now, I thought, since I would ask nothing in return for it. He looked up and smiled when he caught me watching him, and I smiled back. I asked him how he had passed the last two years, whether he had been in Varna, whether he had found work. He looked at me, briefly silent, and then, For a while I was in a bad place, he said and paused, as if unsure how to continue, or as if waiting for me to draw him out. What do you mean, I asked, what kind of place, and he set down his fork, which he had been holding in the palm of his hand like a child, all five fingers circled around the handle. I did some bad things, he said, and I was caught, and they put me away for a year. In prison, I asked stupidly, what else could it be, and he wagged his head yes. What did you do, I asked, remembering of course our scene in Varna, the face he had shown that seemed capable of so much, and that was so different from the face I looked at now.

Mitko made a dismissive gesture with his shoulders, shrugging as he picked up his fork again. It was a job, he said, I worked for a guy in Varna. He helps people, he gives them money, if you need something you can go to him. But you can’t just take somebody’s money, he said, almost as if I had challenged him, you have to pay it back. And if somebody didn’t pay it back, he would send us. You would hurt them, I said, and he shrugged again. Malko , a little, but never too badly, and then, as if affronted, I never hurt anyone badly, I’m not that kind of person, there are people who do that but not me. He lowered his fork to his plate and pushed his food around a bit. And then, Mitko went on, if they still didn’t pay, we would go where they lived and take everything, and here he gestured around the room, as if imagining it stripped bare, the television, the computer, the furniture, we’d take all of it, he wouldn’t have anything left. But that’s normal, he said, again as if defending the justice of it, you can’t take somebody’s money and not pay it back. I didn’t challenge this statement or agree with it, I watched him without saying a word. And that’s it, he said, I had worked for him before, on and off, but this time I got in trouble, I had to go away. It wasn’t nice there, it’s a bad place, I won’t tell you what it was like. But I’m done with that now, he said, making a gesture as if wiping his hands clean, I don’t want to do that anymore.

What happened when you got out, I asked, what did you do then? He shrugged again, I was in Sofia for a while, he said, I found some work here, and he told me how he had worked on a construction site, not as a builder but as security, watching over the premises at night. Skuchna rabota , he said, boring work. I thought about calling you, I still had your number, but I wasn’t sure you would want me to, I thought you were still mad. I shrugged, wondering if I was, and he went on, I worked there a few months, and then it stopped. At my inquisitive glance, They ran out of money, he said, it’s what always happens, we had to stop working. He had gone back to Varna to his mother’s apartment, which was all right in the summer, when there were people, he said, there was something to do, and I thought how he must love it, those few weeks when his city became a little Europe, the beautiful young coming from the west for the cheap beaches and beer, the Balkan carnival, maybe it seemed like the life that should have been his. But no one’s there now, he said, the city’s empty, and so he had come back to Sofia to look for work. But there isn’t any work, he said, what can you do. I stayed with friends for a while, but there’s no one you can count on here, and now his face darkened, the people who say they are your friends aren’t friends at all. And then this happened, he said, gesturing down at his lap, and I don’t have any money; they want me to take pills first, and then if they don’t work I need an injection. But the pills are forty leva, he said, and then, disingenuously, where will I get forty leva? I’ll help you, I said, of course, don’t worry. We had finished eating already, and so I stood and took my wallet from the little shelf by the door, taking out forty leva and then another twenty. Here, I said, for the medicine. Shte se opravish , I said, you’ll get better, and he took the money and thanked me, for the food and for my help, he said, taking my hand in his. I wanted to ask him where he would go, if he had a place to spend the night, but I was afraid he might press me to extend my generosity further than it would reach. At the door he knelt to put on his shoes, which were still damp, and drew on his thin jacket, and then he stood and opened the door, the corridor dark behind him. Thank you again, he said, and then, so quickly that I didn’t have a chance to stop him, even if I had wanted to, he placed both of his hands on my shoulders and leaned toward me, touching his lips to my cheek. He leaned back again and smiled, withdrawing his hands, but not before tousling my hair, smiling now with the unguardedness I remembered. It was a friendly gesture, unromantic, which didn’t dismiss the intimacy of his kiss but set it in a new key, and I was filled with fondness as he stepped out and pulled the door shut behind him. There was no temptation, I thought, there was no danger of his upsetting the new balance I had found, the monogamy that still had the novelty of a break from long habit. After I turned the key in its lock I stood with my hand on the door, not with the thought of opening it again but just to listen to him make his way down the hall. He had already gone down the stairs before I remembered to press the switch for the hallway light, setting the timer running though it was already past its use.