Garth Greenwell - What Belongs to You

But it wasn’t that at all, I saw when Mitko came in, not stepping but stumbling, moving past me in a strange sidelong way, as if his body were oddly weighted and pulling him to one side; he wasn’t a threat to anyone, a wind could blow him over. He didn’t stop to shake my hand or remove his shoes or say anything at all, but with his sidelong lurching movement went into the main room and fell onto the couch. I stood with the door open for a moment, reluctant to close it, as if there were still a chance for what had blown in to blow out, as though he might change his mind and leave before a new revelation emerged, some new drama. I was listening for my neighbors, too, for any opening doors; I would apologize for the noise, in English or Bulgarian, depending on which doors opened. I would say that my friend was drunk, which was true; when he moved past me I had been struck by a strong smell of beer, the kind that comes in two-liter bottles, the cheapest kind. But there was no sign of anyone, the hallway was quiet, and so I did close my door, having no other choice, unless it were to close it behind rather than in front of me, to step out into the hallway and away, which of course was no choice at all.

Mitko was sitting at the end of the couch, though perhaps sitting isn’t the word for his slumped-over posture, his body tilted to one side like a listing boat. He had shrugged off his jacket and left it lying crumpled behind him, an uncharacteristic gesture, given the care with which he usually treated his things. He pulled one knee half onto the seat and turned, a welcoming posture, I thought, an invitation for me to sit beside him. His shoulders and back were bowed forward and his head was tilted up at a strange angle, as if he were studying something at a middle height, the cupboards above the sink, perhaps, though as I approached and then sat at the other end of the couch, keeping as much distance between us as I could, I saw he wasn’t studying anything. His eyes were moving eerily, rolling uselessly in his head, as if disjointed from his will, and his neck was not merely tilted up but straining. It was a posture of agony, I thought, and though clearly he was drunk, drunker than I had ever seen him, drunker than I had ever seen anyone, I thought surely he must have taken something too, some substance the effects of which were beyond my acquaintance with such things. He looked terrible, even thinner than before, so that the clothes he had always worn tight hung loose against his frame; and there was something else as well, less easy to pinpoint but just as alarming, some subtly wrong color to his skin that made it difficult not to pull away from him.

I didn’t recoil, but it was as though he had seen the impulse as he reached over and took one of my hands in his. I had noticed his hands moving oddly, the fingers rubbing against one another in a strange way, as though surprised to find such close neighbors, and now he clasped my hand tightly, taking it in both of his, and kneaded it, squeezing so hard the knuckles popped. Dobre li si , I said to him, are you all right; clearly he wasn’t but I had to say something. He shook his head quickly, not in answer but as if to shake off my voice, and I thought he made an effort to look at me; his eyes stopped their rolling for a moment, they seemed to seek me out, but then began their motion again. He held my hand quietly for a while, still kneading it in his strange way, grinding the joints of my fingers against one another, so that I had to squeeze back to avoid pain. And then he started speaking, though not to me, exactly, or to anyone; he began to repeat a single phrase, which even though it was short I didn’t catch at first, both because his speech was slurred and because it was so odd, a statement of counterfact, Men me nyama , he said, the three words again and again, men me nyama, men me nyama , I’m gone, it means, or I’m not here, literally there’s no me, an odd construction I can’t quite make work in English. For a moment I thought he was singing a pop song from the previous summer, “Dim da me nyama,” which is impossible to translate but the idea is of disappearing in smoke, like a car spinning its tires before shooting off, maybe, or like the running bird in the cartoon. It was a rap song, and the chorus repeated the title again and again, rhythmically, almost like a chant, which was why I thought Mitko was singing it for a moment, his own words matched it so closely, men me nyama, men me nyama . I almost smiled at his drunkenness before I realized that he wasn’t singing at all, and that his eyes, which hadn’t stopped their weird motions, had welled with tears. What is it, I said then, what does that mean, I don’t understand, and at this Mitko stopped his chant, snapped it off as if he were biting it with his teeth, and almost angrily he said Nishto ne razbirash , you don’t understand anything. Okay, I said soothingly, I don’t understand, tell me, but even before I could soothe him his anger, if it was anger, had melted away, had become a more agitated pressing of my hands. Dnes sum tuk , he said, a utre men me nyama , today I’m here, tomorrow I’m gone, and then he took up his weird chant again. It was a charm against something, I thought, though maybe that was giving it too much meaning, maybe it was less than a charm, like a stone one turns in one’s hand, not for any purpose but for the feel of it.

Then he stopped his chant and said my name, or not my name but that syllable he used to approximate it, since my name was unpronounceable in his language; he had tried to say it at first but each time stumbled over sounds he couldn’t make, the intricate shapes that made him shake his head in bemusement. I had felt this myself with R.; the English version of his name is common enough, but it sounded strange in Portuguese, and though I practiced pronouncing it endlessly and though I’m good at learning languages, each time I said his name R. would laugh, and so I stopped using it, I used other names instead, private names I had invented and so could never mispronounce. The syllable Mitko used was a private name too, it was his alone, and he said it now as if to bring me into focus, saying it a second time and a third, and then, Shte umra , he said, I’m going to die, they say I’m going to die, and at his own words the tears that had welled up spilled over, streaming down his cheeks. He let go of me to wipe them away, using the palms of both hands, and then he held his hands over his eyes, rocking his whole body back and forth now that his hands were still. Mitko, I said, reaching over to place my hand on his back, unsure what to do with it now that it was free, Mitko, what do you mean, who says this, and he answered, still rocking, Lekarite , the doctors, they say my kidneys and my liver don’t work, they say I will only live a year. Mitko, I said again, Mitko, and maybe the single syllable oh, I’m not sure what I intended it to mean. But how, I found myself saying, from what, thinking that it couldn’t be the syphilis, which should have taken years to do its work, even if he hadn’t taken the drugs I gave him money for, gave him money for twice over; but he shook his head at this sharply when I asked him, Ne , he said, ne , and then he said nothing else. I remembered the months he had spent in the hospital years before, something do with his liver, though he never really spoke of it, avoiding it as he did so much of his past; hepatitis, I had thought, which I knew was rampant here and against which I had long been immunized. Or maybe it wasn’t that either, maybe it was just the endless alcohol he drank, though he was still so young, I don’t know. And then I remembered what he had said that night in the McDonald’s, just before the encounter I had thought of so often since, with longing and excitement and remorse so tightly bound there was no picking them apart, when he said that the drugs we were both to take were dangerous for him. Maybe he hadn’t been able to walk away from the illness unscathed, as I had; maybe that was what I meant by that syllable I repeated, oh, the unfairness of the luck I couldn’t regret, even as already it was opening up some great space between us, an even greater distance than had existed before. And so I said his name a third time, calling to him across that open space, though he didn’t respond, he just kept rocking back and forth, already unreachable.