Garth Greenwell - What Belongs to You

That my first encounter with Mitko B. ended in a betrayal, even a minor one, should have given me greater warning at the time, which should in turn have made my desire for him less, if not done away with it completely. But warning, in places like the bathrooms at the National Palace of Culture, where we met, is like some element coterminous with the air, ubiquitous and inescapable, so that it becomes part of those who inhabit it, and thus part and parcel of the desire that draws us there. Even as I descended the stairs I heard his voice, which like the rest of him was too large for those subterranean rooms, spilling out of them as if to climb back into the bright afternoon that, though it was mid-October, had nothing autumnal about it; the grapes that hung ripe from vines throughout the city burst warm still in one’s mouth. I was surprised to hear someone talking so freely in a place where, by unstated code, voices seldom rose above a whisper. At the bottom of the stairs I paid my fifty stotinki to an old woman who looked up at me from her booth, her expression unreadable as she took the coins; with her other hand she clutched a shawl against the chill that was constant here, whatever the season. Only as I neared the end of the corridor did I hear a second voice, not raised like the first, but answering in a low murmur. The voices came from the second of the bathroom’s three chambers, where they might have belonged to men washing their hands had the sound of water accompanied them. I paused in the outermost room, examining myself in the mirrors lining its walls as I listened to their conversation, though I couldn’t understand a word. There was only one reason for men to be standing there, the bathrooms at NDK (as the Palace is called) are well enough hidden and have such a reputation that they’re hardly used for anything else; and yet as I turned into the room this explanation seemed at odds with the demeanor of the man who claimed my attention, which was cordial and brash, entirely public in that place of intense privacies.

He was tall, thin but broad-shouldered, with the close-cropped military cut of hair popular among certain young men in Sofia, who affect a hypermasculine style and an air of criminality. I hardly noticed the man he was with, who was shorter, deferential, with bleached blond hair and a denim jacket from the pockets of which he never removed his hands. It was the larger man who turned toward me with apparently friendly interest, free of predation or fear, and though I was taken aback I found myself smiling in response. He greeted me with an elaborate rush of words, at which I could only shake my head in bemusement as I grasped the large hand he held out, offering as broken apology and defense the few phrases I had practiced to numbness. His smile widened when he realized I was a foreigner, revealing a chipped front tooth, the jagged seam of which (I would learn) he worried obsessively with his index finger in moments of abstraction. Even at arm’s length, I could smell the alcohol that emanated not so much from his breath as from his clothes and hair; it explained his freedom in a place that, for all its license, was bound by such inhibition, and explained too the peculiarly innocent quality of his gaze, which was intent but unthreatening. He spoke again, cocking his head to one side, and in a pidgin of Bulgarian, English, and German, we established that I was American, that I had been in his city for a few weeks and would stay at least a year, that I was a teacher at the American College, that my name was more or less unpronounceable in his language.

Throughout our halting conversation, there was no acknowledgment of the strange location of our encounter or of the uses to which it was almost exclusively put, so that speaking to him I felt an anxiety made up of equal parts desire and unease at the mystery of his presence and purpose. There was a third man there as well, who entered and exited the farthest stall several times, looking earnestly at us but never approaching or speaking a word. Finally, after we had reached the end of our introductions and after this third man entered his stall again, closing the door behind him, Mitko (as I knew him now) pointed toward him and gave me a look of great significance, saying Iska , he wants, and then making a lewd gesture the meaning of which was clear. Both he and his companion, whom he referred to as brat mi and who hadn’t spoken since I arrived, laughed at this, looking at me as if to include me in the joke, though of course I was as much an object of their ridicule as the man listening to them from inside his stall. I was so eager to be one of their party that almost without thinking I smiled and wagged my head from side to side, in the gesture that signifies here both agreement or affirmation and a certain wonder at the vagaries of the world. But I saw in the glance they exchanged that this attempt to associate with them only increased the distance between us. Wanting to regain my footing, and after pausing to arrange the necessary syllables in my head (which seldom, despite these efforts, emerge as they should, even now when I’m told that I speak hubavo and pravilno , when I see surprise at my proficiency in a language that hardly anyone bothers to learn who hasn’t learned it already), I asked him what he was doing there, in that chill room with its impression of damp. Above us it felt like summer still, the plaza was full of light and people, some of them, riding skateboards or in-line skates or elaborately tricked-out bicycles, the same age as these men.

Mitko looked at his friend, whom he referred to as his brother although they were not brothers, and then the friend moved toward the outer door and Mitko drew his wallet out of his back pocket. He opened it and took out a small square packet of glossy paper, a page torn from a magazine and folded over many times. He unfolded this page carefully, his hands shaking slightly, balancing it to keep whatever loose material was inside from falling to the dampness and filth on which we stood. I guessed what he would reveal, of course; my only surprise was at how little he had, a mere crumble of leaves. Ten leva, he said, and then added that he and his friend and I, the three of us, might smoke it together. He didn’t seem disappointed when I refused this offer; he just folded his page up carefully again and replaced it in his pocket. But he didn’t leave, either, as I had feared he might. I wanted him to stay, even though over the course of our conversation, which moved in such fits and starts and which couldn’t have lasted more than five or ten minutes, it had become difficult to imagine the desire I increasingly felt for him having any prospect of satisfaction. For all his friendliness, as we spoke he had seemed in some mysterious way to withdraw from me; the longer we avoided any erotic proposal the more finally he seemed unattainable, not so much because he was beautiful, although I found him beautiful, as for some still more forbidding quality, a kind of bodily sureness or ease that suggested freedom from doubts and self-gnawing, from any squeamishness about existence. He had about him a sense simply of accepting his right to a measure of the world’s beneficence, even as so clearly it had been withheld him. He looked at his friend, who hadn’t moved to rejoin us after Mitko hid away his tiny stash, and after they exchanged another glance the friend turned his back to us, not so much guarding the door anymore, I felt, as offering us a certain privacy. Mitko looked at me again, friendly still but with a new intensity, and then he tilted his head slightly and moved one hand over his crotch. I couldn’t help but look down, of course, as I couldn’t restrain the excitement I’m sure he saw when I met his gaze again. He rubbed the first three fingers of his other hand together, making the universal sign for money. There was nothing in his manner of seduction, no show of desire at all; what he offered was a transaction, and again he showed no disappointment when reflexively and without hesitation I said no to him. It was the answer I had always given to such proposals (which are inevitable in the places I frequent), not out of any moral conviction but out of pride, a pride that had weakened in recent years, as I realized I was being shifted by the passage of time from one category of erotic object to another. But as soon as I uttered the word I regretted it, as Mitko shrugged and dropped his hand from his crotch, smiling as if it had all been a joke. And then, since he did finally turn to leave with his friend, nodding in goodbye, I called out