Cleanness

by Garth Greenwell

  Part of Vitosha was a pedestrian zone, and the restaurants and cafés that lined it had seating that spilled out onto the street, some with tables laid out in elegant white, others with low couches for sprawling with cigarettes or water pipes. I was surprised that these were full, the protests hadn’t put a dent in the crowds out to enjoy the evening. There were the usual tourists for whom the parade was a spectacle, they pointed their cameras at us, but also Bulgarians, some of whom sat with their backs resolutely turned, determined to ignore the chants of ostavka and the more aggressive chants of cherveni boklutsi, red trash, which had increased with the darkness, as had the presence of men wearing Guy Fawkes masks. There weren’t many of them but they added a different note to things, a note of incivility, a discordant note, I thought, which was amplified by the fact that there weren’t as many children now; it was a long march, they must have gotten tired. There were more police at the Palace of Justice, wearing their riot gear now but still relaxed; they were chatting among themselves with their visors lifted, shields propped on the ground. A couple of them were sitting on the stairs leading up to the palace, a young man leaned back against one of the stone lions there. D. had once pointed out to me that on one of these lions the legs are in the wrong position, the fore and hind legs of the same side stretch away from each other; it’s supposed to suggest the cat in motion but no animal walks like that, D. said, if it walked like that it would fall over. It’s the perfect symbol, he said, laughing, the Bulgarian lion. You know it’s the word we use for our money, lev, as if our money has ever been a lion! A kitten, maybe, he said, the runt of the litter, and this made him laugh again.

  Just past the palace we turned onto a side street I didn’t know, which narrowed as it moved away from the boulevard, making the march slow down and bunch up. At the same time the noise grew louder, the drums in the darkness ahead of us started striking in unison in series of six beats, the rhythm of cherveni boklutsi, the syllables spaced out, each given equal weight, and there was the clamor too of air horns sounding all at once, a terrible sound, which lasted a minute or two and then died away, the drums receding also. A couple of blocks ahead the march had turned another corner, and this created a kind of bottleneck, slowing everything down further. The street was poorly lit, we were in darkness again, and now there were more police; they lined one side of the street, with their helmets on and their plastic shields raised. What’s going on, I asked M., and she told me that we were approaching the headquarters of the Socialist Party, that every night the march took that route. There was another battery of air horns ahead of us, not as loud as the first but loud enough, the sound reverberated in the little street. It was an old street, with elegant, turn-of-the-century houses and even older dwellings, squat and unadorned, which had escaped the bombs of World War II and the building initiatives of the Communists and now were on the point of collapse. We were packed together now, barely moving though I still felt the impulse to move, the impulse of the crowd behind me. We were penned in, almost brushing shoulders with the people beside us, and I felt M. draw closer to me.

  We inched forward, and then the noise began again just in front of us, and everyone around me started shouting as they turned to face a long building of concrete and glass, five or six stories high. Only the sculpture in front of it marked it out, I had passed it before without paying much attention to the building it adorned. It showed seven or eight figures in battle, some taking aim with rifles, others cradling fallen comrades, the whole dominated by a large, stylized figure of a woman on one knee, her arm flung forward, the fingers outstretched in a gesture that had always seemed moving to me, more moving now that she was outlined by the single lit window of a convenience store behind her. The march had come to a standstill, people were yelling cherveni boklutsi again and again as they shook their fists, suddenly a man standing right beside me sounded his air horn. Jesus, I must have said, covering my ear and shaking my head a little like an animal, and M. looked up at me, concerned. The mood was changing as the chant broke down and became something less choate and more animalistic, hisses and boos, and then I felt the pressure to move again, not in the same direction as before but toward the building and the line of police guarding it. The police felt it too, that pressure, they came to attention, lifting their shields an inch or two and locking them in place. I said something then, This could be bad or something to that effect, and I felt M.’s hand on my arm, though she couldn’t have heard what I said, there was too much noise and anyway I had whispered it, I was saying it mostly to myself. Points of red light were tracing patterns on the building’s concrete façade, people had brought laser pointers, which were harmless of course and also sinister, they aimed them like the laser sights of rifles. The sound of the crowd grew louder, that inchoate sound, formless and primal, inhuman, hardly animal now but primordial, chthonic, like a sound the earth would make. It wasn’t an animal sound but it elicited an animal response, or did for me, anyway, a fear that would have made me run had there been anywhere to run to, that instead made me grow very still. At the front of the crowd now, facing the police, six or seven men in Guy Fawkes masks had suddenly appeared. The masks seemed like an invitation to violence, to commit it or be subjected to it, and I thought I could see the police they were facing lean forward as if to meet them. There was the sound of glass breaking, a bottle thrown over the heads of the police, and almost at the same time a weird crackling and sudden fluorescence of flat red light. Someone behind us had lit a flare, and in response the noise died down, as if everyone had taken a breath. But the pressure I had felt didn’t dissipate, in the suspension of our breath it mounted and became unbearable, demanding release, and though we didn’t quite move it was as if everyone leaned very slightly forward, a wave on the brink of cresting. We hung fire, that’s what it felt like, that phrase from nineteenth-century novels I had never quite understood, I understood it now. Whatever happened I would be swept along with it, whether I wanted to be or not, what I wanted was irrelevant. In the light of the flare I saw a policewoman’s face, a young woman, hardly older than M.; behind the plastic visor her eyes flicked from right to left in fear. And then, just as I felt myself lean further forward, propelled not by any will of my own but by a larger will, ready to spring, from the very back of the crowd a man began to sing. Immediately other voices joined him, soon everyone was singing the national anthem, which is restrained and minor-key, as much mournful as celebratory, nothing like my own country’s anthem, and it was as if the crowd relaxed into it; the pressure that had built dissolved, the song caught it and dispersed it. The police relaxed too, leaning back again, the crowd began to move, the fear I had felt became relief and then, as we turned the corner, something like joy, which I saw reflected on M.’s face and on the other faces around me; everyone was smiling again, beneficent, a nation again, that was what I felt, an ideal nation.

  People kept singing for a block or two as we left the Party headquarters behind, turning right on the narrow street just past it, they cycled through two or three verses before the song faded away once we reached Stamboliyski Boulevard. We had returned to civilization, I thought, we were passing shops and restaurants, their lit interiors calling us back from what we had almost become, it was unimaginable now. At the intersection with Vitosha, the beautiful old church, Sveta Nedelya, sat brooding in the pool of its lights. Ostavka, people were still chanting, but it felt half-hearted now, a matter almost of form. That hasn’t happened before, M. said, meaning the moment at the Party headquarters, I was scared almost, she said, were you, and I admitted that I was, that for a minute I had thought things might get bad. But it’s good that we’re scared, she said. If we’re scared, that means they’re scared, too. She looked at me, her face bright in a streetlamp, then looked away. They need to be scared, she said, maybe that’s the whole point, they need to know they should be scared of us.

  We turned back onto Vitosha, where M. stopped and said goodbye, she would take the metro home. I guess I should do my hom
ework, she said, squeezing my arm in farewell before deciding instead to give me a quick hug. I’m so happy I saw you, she said, it was so great to do this, and then she was gone. Other people were leaving too, streaming down into the metro or dispersing on foot, the march was thinning out. Those of us who stayed turned onto Tsar Osvoboditel again, beginning the last leg of the protest, bringing us back full circle. There were still people yelling cherveni boklutsi but not many, most people were walking quietly, chatting among themselves. I would follow the march to the end, I had booked a hotel room for the night, in the luxury hotel near the statue of the tsar; after the embassy warnings travelers were staying in hotels far from the protests, the rooms were cheap enough for me to afford. I would spend the night there and take the metro to campus in the morning. I glanced at my phone and saw that D. was already waiting for me to join him for a drink at the bar. He was right, D. had texted, meaning the writer I had met and the argument they had had, what’s happening is better than I thought, I can’t wait to talk to you, hurry up. We were still a few blocks away but a new chant had started up, utre pak, tomorrow again, it gave people fresh energy, everyone was chanting it, pumping their fists in the air. Even I joined in, utre pak, I wanted to see what it was like to chant with the others, but soon I felt foolish and stopped.

  There are grassy areas along that part of the boulevard, little gardens set back from the lights of the street, and so I didn’t see S. and his friends at first, they were gathered some distance from the pavement. A woman was standing and waving her arms above her head, that was what caught my attention, and as I approached I saw that S. was sitting on the ground, leaning into K., who had both her arms around him, and that he was holding something to his face. They had piled their signs in the grass beside them, what was left of their signs, they had all been torn to pieces. What happened, I asked the woman who had waved me over, and she answered in English, Some assholes showed up, she said, some of those assholes in masks, they grabbed our signs from us, and they hit S., she went on, when he tried to stop them they knocked him down. All these police and none of them did anything, she said, they’re assholes too, when we went to find them they said they would send someone but that was twenty minutes ago. They don’t care what happened to us, we’ve been calling them but they just keep telling us to wait. She motioned to a man standing to one side, who was gesturing with his free hand while he spoke quickly into his phone. I’m so sorry, I said, do you need anything, is there anything I can do, but she shrugged this away. Does S. need a doctor, I asked, should we take him, but he cut me off, Ne, he said loudly, not moving or lowering his hand from his eye, he was pressing a bag of ice to it, I saw now, and the woman shrugged again. The cowards, the woman said, they were here and then they were gone, in their stupid masks. And what they said to us, they told us we were spreading trash, there are children here, they said, they said we were being—and she paused, looking at the others as she said bezsramni, shameless. Indecent, K. said then, they said we were indecent, they called us dirty queers. She spoke quietly, despite the noise of the protests, she spoke without anger or any trace of emotion; I could see why her children found her such a comfort.

  They’re fucking liars, S. said, pulling away from K. to sit upright, though she kept one arm around him. He lowered the bag from his eye, but in the dark I couldn’t see how bad it was, whether he was really hurt. Obedineni sme, he said, quoting one of their slogans, but we’re not united, they don’t want to be united with us. It’s all the same, he said, all this work and it’s always the same. No, K. said in her calm voice, no, that’s not true, you know that’s not true, but he snapped at her, he pulled away and said angrily It is true, it is true. He had been sitting with his legs stretched out but now he pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. I’m so stupid, he said, I thought it would be different here, I thought these were the good people, the better people, they say they hate the Nazis from Ataka but they’re all the same, to us they’re all the same, they hate us, he said, speaking more loudly now, they hate us, I don’t understand it but they’ll always hate us. I hate them too, he said, they’ll never change, I hate this fucking country. Mrazya vi, he said then, louder still, I hate you. He was speaking to the protesters now, the last of them passing by on the boulevard, mrazya vi, mrazya vi, each time saying it more loudly and angrily, so that people began to look our way; it made me nervous, and the others too, everyone moved just slightly toward one another. But none of the marchers stopped, they looked at us a moment and then looked away. K. kept putting her hand on S.’s back and he kept shaking it off, he didn’t want to be comforted. Mrazya vi, he said a final time, almost shouting it, and then his voice caught, he lowered his forehead against his knees. He let K. put her arm around him then, and after a moment he leaned back into her and returned the ice to his eye.

  I looked at the others, who were sitting on the grass in silence, the woman who had called me over, the man with his phone lowered now, not pressed to his ear, whatever conversation he had been having was over; all of them seemed as helpless as I felt, they all kept their distance from S. Only K. was any use, she was holding him with both her arms again, rocking back and forth a little and murmuring to him in Bulgarian. The protesters had passed and the street was quiet, but I couldn’t make out what she was telling him; whatever she was saying was having an effect, S. was calmer now. Finally the man with the telephone spoke, They’re coming, he said, meaning the police, they say we should wait for them, they’ll be here soon. That’s what they said twenty minutes ago, someone said, and the man shrugged and then sat down, leaving me the only one on my feet. I felt my phone buzz in my pocket, D. again, probably wondering where I was, but I ignored it, I looked at S. and K. huddled together, and then at the street. Volunteers were cleaning up after the last protesters, a man and a woman, each with a broom and dust pail, each sweeping one side of the boulevard, collecting plastic bottles and bits of paper where they had gathered at the curb, the occasional discarded flag; and when their bins were full they carried them to a second woman who stood between them, holding a large garbage bag open. I wondered if they were the same people I had seen before, whether their entire protest consisted of cleaning up, that gesture M. had been so proud of, leaving the city better than they had found it, leaving it pristine. My phone buzzed again, but I didn’t want to meet D. now, I would write him soon to say I wasn’t coming, or not for a while. It was pointless for me to stick around, I couldn’t do anything to help, I wasn’t any help at all, but I let my bag drop to the grass anyway, I sat down with them to wait.

  II

  LOVING R.

  CLEANNESS

  I was at our usual table, next to the window that made up most of the restaurant’s east-facing wall. We liked to look out on the garden, where even in mid-October there would usually have been diners talking and smoking at the tables that were empty now, stripped of their umbrellas and chairs, black metal chains locked around their legs. It was a lovely garden, its shrubs and flowers rare in Mladost, a green relief among the concrete desolation of so much of the neighborhood. There was nothing to be done about the sound of traffic nearby, or the exhaust that tainted the air, and of course one only had to look up to see the gray of the apartment blocks, which put an end to all greenness. We enjoyed it best from inside, we had learned, it was a place to rest our eyes. But tonight everything outside was movement and agitation, as it had been all week, ever since a great wind had swept into or descended upon or laid siege to the city, it’s hard to know how to put it, or my sense of it shifted with the days. It came up from Africa, the guards at my school said, old men who greeted it with resignation; it carries sand from Africa, you’ll feel it, it is a horrible wind. And they were right, there was something almost malevolent about it, as if it were an intelligence, or at least an intention, carrying off whatever wasn’t secure, worrying every loose edge. It made the city’s cheap construction seem cheaper, more provisional and tenuous, a temporary arrangement—as is
true of all places, I know, though it’s a truth I’d rather not acknowledge, of course I came to hate the wind.