Cleanness

by Garth Greenwell

  The road curved toward the town, following the river, and both of us looked down at the water. We had just come from Rousse, a city three hours to the north, where I had finally seen the Danube, the first river I had encountered in Europe on the scale of those I had grown up beside in America. The town had little in the way of a riverfront, just a desolate patch of green like a stain seeping from the city’s largest building, a Soviet-era hotel that stood guard on the bank. The river was swollen with summer rains, and we watched the huge weight of it slide silently past, watching too the swallows twisting above us in the darkening air; and then the river was something we felt more than saw, in the darkness it was indistinguishable from the woods on the Romanian bank. There was nothing so impressive about the Yantra, a narrow river so shallow in places it seemed barely to cover its bed; but there was a kind of drama in the winding shape it cut through the land, at one point almost looping back upon itself as it twisted among the hills that gave the city both its character and its purpose. Atop the largest of those hills sat the jagged ruins of Tsarevets, Turnovo’s main attraction, a medieval fortress that fell to the Ottomans five centuries ago, a symbol of former greatness that’s at once a source of pride and a shadow cast over the present.

  A view of Tsarevets, and of the rest of the town from a neighboring hill, was the primary draw of the hotel where the taxi dropped us off. It was a nice hotel, it cost more than I would usually have wanted to pay, but its luxury was like a grand gesture abandoned, the large room with its gorgeous view filled with furniture and linens in various stages of disrepair. Even so, we felt a little flare of happiness on entering it; R. dropped his bags and stepped onto the bed, jumping up and down a few times, and I laughed with him, even as I sensed, just past the edges of what we felt, a hovering dread. It was a habit of mine, to rush toward an ending once I thought I could see it, as if the fact of loss were easier to bear than the chance of it. I didn’t want that to happen with R., I struggled against it; he was worth struggling for, I thought, as was the person I found I was with him. Then R. stopped jumping and stood at the foot of the bed, throwing his arms wide, and I stepped toward him for the second half of our ritual of homecoming in these temporary homes; and as I wrapped my arms around his waist and pressed my face to his chest, I felt a flood of relief, the release of something increasingly tightly wound.

  We left shortly after, our bags still unpacked, and began to explore the little town. It wasn’t like the other tourist towns in Bulgaria; in the shops there were handmade crafts among the mass-produced souvenirs, and in the old town, its vertiginous streets lined with National Revival houses, at first newly renovated but growing more decrepit as we climbed, there were artisans’ shops in which men and women looked up hopefully from their work, calling zapovyadaite, welcome, come in, to everyone who passed. A year before, the town had been crowded with tourists, their buses nosing through the tiny streets and their bags piled high in lobbies; but now there were few visitors, maybe because it was later in the season and the seaside had drawn them away, and we were often alone as we climbed the steep paths, the cobblestones shifting beneath us. One woman was standing in front of her shop, and beckoned us inside so fervently it would have been difficult to refuse. I glanced at R., who shrugged, and we walked over to her. She spoke to us in English at first, but visibly relaxed when I answered in Bulgarian. My husband speaks perfect English, she said, but he’s gone with my son to Sofia for the day, they’ve left me here alone. The building she welcomed us into was lovely, a two-story house of stone and wood, with cement urns overflowing with flowers at the threshold. The first floor served as a gallery, the walls crowded almost to the ceiling with paintings; others, unhung, leaned in their frames against the walls. I was overwhelmed by the number of them, for a minute I wasn’t sure where to look. Please, the woman said, walk around, there are more in the other rooms, and she gestured toward an open doorway to my right. All of them were done by us, she said, we’re all three painters, and then, at my little murmur of interest, we graduated from the fine arts academy in Plovdiv, my husband and I, and now our son studies in Sofia, at the best school.

  R. had stepped away as she spoke, turning his attention to the walls. She began to tell us about the paintings, glad to have an audience; she paused between sentences for me to translate, though I couldn’t always follow what she said. It was easy to tell apart the three artists as we scanned the walls: Her own paintings were swirling pale abstractions, her son’s glossy female nudes. Her husband’s work was larger and more striking, painted with the angular stylization of socialist-era art. Almost all of Sofia’s public art was in this style, which I liked, more or less, though my Bulgarian friends pursed their lips at my admiration. Mnogo sots, they would say, very socialist, not just about murals and monuments but about music, too, about movies and books, dismissing at a stroke whole generations. The largest of the paintings in the main room formed a series, each of them featuring a central figure with a lyre, his neck bent toward it as if playing for himself alone. That’s Orpheus, the woman said, do you know the story? I did, I had read Ovid in school, and when I said this her whole face lifted and lit up. How wonderful, she said, and then, he was from here, you know, he was Bulgarian, you can see his tomb in the south. I made a sound of polite interest, I had heard this before, and knew that for many people here the spiritual nation was still defined by its most expansive borders, Bulgaria na tri moreta, Bulgaria of the three seas, when for a brief moment it encompassed the whole of Thrace. I translated this too for R., and then, since he didn’t know the story, I sketched it for him: the wedding and the snake, the descent, the trees that uprooted themselves to dance, and then (though this wasn’t in the paintings) the Bacchantes, the slaughter, the head singing its way to Lesbos. We moved slowly, respectfully, through each of the rooms, and then, in the last, the woman directed us down a narrow staircase to a lower level. It was too steep for her, she said, not following us down, but take your time, look at whatever you like. The wooden planks made alarming noises as we descended, and I steadied myself against the wall; halfway down R. placed his hand on my shoulder, as if I were leading him through the dark. The basement was partitioned like the story above it, but it was unfinished; the floors were concrete, the space lit by bare bulbs hanging from wires. The walls here were crammed even more frantically with paintings, which were mounted haphazardly, wherever there was space, without any thought for coherence. In one room there was a heap of canvases stacked one on top of another, several columns of them piled almost to the ceiling, and I paused before them while R. explored the other rooms. This was where they put the paintings that didn’t sell, I supposed; they were displayed upstairs for a while and then moved here to make room. There were hundreds of them, enough for a life’s work, for several lives. It was a kind of trash heap, I thought, or might as well be; they would just sit there, gathering dust and mold, they would never be looked at again. They were buried here, along with the hours and days they had taken, the effort. We have an idea that the things we make will last, but they never do, or almost never; we make them and value them for a while and then they’re cleared away. There’s no metaphysics in it, I thought as I stood there staring at the heap of canvas and paint; it was like an automatic process, biological almost, a kind of excretion, there wasn’t any meaning in it, it laid no claim upon the future. And of course I thought of the pages I number and stack like those paintings, the things I have made, how arduous and ardent the effort, I thought, though I might as well have been counting stones as pages, I might as well have been stacking grains of sand. I repeated the words to myself, ardor and arduous, struck as I had been before by the false similarity between them; I rolled them around without intention, it hardly counts as thought, until as if by their own engendering there appeared among or against them a new word, ordure, the three words linked and tumbling, consequence and cause, until R. came up behind me and placed his hand on my neck, pulling my face toward his own.

  I drew away from
him after a moment. Let’s go, I said, taking his hand and pulling him toward the stairs; I wanted to escape the house and the weight of what filled it. When we climbed from the basement we found the woman waiting for us in the main room, standing hopefully at the glass table that served for a counter. There was a slight wilting in her frame when she saw we were empty-handed, something like a wave receding, though her smile never faltered as she asked whether we had enjoyed what we had seen. Oh yes, I said, very much, so many wonderful things, as if I were trying to make amends for the thoughts I had just had. It felt wrong to leave so quickly, having stayed so long, and I asked if she had a card, saying we would love to see the studio they kept in Sofia. She didn’t, she said, but she took a sheet of paper from a drawer, on which she wrote in beautiful Cyrillic an address we promised to visit. She kept smiling as she handed this to me, but I could see she didn’t believe what I had said; her gaze had gone a little unfocused, she was already staring past us at the empty street.

  Outside, I wanted to tell R. why I had needed to leave so suddenly, but as I began to speak what I had felt seemed ridiculous, out of scale, and I let it drop. It was already late afternoon, and we angled our way back to the busier part of town. We didn’t have any plans for the evening, and as we walked I kept an eye on the walls of the buildings beside the road, which were crowded with posters for concerts and exhibitions and plays, a surprising number for such a small town, I thought, posters mounted over other posters, bulging like plaster from the walls. Most of them were for small venues, clubs and cafés, but there was a series of performances held within the walls of the ruined fortress, too; the stage of ages, they called it, symphony and opera and ballet. We had been saving Tsarevets for the evening anyway; it would be brutal in the day, exposed to the sun and with almost no shade to be found. I saw that there was a concert that night, members of the Sofia Opera and Ballet performing Lakmé, the opera by Delibes. I had never seen it live, I told R., but it was the first opera I owned on CD, two discs I had played again and again. It was like a door opening onto my adolescence, I felt, a chance to share it with him, and suddenly it seemed important that we go, Please, I said, can we go, please, surprising us both with my insistence. He had never been to an opera before, but he was willing; it would be a new experience, he said, he was eager for new experiences.

  We had a late lunch at a restaurant near the hotel. It was almost empty, there were only a few solitary men nursing beers, though the air was still heavy with smoke from the afternoon rush. The large windows along the back wall offered the same view as our room, and R. and I sat at a table next to one of them, looking out at the hills and their crowded houses. These had been grand once, I thought, they rose three or sometimes four stories high; the grandest were built at the very edge of the rock, their walls flush with the cliff. Most of the façades were white, and they gleamed where the sun struck them, their windows shuttered against the heat, but there were other colors too, the bright yellows and blues and reds of the National Revival. I’d be scared to live here, R. said, it looks like the houses could just slide down the hill. I hummed a reply and he laughed. You love it, don’t you, he said, you always love sad places. Then he lifted himself up in his seat to look down the slope of our own hill, toward the banks of the river. Look, he said, and pointed to a series of shacks, what seemed almost like temporary shelters among the trees that filled the valley, with cinder block walls and roofs of corrugated metal. Do you think somebody lives there, he asked, and I said I did, I could see a garden and a tiny yard barely large enough for the mule it enclosed. Why would they need a horse, R. said, and then answered his own question, maybe that’s where the gypsies live. He settled back into his seat, losing interest, but I kept looking at that little house shadowed by trees and in earshot of the river, where it must be cool, I thought, even on the hottest days. When I looked back at him R. was watching me, folding the edge of his napkin up and then pressing it back down. Are you sad, he said, and I shrugged, not sure if I was. I looked back to the window, not at the houses now but at the forested hills beyond Tsarevets, which looked almost pristine, except for one crest where large billboard letters spelled out TECHNOPOLIS, a chain of electronics stores. It’s the only thing we can do, right, R. said, it’s the only thing that makes sense. It was a conversation we had had many times in the past weeks, and since he knew what I thought I didn’t respond. The waiter came then, anyway, bringing the pizza we had ordered. Don’t you think so, R. continued once he had gone, and I hesitated before answering, looking down at the slice of pizza I had taken but not lifting it from the plate. I don’t know, I said finally, I don’t know if it’s the right thing. And then, after a pause, But it’s not the only thing, I said, you know that, you know you could stay, maybe we’re giving up too fast. I would have said more but R. cut me off, he made the annoyed sound I expected, clucking his tongue. But we tried, he said, and I can’t live here. I’d just sit all day by myself, waiting for you to come home, playing computer games, that’s not a life, he said, we couldn’t be happy like that. I started to say that he would make friends, that he could keep looking for a job; there were call centers where they needed European languages, with Portuguese and good English he could find something at one of them. Or he could take classes, I said, he could study again at the school in Studentski grad where he had spent a semester. You could stay, I said, you could make a life here, you wouldn’t have to just sit at home. But I couldn’t put much energy into what I said; he had made a decision, what was the point of talking. I love you, I said, we love each other, it should be enough, though even as I said this I knew it was unfair.

  R. had been watching me, but at this he lowered his eyes. He brought his hand to his face and then bent his head forward, spreading his fingers as if to run them through his hair, which had been long until a few days before, when he buzzed it down to a centimeter or two. He rubbed his scalp a few times, and then dropped his hand back to the table. Skupi, he said, his tone imploring me for something, I don’t know, what if we can’t make it work once I leave, maybe this is my chance and I’m ruining it, he said, maybe I only have one chance to be happy. Am I doing the wrong thing, he said, looking at me, tell me what I should do. He met my eyes, and I felt that he really did want me to choose for him, that he would accept the decision I made; I can say yes to him, I thought, I can say yes, stay with me, I can grab hold of him. The words were on my tongue, I even took a breath to speak them, but I couldn’t speak them, and I looked back down at my food. It would have violated something to say them, his freedom, I suppose, the choice he was so ready to hand over. You have to decide, I said finally, I can’t tell you what to do.

  He looked out the window, nodded, then turned back. Well, he said, we’ve already decided, right, we bought the ticket, it would be stupid to change our minds. Besides, he said, we’re not giving up, we’ll make it work, you’ll come to Lisbon when you’re on vacation, and there’s the job fair in London this winter, you’ll find something. I had been looking for a teaching job in a city where he would want to live, somewhere in the north, in a clean place, he had said, a country where things worked like they should. But jobs were hard to come by, and it was hard for me to believe that R. would find in those countries, in any country, the life he thought he wanted. Though that wasn’t the right way to put it, I thought, he didn’t have a particular life in mind, something we could work for together; he acted as though life were something that would find him, in some city he had yet to see. Still, I pretended to be sure, as much for myself as for him, we would figure it out, I said, of course we would, we belonged with each other, I was his.

  As we climbed the hill to the fortress after our meal I could almost feel the centuries peeling back, exposing a world whose brutality was clear in the walls raised up to resist it. The way things are now, it’s hard to imagine the country that could make this, R. said as we bought our tickets and began walking the long strip of stone leading to the fortress, pausing to stare at the huge square fra
me for gates that once would have barred our way. We weren’t alone on the path up the hill; there were others too, couples mostly, some of them in clothes that made me feel underdressed, the women picking their way gingerly over the stony ground in heels. Apart from the occasional sign and a few wooden staircases granting access to the ruins, there was little to distract us as we walked the uneven ground, making our way around boulders and the ruins of walls. As we turned past one of these walls we surprised three men chatting, dressed in medieval costumes, two half-naked and muscular in leather tunics and a third in a kind of peasant cloth. They snatched the cigarettes from their mouths and stood up, one of the larger men unfurling his whip; and then, seeing our lack of interest, they leaned back against the stone, entirely contemporary in their strange clothes. At first I thought they might be from the opera, members of the chorus waiting for their call, but their costumes weren’t right, and I realized they must have been performing in some tourist reenactment, Ottoman soldiers and a Bulgarian peasant. They resembled anyway the images in the books that had given me what idea I had of the history of the place, a set of slim illustrated volumes, comic books almost, a children’s history of Bulgaria filled with barbaric invaders and mothers in tears, villains and victims stark in their frames. There were multiple versions of the story, I knew; in some the Bulgarians were valiant, in some savage and cruel, holding out for months against overwhelming forces, ceding an inch of ground at a time. There’s no getting to the truth of such things, they’re so far in the past, though nearly everyone I had met talked about the fall of Tsarevets in 1393 as if it were a personal grief. I hate the Turks, the woman who cuts my hair finds an occasion to say every time I sit in her chair; I’m sorry, but I can never forgive them, they are a terrible people.