Cleanness

by Garth Greenwell

  There was nothing solemn about the priest now. Once he had opened the bottle he made a direct line for D., the youngest American, who from the first had been the object of greatest interest for the Bulgarian men. This was especially true of the priest, whose attentions had gone quickly from charming to comic and then, as they persisted, become disquieting. For most beautiful first, he said, pouring wine into her cup, his English almost nonexistent, and she smiled and looked away, cringing a little. He came around to each of us then, gallant as he filled our cups, though he refused to meet my gaze, as he had all day, my attempts to speak with him defeated by the odd way he spoke Bulgarian, very fast and with a tripping enunciation that made him impossible for me to understand. It was the accent of his region, one of the other Bulgarians said to me, selski aksent, a village accent. But it wasn’t his accent that made him distant with me, I thought, though maybe it was uncharitable of me to assume he shared the views of his colleagues, or some of his colleagues, like the priest who had called, the previous summer, for all decent people to line the route of the Pride parade and throw stones at the queers.

  I took advantage of the pause to check my phone again. We were taking a break, that was how R. had left things, but though I tried not to think it I knew the break was final. For the past two weeks we hadn’t had any contact, stopping our Skype chats and emails, which had become essential to the structure of my day, even as they had also begun to seem like a trap, taking me away from writing, keeping me up too late. He never wanted to hang up, I’ll be so bored, he would say, I’ll be so lonely, and the next day I would struggle to make it through class. They had come to feel like a trap but without them I found the evenings intolerable, there was too much time for thinking, too much time for remorse. It wasn’t really true that we had no contact, we still looked at each other’s Facebook pages; the night before I had posted photos of the drive from Sofia to Sozopol, of our group beside the sea, probably that was what had spurred him to send, very early that morning, the message I had worried over all day. It was full of regret and self-recrimination, I’ve broken the best thing, he wrote, he didn’t know why he had done it, it was just the same thing again and again, he said, it’s like I hate my own happiness, which was a phrase I had repeated to myself all day. This had been the worst part about distance, the helplessness I felt when he was anxious or sad, as he often was, when nothing I could say would comfort him. Sex could comfort him, or just the presence of my body beside his, he wanted physical comfort, and it was terrible to think of him in his room alone. I know I can’t fix it, he said, I know it’s too late, we can’t go back, he spoke of it as if it were the distant past, and this made me angry, since what was the point of his message then, why had he sent it to me, why had he drawn me back to him, drawn me back but only so far.

  The priest had finished making his rounds, he had emptied one bottle and carried another that was half full, which he lifted to his mouth and drank from deeply, thirstily. He started singing as we walked on, following the road as it opened up, past the houses of the old town, into a kind of plaza beyond which a tree-lined avenue led up to the highway. I couldn’t understand the words of his song but the melody was familiar, and after a moment I realized it was the anthem of one of the football teams, I had heard groups of men singing it in the streets, Bulgarian flags draped across their shoulders. No one else took it up now, though he didn’t seem bothered, he walked ahead singing, swinging the wine bottle to punctuate his phrases.

  N. stepped onto a bench at the edge of the plaza, trying to get our attention. Dami i gospoda, he said, repeating it in English, ladies and gentlemen, and we gathered around him, except for the priest, who kept walking into the darkness, singing his song, until the Bulgarian woman ran to catch him by the shoulder and turned him back to us. Oh, he said, dipping his head in apology, and then he took a place at the back of the group, his hands crossed at his waist, holding the bottle low, an image of meekness. Ladies and gentlemen, N. said again, spreading his arms wide like a politician and making all of us laugh. He was from Burgas, a city some twenty or so kilometers away, and of all the Bulgarians he knew Sozopol best. I worked as a tour guide here when I was young, he said, and now I would like to tell you, American friends, a few things about my country. This is the most old town in Bulgaria, he said, its name is Greek, it means—and here he paused, groping—spasenie, at which a couple of the Bulgarians said salvation, which he repeated, nodding, salvation. Once this was Greek, there are still many Greeks here, they build many little churches we still have, and it was true, everywhere you looked there were tiny chapels, places to pray for fishermen out at sea. There was one of these across from our hotel, facing the water, and I had entered it very early that morning, as I set off to stroll through the town on my own. It had been restored, every inch of the walls had been covered in bright blues and golds, portraits of the Virgin, the saints, and on the ceiling a large, intricate painting of the sun, multiple spoked disks laid atop one another like a complicated set of gears. The remnants of candles stuck up from trays filled with sand in front of the image of the Virgin; a pile of these candles, very long and thin, sat next to a donation box at the door. There’s a feeling such places accrue, a residue of use, and I considered taking one of those candles and saying a prayer of my own, something to do with R. maybe, that he be happy, that we both be happy, together or apart. Now, in the plaza, as N. continued to speak I looked at the priest, who stood quietly, still calm, his hands crossed at the waist, the bottle dangling, his head slightly bowed. He could almost have been praying himself, though he wasn’t praying, he was drunk, or maybe he was praying too, I don’t know. It was a posture—the bowed head, the apparent meekness—I remembered from the man I had gotten to know that year in Boston, the priest in whose office I had sat nearly every week; it was the posture with which he met my zeal or desire for zeal, which seemed to bemuse him, as if he found it both sincere and unreal, which it was. I don’t recognize the person I was then, when I read my journal from that time, or the handful of poems I wrote. I wanted to unmake myself, it seems to me now, I wanted to fit my life into a system that would deform it so entirely it would be unrecognizable.

  But now N. interrupted his lecture, saying here he was, telling us about the town, it was hard work, and he was a professional, he shouldn’t work for free. I want money, he said, making us laugh, American money, does someone have a quarter, and someone did, it was fished out of a pocket and handed over. George Washington, he cried, a sudden change of tone, I love George Washington, he is my favorite person. We laughed again and he looked up, Why are you laughing, he asked, which made us laugh more. Look, he said, holding up the coin, it says here Liberty, it is the most beautiful thing, most beautiful word, it is for this I love George Washington. He fights for freedom, like us, Bulgarians fight for freedom too. For five hundred years we are slaves to the Turks, but now we are free. It is the most important thing, Liberty. Hear hear! someone said, an American, and we all raised our cups to N., though most of them were empty already. He seemed pleased by this, he gave a quick bow, at which our toast turned more raucous, Nazdrave, we cried, the Bulgarian toast, Nazdrave. He hopped down from his perch, motioning us to be quiet, We are not drunk Romanians, he said. Then he held the quarter up, looking at it anew, and with a tone of real wonder asked What do I do with this money, which set us laughing again. Keep it, D. said, from the back of our circle where the priest stood too close to her, it means someone in America loves you. Ah, said N., beaming at her, pleased beyond words, and he slid the coin into his breast pocket and cupped his hands over it. I keep it forever, he said.

  Then the priest said something I didn’t catch, pointing with his bottle, and N. said Yes! The beach! I take you there, and we followed him across the square. I was eager to be festive with these people, to distract myself from the grief I had felt since receiving R.’s message, my own grief and grief at the thought of him alone in his room in Lisbon—though I didn’t know where he was, of course, he
had sent his message hours before and might already have recovered from his spasm of regret, who could know. I hung back a bit, as we reached the other side of the square, to look at the structure we were passing through, something like a covered patio between two buildings, while the others were descending the wooden staircase to the sea. There was a set of wooden counters, what looked like a sizeable bar, but all of it was abandoned now, strewn with trash and empty bottles. It must come alive in the season, I thought, though there was a kind of finality to its disuse, it was difficult to imagine that in a few weeks it would be transformed, packed with young people. I felt uneasy, and suddenly I realized I wasn’t alone; a man, who must have been watching us as we passed, was leaning against the wall. He took a long drag from a cigarette, the tip flaring red in the dark, and met my eyes briefly before lowering his gaze. I almost thought he was there to cruise, that maybe this was a place men used, but he had an air of belonging, leaning against the wall, and I decided he must be something like a guard, keeping an eye on the place until it came to life again for the summer. Maybe he would stand there all night, I thought, but I didn’t see any television or radio to keep him company, anything at all, there was nothing but the sea to mark the time. Or maybe there was an office or booth he would retreat to once we had passed, maybe he had only emerged on hearing our approach. I nodded to him as I moved toward the stairs, murmuring Dobur vecher, but he just raised his eyes again and flicked his spent cigarette to the ground.

  There was a wooden platform at the bottom of the stairs, beside which the others had piled their shoes. I could see the whole coast, stretching from the old town, where we had eaten, which was quiet and dark, to the new town with its high-rise hotels, their windows facing the sea. One restaurant was still open, brightly lit in red and blue, and I could hear music, Balkan pop, the uneven drums and pipes, a woman’s voice singing restlessly around them. I couldn’t make out the words but they were always the same: something about love, I thought, something about loss. The beach was artificial, someone had told us, they trucked tons of sand in to this particular cove; the rest of the coast was rocky, there was nowhere to bathe, though young men, despite the posted warnings, climbed the rock walls each summer to jump into the sea. The Roman wall along the old town was perpetually lit by floodlights bolted to the rocks beneath it. I had walked beside it earlier that day, with a friend who had traveled from Burgas so we could spend an hour or two together, and he had shown me where the original wall ended and modern reconstruction began, a thin strip of metal running between them. Only the lowest stones were ancient, and I knelt to lay my hands on them, jagged and pocked from the salt air, imagining the hands that, generations ago, had placed them there. This city had been a major port once, the Romans had dedicated it to Apollo, setting a great statue of the god like a guard against the sea, though the statue had disappeared long ago.

  From where I stood now I could see the path we had taken, my friend and I, and I remembered too how he had pointed to this beach, telling me that in summer very late at night you could find men here, that there were sheltered places in the rocks where you could go with them. I wondered if I would want that now, if there were men to be had. Shortly after R. had told me he wanted to end things I had gone to the city center, seeking I don’t know what. For almost two years I had been with no one but R., and for the past three months I hadn’t been with anyone at all; I went out in search of feeling, I suppose, or maybe the absence of feeling. I descended the flights of stairs to the bathrooms at the National Palace of Culture, though for so long I imagined I had left them behind, that I had been lifted out of them, as I was in the habit of putting it to myself, into a new life. I had thought that before, when I sat in that room in Boston with the priest, I had thought in precisely those terms, I am being lifted out of it, not by my own agency but by some intervening force: God, love, edno i sushto, one and the same. But we are never lifted out of such places, I think now, and so I went back to the bathrooms beneath NDK, I had never stopped thinking about them; even as I lay with R., flooded with love, there was a part of me untouched by him, a part that longed to be back here. My hands shook as I undid my belt at the urinals, out of excitement or dread, I felt I could hardly breathe. Almost immediately a man stepped up next to me, nineteen or twenty perhaps, very beautiful, his large cock already hard. Possibly he was a hustler, he was so eager, though he didn’t make any demands as I reached over and took him in my hand, feeling the thick warmth of him as I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, trying to discern what I wanted, knowing how easy it would be to take him into the neighboring room with its stalls. I heard him whisper Iskash li, do you want it, and though I did want it I let him go, I hid away my own hardness and fled.

  It was a beautiful night, the nearly full moon casting its light upon the water, and I wanted to be with them now, these people I hardly knew who seemed so at ease with one another. I took off my shoes and walked up to N., our erstwhile guide, who was smoking a cigarette, standing well away from the surf where the others were wading, letting the waves brush their ankles and calves, shouting and laughing. Hi, he said, smiling at me, speaking in English though my Bulgarian was better, it is beautiful here, no? And I said it was, very much so, prekrasno. He asked me about the morning’s workshop, and I told him it was fine, that they were interesting writers, I liked them very much. And how was the Bulgarian group, I asked, and he turned to me, smiling widely, and said Today we talked about the G-spot of the story, how it is like with a woman, it is difficult to make the story come. Ah, I said, taken aback, I see. And then, after a pause, But I don’t understand, I said, why should the story be a woman? It was a fair question, I thought, but he looked at me with blank incomprehension, even though I had spoken in his language. Couldn’t it be a man, I asked, would it change anything, and I thought he was going to say something in response, but then our attention was claimed by a commotion farther down the beach. What’s that, I said as we started walking toward the others, who had gathered in a circle, what’s going on, and then, as we heard whistles and catcalls and voices chanting strip, strip, N. told me that the priest had said he wanted to swim. We could see him now, already bare-chested, his bearded face bright in the light of cell phone cameras brought out of pockets. Immediately, catching sight of him, I felt myself in that strange state of vibrancy and stasis, like a flame submerged in glass, sealed off as always when I feel desire I shouldn’t feel. Not that he was so desirable: he was thin and pale, with a silver cross glinting on his chest. His hand drifted to his jeans and he paused, letting the encouragement rise, looking around the circle until he found D., eager as the rest, hooting and calling Take it off, and with a look that seemed to dedicate the act to her, the whole evening, the night and the sea, he undid the buttons of his fly and stripped. There was an eruption of cheers, and he began playing to the crowd, lifting his arms and flexing, smiling at the flashing lights; he was entirely one with them now, I thought, all his sanctity was gone. He wasn’t naked, he was still wearing a pair of tight black briefs, and I was surprised to see they were a designer brand, sleek and European, not at all what I would have expected. He posed for a moment, balanced on his skinny legs, and then he turned his back to us and ran for the water, splashing at first awkwardly and then diving in, fully submerged. Jesus, I said to no one in particular, it must be so cold. He’s crazy, N. said beside me, and then, three weeks ago he is in Israel, the Holy Land, and he swims in the river Jordan. It is forbidden to swim, but he doesn’t care, he swims anyway. We watched him for a while before most of the group lost interest, turning to other pursuits, pouring the last of the wine. D. and the Bulgarian woman climbed the tall lifeguard’s platform together, waving to us below. But I kept watching him, visible in the moonlight; he was a good swimmer, he seemed at home in the water, I thought, like a creature reconciled to what it was. I kept waiting for him to turn, to swim back, but he didn’t, and finally in the dark I could hardly make him out at all. He’s kind of far, isn’t he, I said aloud,
again to no one in particular, shouldn’t he be turning around, and then N., who hadn’t been paying attention, said Idiot, it’s dangerous at night, and both of us shouted for him to come back. He didn’t hear us at first, he kept swimming, and then the others were shouting too, in English and Bulgarian, and all of us were waving our arms. He stopped finally, and waved one of his own arms in response, and then he began swimming toward shore, more slowly, I thought, as though there were some force pulling back at him, some element working to bear him out farther still.