The Same Night Awaits Us All Read online

  “And so I tell them,” he went on, “that this is the apostle of contemporary Bulgarian art, and they respond well how the hell are we supposed to know that he’s an apostle, Krustev! . . . To us, they tell me, he’s just some strange-looking guy, and it’s our duty to find out who he is and what he’s doing! You dimwits, I tell them, you, I tell them, I know you don’t read newspapers, but don’t you at least read the placards? They’re everywhere! Have you heard nothing about tonight’s lecture? He’s a Bulgarian writer who gives lectures—that’s it, I tell them. We’re embarrassing ourselves. I lay into them real good, I’m telling you.”

  Sheytanov wasn’t acquainted with the young man—he knew his father, the bookshop owner Vassil Krustev. He’d often stop by his shop on Coburg Square in Yambol, right next to the tram stop with the two municipal horses tied up in front of it. But on this day in October, it so happened that when Sheytanov went to Professor Kazandjiev’s lecture at the university, someone pointed out the young Krustev during the break, so he went up to him and introduced himself. The kid practically jumped out of his skin. The anarchist only smiled and suggested the kid work on not getting so startled in the future.

  [Years later, when this same young man from Yambol was deep into his wise years, he’d tell anybody who’d listen that he hadn’t been the least bit startled when he met the anarchist. He told everybody how he’d immediately spotted the gun underneath the frightening man’s polished suit, but hadn’t been the least bit scared. Not in the least! And then he’d remember something even scarier: the gun hadn’t actually been underneath the overcoat, but inside that wide-brimmed hat Sheytanov was known for, and he held it folded in his hand like a bag, so that when the young man had peeked inside, he saw not only the gun, but a bomb, too. And Sheytanov had said: “Just in case!”

  Sometimes those listening to the stories laughed under their breath disrespectfully. “Come on now, Bai Krustev, what gun, what bomb inside a hat are you going on about? What would he need a bomb for, he was on his way to meet a poet, not take out a general. You,” they’d say, “you’re starting to lose it a bit, eh?” He looked at them, young and disbelieving, mocking him . . . but he held his head high and shrugged it off: “Those were the times! Everybody in Yambol,” he’d yell, “went around with guns and bombs . . . You wouldn’t understand.”

  Then he’d wave his hand and go on.

  “I too am still wondering,” he explained assuredly, “where I got the courage that night to go for a stroll in such company. I suppose I had no fear then.”

  Anyway, when he—the most wanted man in the entire kingdom, whose name derived from sheitan, Turkish for “devil”—had come up to ask the then-young Krustev whether he’d introduce him to the poet, he had responded without so much as blinking an eye: “You bet I will! Let’s go.” Now the elder Krustev kept jabbering and believing everything he said.]

  [Friday, January 11, 2013]

  “He was really pissed, I’m telling you,” the young Krustev wouldn’t shut up afterward on the street, zigzagging between the throngs of people. “He says to them, ‘I am a Bulgarian writer, and who the hell are you!’ And before that, we’ve got him on a caïque. We’re taking him to one of our people across the river in Cargon . . . Romantic, right? But then the boat starts swaying, and our guy’s practically screaming . . . ‘What the hell are you doing? Goddamn it, are you trying to drown me in your Tundzha? Is that what you want, you giftless scumbags! Ha ha, I’m only joking!’ He said he was joking, but he seemed really pissed off to me! . . . So we bring him to my house straight from the station. My mother starts setting the table for him—taramasalata, yogurt, crepes, this and that, and he turns to me, ‘Hey Kiril, a minute ago you tried drowning me in that damn river of yours and now you want to starve me to death. Look at me, do I look like someone who can get by on taramasalata and crepes? I need manja! I,’ he says, ‘love nothing more than to eat manja and converse.’ Well, I got embarrassed. I got up right away and ran across the street to the Little Kazak, where I grab, no joke, an entire pan of stuffed peppers, and run back home . . .”

  Krustev and Sheytanov drifted through the jovial Sofia crowds and the kid from Yambol kept on shouting excitedly, lest Sheytanov assumed all they’d done with the poet was eat and drink, which they surely had, of course—entire Dionysian suites followed the poet’s lecture at the Yellow Salon. And he’d said it exactly like that—Dionysian suites, nonchalantly adding that what he meant were bacchanal transpositions from ancient Dionysus, of course. The poet had drunk them all under the table, for the man could drink. The young men—in all their Bohemian glory!—had barely finished a tin of wine (they all drank from petrol tins which they called amphorae of modernism), but the poet, he had drained one entirely by himself. The kid was impressed. The poet had been a great aesthete otherwise. And he had immediately agreed to contribute to their magazine in Yambol . . .

  Sheytanov had heard of their magazine, yes, and smiled. They’d started it in Yambol—in all their Bohemian glory!—in the spring of twenty-two with all the ferocious earnestness and exalted impertinence in the world, and had not only convinced the poet to write for them, but had somehow contacted the famous Italian poet Marinetti himself. Their magazine halted publication after only the second issue, naturally. At the time, Sheytanov had been at the commune near Ruse, but frequently came back either to Sliven or to Yambol, and when he did, he was sure to stop by to see the young man’s father, Vassil Krustev, at his bookstore, where he had learned of their magazine with the bombastic name: Crescendo. As a joke, he and Vassil Krustev wagered a bet to see just how long these literary Qizilbash would last before they abandoned the whole thing. The bookseller laughed bitterly and told him that he’d sold a whole four copies of the first issue, three from the second, and that if the philosophizing slackers had really pushed, they could have gotten to six issues out of pure pig-headedness—just long enough to spend the last of their literary patron Petkov’s money. Sheytanov bet they’d make it to five issues. But in the end, both guessed wrong.

  And so it went . . .

  [Friday, January 11, 2013]

  It was as though Sofia had come to life again following the bleakness of martial law on this Wednesday, the tenth of October, nineteen twenty-three: the confectionaries were once again sweet with the aroma of caramelized sugar, cakes and boza; the cafés rolled up their blinds with a bang and the waiters ran around drawing the colorful awnings and setting the tables on the sidewalks; the beer halls were already brimming with men and easy women, and flower girls and cigarette girls squeezed between the tables; charcoal pans smoked with the first chestnuts of autumn; the shops took down the shutters from their window displays and set out whole sacks and crates of uncovered goods; and the servant girls hurried along with their baskets, picking out dinner for their masters . . . And so it was! And besides, who enjoys sullen times? By the afternoon, everyone had already forgotten about the two horrible weeks that followed the September mutiny, when the streets were patrolled by a military watch day and night and the horses of the sour-faced mounted Sofia police clopped along the pavement, and the plateless black trucks rattled back and forth, loaded with things no one in the city wanted to imagine.

  But now the city hummed with an air of jubilance and the pointy-roofed newspaper stands opened once again,

  [Now I remember! Some newspapers managed to get their evening editions printed earlier that afternoon, filled with the panicked declarations that so and so, following the unparalleled September endeavor of such and such, had cut all ties with the so-called communist party and conjured the esteemed public not to mistake them ever again for those villains the communists.

  This trend had appeared as early as June of twenty-three, when dozens of frightened people—downtrodden deadbeats with beggars’ habits and vile dispositions—clamored to denounce the agrarian union.*

  And all these newspaper columns were positioned right alongside the news about how the now brutally murdered prime minister Aleksanda
r Stamboliyski’s closet inside his villa in Slavovitsa was, apparently, overflowing with lace slips and women’s silk culottes, not to mention how entire milk-cans of perfume had been found at his homestead in Zaharna Fabrika. It would appear the village tribune practically bathed in perfume!

  But so what, nothing new under the sun . . .]

  and the walls and the ad pillars, variously colored by the newspaper placards and vibrant posters, announced everything imaginable. The Drummers Cabaret, showcasing Stamboliyski in the Heavens from Borio Zevzeka; the public lectures of the famous Russian professor Aleksei Etastovich Yanisheski from the Sofia medical faculty and his lecture “Fear and Bravery”; the traveling healer Nesterov—a scientist, supposedly, but really a charlatan and incomparable whoremonger—with his noisy scholarly essays on psychological phenomena and their application in treating nerve-related illnesses; the Italian acrobat Montagnani, the king of the tight rope; there were new and already old placards for German films (Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horrors at the Modern Theater down Maria Louisa Boulevard; Paul Wegener’s The Golem at Gloria Palace); Russian concerts, all things of that sort . . . and the two of them, the young man from Yambol and Sheytanov, marched all around that kaleidoscope of color, first down Shipka Boulevard, past Sofia University, then past the King’s manège, by the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, built long-ago yet still unconsecrated, down Moskovska Street, and from then on toward Dondukov Boulevard, where one could barely get past the crowds and where the vitrines of the famous butcher shops of Dokuzanov and Krusharov were festooned with smoked pigs’ heads and legs, salamis gilded in foils, and countless sorts of sudjuk, where the trams turned with a scream down the even louder Targovska Street or pushed straight ahead to the Sveta Nedelya Cathedral.

  From Dondukov Boulevard they turned by the Macedonia bookstore and descended down Targovska Street toward the Berlin Hotel, where the jovial babel of the first customers rose up from the garden. From there down to Banski Square—through the garden, where a street organ was breaking the hearts of bystanders and a parrot pulled fortunes out of a nearby box, and a hundred grinning shoe-shiners tapped on their boxes, and phaetons and expensive automobiles were lined up along the curb . . . The construction sounds of gas chainsaws screamed and grated down the tiny side streets in all directions, and extending above all of that was the ineradicable twittering of the billions of Sofia sparrows and the hollow cooing of the pigeons.

  “Krustev, Krustev . . .” said Sheytanov to the young man. “How funny life is. Just look at these people. Loosen their leash just a touch—and off they go, celebrating . . .”

  “No shit!” he said, repulsed. “Philistines.”

  [Saturday, January 12, 2013]

  . . . The two men arrived at the poet’s apartment building, which was across the street from the Banya Bashi Mosque and was practically glued to the side of the Market Hall. A pharmacy stood at one end; at the other end a sign enthusiastically advertised the boza beverage company Radomir; right next to the main building door, yet another sign publicized an import-export bank with branches in Varna and Burgas, and a “Post Office” sign hung above the door; and above all that, between the second and the third floors, the dark blue blinds of the Bulgarian offices of the company Longines stretched all the way from one end of the building to the other. The two men crossed the boulevard with its red trams rattling on their way to Lavov Most, and headed over to the dark mass of Sveta Nedelya and pushed open the heavy wooden front door. Sheytanov spotted the doorbell bearing the poet’s name and saw “77 steps” written right next to it, which made him laugh.

  “Are you laughing about the steps?!” the young man exclaimed. “It’s absolutely, exactly seventy-seven, I counted!”

  Then they both spotted someone had scribbled “Cyclops!” below the doorbell and the young man, angry at the sight of the reference to the one-eyed monster, shouted:

  “Bastards! Come on, let’s go, and try not to swear.”

  They climbed up the red carpet, fastened by brass rods to the wide staircase, and went straight to the fourth floor . . .

  When the poet opened the door, Sheytanov held out his hand:

  “Sheytanov.”

  “I know,” the other responded, “Milev.”

  “I know.”

  [Sunday, January 13, 2013]

  Sheytanov had spent nights in all manner of locations, been all over, including lux hotels—places of quiet, calm debauchery, sophisticated brothels, really, with an endless supply of hot water, silk sheets, and feather duvets; the hallways were covered in carpets a centimeter deep and the hotel whores were bathed, discreet, and polite. But he’d also laid his head down in hovels with dirt floors, blackened straw-mattresses, and snorting cattle. This place, however, truly impressed him. Originally designed as a regular apartment, the poet’s abode was now a vast single room he’d cleverly partitioned with curtains, like an enfilade. There was a vestibule, a bedroom, a kitchen, and between them a hallway adorned with dozens of prints from famous paintings by Marc Chagall, Heinrich Zille, and Edvard Munch. There was also a little room behind a colorful cotton print for his oldest daughter (who was already a little miss of three, a hair before four, even, and she couldn’t possibly be expected to sleep in the same room as some baby!), an office for him, and even a guest room by the window facing the boulevard, where the first electric streetlights came on as dusk fell.

  And the ceilings . . . high as the sky.

  “Well,” the poet spread out his arms, “here we are, this is our life, maybe not the one we want, but for now, the one we have . . .”

  “You have a great place here,” Sheytanov reassured him. “Very nice. Cozy and comfortable . . .”

  “Ha-ha!” the other laughed. “Well, I’m not complaining! I can rear-range it at any time, and the most important thing is that with walls like these, there’s no need for us to yell from one room to another . . . But the kids love it too—they can potter about without having to worry about opening doors. Apart from that, the coziness is entirely Mila’s doing, and the comfort—well, that’s all me.”

  He continued laughing and added that if they were to ask Kiril, he’d tell them that in a bourgeoisie apartment, the orderliness of only two rooms mattered: the bath-room and the toilet-room! . . . The young man’s face went scarlet as he began to explain himself, arguing that the poet had in fact quoted the Soviet writer Ehrenburg, but the other cut him off again.

  “Ehrenburg, Shmehrenburg—you’re both wrong! The most wonderful place in a bourgeoisie apartment is the dining room, Bai Krustev . . . The dining room!”

  And he let out an even louder chortle . . .

  The poet led them to the guest room and excitedly pointed to the window. This was the best part about living on the fourth floor, he explained—you could watch the world from up high, both the people and the city, and he wasn’t quite sure which he liked more, watching the city or the human ant trail underneath. But he most loved watching the trams—the way they followed the straight line from the bridge all the way down the entire boulevard with certitude, then obediently made their turn up by the church. He noted how only the minaret across the street was higher than his building, but that didn’t bother him since the mosque was so old and grand—a true masterpiece created long ago by Mimar Sinan himself.

  “So, there you have it,” he said, “nothing more to say about our place, really. Oh, yes, and I don’t need curtains on the windows, either—it’s not as if the muezzin’s going to be peering in from his minaret. Let’s sit, and please, make yourselves at home.”

  They sat around the round, lace milieu-covered table, while the poet’s astonishingly beautiful wife quickly brought glasses and a bottle of wine as her youngest daughter pattered behind her, still a baby at barely two years, and the eldest marched with a grandiose waddle wanting very much to show everyone that she cared about nothing else but the doll in her arms, likely sewn by her mother. Aromas mingled all around—the tart scent of the washing, the bouquet of an autumn s
tew, and of milk, from behind the canvas to the kitchen.

  And the smell of books . . .

  [Sunday, January 13, 2013]

  At some point the little girl couldn’t stand it anymore and stepped out from behind her kingdom of disinterestedness, went up to Sheytanov, and tugged on his sleeve. When he looked at her, the little girl politely said:

  “How do you do? My name is Leda-Evgenia Georgieva Kassabova! Nice to meet you!”

  And he responded:

  “Likewise young lady—Sheytanov, Georgi Vassilev! . . . You have a very pretty doll.”

  Then he scrunched up his face a little and repentantly asked:

  “But shouldn’t I have introduced myself first?”

  “Oh, no,” Leda explained. “That’s only how grownups do it. Kids should always go first, so that the adults aren’t always saying ‘what’s your name, little girl, what’s your name, little girl? . . .’”

  Sheytanov put a hand to his heart in relief, about to ask her something else, when she beat him to it and reproachfully queried:

  “Where is your wife, Mister Sheytanov? Is she in Stara Zagora or Berlin?”

  The poet’s wife started to scold her, but the little girl sighed and went on:

  “Is she expecting?”

  Now everybody laughed and the poet’s wife picked up the child to carry her to her room. Leda looked over her mother’s shoulder and still managed to get out:

  “Isn’t that what women do? Expect children?”

  Her mother lifted the printed curtain to her room, and Leda Georgieva Mileva waved her hand, courteously declaring:

  “Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite!”

  “The third will be a boy,” the poet declared proudly. “We’ve made our decision . . . My mother and father started with two boys. I was first, followed by my brother, Boris, and then four beautiful girls, one after the other. We’ll do it just the opposite—two girls and four strong boys!