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  My girlfriend, the driver said, she yells at me all the time, she says I work too hard, she wants me to spend more time with her, you know, she doesn’t understand. She’s from the mountains, her parents still live in the village, she likes to go there on the weekends, she wants me to go too. But tell me, he said, how do I have the time to go, I work twelve, fifteen hours a day, every day, you understand, I never take a day off. I love the mountains, he said, as if defending himself, running his fingers through his hair, which was cut close to the skull, I would love to go to the mountains, to get out of Sofia, in the mountains it’s clean, the air is good, you can breathe there, it’s not like here. Sofia used to be clean, he said, when I was a kid, I hated the Communists but you have to be honest, they kept things clean, it wasn’t like it is now. And people took care of each other then, he said, we were all fucked but we had solidarity. Now people just say fuck off—maika ti, he said, which means your mother, it’s a kind of contraction, when people are really angry they say maika ti da eba, I fuck your mother—nobody cares about the others, everybody steals whatever they can. Do people take care of each other in America, he said then, the first question he had asked me though he didn’t want an answer, he went on right away, I know they do, he said, I’ve never been to America but I have the idea that you care for each other there. We were still stopped in traffic, he shifted anxiously in his seat. That’s good about the protests, maybe, he said, they show that people believe in solidarity, the young people, we’ve forgotten but to them it’s still important. Mozhe bi, he said again, maybe, I don’t know. He took his pack of cigarettes from a cupholder in the center console and knocked one into his palm. Well, he said, lighting it, buddy, priyatelyu, this traffic isn’t going to move anytime soon. He suggested I get out and walk, that way he could take the next exit and head back to Mladost. We settled up then, I grabbed my backpack from between my legs and hooked my fingers through the latch of the door. Blagodarya, I said, hesitating a moment before leaving the little intimacy his speech had made, and he held out his hand. Uspeh, he said as I took it, good luck, and then he released it to fiddle with the radio, dismissing me with a blast of American rock.

  It was a bit of a walk to the gathering point, which was in front of the Archaeological Museum, on a stretch that featured the city’s most impressive architecture, its public face: the huge cathedral, with its domes and bells, and state buildings, the university and National Assembly, august and classical. It was an architecture of aspiration, a new nation declaring its ideals. Much of the protesters’ anger had converged here, at the Assembly especially, where there had been a dramatic moment in an earlier wave of protests, a couple of months before. It had been late, almost midnight, and the representatives were huddling inside, waiting for the protesters to leave, as they always did, once they had spent their anger in shouting. But something happened that evening, there was a shift, the anger didn’t disperse but grew ominous, dense and pressured. With every representative who left the protesters had grown angrier, their insults more virulent, their chants more raucous, to the point that the politicians who remained were too frightened to leave, the police had to intervene, they brought in a bus to evacuate them. But the crowd wouldn’t let them leave, they pressed themselves against the bus, began rocking it back and forth, and then there were balaclavaed men with bottles and metal pipes, and in a clip repeated again and again on the news one of them leapt up and struck one of the windows, shattering it. This escalation seemed to give the crowd pause, it was as if there were an indrawn breath, a hesitation that might have been the prelude to real violence except that it gave the line of police reinforcements a chance to break through, using their shields to push the protesters back, opening a path for the bus to escape.

  Probably it had something to do with the weather, the fact that the most recent protests had remained peaceful; Sofia is wonderful in springtime, and even with the unseasonable heat it was a glorious spring. At Orlov Most the little vendor stalls were heaped with flowers and with cherries, swollen and voluptuously red; old women brought them from their villages, they were the most delicious cherries I had ever tasted. I bought some now from a round squat woman who called out sladki, sladki, promising they were sweet. She put great handfuls in a plastic sack, a bread bag turned inside out—I saw she had a whole heap of these sacks next to her in a garbage bag, she must have been collecting them all winter. The bag she handed me was half full, more than I wanted, she had filled it before I could tell her to stop. She was wearing a thin, formless housedress with a floral pattern, almost a nightgown, the kind of thing my own grandmother wore, and her hair was the same, too, cut short and curled; probably the resemblance was why I stopped, though her hair wasn’t my grandmother’s gray but dyed a bright shade of red I had only ever seen in the Balkans. She weighed the cherries on an old balance scale, as she did so trying to sell me her flowers, that was all she had on her table, cherries and country flowers, daisies and black-eyed Susans and Queen Anne’s lace, laid out in piles and also in prebundled bouquets, one of which she held out to me. For your girlfriend, she said, go on, she will be so happy. I laughed, thanking her but not taking the flowers, and she shrugged, disappointed. But she smiled again when I handed her a bill for five leva, telling her to keep the change, and she insisted I take a single black-eyed Susan, which I did, I would feel awkward carrying it through the streets but it would have been rude to refuse. I thanked her and slipped into the stream of people walking along the boulevard. Nearly everyone was headed for the protests, they carried signs and noisemakers, one man swung a bullhorn at his waist. They were young people mostly, some of them with shaved heads or dyed hair, the various strands of Sofia’s alternative scene, a kind of neo-hippie style of torn jeans and denim jackets; but really there were people of all kinds, men and women coming from the office, couples pushing bikes or strollers, one young man with his daughter on his shoulders, her ringlets of brown hair crowned with a chain of flowers. People were laughing, the mood wasn’t angry at all, it was ebullient, and I slipped the stem of the black-eyed Susan through the buttons of my shirt, so that the bright head hung at my heart. That put me in mind of something, a flower for a heart, there was a line of a poem I almost remembered, something from O’Hara or Reverdy; I couldn’t quite catch it but the feel of it made me smile. Police were in the street directing traffic, ushering the last cars through before they closed the boulevard for the march, but for now we stayed on the sidewalk, moving more slowly as it grew more crowded, which just increased our fellow feeling: people smiled to one another in a way that was unusual in Sofia, couples drew closer together, parents pulled their children near, keeping a hand on the top of their heads, on the nape of their necks. Bulgarian flags were everywhere, dangling from breast pockets or the straps of backpacks, one woman had four or five of them tucked into the long braid of her hair. Children waved them in the air, and some adults did, too, though we hadn’t made it to the protest yet. Or maybe we had, we were the protest already, I guess, we had become a kind of parade. The cherries burst in my mouth, firm and ripe, sweet with a dark sweetness, gorgeous, like a low frequency. I spat the pits in my palm and dropped them a little guiltily into the gutter.

  My phone buzzed with a text from D., telling me to meet him at the fountain in front of the Presidency. He was one of the first friends I had made in Bulgaria, a journalist and a poet, an alumnus of the school where I taught. We had met at some function where he was held up as an example, since after college and graduate school in the States he had decided to come back, as almost none of our students ever did; if you came back it meant you had failed, our students thought, but D. hadn’t failed, it was an important example. The boulevard was blocked off after the intersection with Rakovski and we spilled out into the street, which was already full of people, as was the square in front of the Presidency. This had yellow police barricades in front of it but was otherwise protected only by the usual ornamental guard, two men in nineteenth-century uniforms staring blank
ly and unfazed, bayonets held stiffly at their sides. The police were gathered across the boulevard, in front of the former Communist Party headquarters, which served as Parliament offices now and where there was a much larger space kept free from protesters, the distance a bottle could be thrown, I thought—but they were relaxed, most of them held their helmets under their arms. Their riot shields were stacked in piles leaning against the bus they had traveled in on, the size of an American schoolbus, painted blue and white. They were smiling and talking with one another, with the protesters, toward whom they had expressed a benevolent neutrality, claiming in public statements that they were keeping the protests safe, that so long as they remained peaceful they had no intention of putting a stop to them; and the protesters reciprocated, one man stood now in front of them with a sign that read WE THANK OUR FRIENDS THE POLICE. The hope was that by saying it one could make it so, I thought, and so far the hope had held. Interspersed among the crowd were large white vans, teams of newscasters; cameramen stood on their roofs, next to the satellite dishes, scanning the crowd. People were milling about, many of them holding their signs above their heads to block the sun; it could have been a fair, almost, the crowd was bright with balloons, with spinning pinwheels children waved, with the sounds of whistles and handheld drums. Near the fountain, in the shade of a tree, a man had set out a table with these trinkets, most of all with the little Bulgarian flags that he held out to passersby, calling out po levche sa, one lev each. There were other street vendors, too; the air was sweet with roasted walnuts, and people were carrying little plastic bags of sunflower seeds, bottles of water still sweating with condensation.

  I couldn’t see D. at first, the area around the fountain was packed with people. Children ran around the fountain’s edge, weaving past their parents, bumping into strangers, and playing in the water, too, though there were signs forbidding it; they shrieked, arms pressed tight to their sides, as the spray soaked their clothes. But then I noticed him, he had hoisted himself onto the base of a lamppost and was scanning the crowd. I waved and his face brightened when he saw me. He was a few years younger than I, with shaggy black hair that hung into his eyes if he let it go too long between haircuts, as he had now. He wasn’t obviously beautiful but he was beautiful, it was a combination of charm and intelligence, a kind of earthy old-world grace, and of the wiry athleticism I felt when we hugged, a little awkwardly to spare the flower. You’ve been working out, I said when he pulled back, and he smiled, raising both his arms in a muscleman pose. It had taken me a while to be sure he was straight, he was so warm with his friends, he spoke a language of endearment, of casual caresses and kisses to the cheek and forehead, flirtation was his natural mode of congress with the world. This annoyed me sometimes in others, it could seem like a taunt, or a demand to be adored; but D.’s affection was genuine, a kind of blessing, it made you happy to be with him. He led me to the patch of shade he had claimed under the trees that grew near the wall of the Archaeological Museum, where he had been standing with two other people. One of these was his mother, whom I knew well, and I took the flower from my shirt and held it out to her, which made her laugh, she took it and then pulled me to her for a hug. I’m sure my face showed my surprise when D. introduced me to the older man standing with them; I had read his books, in Bulgarian and in English, he was the first writer I read when I decided years before to come to Sofia. Za men e chest, I said to him, shaking his hand, it’s an honor, and he smiled, less at the sentiment, I thought, than at the formality of what I had said, which was so out of tune with the festive atmosphere, with his friendship with D., which was old and deep, with the shorts and sneakers he was wearing, I was suddenly a little embarrassed. Cherries, I said in English, I had almost forgotten their weight in my hand, and I held the bag out to him. He laughed, and as he reached his hand in the awkwardness was gone. D. took each of us by a shoulder, beaming, and said how happy he was for us to meet. I offered the cherries to him, too, telling him to take the bag, I had had enough. You brought us gifts, D. said, flowers and cherries, you brought us springtime, he said, which made everyone laugh.

  The writer had already been saying his goodbyes when I arrived. He wouldn’t march tonight, he said, he had come to watch the crowd gather but he had to get home to his daughter, it was her bedtime already. She would be getting cross, he said to me; he spoke the English of the British Institute, of the Cambridge exam. He was devoted to this girl, who was four or five; his Facebook page was full of pictures of her, of the two of them, he was a convert to fatherhood, having come to it late. She came the first couple of days, he said, but after that she refused, she wanted to stay home with her mother and read—she loves to read, he said, you’ve never seen a child who loves so much to read—she says the protests are boring. Smart girl, D. said, they are boring, every night is the same, it’s not really a protest, it’s just a boring party. He spoke as if he were picking up a conversation I had interrupted. They don’t have any ideas, he said, throwing up his hands, what’s the good of a movement without any ideas. No no, the writer said, please, you can’t write that—D. was reporting on the protests for a newspaper in Britain, almost the first international coverage they would receive—please, that can’t be your story. You have to say what the feeling is, the energy, but D. cut him off. The energy, he said, not sounding happy now, what the fuck is that? Look, if it’s just energy, we should hope it stops, right away, energy without a plan can’t build anything, it’s more likely to make things worse. No, the writer said again, but he was already withdrawing, he put his hand on D.’s shoulder but it was a way of ending the conversation, not of drawing him near. I don’t think you’re right, he said, it’s the future they want, you should do what you can to help them. He smiled then, he put his hand on D.’s face, cupping his cheek like a grandfather, a much older man. If you had children you’d see it differently, he said, switching to Bulgarian, you’d support them then. D. scoffed but the writer had already moved on, he reached his hand to D.’s mother, who took him by the arm instead. I’m going too, she said, I’ll walk with you. D. kissed her cheek, and she thanked me again for the flower, which she held with her free hand as she and the writer set off for the metro stop a few blocks away, leaving D. and me alone. He looked at me and smiled, shrugging a little. He’s a great writer, he said, but he’s wrong about this. I didn’t say anything; I wanted to take up the writer’s side of things, but I knew I would lose the argument—I didn’t have any arguments, really, just feelings, he would have laughed at them. And anyway the drums started beating then, and air horns blared, and there was a shift in the crowd, which grew still and then very slowly began to move. D. sighed. Okay, he said, I guess it’s time, and he swung his backpack off his shoulder to take out a large camera, which he hung around his neck. It was his first time at the protests, too, he had followed them in the news but hadn’t come out until tonight, to play the role of journalist, not citizen—he would wander around talking to people, he said, gathering material. There was another blast of horns, and D. invited me to join him. But I would have been in the way, and I wanted to be on my own for a bit, I told him I would find him later. The crowd was moving more decisively now, I stood for a while at the fountain and watched it pass. People held their signs at attention, not using them for shade anymore, and everywhere I saw the word OSTAVKA, resignation, the protesters’ primary demand. A golden retriever twisted among the crowd, unleashed, his tail crazily wagging, until he paused in front of a young girl with Bulgarian flags painted on her cheeks, who patted him once or twice before he rushed off again.

  I was there to join them, but something held me back. I stood scanning the crowd until I saw, among all the Bulgarian red and green and white, a little rainbow flag, then another, a whole group of five or six people waving them alongside their posterboard signs. I knew them, or most of them, they were activists I had met over the years, and I cut through the crowd toward them. S. greeted me first, tucking his posterboard under his arm to shake my hand. He
was in his midtwenties, tall, with longish brown hair he frequently tossed out of his eyes, the gesture of an eighties pop star. He had come in from Varna, where he ran one of the only activist organizations I had heard of outside of Sofia. It had been in the news lately, they had tried to organize what he called an LGBT film festival, though it was really just a few chairs and a DVD player in a café. But even that was too much; on the second day a group of men barged in, they destroyed the television, they threatened anyone who came back. I mentioned this to him, saying it was terrible, outrageous, but he waved the words away. Those assholes, he said, it was just bullshit theater, the police were there the next day but they didn’t come back. He was more upset about the Pride parade in Sofia, which had been canceled; when the city had expressed concern about security during the protests, the organizers had put out a statement that they were postponing the event as an act of solidarity, that it was a time for Sofians to stand together. Obedineni sme, they said, we’re united as Bulgarians, which is total bullshit, S. said, what kind of message is that, it says we have to choose between being gay and being Bulgarian, fuck that, it’s so fucking homophobic. He winced as an air horn blew nearby. And fuck the city, he said, they can’t just decide not to protect us. If they want to be part of the EU they have to make it safe for us to march, it’s bullshit to give them permission not to try. He gestured to the rest of the group. So we’re doing Pride anyway, he said, they should know we’re here, they shouldn’t be able to ignore us. Even so, their posterboard signs were mostly discreet, one with the words NIE SME S VAS, we’re with you, with rainbows in the corner, another with TOLERANTNOST in thick black letters against the white. Only two of them carried signs that were more demonstrative: S., whose sign read NIE PROTESTIRAME BEZ HOMOFOBIYA, we’re protesting without homophobia, and K., a woman my age from Dobrich, a small city where she worked translating technical English but spent most of her time on message boards and chat rooms, often enough on the phone, counseling gay teenagers—she called them her children—sometimes talking to them through the night. This accounted for the harried look she always wore when I saw her, the dark circles under her eyes, the heaviness with which she moved. She was admirable, everything about her spoke of sacrifice, and something in me shied away from her, I didn’t doubt the good she did but I avoided her whenever I could. S. had been one of her children, years before, and he remained devoted to her; I had heard him say that she had saved his life, that she inspired the work he did. She nodded when I walked up, but didn’t offer to shake my hand. Hers was the largest sign, with the letters LGBT and beneath them I NIE SME BULGARI, we’re Bulgarians too.