What Belongs to You Page 7

  III

  POX

  When the knock came, quick and assured, I heard it without surprise, my hand steady at the stove where I was warming the simple meal I had made. It wasn’t late, despite the darkness beyond the windows at my back; it was February, the dark came early, and what had been an unnervingly mild season had turned sharp and bitter, the coldest winter on record, with a fierce wind that burned whatever skin one left uncovered. He hadn’t pressed the buzzer from the street below, which would have given me some warning and a moment to prepare; he must have thought surprise would be to his advantage, I thought, and I imagined him waiting for someone to come in or out of the building’s locked front door, sheltering as best he could against the wind, a cigarette tight at his lips. There was no need for any of it; I would have buzzed him in as quickly as I opened my apartment door, which I unlatched without even drawing aside the little cover of the peephole, though I did pause briefly with my hand on the knob, drawing a steadying breath. It was almost two years to the day since I had last seen Mitko. When I returned from Varna I did everything I could to ensure I wouldn’t see him again; I blocked him on Facebook and Skype, I scrubbed him from my e-mail and phone. These were measures against myself, really, I wanted to make it more difficult for me to find him in a spasm of remorse; and though I thought of him often, though he appeared in dreams from which I woke more excited than I was by anything in my waking life, I didn’t regret what I had done. I had missed him, but more than missing him I had been relieved that he was gone.

  The corridor was dark when I opened the door. The light was set to a timer, which must have run out since he pressed the switch at the bottom of the stairs, if he had; or maybe he thought darkness, too, was to his advantage. I could only see him thanks to the light from my own apartment, which barely reached him where he leaned against the opposite wall, as though he had waited a long time for me to answer, or been prepared to wait. He straightened up, coming farther into the light, and I could see he wasn’t dressed at all for the cold; he was wearing a thin jacket and torn jeans, and his canvas shoes were soaked through. He was unshaved and unkempt, thinner than he had been, though he had always been thin; it was as if he had been worn away somehow in the months since I had seen him. He stood with his shoulders slumped, his hands—which I remembered in constant motion, always seeking some occupation—shoved firmly in his pockets. Dobur vecher, he said, a formal greeting, as if he were unsure of his footing, and I repeated it back to him in the same tone. But I wasn’t unhappy to see him. Something in me leapt up at the sight of him, despite his state and my desire to keep a tight rein on my feeling.

  We stood for a moment looking at each other (what did he see, I wondered, what tale of the two years did the sight of me tell?), and then he jerked his head up a little, indicating the apartment behind me. Mozhe li, he said, may I, and I drew back from the entrance and motioned him in, saying Yes, of course, zapovyadaite, come in. I realized too late that I had used the polite form of the verb, so that my invitation at once welcomed him and held him off. He stepped forward, only now reaching out his hand, and his grip was as I remembered it, strong and cordial, though he didn’t meet my eye with the eager and disarming look I remembered from our first meeting. He looked down at our hands instead, his brown against mine, the ends of his fingers broad and blunt, almost square, and then he bent to unlace his shoes and I took in his smell, wet and unwashed and stinking of alcohol. I followed him into the room, where nothing had changed, the bare table was still by the window, the shabby sofa along the wall, with a street map of Sofia pinned above it. When he glanced at the stove he said I’m sorry, you were having dinner, I’m interrupting, and I looked at him curiously, surprised by a brittle formality I had never seen in him before. What did he think I was feeling, I wondered, that would be pleased or appeased by this; or maybe it was something else, an attempt at dignity, at shoring himself up against whatever had worn him so roughly and brought him finally to my door.

  He stood in the center of the room with his arms crossed, his hands clamped beneath them, and he was swaying back and forth, whether out of nervousness or a need for warmth I wasn’t sure. I haven’t seen you for a long time, I said finally, lamely, how are you, and at this he did look up, but briefly and without fully lifting his head, so that it was as if from below that he met my eyes. I’m not good, he said, and then more firmly, I’m bad, I need to talk to you, I’ve come to tell you something. Lots of people wouldn’t come, he said, they’d say he’s an American, let him worry about himself, but I’m not like them. What are you talking about, I asked, what’s going on, feeling at once exasperation and dread of what was to come. And then I lost track of what he said, he spoke too quickly or unclearly, so that even when he repeated himself I was lost; though I knew the words I couldn’t make any real sense of them, and I turned my palms up in defeat. I could see his frustration; it had been hard for him to say whatever he was telling me, I felt, it was as though he had overcome something to say it, and having succeeded it was intolerable to have finally said nothing at all. He sat down on the sofa, spreading his legs wide, and leaned forward to open up the laptop I had left lying on the coffee table. I’ll write it, he said, motioning for me to sit beside him, which I did, excited to be near him though I didn’t intend to touch him, though I intended whatever the provocation to resist.

  The Internet browser was open when the screen lit up, and Mitko began to type directly into the navigation bar, the single line of text stretching out across it. He was a slow typist, using just one finger of each hand, using too the codes and abbreviations of chat room transliteration, which had only slowly over my years here become legible to me. But I understood his story well enough now, and my disquiet deepened as I shook my head from left to right in affirmation when he paused, as he did every few words, to ask Razbirash li? A few days ago, I read, he had begun to have a problem, it had never happened before, he felt a pain in his groin and there was a white discharge from his penis. As he typed it occurred to me, oddly and inappropriately, that he used the same word, teche, one might use for a dripping faucet, and I filed it away, this detail of usage, a distraction from the dread I felt. Okay, I said, since he had paused, waiting to make sure I had caught up, did you to go a doctor, and he nodded, bending over the keyboard again, writing that he had gone to a clinic and had blood drawn and been told that he had syphilis. Oh, I said, drawing back without thinking, a reflex against contagion and against the word, too, feeling horror at a nineteenth-century disease I only knew about from books, so that my first thought, immediate and vivid, was of Flaubert on his travels, some account I had read of his climbing down from horse or camel to change bandages that had been soaked through.

  Mitko must have taken my recoil for disbelief, since he said sharply Do you think I’m lying, and then stood up. I believe you, I said quickly, seeing his hand at his waist, of course I believe you, that’s not necessary, but he had already undone his belt, and, fumbling just a moment with the safety pin that held the flaps of denim together (both the button and the zipper gone), with one swift motion he lowered both his jeans and his briefs to his knees. I was amazed again by how casual he could be in these moments, how little such exposure meant to him, and I couldn’t help but look at his cock, which I had known so well and which was the same, heavy and long, without any signs of disease; I was taken aback by my eagerness to see it. Mitko took it in one hand and pinched the base with two fingers, pulling them slowly up the length of it. It was the gesture I remembered as the final act of sex, milking the last of a desired substance, and I watched as a single drop emerged at the tip, cloudy and white, indistinguishable from semen, really, and maybe it was the very similarity that so repulsed me, that turned my stomach as Mitko used the forefinger of his other hand to gather the discharge that was so much like a pearl, even in my disgust it was the unavoidable comparison. He gave his own look of revulsion; Gadno, he said, disgusting. He held his contaminated hands away from himself and walked awkwar
dly to the bathroom, his cock dangling, his jeans still around his knees, his briefs, I noticed now, stained a brownish off-white at the front, as if he suffered from a kind of chronic incontinence, as I suppose he did. It must be terrible, I thought, remembering his fastidiousness, to find oneself a source of such pollution, to have it flow out unchecked. He took his time in the bathroom, washing his hands and then rising on his toes and leaning forward to place the tip of his penis in the flow of water. I watched him, still sitting on the couch, as he dried himself with toilet paper and then pulled his briefs back up, holding the stained cloth away from his skin as long as he could before he let it snap back into place.

  He returned to the main room and sat down again beside me. That’s serious, I said, I’m sorry, and he shook his head in agreement. Then he looked at me. Have you had any problems, he asked, anything like this? Me, I said, taken aback, of course not, no, nothing at all. At the clinic, he went on, they said I’ve had it for a long time, that’s what I came to tell you. You need to get checked, he said, and I nodded in consent. All right, I said, I will. I wasn’t very worried: it had been two years, and I hadn’t noticed anything to cause alarm, certainly nothing so dramatic as Mitko’s own symptoms. But it was also true that I hadn’t been tested for anything in years. The terror I had felt constantly when I was younger had given way to something like carelessness, which I knew was irresponsible, though I mostly took the usual precautions, and anyway it was an easy enough thought to avoid. Lots of guys wouldn’t have told you, Mitko said again, they would have said what do I owe him, he can fuck himself. But I’m not like that, he went on, and you’re my friend. I’ve never stopped thinking of you as my friend, he said, shifting the pitch of the conversation just slightly, making it more intimate. This too was a different tone, one I hadn’t heard from him before, retrospective, almost regretful, though I didn’t really trust it, I doubted it was his conscience alone that had brought him back to me. Are you sorry, he said then, deepening this tone still further, are you sorry that you came to Varna that time? I didn’t answer at first, remembering how frightened I had been that night, and thinking too of the whole false history between us, falser now that I’ve turned it over so often. No, I said, I don’t regret it, and as I said it it was true. And you, I said, and he drew his head up in a single quick jerk, not quite a nod, Ne, ne suzhalyavam. For the first time since he had arrived he smiled, not the eager smile I remembered from before but something that lightened the mood. Radvam se, he said, I’m glad you’re not sorry, and then he placed his hand on my knee, not meaning it as a seduction exactly, the fact of his illness dismissed any thought of it, but as a reestablishment of contact, I thought, a suggestion that at some point we might begin again what we had halted. Mitko, I said, I should tell you, I have a friend now, and I paused, not sure how to clarify what I meant, the Bulgarian word allowing for so many possibilities; imam postoyanen priyatel, I said finally, a constant friend, the awkward phrase the best I could manage. I wanted to make things clear, to draw firm lines, but I realized even as I spoke I was taking for granted the fact that Mitko would come again to my door, that almost certainly I would let him in. Is he Bulgarian, Mitko asked, catching my meaning, and I said he wasn’t; we met here, I said, but he’s Portuguese, he lives in Lisbon, and then I stopped, feeling I shouldn’t say more. I wanted to keep my relationship with R. to myself, and the thought of him gave new urgency to Mitko’s warning. How would I forgive myself if I had infected him, if I had dragged him into the world from which (as I thought of it) he had lifted me out?