What Belongs to You Read online

  Yasno, Mitko said, drawing back his hand, I get it; he seemed happy to let the subject drop. I had noticed his eyes flick once or twice, as if involuntarily, toward the pan still lying by the stove, and I stood and relit the burner, asking him if he was hungry. It wasn’t really a question, and he didn’t pretend to consider it. While the food was warming he turned back to my laptop, logging on to Facebook and, I was sure, the Bulgarian hookup site I remembered from before, and then he closed the computer and sat with me at the little table. I was surprised that I couldn’t remember our ever having shared a meal before in that way, quietly and seated and alone. We didn’t talk at first; Mitko dug into the food and I watched him eat, surprised by how happy I was to have him there. I wondered how much this feeling owed to him, to his company or the pleasure he took in the poor meal I had made, and how much it depended on some gratified notion of myself, my willingness to set aside the past and a generosity I knew he would call on before he left, which was real generosity now, I thought, since I would ask nothing in return for it. He looked up and smiled when he caught me watching him, and I smiled back. I asked him how he had passed the last two years, whether he had been in Varna, whether he had found work. He looked at me, briefly silent, and then, For a while I was in a bad place, he said and paused, as if unsure how to continue, or as if waiting for me to draw him out. What do you mean, I asked, what kind of place, and he set down his fork, which he had been holding in the palm of his hand like a child, all five fingers circled around the handle. I did some bad things, he said, and I was caught, and they put me away for a year. In prison, I asked stupidly, what else could it be, and he wagged his head yes. What did you do, I asked, remembering of course our scene in Varna, the face he had shown that seemed capable of so much, and that was so different from the face I looked at now.

  Mitko made a dismissive gesture with his shoulders, shrugging as he picked up his fork again. It was a job, he said, I worked for a guy in Varna. He helps people, he gives them money, if you need something you can go to him. But you can’t just take somebody’s money, he said, almost as if I had challenged him, you have to pay it back. And if somebody didn’t pay it back, he would send us. You would hurt them, I said, and he shrugged again. Malko, a little, but never too badly, and then, as if affronted, I never hurt anyone badly, I’m not that kind of person, there are people who do that but not me. He lowered his fork to his plate and pushed his food around a bit. And then, Mitko went on, if they still didn’t pay, we would go where they lived and take everything, and here he gestured around the room, as if imagining it stripped bare, the television, the computer, the furniture, we’d take all of it, he wouldn’t have anything left. But that’s normal, he said, again as if defending the justice of it, you can’t take somebody’s money and not pay it back. I didn’t challenge this statement or agree with it, I watched him without saying a word. And that’s it, he said, I had worked for him before, on and off, but this time I got in trouble, I had to go away. It wasn’t nice there, it’s a bad place, I won’t tell you what it was like. But I’m done with that now, he said, making a gesture as if wiping his hands clean, I don’t want to do that anymore.

  What happened when you got out, I asked, what did you do then? He shrugged again, I was in Sofia for a while, he said, I found some work here, and he told me how he had worked on a construction site, not as a builder but as security, watching over the premises at night. Skuchna rabota, he said, boring work. I thought about calling you, I still had your number, but I wasn’t sure you would want me to, I thought you were still mad. I shrugged, wondering if I was, and he went on, I worked there a few months, and then it stopped. At my inquisitive glance, They ran out of money, he said, it’s what always happens, we had to stop working. He had gone back to Varna to his mother’s apartment, which was all right in the summer, when there were people, he said, there was something to do, and I thought how he must love it, those few weeks when his city became a little Europe, the beautiful young coming from the west for the cheap beaches and beer, the Balkan carnival, maybe it seemed like the life that should have been his. But no one’s there now, he said, the city’s empty, and so he had come back to Sofia to look for work. But there isn’t any work, he said, what can you do. I stayed with friends for a while, but there’s no one you can count on here, and now his face darkened, the people who say they are your friends aren’t friends at all. And then this happened, he said, gesturing down at his lap, and I don’t have any money; they want me to take pills first, and then if they don’t work I need an injection. But the pills are forty leva, he said, and then, disingenuously, where will I get forty leva? I’ll help you, I said, of course, don’t worry. We had finished eating already, and so I stood and took my wallet from the little shelf by the door, taking out forty leva and then another twenty. Here, I said, for the medicine. Shte se opravish, I said, you’ll get better, and he took the money and thanked me, for the food and for my help, he said, taking my hand in his. I wanted to ask him where he would go, if he had a place to spend the night, but I was afraid he might press me to extend my generosity further than it would reach. At the door he knelt to put on his shoes, which were still damp, and drew on his thin jacket, and then he stood and opened the door, the corridor dark behind him. Thank you again, he said, and then, so quickly that I didn’t have a chance to stop him, even if I had wanted to, he placed both of his hands on my shoulders and leaned toward me, touching his lips to my cheek. He leaned back again and smiled, withdrawing his hands, but not before tousling my hair, smiling now with the unguardedness I remembered. It was a friendly gesture, unromantic, which didn’t dismiss the intimacy of his kiss but set it in a new key, and I was filled with fondness as he stepped out and pulled the door shut behind him. There was no temptation, I thought, there was no danger of his upsetting the new balance I had found, the monogamy that still had the novelty of a break from long habit. After I turned the key in its lock I stood with my hand on the door, not with the thought of opening it again but just to listen to him make his way down the hall. He had already gone down the stairs before I remembered to press the switch for the hallway light, setting the timer running though it was already past its use.

  I hardly slept that night. Almost as soon as Mitko left I started to worry, and I lay in bed wondering what I would tell R. if the tests came back positive, as now I was sure they would. I had written him an e-mail, saying I was too busy to talk on Skype, as we usually did every night before going to sleep. I didn’t tell him about Mitko’s visit. It wasn’t my intention to lie, and R. already knew about Mitko, like everything else in my past he was part of the story that had led us to each other; it’s a way of being in love, I think, to see the past like that. R. would worry even more than I did, I thought, it was better to spare him until I was sure. The next day was a Friday, and I had the first two periods of the morning free. I had never been ill in my three years in Sofia, or never ill enough to seek out care; I don’t like going to doctors’ offices, I’ve hated them since I was a child, with their humiliations, their assaults on necessary privacies. But there was a clinic near my school, in a glass-fronted building situated right at the turn from Malinov Boulevard to the private road leading to the police academy and the American College. I walked past this clinic every day, and I knew it was where the other teachers went, that it was modern and efficient and that someone there would speak English. This was important, as I realized I lacked the vocabulary to request the tests I needed or explain the circumstances of my case, and I imagined how my helplessness in the language would compound the helplessness of illness. I was reassured, as I opened the door to the clinic, by a waiting room that wouldn’t have been terribly out of place in America. There were a number of women bustling behind the long counter in the aggressively heated room, which was already full, even though I had arrived shortly after they opened. I was nervous as I entered, and annoyed with myself for being nervous. For all its literary horror I knew syphilis was easily treated, I would only need antibio
tics, probably a single shot. It was stupid to be embarrassed, I said to myself, it was an infection like any other. But as I stepped up to the counter none of this eased what I felt, which was strong and deep-seated, part of that larger shame of which my whole story with Mitko, from our first encounter to this deferred consequence, was merely the latest iteration.

  One of the women looked up, her fingers pausing at the keyboard, and my tension was relieved by a brightness of welcome I had grown unaccustomed to. She looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to speak, and when I asked in Bulgarian if she spoke English she seemed genuinely sorry that she didn’t, no, not a word. She turned to the other women behind the desk, all of whom confessed a similar helplessness. Wait just a moment, she said, picking up the phone, we’ll find someone, and as I stood I glanced around the waiting room, relieved that none of the eight or ten people sitting in the plastic chairs, none of them visibly ill, seemed to have paid us any mind. Here, the woman behind the desk said, standing now and leaning forward to point down a hallway lined with examination rooms, this woman can help you. I looked over to see a large and much older woman walking toward us, dressed in the formless uniform of an orderly or nurse, her thinning blond hair styled severely in a masculine cut. There was something severe in her face as well, for all its heavy roundness, a tightness about the lips suggesting not just a difficult morning but a more fundamental fatigue. Good morning, she said, a plummy British accent coming through the Balkan, what can we do for you today? She spoke more loudly than necessary, showing off her English, as people often do here, where the language when spoken well confers some prestige, and I realized I had already taken a dislike to her. Yes, I said, speaking not quite furtively but at a much lower volume, I would like to get a full set of tests, and then I paused, realizing I wasn’t sure of the words even in English, a full screening, I said finally, for STDs, thinking then that maybe the acronym would be lost on her, that I should have spoken the words in full. But she understood immediately, saying Yes, of course, and she leaned over the counter, resting her large breasts on its surface, to reach for a sheet of paper. All right, she said, drawing a pen from her pocket, let’s see, and then she began reading off the tests, still in a loud voice as she circled them, saying So, you will want HIV, pronouncing it as a single syllable, hiff, and gonorrhea, chlamydia, hepatitis, and then, moving the pen down the page, anything else? Well, I said, yes, but she clucked her tongue before I could go on, having come across the word at the bottom of the page, Yes, of course, syphilis, speaking all along in the same inflated tone, either clueless or malicious, I thought. Several people were looking at us now, including one very beautiful man about my age, whose eyes caught mine before I quickly looked away. No one needed English to understand, since the names she circled were the same in both languages, and I hardened my features against the curiosity we were attracting. So, she said, handing me the page, come along, and I followed her down the long hallway, relieved to escape scrutiny and trying not to glance through the open doors of the examination rooms we passed. We turned left at the end of the corridor, stopping outside a closed door marked Laboratoriya. Please, sit, she said, motioning me toward the short bench against the wall, and then she took the page she had just given me and let herself into the room, closing the door behind her. She opened it again a moment later, saying All right, I will leave you now, they will let you in in a moment. If you need anything, just ask for me, she said, taking her leave as I thanked her, though after she left I realized she had never told me her name.

  About twenty minutes had passed, and I had started to worry about making it to my class on time, when the door opened and a woman ushered me in. Dobur den, I said, nodding at her, and she pointed to the large chair in the corner, telling me to sit. The room was full of instruments and machines, many of them working away, and the surfaces were crowded with trays of red vials arranged meticulously in rows. She was working at one of these trays, wrapping an adhesive label around a vial before sliding it into place. Sega, she said, now, as she turned toward me and took from a table what I assumed was the page specifying my tests. She studied it briefly and then took a number of empty vials, a dismaying number, of different sizes gathered from various trays. She arranged them on the little table to my right and then sat on a stool beside me. Now, she said again, looking at me for the first time, are we going to have any problems? I looked at her uncomprehendingly and she went on, Will you be all right, will you be—and she used the word muzhki, manly; people say it all the time here, Druzh se muzhki, act like a man, and I always resented it when someone said it to me, it felt like a challenge they weren’t sure I could meet. And anyway it was the kind of doctorly banter I hated most, a chummy preliminary to unpleasantness. She looked much the same as my earlier guide, older and formless and with short, thinning hair, though hers had been dyed the alarming shade of red inexplicably popular in Sofia. I’ll be fine, I said, pulling my arm from its sleeve, and then opening and closing my hand as she tied a rubber tourniquet around my bicep. I wasn’t troubled by needles, but I hated the pressure of the tourniquet, the slow rising of my veins against the skin. Ah, the woman said in appreciation, here’s a nice one, and she told me to squeeze hard as she quickly swabbed it with alcohol. I turned away then, as I always do, looking at the little square of window with its glimpse of sky, and then I closed my eyes as I felt the metal on my skin, the sharp prick and then the unsettling dull ache of the needle in the vein. She knew what she was doing, I thought, as she snapped the first tube in place with one hand and untwisted the tourniquet with the other, telling me at the same time to relax my grip; I had certainly had worse, though I was taken aback to notice, as I looked at my arm again, strangely alien to me now as it did its work, vigorously pumping blood, that she was doing all of this without gloves. She moved through her vials quickly, deftly corking and uncorking until finally she drew out the long spike, at the same time pressing a ball of cotton to the wound. Press here, she said, zdravo, hard, and then gathered the vials and took them to a table, where she began labeling them and placing them in trays. I didn’t get up at first, waiting for instruction, and then, Am I finished, I asked, and she said Da da dismissively, busy with her work, telling me I could return for the results after lunch.

  I made it to school in time for my class, disappointing the students who were gathered at the door, surprised to find it locked and excited at the prospect of a broken routine. There were only a few minutes before the second bell, no time for me to gather my thoughts, but they were good kids, talkative, amiable, eager for debate, and though I kept thinking about those vials even now giving up their secrets, eventually I lost myself in the conversation’s back and forth, grateful that it was a day on which the machinery basically worked. I taught four periods, two before and two after lunch, and I was sorry to see the last of the students go, for once I would happily have taken any offer to prolong our talk. The same women were at the counter when I returned to the clinic, and the one I had spoken to before picked up the phone when she saw me, talking with someone quickly as I approached. You speak some Bulgarian, yes, she asked, settling the phone back in its cradle, and then she told me that my results weren’t quite ready, inviting me to sit and wait, it won’t be long, she said. The waiting area was empty now, and in general the clinic was quieter, free of the morning’s bustle. I sat in one of the plastic chairs beside a long, low table covered with pamphlets, informational brochures on eye care and diabetes, advertisements for medications, for a particular brand of lubricant, the glossy paper swirled haphazardly about. I glanced at one brochure but could make little of it, even the cover was full of words I didn’t know, though when I opened it the images were familiar from other waiting rooms I had sat in, the stock visual language of medical admonishment and reassurance. For all that I avoided such offices these images, with their warnings about precaution and prevention, had long been part of my most private sense of myself. I grew up at the height of the AIDS panic, when desire and disease seemed
essentially bound together, the relationship between them not something that could be managed but absolute and unchangeable, a consequence and its cause. Disease was the only story anyone ever told about men like me where I was from, and it flattened my life to a morality tale, in which I could be either chaste or condemned. Maybe that’s why, when I finally did have sex, it wasn’t so much pleasure I sought as the exhilaration of setting aside restraint, of pretending not to be afraid, a thrill of release so intense it was almost suicidal. As I sat flipping through brochures, waiting for someone to collect and usher me elsewhere, I remembered the first time I was tested, in my last year of high school, at a free clinic in Michigan. I had left my hometown two years before, and in that time news had reached me of friends falling ill. I knew I must have been exposed to it, I had been extravagantly reckless; and as I waited for the nurse to call my name, two weeks after the test, I was sure of the news she would bring. My best friend was beside me, and I held his hand as the woman read me the results and I felt not relief, exactly, but disappointment, or something so bewilderingly mixed I still have no good name for it. Maybe it was just that I wanted the world to have a meaning, and that the meaning I wanted it to have was chastisement.