What Belongs to You

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 awkwardly 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?

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 antibiotics, 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.

For the first time since I had arrived, the clinic door opened, and the nurse I had spoken with that morning came in. She was moving slowly, holding between two fingers of one hand a thin plastic cup of coffee, the bottom sagging, distended with heat. Hello, she said in her strange accent, are you here for your results, and when I told her that I had been waiting for some time, that I was beginning to feel forgotten, her face darkened in sympathy. Well, she said, let’s see what we can do, and she turned and began speaking quickly to the receptionist. She referred to me as gospodinut, the gentleman, which surprised me; older people here usually call me momcheto, the boy, a friendly term I like more. Come with me, she said, turning, and I followed her to the room she had taken me to before, a strange weightlessness in my abdomen. I’ll be just a moment, she said, wait here, and then she knocked sharply on the laboratory door and opened it without waiting for an answer. She left the door ajar, and I could hear something of the conversation she had, or at least her voice, which was louder than the other and tinged with something like rebuke. I heard a chair groan as someone rose from it, and then a quieter, extended exchange I could make little of, though I knew it must mean they had something to discuss, and I realized, with a sharp clenching in the pit of my stomach, that I was surprised, that for all my anxiety I hadn’t really believed I had it, and I thought of R., of what I would have to tell him and of how he would respond.

The voices drew closer and I heard the technician say Do we just put it in his hand, and the other woman, my guide, saying Yes, of course, they are his results. She stepped into the hallway alone, holding the page and smiling, and perhaps it was only in my imagination that her smile seemed changed. Tell me, she said, have you ever had a positive result on any of these tests before, and I said no, I hadn’t, I had always been negative. Well, she said, there may be a problem, and she held up the sheet in her hand for me to see. Here, she said, pointing to a line where there was a mark handwritten in ink, a plus sign or cross, surrounded by Cyrillic letters and other symbols she didn’t give me a chance to decipher. You have tested positive for syphilis, she said. Since it was the news I had prepared myself for I didn’t react, which seemed to surprise or disappoint her, as if she had been cheated of an intended effect. It’s a very serious infection, she said, almost sternly, as though I were a child she had to school. Yes, I said meekly, of course, and she went on, mollified, But this is only a first test, you must have another to confirm it. Can we do that now, I asked, sick at the thought of more waiting, but she said Oh no, as if surprised by the question, you have to go to another clinic for that, we can’t do it here. But here, she said, pulling out a smaller piece of paper that she had been holding behind the report of my results, I’ve written it down for you, where you need to go. THE XXIX POLYCLINIC, she had written, the numbers in block Roman numerals, and beneath it GOTSE DELCHEV, the name of a district where I had never been. As I took this paper, I imagined having to find my way to an unfamiliar part of the city, to a public clinic where no one would speak English, and I thought of all I had heard about such places, the long lines and poor facilities, the incompetence or disregard of doctors. She must have seen how I felt, and as if taking pity, she said One of the buses that stops outside will take you there, I think, I’m sorry I don’t know which one. She started walking toward the reception area again, having done everything she could, and I followed obediently behind her. That was why I hated clinics and examinations, I thought, the indignity they inflict, the way they let doctors and nurses deliver a sentence and then wash their hands of it, so that however they change one’s life they remain unchanged themselves. You will have to go on Monday, she said, they will be closing soon for the weekend. Tell me, I said, as we neared the glass doors of the entrance, once I have the results from the second test, can I get the treatment here? I had spoken this in what must have been a hopeful tone, or a tone of entreaty, and it seemed to me she replied with pleasure as she opened the door for me and said again Oh no, it’s best that they take care of everything from there. I stepped outside, and then half turned back to raise my hand in goodbye. But it was a wasted gesture; she had already moved on to other tasks, letting the door swing shut behind her.

On Sunday night Mitko appeared again. He buzzed up from the street this time, confident I would answer; or maybe he had gotten tired of waiting for someone to open the door. It was late, I was already in bed with a book in my hand. It had been a long, anxious weekend, and I had hardly needed to exaggerate when I wrote to my department chair that I was too ill to come in, freeing the next day for the clinic. I was caught up again in the poetry of the illness, as it were, that aura or miasma of shame; I felt unclean, I wanted to hide myself away, feeling, for all I had learned of the disease, that even touching someone might contaminate them. I washed my hands compulsively, and made obsessive use of the little bottles of antiseptic gel that most teachers keep close by. I stayed at home as much as I could, and when I had to go out I shied away from any kind of contact, careful not to bump or nudge into people on the street or in the grocery store, which is difficult to avoid here, where there’s such a different idea of personal space. I had been sick before, of course, but this felt like more than sickness, like a physical confirmation of shame.

I told R. everything on Friday night. I called him on Skype as soon as I saw him online; I had been waiting for a while, he had been out with friends and got home later than planned. He was still in his street clothes when his image filled my screen, his hair mussed from the hat he had just pulled off. He was already in the middle of a sentence when his voice came through, apologizing for being so late, and it took him a moment to notice that something was wrong. What is it, he said, what happened? I couldn’t bring myself to speak for a minute and then I spoke like a child, I said I have to tell you something, I’m sorry, please don’t get mad. What is it, he said again, a little frightened now, just tell me. And I did, watching his face as I told him about Mitko’s visit and the clinic and what they had said. I didn’t know how he would respond; I thought he would be angry, I was even afraid he might end everything between us. But he only took a somewhat deeper breath and said All right, I’ll get tested, it’s not a big deal, right, the worst case is a shot. Calm down, he said, and I was flooded with gratitude and relief. I was surprised he took it so calmly, more calmly than I had; I was usually the more dependable one, older and more settled, and after we logged off Skype I wondered if his calm would last, or whether he was just shocked at what I had told him, experiencing a kind of blankness before worry set in. And I was right, the next morning I woke to find my in-box full of e-mails he had sent through the night, each more anxious than the last. He had just graduated university and was still without a job, entirely dependent on his parents; he would have to ask them for money, he wrote, which would mean telling them the whole story. He had only recently told them about me, in the process coming out to them; how could he tell them he might have syphilis, he asked me, what would they think. He was frantic by the last e-mail he sent, and I felt horrible for what I had done. We spoke again when he woke, and I told him that I would wire him money, of course I would pay for everything, I said, after all it was all my fault. Though I braced myself for his anxiety to turn to resentment and then to blame, it never did. By Sunday night he had regained his resolve: we would go to our respective clinics in the morning, we agreed, we would be treated, it would all be over soon.

I had put the computer away and settled into bed to read when the buzzer rang. I knew who it was, of course, but I still stepped out onto the balcony to look. Mitko stood below, bareheaded against the cold, peering up to catch sight of me. He smiled when he saw me, and I held my hand out to him in a staying motion, as if patting something down, before going back in to quickly put on the clothes I had left crumpled on the floor. We had agreed, R. and I, that when Mitko returned I shouldn’t let him into my apartment, that we should speak outside or go somewhere else; I don’t like the idea of him there, R. said, and really he thought I should cut him off entirely. Why would you see him again, he had asked me several times over the last days, you don’t owe him anything, you’ve already helped him, and if you keep helping him there will be no end to it, he’ll take and keep on taking. You know he doesn’t care about you, R. said in one of our conversations, you were never friends or anything else. I did know this, and so I found it difficult to explain the obligation I felt, the sense that I couldn’t, whatever else might happen, simply cut Mitko adrift, though I had tried to do that before, and maybe I would have to do it again. You want to be the big American, R. said in a final charge, you think you can fix things, you want to save him. And maybe that was part of it; certainly there was a tenderness in me that Mitko struck as no one else did, and I hated that, for all his sometimes brutality, he was finally so helpless in a world that took little heed of him. I did want to help him, but I no longer believed, if I ever had, that Mitko could be drawn in any permanent way out of what had become his life. I knew I couldn’t save him, but how could I explain to R., especially to him, the feeling of inevitability I had whenever Mitko appeared, as though we were in a story that had already been written.

He was waiting patiently when I stepped outside into the cold, standing beside the door and drawing on a cigarette that he left in his mouth as he held his hand out in greeting. K’vo ima, he asked, glancing up at the dark apartment, what’s wrong? A friend is staying with me, I said, the lie R. had told me to use, and Mitko nodded, Yasno, I get it. Your friend from Portugal, he said, the obvious assumption, though I was taken aback to hear any mention from him of R., and I quickly shook my head, as if dismissing the thought of him from the air. No, I said, just a friend, and then, before he could ask anything else, Are you hungry, should we go somewhere to eat? We began walking slowly together over the ice, which was thick and many-layered on the sidewalk. Mitko was wearing the same clothes I had last seen him in, the same thin jacket, but he seemed unbothered by the cold, and in general he looked better: he had showered and shaved, his clothes were clean, and looking down, I saw that the canvas sneakers had been replaced by short leather boots, well-worn but sturdy. A friend gave them, Mitko said when I asked, shrugging his shoulders, they’re not so nice but they do the job, they’re better than the others. We turned to the right just past my building, down a side street that was less traveled and so especially treacherous now, and despite my boots I slipped several times, once nearly falling. Careful, Mitko said, grabbing me and holding me steady, surer-footed than I, and once I had regained my balance he squeezed me hard around the shoulders, leaving his arm there as we continued picking our way to the main boulevard. There was a McDonald’s on this street open twenty-four hours; it was always well lit and there were always people there, as R. had reminded me; it would be a good place if I had to meet with Mitko, he said, a safe place.

I expected Mitko to load his tray with far more than he could eat, as he usually did when I bought him food, but he only ordered a sandwich, fries, and at my insistence a milkshake, which he had never had before, he said, it had never occurred to him to try one. Mitko grabbed the milkshake as soon as the server set it down and put the straw to his lips, and it was a joy to see his eyes widen with pleasure when he tasted it. We walked with his tray to the most secluded corner, as far as we could get from the other diners, a few couples, one large group of friends. To the right of our table there was a closed glass door leading to a room for children’s parties. The room was dark now, and the door was locked, as Mitko found when he tried to turn the knob; but we could make out bits of the brightly colored interior, the plastic cubes for climbing, plush seats in the shapes of cartoon characters. It disquieted me somehow; it was a whole world molded for a kind of carelessness I doubted had anything to do with childhood, a carelessness I couldn’t remember ever feeling. Mitko sat and tore into his food, not pausing until almost all of it was gone. Then he looked up, almost embarrassed, as if for a moment he had forgotten I was there. Kak si, he said, smiling a little, and I said I was fine, a little tired maybe, but all right. It’s late, he said apologetically, I know you go to sleep early, I wouldn’t have rung the bell except I saw your light. This was untrue, of course, as we both knew, and maybe I spoke a little brusquely when I said Why did you come to see me, do you need something, but he brushed this aside, asking me instead if I had been to the clinic yet, if I had been tested. Yes, I said, I have to go again for a second test tomorrow, but the first was positive, I know I have it. Mitko looked at me silently, and then Oh, he said, I’m sorry, and it sounded genuine, more so as he said it again, suzhalyavam, I’m sorry. But I dismissed this, waving my hand a little in the air. I have it from you, I said, probably my friend has it from me, and you got it from someone, too; it’s an infection, I said, there’s no guilt, you don’t need to be sorry. Mitko looked surprised at this, that I had passed up an advantage, but he nodded in acknowledgment nonetheless. And you, I said, are you better, have the pills helped, but he jerked his head, the single vertical motion that means no here, like a door slamming shut. No, they haven’t helped, and gesturing to his crotch, I still have the same problem, he said, using the word he had used before, as if for a leaking faucet. I went to the clinic again, he said, I have to get the injections, the pills aren’t strong enough. It’s dangerous for me, he went on, the medicine is very strong, and I already have problems with my liver, I told you that. I nodded, remembering what he had said about his weeks in the hospital in Varna, which he had spoken of with more horror than of prison. So it’s dangerous, he went on, but I have to do it, to get rid of this other thing. Suzhalyavam, I said, repeating his word, I’m sorry. And it’s expensive, he went on, looking up at me to make the most of my sympathy, the shots cost much more than the pills, one hundred leva, he said, and then quickly added, but that’s for all three shots, after that I’m done. He hadn’t asked me for anything, but of course the request was there, it seemed cruel to make him say it. Dobre, I said, okay, so I’ll help you, you don’t need to worry. Some tension I hadn’t quite registered in him released as he smiled, and I realized that he had been worried, unsure whether my feeling for him would stretch so far. Thank you, he said, and then, you are a true friend, istinski priyatel, and I was disconcerted by the pleasure I took in his saying it.

Mitko turned his attention back to the food on his tray, what was left of it, determined not to let anything go to waste. Wanting to get away from him for a moment, I pushed my chair back and stood, saying I would be right back. The bathroom was near the table we had chosen, just across from the locked playroom that seemed to me so oddly baleful. It was small, with a single stall and urinal and a sink mounted against the wall. I stepped up to the urinal, fishing myself out for form’s sake but feeling no urgency to piss; I closed my eyes instead and breathed deeply, grateful to be free from Mitko and what he had made me feel, that pleasure that was too sharp. I would wonder, later, whether that feeling itself was an invitation for what happened next, whether I allowed Mitko to see it; but I don’t think so, I think I was surprised when I heard or felt the door open, felt more than heard, I think, the tiny shift in pressure, the resistance of the air collapsing like my own resistance, which was swept aside when I felt the sudden warmth of Mitko behind me. I had known it was he when the door opened, it never occurred to me it could be anyone else, as it never occurred to me to tell him to stop, or occurred with so little force it was lost in the sweep of my excitement. There wasn’t a lock on the door, we could have been interrupted, and maybe the risk heightened my pleasure as Mitko pressed his whole length against me, placing his feet beside mine and leaning his torso into my spine, his breath hot on my neck. This was reality, I felt with a strange relief, this was where I belonged, and I thought of R., though it shames me to recall it, as though our life together, open and sunlit and lasting, were entirely without substance; I felt it disappear, simply disappear, like a flammable shadow, and part of me was glad to feel it go. Mitko’s mouth pressed at my neck and his hands reached beneath my shirt, touching me as he knew I liked to be touched, remembering exactly though so much time had passed. He pressed into me harder, forcing me forward, and I braced myself with one hand against the tile while I felt him grind against me; he wanted me to know that he was hard, that he wanted it too, that he was ready to do again what we had done so often. With my other hand I jerked myself off, I had gotten hard at his first touch, at the first intimation of that touch, and I was swept forward in a single motion, quick and reckless, swept forward by Mitko, the weight of him against me and his hands, and then suddenly his teeth at my neck, until I came with a pleasure I hadn’t known in months, that maybe I had never known with R. For a moment, as I let my head fall until my forehead lay next to my arm, before I could feel anything else I was grateful to Mitko. He stayed with me a little longer, wrapping his arms around me more tightly, as if he were holding me in place; and then there was a last pressure of his lips on my neck and he was gone.

I left my head resting on the tile, taking deep breaths, feeling my organism settle with a sensation like the clicking of metal as it cools. Without opening my eyes, I pulled on the lever to flush the urinal, then again, and then a third time. I was used to feeling regret in such moments, of course, sometimes I thought it was part of my pleasure, like a bitter taste making a flavor more rich; but I felt something stronger now, I was sick, I was infectious, and children came here, I thought, remembering that locked room as I flushed the urinal again and again. Then I stepped into the stall and unwound a mass of toilet paper, which I wet at the sink and used to wipe down the lever I had just touched, as well as the wall where I had braced myself, though there could be no danger there; and then I began wiping down the porcelain itself, inside and out. I knew the whole performance was excessive, I was wiping surfaces unlikely ever to be touched, but I kept at it as the paper dissolved in my hand. Finally I carried the wet mass to the toilet, and then I stood for some time at the sink, washing my hands. Only then did I let myself think of R., as I looked at myself in the mirror, my face still flushed. He loves you, I said, whispering the words out loud. And then I said it again.

I saw that Mitko had cleared the table when I stepped out of the bathroom. Only the paper cup of the milkshake was left, and he leaned over it with his elbows planted on the table, looking at me with his head quizzically cocked. He looked like a child, I thought, as I had so often before. He watched me with a kind of guarded expectancy, as if he knew he hadn’t acted strictly as he should, but thought he had been so charming he could still expect a reward. When he asked me if everything was all right, I said Yes yes, everything was fine. Malko sme ludichki, he said then, his face breaking into its smile, a real smile, full voltage: we’re a little crazy; and I had to agree that this was so, smiling at him weakly in response. But my smile faded quickly, and without sitting down I said that we should go. Yes, Mitko replied, your friend is waiting, and before I remembered my earlier excuse I thought of R. He stood up, then took his cup and sucked loudly at the straw one last time, gathering all the sweetness he could. The cold was brutal after the warmth of the restaurant, but I paused to give Mitko the money he had asked for, taking the five new bills from my wallet and folding them once as I passed them to him. Thank you, he said, closing the money in his fist and bringing it to his heart, thank you a lot, naistina, I mean it. It’s nothing, I said, you need it; and then quickly I asked him how he wanted to get home, whether by metro or by bus. But it was late now, and a Sunday, and neither of us was sure how late the metro would run. There was a bus stop across the boulevard that would get him downtown, and we made our way there together, the slush of the day’s traffic already frozen in the quiet street. Mitko walked confidently in his new shoes, a few steps ahead of me, no longer quite so attentive, I couldn’t help thinking, now that he had what he had come for; and he looked around restlessly, as if he were frustrated by the empty street. There was only one other person waiting at the flimsy structure of plastic and corrugated tin, a thirty-something man in a heavy coat, huddling away from the wind and curled around the cigarette in his hand. He glanced at us and then quickly looked away, but Mitko spoke to him without hesitation, calling him bratle, brother, asking first for a cigarette and then, when this was handed over, for a light. Dobre, I said after this transaction, all right, I’ll leave you here, I should get back, and Mitko stuck the cigarette in his mouth, holding his hand out to me for a brief farewell. Then he stepped out from under the shelter, and, though it meant exposing himself to the wind, turned his face in the direction from which the bus would come.

The buses of the 76 line are old and in poor repair, and the one that finally pulled up the next morning looked like all the others, square and painted a flat metallic green. It was double length, the two compartments joined by a great hinge in the center, the seam sealed with accordioned plastic that gave and took up slack as the two halves struggled against each other on the poor roads. The plastic was torn in places, letting in drafts that were painfully cold and yet did nothing somehow to relieve the stifling heat. My stop was early enough on the route that I was able to find a seat, and I wiped the window with my sleeve, clearing a half circle in the condensation, though it fogged over again almost at once. At each stop more people got on and only a few got off; by Tsarigradsko Shose, the boulevard leading downtown, the bus was full, and a large older woman had taken the seat next to me. In the more restricted space I gave up trying to keep the window clear, letting it steam over entirely, and shifted my attention to the inside of the bus. The aisles were filling up, and so was the open space around the contraptions for punching tickets, just a row or two from my seat, and the larger space farther up where the two halves of the bus were joined, a circular panel in the floor covering the hinge or joint between them. It was a difficult place to ride; older people avoided it, though there was a railing to help manage the rocking motion that could sometimes, depending on the driver’s mood, be quite violent. I remembered one afternoon that fall, just after school and so before the evening rush, when I watched a group of male students take turns standing there, riding without holding on to the railing, bending their knees and throwing out their arms in a surfer’s pose, laughing as they were thrown off balance. No one was in the mood for that now, there was a Monday morning dourness in the way the men gripped the rail. The bus grew hotter as even more people got on, and the air took on a winter smell I had grown accustomed to, of wet wool and cigarettes and even this early of beer.

I had begun to sweat, and I glanced at the latch at the top of the window, wishing I could reach up and pull it down. But I didn’t dare; everyone would have been upset, people here are convinced they can catch their death from a draft. There was a man standing in the space just in front of me, leaning against the window, who was moving slightly, not just with the bus but with a motion of his own, shifting his weight forward and then back, his coat dragging against the window. It was while he was leaning forward that I saw a fly on the pane of glass behind him. It was still, maybe numbed by the cold of the window, a common housefly that must have ridden in from the heated interior of someone’s apartment via the heated interior of someone’s clothes. In the summer flies are common on buses, of course, a buzzing nuisance, but this one seemed special; it must have survived against all odds to make it here, so deep in the season. It clung to the pane despite the shuddering of the bus, until finally it made a tiny movement upward, like an exploratory step up the glass. When the man leaned back, his coat falling over it again, I almost cried out to stop him. I waited for the fly to reappear, unable to look away from the spot I had last seen it. I had forgotten the stifling heat and the general misery of the ride in my concern for the creature and in my relief, when the man shifted again, to find it still intact. For the next few minutes I watched as the man leaned forward and back and the fly was covered and revealed. Almost every time the coat was lifted it made another movement upward toward the point where the man’s shoulder met the glass; Don’t do that, I said under my breath, that’s the wrong way. It was ridiculous to care so much, I knew, it was just a fly, why should it matter; but it did matter, at least while I watched it. That’s all care is, I thought, it’s just looking at a thing long enough, why should it be a question of scale? This seemed like a hopeful thought at first, but then it’s hard to look at things, or to look at them truly, and we can’t look at many at once, and it’s so easy to look away.

Downtown, at Orlov Most, Eagle Bridge, the bus finally got less crowded, with half or so of the passengers stepping off and many fewer getting on. The woman beside me stood up, much to my relief, and the man leaning against the glass left too, moving with the others to escape the bus. I looked eagerly for the housefly, and when I saw no sign of it I stood, before the new riders climbed on, and scanned the floor to see if it had fallen. But there was nothing there either, and I sat down again at a loss. There were only a few more stops before we entered Gotse Delchev and turned onto residential streets, and since I was unfamiliar with the route now I moved to be near the door, where I leaned out to read the name of each station that we passed. But I needn’t have worried; the polyclinic had its own stop and several people got off there, leaving the bus almost empty as we stepped down into the snow. It was a broad gray concrete structure of four or five stories, much larger than the clinic near the school, nearly a hospital. The steps leading up to the entrance were perilous, packed with ice, as was the unusable wheelchair ramp to my left. I climbed up carefully, planting both feet on a single stair before chancing another, feeling how easily I could lose my footing, feeling elderly, and wondering how the genuinely infirm could possibly manage. The ground floor of the building was a large, echoing space that seemed unfinished; the floors were untreated, little more than concrete, the walls coated in bare plaster. There was no reception or information desk, only a large notice board with the departments organized by floor, the doctors’ names on long plastic strips that could be taken out and replaced. I had the page with the name of the department I needed, but the woman from the clinic had written in a quick cursive hand I couldn’t quite make out. Some of the words on the board were familiar, ophthalmology, gynecology, but the transliterations were awkward, I had to sound them all out, and there were several I couldn’t make any sense of at all. As I looked around in confusion, I saw a woman in a white coat coming down the large central stairs, holding a plastic cup of coffee and clearly on her way out for a break, though the day had hardly begun. Excuse me, I said, using the politest form, proshtavaite, forgive me, as I held my page out to her, can you help me find this? She took it from me, and then her eyes flicked up once, from the paper to my face, almost without expression. She pointed me toward a far corner, where there was a sign that read Dermatologiya i Venerologiya. I recognized the first word, but the second took me a moment; we say venereal disease in English, of course, but I had never heard of a venereology department, and I wondered whether the word was used in the States. By its Latin roots it should have meant the study of love, and I wondered too how often that made it the right word for the people who came here, and whether it was the right word for my own predicament.

I pulled open the door and stepped into a long bare hallway of offices, lined at intervals with benches bolted to the walls. It was almost empty, I saw with relief; an elderly couple occupied one bench, a teenage boy another. At the far end there was a door that led outside, and above the last office on the left I saw a sign for registration. The door to the office was closed, but at my knock a voice called for me to come in. A middle-aged woman was sitting at a desk with a newspaper spread in front of her, her right hand resting by a cup of coffee, clearly absorbed in a morning routine. She didn’t look up as I entered, her eyes still scanning the page, and turned to me only as I spoke, with an interest sparked, I suspected, by my accent. She returned my greeting and then looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to explain why I was there. I’ve received a positive result on a test, I said, handing her the note I had been given by the other clinic, I’m here for a second one to confirm it. All right, she said, rising slowly from the desk, as if loath to leave her coffee; have you had any symptoms, she asked, any sores, using the word rani, wounds, and when I said that I hadn’t, or none I had noticed, I knew they could be painless and small, she asked why I had gotten tested in the first place, whether I had any reason to think I might be infected. I hadn’t anticipated the question, and I paused before responding. A friend came to see me, I said finally, he told me that he had this sickness, he said that I should be tested. She raised her eyebrows just slightly at this, and then she said So you had contact with this person, using that word, which is the same in the two languages, kontakt; and I repeated it back to her, looking her directly in the eyes, Yes, I had contact with him. I wouldn’t accept the shame she seemed to want me to feel, and she acknowledged this, I thought, dropping her gaze as she reached past me to open the door. Dobre, she said, all right, follow me. She made quick work of me in a room across the hall, not speaking as she swabbed and drew blood, and once again I was surprised by the lack of gloves. Then she ushered me out with the promise that someone would see me when I returned that afternoon for my results.

I couldn’t bear the thought of spending hours in that long hallway with its bare benches, still occupied by the same patients, or would-be patients, who hadn’t moved and seemed resigned to a long wait. I needed to walk, even if it was hard going in the snow, so I exited through the door next to the registration office and descended a long ramp leading to the street. The air had warmed, it looked to be a beautiful day, sunny and clear as few had been that season, and already the snow and ice had softened, the surface giving way just slightly, slick and wet. I thought of Mitko and his new shoes, the old ones would already have been soaked through. I was dry in my winter boots, though they didn’t help much with the ice, and I made my way slowly down the ramp and then across the little street that ran the length of the building toward the main boulevard. It was a pleasant neighborhood, Gotse Delchev, prosperous and older than Mladost, with more trees and green spaces; it might even be lovely come spring, I thought. There were still the apartment blocks, that Soviet model of collective life, but there wasn’t the same randomness and glut here as in Mladost, where in the chaos after the fall of the old system space was snatched up and structures built, or half-built, without rhyme or reason, cheap and unplanned. Here, in Gotse Delchev, there were fewer new buildings, and the original plan of the neighborhood was still visible, its geometrical shapes. The shops I passed weren’t just the single-shelf affairs of Mladost, the little markets made up of prefabricated shacks; they were urban, even elegant, or at least aiming toward an idea of elegance. In front of some of them paths had been shoveled through the snow, something almost unheard of here. Even in the cold, and even at an hour when many people were at work, I passed people shopping or walking their dogs, and young people, university students maybe, busy about their lives, so that the streets I walked seemed vibrant to me, more vibrant than my own. But then almost everywhere I went I imagined a place more accommodating of the life I wanted, as if happiness were a matter of streets or parks, as maybe to a point it is; and with R. away for so long I was accustomed to thinking of my real life existing in some distant place or future time, projecting forward in a way that I was afraid might keep me from living fully where I was. R. must be up by now, I thought, he must be heading for his own clinic, with whatever feelings of apprehension or shame, with whatever feelings of remorse.

I turned onto the large and busy boulevard that marked the neighborhood’s edge, though this meant facing into the wind, which charged down it unimpeded by buildings or trees. Several blocks ahead I could see something that looked like a construction site, though not of the kind scattered throughout Sofia, for malls or apartments; there was a single concrete pillar rising above the billboards that lined the streets, I couldn’t imagine at first what it was for. When I reached it, I saw that the billboards, which were faded and worn at the edges, displayed information about the construction of a cathedral, and that the date set for its completion had passed by several years. There was a sketch of what the cathedral would look like on one of the boards, along with its name, SVETI PURVOMUCHENIK STEFAN, Saint Stefan the First Martyr, I thought, puzzling out the roots for first and pain, the suffix that makes a word signify a person. Printed in a larger font than the saint’s name was the project’s corporate sponsor, one of the country’s biggest banks. The site was surrounded by a fence draped with green mesh, which was torn away in places. No one was building anything now, and it didn’t look like anyone had been working there for a long time. The pillar was the only section they had really begun, though maybe they had laid foundations for the rest, I couldn’t tell because of the snow. There was also an arch, I could see now; it peeled off from the side of the pillar, and next to it were a few steps leading up to a small platform. It was going to be the entrance, then, and the pillar must have been intended for the bell tower, though they hadn’t gotten very far; there were thin metal rods extending naked a few feet beyond the concrete, an aspiration, so far as I could tell, entirely abandoned.

I made my way across the road, two lanes on one side of the concrete median and two on the other, the ice more perilous than the traffic. The fence wasn’t really meant to keep anyone out, or not anymore; the metal posts were planted in concrete blocks one could move easily enough, as someone had already done where the segment of chain link was unsecured, creating a passageway I slipped through. The arch was graceful, despite the cheap material it was made of, and the whole site was like a ruin, or a ruin in reverse, caught rising rather than falling. The ground was strewn with beer bottles, cheap plastic jugs sticking up through the snow; there was no telling how long they had been there. I climbed the few stairs to the platform, which was sheltered from the snow by the arch, and here there was more refuse, a profusion of cigarette butts and plastic bags and, here and there, the discarded wrapper of a condom, the top strip torn and bent, opened hurriedly, I imagined, gripped by fingers or teeth. It hadn’t been entirely abandoned, then, and I thought of the teenagers who must use it to escape apartments that often enough house three generations. I looked up at the arch, and something in me responded to the familiar shape of it, though I haven’t been to a church in years, or not as anything but a tourist. I thought of R., wondering if he had gotten tested yet, if he was waiting for the result; I hated that I wasn’t with him, that there was no one he could ask to go in my place, that he was there because of me. I worried it would make him regret having met me at all; I wondered if I thought it should. Maybe they were a mistake, my years in this country, maybe the illness I had caught was just a confirmation of it. What had I done but extend my rootlessness, the series of false starts that became more difficult to defend as I got older? I think I hoped I would feel new in a new country, but I wasn’t new here, and if there was comfort in the idea that my habitual unease had a cause, that if I was ill-fitted to the place there was good reason, it was a false comfort, a way of running away from real remedy. But then I didn’t truly believe there was a remedy, I thought as I stepped down from the platform into the snow, walking back to the boulevard, and how could I regret the choices that had brought me, by whatever path, to R., any more than I could regret those that had led to Mitko and to moments that flared in my memory, that I knew I would cherish whatever their consequences.

I found a café, where I took refuge for a few hours with a book and bad coffee. When I returned to the polyclinic I was greeted by a different woman, who was much warmer than the first, even friendly as she told me that the test results were ready and that the doctor was available; she knocked on the office door and peered in briefly to announce my presence, and then told me to take a seat on the bench beside it. Just a minute, she said, she’ll call you in, though I waited much longer than that. The hallway was empty now, there were just two cleaning women standing at the other end, chatting beside a cart and mop, oblivious to who I was or why I was there. Soon it would all be over, I thought, remembering what R. had said; I would speak to the doctor and get my shot, and then I would be back in that cleaner life he and I had made together. It was only at the second or third shout from inside the room that I realized a voice, already exasperated, was calling for me to enter. I stood quickly, disconcerted, the more so as I opened the door to find a woman glaring fiercely at me from behind a desk. She stood as I walked in, but didn’t greet me or extend her hand, merely nodding at my murmured Dobur den. She was a slight woman, not quite young, and I was taken aback by her appearance, which suggested an idea of beauty at once ubiquitous and mocked here, a hypersexualized style associated with a certain kind of fashionable wealth. She was elaborately made up, with heavy eye shadow and glossy lips, and her hair was teased and styled into an enormous, unmoving mass. Her medical coat was pulled tight, and beneath it she wore a skirt of some vaguely reflective material and extremely high heels. She spoke Bulgarian in an odd way, very quickly and somehow at once clipped and indistinct, as though the words were a crisp fruit she bit into to find that it was soft. We have the results of the second test, she said, there’s no doubt now that you have this illness, which is something very serious for you, serious and dangerous, for you and for anyone with whom you have sexual contact of any kind. There was an odd formality to her speech, as though she were reciting a government text, as perhaps she was, and she asked me questions I had already been asked, whether I had had any wounds or sores on my genitals, but not only there, also in my mouth, beneath my tongue. Nothing I’ve noticed, I said, nothing unusual, though I had had sores in my mouth, they aren’t uncommon for me, they’ve come and gone since I was a child. This gave me pause, and the woman cocked her head just slightly. Are you sure, she said, a note of suspicion clear in her tone. I had heard university friends, medical students, complain that patients always lie, which they said with the same professional knowingness and exasperation I saw in the look the doctor gave me now, and if it was true in general it must be especially true here, in this room where there was such humiliation in revelation, where guarding a secret felt so much like guarding the self. Yes, I said, I’m certain.

She seemed to sigh at this, in acknowledgment or frustration, I’m not sure which, and then she said something I didn’t catch at all, a quick and sharp command. I hesitated a moment; sometimes there’s a kind of delay in processing the words and it’s as though I hear them again, or see them almost, laid out end to end as if on a page. But nothing came now, not a single word, and before I could ask she repeated herself more loudly, as one sometimes does when speaking to foreigners, as though it helps. I’m sorry, I said, feeling like a child, I don’t understand. The doctor closed her eyes, just slightly longer than a blink, and then she took what I thought must have been a steadying breath before saying something I did understand, Lower your pants, though I hesitated again, bringing my hand to my belt buckle but not yet undoing the clasp. This was too much for her, apparently, my failure to comply, and unable to contain her annoyance, she said Go on, I need to see your dick, using a word that while not quite vulgar wasn’t clinical either. It shocked me a little, though it wasn’t just the word that was a breach in decorum, it was also the pronoun she used, the informal ti. I had never really felt the force of this before; knowing how to address someone was always hard for me, we don’t have those nuances in English verbs, or not anymore. But I felt the difference it made now, it was like a change of temperature, and it eroded further the dignity I wanted to preserve. I lost that dignity entirely as I exposed myself, and then lifted my penis for her to inspect, pulling it to the right and the left as she directed, exposing all surfaces to her view. Finally she was satisfied, motioning for me to cover myself, and turned away to a little table beside her desk, where there was a blunt metal container and a large wad of cotton. She tore off some of this and dipped it quickly in the canister before handing me the sodden mass, the smell of it antiseptic and foul. For your hands, she said, and then turned again dismissively toward her desk.

Taka, she said then, once she was seated, while I was still fumbling with my clothes, so, the best treatment for this disease is an injection of penicillin, but as unfortunately now there is no penicillin available, this course of treatment is not possible. Wait, I said, interrupting her, and maybe intending to reclaim something, to mount some challenge, how is that possible, not to have such a basic thing? But she was unperturbed, holding up a single hand to silence me. The manufacturer of this drug is in Austria, she said, and they have stopped distributing it to us; for four months it has been impossible to find in Bulgaria. Anywhere, I asked, not quite believing it, and said again, how is it possible, but she shrugged her shoulders and went on. You can check this for yourself if you like, of course, but I can tell you that no one in Bulgaria has had this drug for months, and no one can tell you when we will have it again. It is available in Greece, I think, she said, I will write you a prescription if you’d like to go there for your treatment. How could I go there, I said, I have a job here, I can’t go to Greece. Kakto i da e, she said, however that may be, and then went on to propose an alternative. The second best treatment is a course of pills, she said; it is not the best option, but most of the time it does the job. She reached for a pad at the edge of her desk. You will take the pills for two weeks, she said, and then after three months you will be tested again, to see whether the treatment has been successful. I had read all I could find about treatment on the Internet, and I knew that a two-week course of pills wasn’t always enough, especially if it was an old infection, in which case four weeks was more likely to work. If there’s doubt, I ventured, shouldn’t I take the pills for a longer time, but she held up her hand before I had finished speaking, and began reciting a text that this time I was sure was an official script. In making these recommendations, she said, I’m following the guidelines of the Ministry of Health and Prevention, zdraveopazvaneto, I’m not sure of the best translation; should you wish to follow another treatment, I cannot accept responsibility for the consequences. I was Vie again, she had returned to the formal address, and I felt like this was a further humiliation, though I couldn’t say why. And if I accept the responsibility for those consequences, I said, as she began writing on her pad, will you write me a prescription for four weeks? She continued writing, and in the same tone of officious formality began to say again that she could only follow the Ministry’s regulations, but then she paused and looked up. In general, she said, there is not a problem in using a prescription twice. This was true, I would find; the prescription wasn’t dated, and later that afternoon, when the pharmacist handed it back to me along with my pills, there wasn’t any sign on it that it had already been filled, I could use it as many times as I wanted. She finished writing and held the paper out for me to take, remaining in her seat so that I had to step forward and reach over the large desk. And that’s all, she said, releasing me, you will return in three months for another test.

I turned toward the door, desperate to leave, exhausted by my encounter with this woman, who had been uzhasna, I thought, awful, thinking it half in Bulgarian and half in my own language, which I returned to as if stepping onto more solid ground. One more thing, I heard the woman say behind me, drawing me back, her chair squeaking as she stood. I turned to see her moving toward another side table, where there was a large ledger book lying open. It was like the book in which we kept track of our classes each day at my school, signing for every hour we taught. Because of its danger, the woman said, the Ministry requires that we report all cases of this illness. I felt a sudden concern, wondering if this would complicate my stay in the country, my visa that must be renewed each year; but I thought also it would be a way not to choose, if I was forced to leave, it would almost be a relief. Then I looked down at the page, where in a quick, not quite cursive Cyrillic I saw that she had gotten my name wrong, putting down my first and middle names but leaving off the last; there wouldn’t be any consequence, I thought, they wouldn’t be able to find me at all. In the large box next to this mistaken name they had glued in a strip of paper with a typed statement, a pledge of sorts not to donate blood until tests showed I was no longer a danger. The woman laid her finger, with its long painted nail, on the blank line beneath this, saying I had to sign it before I left. I did so, putting my initials down with a little flourish, entirely illegible. She closed the book as soon as I was finished, using both hands to hold the long pages in their place as she folded it shut. I can go now, I said, phrasing it half as a question, and she nodded, though as I laid my hand on the doorknob I heard her voice again. Tell me, she said, did you have this disease when you came here, did you bring it with you? I paused, keeping my hand on the door, and then without turning I replied Of course not, it’s something I picked up here. And then, as I opened the door, with a bitterness I didn’t plan, A souvenir of your beautiful country, I said.

I closed the door behind me and sat down again on the bench. I was eager to leave but I hadn’t paid yet, and before I could speak to anyone I needed a moment to myself. So I sat, staring at nothing, at the floor, determined not to see anything for a while; I sat with my head in my hands, and then with my hands over my eyes, the heel of each palm fitted to the socket. It was a posture of distress, I suppose, though it wasn’t quite distress that I felt. I didn’t understand the bitterness with which I had spoken, bitterness not just toward the woman but toward the place, this country I had chosen; I hadn’t known I felt it, and I wondered how deep it went. There was something else troubling me, too, and after I had sat for a little while I realized that what the doctor had told me contradicted Mitko’s story. The last time I had seen him he said he needed money for injections, that the pills hadn’t worked, but it must have been a lie; there weren’t any injections to be had, pills were the only treatment he could get. For a moment it was as if I hung suspended, unsure of what I felt. I didn’t know why I was so surprised, I knew Mitko couldn’t be trusted, that he would do or say almost anything for money; and this was something I could hardly resent, when it had given me access to him in the first place. But I was angry, I felt I had been made a fool. Maybe I imagined we had gotten past this somehow, that the sickness we shared established a kind of solidarity between us, a shared ground. And I had been generous, too, I had helped him without getting anything in return. But that wasn’t true, I thought suddenly, I had gotten something in return, he had made sure of that when he followed me into the bathroom and made me see how much I wanted him. He hadn’t allowed me to be generous, that had been the point of what he had done. I had wanted to give without taking, but it must have been humiliating for him, not to have anything to bargain with, and I wondered now if I had liked his humiliation, if that was the pleasure I took in my generosity, that I was humiliating him in giving him what he needed while claiming not to need anything back. R. had been right, there would be no end to it, not just to Mitko’s taking but to my own false motives; there could never be any shared ground between us, we would never find a way to be decent to each other. I had to end it, I knew, I had to give up the pleasure of him, not just the obvious pleasure but the pleasure of being kind, of what I had taken for kindness and now feared was something else.

I heard someone walking toward me and took my palms from my eyes, which were dazzled by the sudden light. It was the woman from the office, standing by the bench and looking at me with concern, and I was embarrassed, realizing I had made a quiet spectacle of myself. Vsichko nared li e, she asked, is everything all right, is everything in order, rather, red being the word for line or sequence; is everything in its place is what it really means, and I thought to myself when was it ever. But of course I said yes, that short syllable, saying it twice in quick succession, da da, as if to say what a question, how could it be otherwise, and she nodded at this as though she believed it, and then took a seat beside me on the bench. I was surprised by the sudden closeness, flinching a little as if she might mean me harm. She wasn’t a young woman, but there was a sense of vitality about her that made me think of the Bulgarian phrase zryala vuzrast, ripe age, which they use for the period before one is truly old. She was large, but she carried her weight like a sign of health, her frame softened by well-being. It occurred to me that she was the first person I had seen in these institutions who didn’t seem exhausted or exasperated; it’s a talent some people have, being at ease, or seem to have, I know such impressions can be wrong. Ne se pritesnyavai, this woman said, don’t worry, ne e fatalno, it’s not so serious, you’ll do the treatment and get better, soon it will be behind you. She was being kind, simply kind, and I looked at her for a moment before I said thank you, and then, because it was inadequate to what I felt, I said it again. And your friend, she went on, and I noted that she too was addressing me informally; before I had been Vie and gospodinut, the gentleman, but now I was set on a new footing. And this was part of her kindness, so that I felt the other side of that nuance my language doesn’t have, that if it is a loss of dignity it can be a gain of warmth, something that seemed to me now very dear. Your friend, how is he, she asked, has he been to see someone, is he getting treatment? He is, I said, though I realized I wasn’t sure if that was true, I didn’t know where the money I had given him had gone. She nodded, It’s important that he does, she said, make sure he finishes it, otherwise he won’t get better. All right, I said, I will, and she braced her palms against her thighs and stood. Come on, then, she said, let’s go to the office so you can pay and get home.

I was warmed by her kindness as I made my way back to Mladost, the bus nearly empty, the evening rush still hours away. I thought of Mitko on the long ride, feeling sure my decision was the right one, and feeling too that it would be difficult to keep. When I talked to R. that evening, he told me that he had been tested in the morning and received his shot in the afternoon; and I was glad that it seemed to be something he had put behind him as he dressed to go out for dinner with friends. I was feeling better, too. I had eaten already and was sitting and reading in the main room, relaxing for a bit before bed; it had been a long day, I would go to sleep early. I didn’t have any desire to see Mitko, and when I heard the quick bleat of the buzzer I was tempted to ignore it. But he could see my light from the street, he knew I was home, and anyway it would be better to get it over with now, I thought, while I was still sure of what I had to say. I didn’t press the button to release the door or speak to him, but I did turn on the hall lights, which would be acknowledgment enough. I took my time putting on my boots and coat, wrapping a scarf around my neck; it had gotten colder again once the sun went down, but I felt I was wrapping myself up against something else, too, some inner weather against which I had to guard.

Mitko was waiting for me below, his hands jammed into his pockets, his shoulders hunched against the cold. Maybe it was the cold that made him less friendly; he didn’t shake my hand or smile, he hardly greeted me at all. I thought you weren’t coming, he said sullenly, without any of his usual charm, what took you so long. I have friends over, I said, we’re eating dinner, feeling in some way that lying confirmed my resolve, that it was proof of a falseness between us that was irremediable. Mitko shrugged, saying But can we go somewhere else, I don’t feel well, it’s so cold. No, I said, though it was hard to say it, I’m sorry, I don’t have much time, I have to get back to my friends. He made no reply, having expected this, maybe, or maybe the excuse was so evidently false it didn’t deserve an answer. I need to go home, he said, I want to be in Varna, I don’t have anywhere to sleep here, I don’t have any money. He didn’t look at me as he said this, looking instead at the ground, or to the side, as if he were ashamed, and as he spoke he shifted his weight back and forth, scuffing the snow with his shoes. Will you help me, he said, still not looking at me, I need forty leva for the bus, that’s all, forty leva samo, please. He was less sullen than suppliant now, and I hesitated before I answered. Whatever he would actually do with the money I could see he was in need; he was miserable and cold, I was sure he was hungry, and what was it to me, forty leva, now I think I should have given him whatever he wanted. But I didn’t give it to him, I said No, Mitko, I’m finished giving you money, krai, I said, the end. Zashto, he asked, looking up at me sharply, why, repeating it again, zashto? I know you didn’t get the injections, I said, at the clinic today they said you can’t get them in Bulgaria, and I told him that at Tokuda they had said the same, when I called the international hospital to confirm what I had been told. But that’s not true, he said, raising his voice in indignation, I got the shot, I’ll take you to my clinic, he said, they’ll tell you, but I cut him off, saying I didn’t want to go anywhere with him. I’m not a liar, Mitko said, standing still now, don’t call me a liar, I’ve never lied to you. I thought I could see him gathering his forces, trying to put on that face I had seen in Varna so many months before; but it was as though he couldn’t quite manage it, as though it were beyond him now, and with a sadness I couldn’t explain I watched it fade before it had formed. Come on, he said, are be, give me the money and I’ll go, I won’t bother you anymore. But I shook my head. I won’t, I said, speaking gently now, I’m through. I touched his shoulder, not sure what I wanted it to mean, and then I turned my back to him and went inside, where I shuddered almost violently at the sudden warmth.

Even with all I fail to understand, living here — the half-caught phrase or gesture, the assumed meaning I can’t share — here as nowhere else I have the sense at times of the world tidying itself up for consumption, of a meaning delivered like meat already cut, strangeness of a sudden making sense. Not long ago, for instance, after the end of the whole story with Mitko, I found myself on a train from the coast returning to Sofia. I was dreading the journey as I dread all long trips, with their boredom and confinement, especially in the heat of late summer. And I was all the more apprehensive because I was traveling with my mother, her visit a tentative rapprochement after three years of near estrangement. We hadn’t fallen out, exactly, but she was part of that past I had wanted somehow to undo, a past I had felt freer without, and I was uneasy at the thought of her coming here, bringing with her so much of what I had fled. There was the added burden of being a host, heavier since it was my mother’s first trip to Europe, her first trip anywhere at all, and she felt a mixture of eagerness and anxiety I had to satisfy and allay. She had scheduled ten days in Bulgaria, most of which we had spent outside of Sofia; I wanted her to see the more beautiful parts of the country, and we were returning now from Burgas, a seaside city I had long wanted to visit. We had both been charmed by it, and as we joined the crowds walking its long piers and rocky beach, there was a vibrancy in the summer-drunk evenings I had never felt in Sofia. We hadn’t had any of the dramatic scenes I had anticipated, though we were both fatigued, I thought, by the care we took to avoid them. But the trip had not been a failure; I hadn’t, as I had feared, been cruel to her, though for a long time cruelty had been my way of protecting myself from what I saw as her grasping possessiveness, a desire to pry that infringed upon my necessary privacy. She had been careful, after our three years apart, not to impose, and she maintained a lightness of tone that didn’t quite preclude moments of closeness. She spoke of the past in a way she hadn’t before, telling stories of my father, of his early life and of their life together, for the first time speaking of him without rancor, acknowledging a happiness that was brief and had never been reclaimed. I was eager for these stories, though I was cautious, too; I knew that they might draw me back to what I had left, that they had depths I might be lost in.

When my mother first arrived, I was shocked by how drawn and worn her face was, how thin and fragile-seeming her frame. She was unquestionably old now, as she hadn’t been before, and I saw this with a pang as she stepped through the glass doors at the airport’s new terminal, a pang I felt again as we settled in our seats on the train, arranging our bags in the unclaimed space between us. I had paid for a first-class cabin, and on our way to it we passed through six or seven cars, comfortable and European and aggressively air-conditioned, to find that our own was the sole unmodernized wagon, a rusted relic of socialism. Its claim to first-class status lay in the fact that it was divided into four eight-person cabins, each of which had a glass door that could be shut, though they all stood open now in the hot unmoving air. I was mortified by this, which I felt as my own failure, though I tried to laugh it off; only in Bulgaria, I said, and told my mother that now she would have an authentic Balkan experience. My mother took my lead, dismissing any discomfort as she arranged her things, even as her discomfort was clear, not least in how she eyed the other passengers sharing the small space. My mother has always been mistrustful of strangers, a part of the timidity or fear that at times seemed to dominate her life and that I feared I had inherited, learning from her a hesitancy, a kind of suspicion or doubt of my forces that had kept me, that might still keep me, from finding how far they could run. Anything foreign caused her alarm, as I could see in the way she grasped her purse, even when she delighted in the newness of what she had seen. She was uneasy now, too, though any sign of it was restrained by the politeness that was an imperative almost equal to her fear. I was relieved to see that our cabin wasn’t full; my mother and I were able to claim an entire side of it for ourselves, the three other passengers having arranged themselves to face forward as the train began to move. Of these three, one was traveling alone, a man in his thirties, bearded and overweight, a fat paperback open on his lap. At the opposite end of the bench, by the window, sat an older woman, very large and wrapped in layers of clothing despite the heat, and sprawled upon her, half in her lap and half in the seat beside her, apparently sleeping, there was a boy of perhaps six or seven. His face was turned toward the sun, though the woman held one hand above him so that a shadow fell across his eyes. My mother was immediately charmed by him, he was the same age as my brother’s child, but my own heart sank at the prospect of the noisy hours ahead. I wished him a long sleep as I took out my book, I don’t remember now what it was, something in English, and my mother pulled from her bag the stack of magazines she carried with her everywhere we went. We settled in to read, my mother and I and the man with his book, which made him laugh out loud every now and again. When the heat got too much for her to bear, my mother would lay her magazine aside or close it and use it as a fan, looking at me with wide eyes and mouthing It’s so hot, the peculiar drawn openness of the southern vowel clear even in pantomime. I could only shrug at this, helpless to improve things beyond the opened window and door, which allowed for the occasional draft, though the train moved too slowly and stopped too frequently for anything like a real breeze. I set my book aside often to look out at the landscape as it shifted, at the towns and villages we passed, nearly all of them in disrepair, cottages and little houses falling into themselves. The huge fields were brown and cracked with drought, though they were still worked by huddled figures with bundles on their backs, or by the rare tractor kicking up dust. As we passed these places, it was easy to imagine that we were in a different time, the buildings and natural spaces almost untouched by the modern age, except that so many of the cottages we passed, even the most decrepit, were festooned with the same satellite dishes I knew from my neighborhood in Sofia, some small and modern, others huge and tripodal, discolored with age.

After an hour or so the boy’s sleep grew fitful; he turned and kicked his legs, then heaved himself out of the woman’s lap and sat blinking as she roused herself in turn. The boy looked around the compartment, at once shyly and openly, his eyes meeting mine briefly before shifting away. Lie back down, I heard the woman say to him, as she put her arm around him to pull him back, but he wasn’t tired, he said, and he braced both his arms against her to resist. He was hungry, and the woman rooted around in one of the large bags she had arranged at her feet, pulling out a sandwich wrapped in cellophane, which she folded back before handing it to him. He grabbed it and slid off the bench, standing at the window to watch the landscape as it passed. He was still half-asleep, his eyes glazed over, chewing slowly, mechanically, as if willing himself awake. I was looking at him more than at my book, and at my mother, too, who was watching him and smiling, smiling more broadly whenever he looked her way; but he was shy with her, not quite smiling back. He grew more alert as he ate, taking from his grandmother a bottle of airan, yogurt mixed with water, a favorite drink here. He ate more seriously as he woke, taking larger bites and throwing his head back to drink, holding the empty bottle inverted in the air, catching the last drops on his tongue. His grandmother took the trash from him, after which he held his hand in front of her, palm up, and she gave him a small piece of chocolate wrapped in foil. He ate this quickly and without any show of pleasure, and then, when the woman held out her hand for the foil he had crumpled, he made a quick leap and tossed it out the window. She scolded him for this, saying something I couldn’t catch, perhaps it was just his name, but he spun around with a broad smile, looking at each of us, as if at once surprised and delighted by his own daring. I tried to look at him sternly, to show an adult solidarity with his grandmother, but my intention gave way before his smile, which was impossibly bright, sure of itself and sure, too, that nothing could resist it for long.

He was a beautiful child, slim and long-limbed, his skin bronzed from his vacation at the sea. He was used to being adored, I thought a little bitterly, despite responding myself to his loveliness. We all felt it; my mother was immediately won over, and even the man across from us smiled over the top of his book. His grandmother pulled him back into his seat, still scolding him, telling him to sleep, they had a long way to go, and then, when he refused, she told him to sit still at least, she was tired, she wanted to rest some more. But he only sat still for a short time; soon enough he was casting about for diversion. The window beside him was made of two long panes, the upper of which slid down, though whatever latch or catch should have held it was broken, and we had lodged bits of paper in the corners to hold it open. He reached up, curling his fingers around the top edge, and hauled himself to his feet, standing on the bench so that his head was above the lowered pane; he stared out over the fields we passed, his view unencumbered by the clouded glass. The train had picked up speed, and his hair was pushed about in the moving air. He began playing a game, turning his head quickly and repeatedly from right to left, focusing his sight on an object and following it as we passed; it was something I had done, too, staring out of windows on long trips in the car. Poor boy, I thought, he had nothing at all to do, no toys or books, though perhaps he was too young for books, and with the prospect of many hours to fill. He turned away from the window, facing the back wall, and reached up toward the metal rack where we had placed our luggage. Then, taking the edge of the rack in both hands, he lifted himself up, his right leg striking out for the window, seeking purchase. This woke his grandmother, who grabbed the leg nearest her and tugged on it, saying Dolu, down, saying it again when he dropped to the seat but remained standing. Sit down, she said, you’re bothering these people, they want to read, and it was true that we had stopped reading, having turned to look instead at the two of them; but I didn’t feel bothered, he was more interesting than my book.

I’m bored, he said, skuka mi e, it’s a long trip, I want to do something. His grandmother sighed. It’s not so long, she said, other children manage to sit and to be good. I’ll never sit, the boy cried, squaring his shoulders, and he repeated the word never, nikoga, separating each of the syllables, throwing them like little punches in the air. I laughed, I couldn’t help it, and the man across from me laughed too; even the grandmother smiled, it was too charming to resist. The boy looked surprised at our laughter, as if he had forgotten about us, and then he glanced at each of us in turn with his enormous smile, thrilled with the impression he had made. Only my mother was left out, and she reached urgently across to grip my arm, asking what he had said, wanting to know before the moment passed. And then she smiled too, looking first at the boy and then his grandmother, laying her hands in her lap and settling back against the bench in a peculiar way she had, as if it were all just too much for words. He’s a sweet boy, she said then, looking at the grandmother, who smiled back at her but shook her head, saying she was sorry, she didn’t speak any English. I translated what my mother had said, and the woman looked at me, a little surprised. You speak Bulgarian, she said, almost a question, and then, when I had wagged my head from side to side, Well, she said, he can be sweet and still be bad. But she was pleased, and she looked at my mother while I translated, smiling and nodding her head a little. There was a camaraderie among us now, a warmth that made us more than strangers, and the boy felt it too, I thought, so that his sense of his kingdom spread from the little seat, expanding to encompass the entire compartment. At several points during our ride, the man across from us had interrupted his reading to take a camera from the backpack beside him and step into the corridor, snapping photos through the large windows there. The boy had watched this with interest, and now, as the man took his camera out again, he went to stand before him, cocking his head a little. Do you want to see how it works, the man asked, tilting the camera so the boy could see the digital screen surrounded by switches and buttons, and the boy nodded, still shy, and then hopped up onto the bench beside him. Don’t bother him, the grandmother said, but the man shook his head at this, saying it was fine, he didn’t mind, and he and the boy examined the camera for a few minutes, scrolling through the photos, and then, with the grandmother’s blessing, they stepped together into the corridor, where the windows offered more expansive views.

He’s my daughter’s child, the woman said to us, I took him to the seaside for a week, all he did was run and play, I thought he would sleep on the train, he usually does. I shook my head in sympathy, saying that it was a long trip, it was hard for a child, and really he was being very good. Is this your mother, the woman asked then, and I said yes, saying too that it was her first time in Bulgaria, her first time anywhere outside of the States. Her first time in Europe and you brought her to Bulgaria, the woman said, oh, she must think it is terrible here. I paused to translate for my mother, who gasped and leaned forward, Oh no, she said, it’s a beautiful country, I’ve had a wonderful time. Maybe the sea is nice, the woman allowed, but Sofia — and she cut off her sentence, wrinkling her nose. But she is your mother, the woman said, anywhere she’s with you she will be happy. When she heard this, my mother reached over and laid her hand on my arm, saying that was true, that was certainly true, and I felt something twist in me, the motion of some unthinking thing when it is gripped too hard, and I had to resist the urge to pull away. But you live in Bulgaria, the woman asked, what do you do here, and her face brightened with interest when I said I was a teacher, when I named the famous school where I work. Bravo, she said, that is the best place, and then she said that her grandchild had started learning English that year, that he had learned songs and already knew his numbers. He was a smart boy, she said, when he wasn’t being bad. This last was meant for the boy himself, who had just come back in, he and the man, the boy happy with the camera. He held it to his face (the man kept his own hand on it too), and looked at each of us, using his hand on the lens to twist it first one way and then the other, making us large and small by turns. This man is a teacher, the woman told the child, he teaches English, and she encouraged him to practice his English with me, to show me what he had learned; but the boy turned shy, still smiling but moving his head up and down, a decided no. Come on, I said in Bulgarian, just say a little bit, what words do you know, but he still refused, suddenly demure; he climbed back into his seat and laid his head on the woman’s arm. He’s shy, the woman said, but really he knows a lot. She told us about the teacher he had had that year at school, a young man, new and full of energy, who played games with the kids, so that they learned without knowing they had been taught. They even put on a show at the end of the year, she said, it was wonderful, all of the students had learned so much. The boy lifted himself up again then, suddenly unshy; I want to say an English word, he said. He wiggled himself to the edge of his seat, the toes of his shoes just touching the floor, and looked around at each of us in turn, as if to make sure we were all watching. Then he threw both of his hands in the air and shouted Kung Fu! falling back against the seat as he held out the second syllable, turning it into a howl. The woman clicked her tongue, You know better words than that, she said, but the rest of us were laughing again, and again the boy was pleased.

The woman pulled out more food for him then, and the rest of us returned to our reading, though I was hardly reading at all, I was watching the boy with a fascination I didn’t understand. There was something electric about him, as he sat chewing his sandwich, looking out the window, a charm beyond mere loveliness. He was still for a while, lulled by food and by the heat, which had grown more intense as the afternoon wore on, but soon he was restless again, climbing up on the bench, then onto the narrow ledge of the armrest, grabbing with both of his hands one of the metal bars of the luggage rack. Get down, his grandmother said sharply, I’ve already told you, and the boy dropped his hands, not in surrender but to have them free for bargaining. But you don’t know what I’m going to do, he protested, his voice full of the injustice of it, I haven’t even tried yet. Just wait, just let me try, then see if it’s bad, and he made a particular gesture with his hands, curling his fingers slightly and holding them both palm up before him, a pleading gesture, and all at once and with a physical force I understood the source of my fascination with the boy, the reason I had been unable to look away. It was one of Mitko’s gestures, I realized, all of the boy’s gestures were ones I had seen Mitko use; the boy himself, his long limbs, his slenderness, the peculiar cast of his skin, might have been a small copy of the man, so that I felt I was watching Mitko as a boy, before he had become what he was now. Where had they learned it, I wondered, this repertoire of gestures that made a way of being a man, the talent for friendliness and charm that had always astonished me, with its certainty both of welcome and of the right to whatever it could grasp.

The boy did pull himself up then, showing off his strength, and as his legs flailed in the air the woman grabbed one of them and pulled, which made the boy giggle at first, thinking it was a game. He dropped back down to the little ledge, leaning back against the wall, still smiling, and again brought his hands together in front of him, not pleading now but as if to say see, it was nothing so terrible, how silly you were to worry. But this time the woman snatched one of his hands and yanked it hard, pulling him forcibly into the seat. I said to get down, she said, and it was clear now that she was angry, really angry for the first time in the trip, and it was as much in response to this anger as to any pain she had caused, I thought, that the boy began to weep. He was shocked at first, wide-eyed as if unbelieving that his luck could have run out, and then, though I could see he tried to resist, to act muzhki, the tears streamed down. The boy kept wiping them away, using his whole palm, but there were always more, he was outsized in grief as in all other feeling. His grandmother refused to look at him, and I thought, as I had before, how difficult it must be to parent, to divine the discipline or patience by which to make the good seeds grow while plucking out the bad, though maybe there was no real telling them apart. What was charming in the child would not be charming in the man, I thought, remembering Mitko and his bewilderment at my exasperation, his disbelief at every refusal. He had been a child just like this. I glanced at my mother, who looked stricken as she watched the boy weep, her own eyes welling with tears, and I wondered, as I had so often, whether she was the source of my own discontent, whether there was something she could have done that would have made me other than I am. I considered this as I watched her watching the boy, even though I knew it was unfair, that I was lucky to be loved as she loved me.

It was now, as the boy wept, as I watched my mother watch him guardedly, as we all withdrew into our privacies so as to allow the boy his own, that I felt an odd aligning of things, that weird pressure as they found their place and as I found my place among them, my mother and the boy, the hot compartment, my memories of Mitko that came back so fiercely I was wrung by them, by the thought of our last meeting that had left me even after all these months bereft. I pulled my notebook from my bag, wanting to catch this before it faded, scribbling not sentences but impressions, a certain arrangement of things, even as I heard the boy, who had found his voice again, begin his recriminations. He was holding his arm where she had grabbed him, pressing it bent against his chest. Schupi mi rukata, he said, you broke my arm, it hurts, you didn’t have to pull so hard, but the woman was unmoved, used to his dramatics, I supposed. You should do what I tell you, she said. It’s not your train, he responded, less pained now than sullen, you didn’t build it, you didn’t buy it, using logic like a rampart he could retreat behind, you can’t tell me what to do, but none of this merited any reply. There’s nothing for me to do, he went on, trying another tack, I don’t have anything to play with, I don’t have any toys, you won’t let me climb, I’m bored, he said, skuka mi e. He was on better ground here, I thought, there was some justice in his complaint, though the woman still sat silent. My arm, he said a moment later, as if remembering, it really hurts, and he held it out to her as she took it again in her hand, gently this time, looking concerned, saying Let me see, and then yes, it’s very bad, I’m afraid we’ll have to cut it off, so that suddenly he was giggling, twisting away as she leaned in, still holding his arm, and began to tickle him. He was all joy now, the tears barely dry on his face, and after a moment at this game he ended draped across her lap, his arms cast about her, a posture so sweet it was almost painful to see, as it was painful to see my mother, who watched them with such longing I had to look away. I could remember a time when we had touched like that, my mother and I, when I sought out her presence and her touch, too, and I wondered where that ease and openness had gone, and why they had been replaced with such stiff discomfort, a sense almost of taboo that kept me from making any answer to her expressions of love. I felt for the first time how cruel I had been, when I had stopped answering her calls and e-mails, which grew increasingly frantic until they fell away. For a time I had been lost to her, and she couldn’t have known I would return. They stayed like this for some time, the woman and the boy, with his arms around her and her hands resting on his back.

I lost myself then, writing my notes, so that it was a few moments before I became aware that the boy was watching me; he had pushed himself from his grandmother’s lap and was sitting upright, and there was an intensity to his looking, a gravity of desire. I want to write too, he told his grandmother, and while she looked in her bag for a pen, he leaned forward and shyly, as if she might object, drew from the metal bin one of the cards my mother had discarded from her magazines, and then, when she nodded at him and smiled, a second and a third. He settled back, and holding the cards on his lap he began to write, in large block capitals copying out the three words, BUSINESS REPLY MAIL, again and again, practicing the alphabet, I realized, the letters uncertain in his childish hand, a Cyrillic Б replacing the Latin as often as not. I can’t say why it affected me as it did, his studiousness, the quiet earnestness with which he worked, but it was heartbreaking, the more so when he turned to the woman and said When I’m finished, he will read it, inclining his head toward me. Maybe now that I saw Mitko in the boy, any future I could imagine for him gave me something to grieve. Should he fail in his studies, or should he find after them there were no jobs to be had, should he turn, like Mitko, to drink or to drugs, thwarting his grandmother’s hopes, there was the lost promise of the bright boy before me. But if the boy made the most of that promise, if he left Bulgaria (where there is no future, my students tell me again and again, where there is only the narrowing horizon of diminished expectations), if he thrived beyond anything his grandmother hoped, then there was the thought, unbearable to me, of what Mitko might have been. By the third paper card the boy’s writing had lost its shape altogether, softening and flattening out until it was just a wavy line across the page. As the train slowed in its approach to Plovdiv, where my mother and I would spend the night — I wanted her to see the beautiful old city, the ornate wooden houses climbing the hills — he held up this last card with its scribbles for me to read. That must be a language I don’t know, I said, smiling, I can’t read it, and he seemed satisfied, he grunted and said Tova e ispanski, that’s Spanish, making me laugh again. You’re very smart, I said, as his grandmother shook her head, it’s good to know so many languages. My mother and I were standing now, gathering our things, lifting our large bags from the rack, and I found I didn’t know how to say goodbye to the boy. I wanted to tell him to study, to work hard, above all to study his English, which he would be helpless without; it was his best chance, I wanted to say, but that’s the kind of thing one can never say, there’s no way to say it, or no way for it to be heard. And so instead I opened a small pocket of my bag, telling him I wanted to give him something, something you couldn’t find in Bulgaria, I said, and I handed him a drugstore peppermint from a packet my mother had brought over for me. It was my favorite candy when I was a child, and I was glad beyond words at the pleasure it gave him when he twisted off the plastic wrapper and popped it in his mouth. Then the train stopped, and my mother and I moved into the corridor, clumsy with our bags and with the prospect of being alone together. As we joined the line of people getting off at the last stop before Sofia, I looked once more at the little boy, whom I felt I would never forget, though maybe it wasn’t exactly him I would remember, I thought, but the use I would make of him. I had my notes, I knew I would write a poem about him, and then it would be the poem I remembered, which would be both true and false at once, the image I made replacing the real image. Making poems was a way of loving things, I had always thought, of preserving them, of living moments twice; or more than that, it was a way of living more fully, of bestowing on experience a richer meaning. But that wasn’t what it felt like when I looked back at the boy, wanting a last glimpse of him; it felt like a loss. Whatever I could make of him would diminish him, and I wondered whether I wasn’t really turning my back on things in making them into poems, whether instead of preserving the world I was taking refuge from it. The doors opened, the line began to move, and I saw that the boy was already clambering into the seats we had left, claiming a new space as his own. And then my mother and I stepped off the train into the evening air, nearly gasping in relief at its freshness.

I must have been sleeping deeply, one night that spring, I must have been in a state beneath dreams or any kind of thought, when suddenly I bolted awake. Just for an instant, I felt what I had felt a few weeks before, when in the dead of night there was a violent jolt and shuddering, a movement that violated not just my sense of physical law but some deeper certainty I had taken for granted. I was pinned to my bed by an animal fear as the world shifted with a sound I had never heard before, a deep grinding thunder and the sound of alarms, all the cars of my neighborhood shrieking their warnings, a bewildering cacophony of patterns and tones. It was the strongest earthquake to strike Bulgaria in a century, the papers would say the next morning, though really it had only been of a middling strength. In Sofia the blokove had swayed but none had fallen, and there wasn’t much damage beyond broken windows and cracked facades; even in the villages only the oldest structures collapsed. There was one death, the articles said, an old woman whose heart stopped at the shock of it. It was the first earthquake I had ever experienced, and the first time I had known that absolute disorientation and helplessness, the first time I had felt in that incontrovertible way the minuteness of my will, so that underlying my fear, or coming just an instant after it, was total abandon, a feeling that wasn’t entirely unpleasant, a kind of weightlessness. It was the noise that made me feel that fear again, just for a moment, and then I was on my feet as I realized the sound that had woken me wasn’t a calamity, but someone pressing again and again the whirring chime of my door, while at the same time striking the door itself, not knocking but pounding, quickly and heavily. I knew who it was, of course, though he had stayed away for many weeks. I had promised R. I wouldn’t let him in again if he returned, You can’t speak to him, he had said, if you speak to him, if you give any sign to him at all, he will come back; he has to stop existing for you, he said, using almost those words. But what could I do, I thought as I moved to the door, calling out to stop the noise, which must already have woken the neighbors and which soon would draw them out, in curiosity or anger; what could I do when he was constrained by so little, the man on the other side of the door, who kept up his noise despite my calling to him from the hall, or perhaps he hadn’t heard me over that noise, since at the first motion of my hand on the key it stopped all at once, as if now he were ready to be patient. When I turned the heavy tumblers in their grooves and then the handle, intending to open the door just slightly, a weight was applied from the other side, and as I stepped back quickly, almost falling, I thought maybe he wasn’t alone, that he had come finally to see through the threats he had made in Varna.

But it wasn’t that at all, I saw when Mitko came in, not stepping but stumbling, moving past me in a strange sidelong way, as if his body were oddly weighted and pulling him to one side; he wasn’t a threat to anyone, a wind could blow him over. He didn’t stop to shake my hand or remove his shoes or say anything at all, but with his sidelong lurching movement went into the main room and fell onto the couch. I stood with the door open for a moment, reluctant to close it, as if there were still a chance for what had blown in to blow out, as though he might change his mind and leave before a new revelation emerged, some new drama. I was listening for my neighbors, too, for any opening doors; I would apologize for the noise, in English or Bulgarian, depending on which doors opened. I would say that my friend was drunk, which was true; when he moved past me I had been struck by a strong smell of beer, the kind that comes in two-liter bottles, the cheapest kind. But there was no sign of anyone, the hallway was quiet, and so I did close my door, having no other choice, unless it were to close it behind rather than in front of me, to step out into the hallway and away, which of course was no choice at all.

Mitko was sitting at the end of the couch, though perhaps sitting isn’t the word for his slumped-over posture, his body tilted to one side like a listing boat. He had shrugged off his jacket and left it lying crumpled behind him, an uncharacteristic gesture, given the care with which he usually treated his things. He pulled one knee half onto the seat and turned, a welcoming posture, I thought, an invitation for me to sit beside him. His shoulders and back were bowed forward and his head was tilted up at a strange angle, as if he were studying something at a middle height, the cupboards above the sink, perhaps, though as I approached and then sat at the other end of the couch, keeping as much distance between us as I could, I saw he wasn’t studying anything. His eyes were moving eerily, rolling uselessly in his head, as if disjointed from his will, and his neck was not merely tilted up but straining. It was a posture of agony, I thought, and though clearly he was drunk, drunker than I had ever seen him, drunker than I had ever seen anyone, I thought surely he must have taken something too, some substance the effects of which were beyond my acquaintance with such things. He looked terrible, even thinner than before, so that the clothes he had always worn tight hung loose against his frame; and there was something else as well, less easy to pinpoint but just as alarming, some subtly wrong color to his skin that made it difficult not to pull away from him.

I didn’t recoil, but it was as though he had seen the impulse as he reached over and took one of my hands in his. I had noticed his hands moving oddly, the fingers rubbing against one another in a strange way, as though surprised to find such close neighbors, and now he clasped my hand tightly, taking it in both of his, and kneaded it, squeezing so hard the knuckles popped. Dobre li si, I said to him, are you all right; clearly he wasn’t but I had to say something. He shook his head quickly, not in answer but as if to shake off my voice, and I thought he made an effort to look at me; his eyes stopped their rolling for a moment, they seemed to seek me out, but then began their motion again. He held my hand quietly for a while, still kneading it in his strange way, grinding the joints of my fingers against one another, so that I had to squeeze back to avoid pain. And then he started speaking, though not to me, exactly, or to anyone; he began to repeat a single phrase, which even though it was short I didn’t catch at first, both because his speech was slurred and because it was so odd, a statement of counterfact, Men me nyama, he said, the three words again and again, men me nyama, men me nyama, I’m gone, it means, or I’m not here, literally there’s no me, an odd construction I can’t quite make work in English. For a moment I thought he was singing a pop song from the previous summer, “Dim da me nyama,” which is impossible to translate but the idea is of disappearing in smoke, like a car spinning its tires before shooting off, maybe, or like the running bird in the cartoon. It was a rap song, and the chorus repeated the title again and again, rhythmically, almost like a chant, which was why I thought Mitko was singing it for a moment, his own words matched it so closely, men me nyama, men me nyama. I almost smiled at his drunkenness before I realized that he wasn’t singing at all, and that his eyes, which hadn’t stopped their weird motions, had welled with tears. What is it, I said then, what does that mean, I don’t understand, and at this Mitko stopped his chant, snapped it off as if he were biting it with his teeth, and almost angrily he said Nishto ne razbirash, you don’t understand anything. Okay, I said soothingly, I don’t understand, tell me, but even before I could soothe him his anger, if it was anger, had melted away, had become a more agitated pressing of my hands. Dnes sum tuk, he said, a utre men me nyama, today I’m here, tomorrow I’m gone, and then he took up his weird chant again. It was a charm against something, I thought, though maybe that was giving it too much meaning, maybe it was less than a charm, like a stone one turns in one’s hand, not for any purpose but for the feel of it.

Then he stopped his chant and said my name, or not my name but that syllable he used to approximate it, since my name was unpronounceable in his language; he had tried to say it at first but each time stumbled over sounds he couldn’t make, the intricate shapes that made him shake his head in bemusement. I had felt this myself with R.; the English version of his name is common enough, but it sounded strange in Portuguese, and though I practiced pronouncing it endlessly and though I’m good at learning languages, each time I said his name R. would laugh, and so I stopped using it, I used other names instead, private names I had invented and so could never mispronounce. The syllable Mitko used was a private name too, it was his alone, and he said it now as if to bring me into focus, saying it a second time and a third, and then, Shte umra, he said, I’m going to die, they say I’m going to die, and at his own words the tears that had welled up spilled over, streaming down his cheeks. He let go of me to wipe them away, using the palms of both hands, and then he held his hands over his eyes, rocking his whole body back and forth now that his hands were still. Mitko, I said, reaching over to place my hand on his back, unsure what to do with it now that it was free, Mitko, what do you mean, who says this, and he answered, still rocking, Lekarite, the doctors, they say my kidneys and my liver don’t work, they say I will only live a year. Mitko, I said again, Mitko, and maybe the single syllable oh, I’m not sure what I intended it to mean. But how, I found myself saying, from what, thinking that it couldn’t be the syphilis, which should have taken years to do its work, even if he hadn’t taken the drugs I gave him money for, gave him money for twice over; but he shook his head at this sharply when I asked him, Ne, he said, ne, and then he said nothing else. I remembered the months he had spent in the hospital years before, something do with his liver, though he never really spoke of it, avoiding it as he did so much of his past; hepatitis, I had thought, which I knew was rampant here and against which I had long been immunized. Or maybe it wasn’t that either, maybe it was just the endless alcohol he drank, though he was still so young, I don’t know. And then I remembered what he had said that night in the McDonald’s, just before the encounter I had thought of so often since, with longing and excitement and remorse so tightly bound there was no picking them apart, when he said that the drugs we were both to take were dangerous for him. Maybe he hadn’t been able to walk away from the illness unscathed, as I had; maybe that was what I meant by that syllable I repeated, oh, the unfairness of the luck I couldn’t regret, even as already it was opening up some great space between us, an even greater distance than had existed before. And so I said his name a third time, calling to him across that open space, though he didn’t respond, he just kept rocking back and forth, already unreachable.

I want to go, he said then, and heaved himself off the couch. He swayed for a moment and stumbled, catching himself by throwing out first one leg and then, as he began to fall forward, the other. Maybe he had stood up too quickly and was dizzy, in addition to being drunk and whatever else he was, and in this odd, almost falling way he moved from the main room to the hallway. I stood too, unsure whether I should stop him or be grateful the ordeal had been so brief. Now that I knew or thought I knew I would finally be rid of him I didn’t want him to go, and I was almost happy to see him turn away from the door, walking or stumbling instead down the hallway to my bedroom. I got up to follow, and watched as he collided with the bed and then fell down upon it, as if he were feeling his way in the dark and had been surprised by it. He lay for a moment and then pushed himself up, swaying before half falling again. He stayed then in a half-sitting, half-lying posture, his hands still working, I saw, gripping and releasing the light blanket I had been sleeping under. I stood at the doorway, watching, unsure whether I should go to him; the bed was a dangerous place, with its memories of what we had done there. But then as if his strength gave out Mitko let himself fall, drawing his legs onto the bed (he hadn’t removed his shoes, I saw them muddy the sheets), and then he pulled his knees to his chest and again began to weep, but quietly this time, the tears sprang and his face closed in on itself but his mouth opened and shut without making a sound. I did go to him then, I went to the bed and lay beside him and put my arm on his shoulder, not embracing him but offering him comfort, I hoped, a sign of my presence though I touched him nowhere else, and immediately he seized my arm with his and pulled it to his chest, which rose and fell as he gasped in his silent weeping. And he didn’t just pull me to him, he rolled back as well; I had kept a space between us but he pressed against me, the whole length of his back against my front. I tightened my arms around him, holding him as he wept, and he reached one of his legs through mine and pulled me tight, so that I felt his body all along my own, his body that had been, in however partial or compromised or intermittent my fashion, beloved to me. As I pressed my face to his neck and breathed him in, his scent sour with sweat and alcohol, it seemed impossible it could dissolve, simply dissolve, this form I had known so intimately with my hands and my mouth, it was unbearable that this body so dear to me should die. But though I held him more tightly the space that had opened up between us remained, and I knew I would stay on the other side of it, the side of health, I knew I wouldn’t stay with Mitko and face the death he faced; I know it’s everywhere, that it’s an illusion we ever look anywhere else, but as long as I could believe it I would pretend to look away. Love isn’t just a matter of looking at someone, I think now, but also of looking with them, of facing what they face, and sometimes I wonder whether there’s anyone I could stand with and watch what I wouldn’t watch with Mitko, whether with my mother, say, or with R.; it’s a terrible thing to doubt about oneself but I do doubt it.

Even so, I lay beside him, I held him as he held my arm, embracing it against his chest. When he had calmed he began to speak, and his hands, which had been still as he wept, started to knead me again where they gripped me, taking up again their strange motion. Obichash li me, he asked, do you love me, but it wasn’t a question; I know you love me, he said, not waiting for me to speak. I know you love me but I can’t love you, I’m sorry, you are my friend, he said, priyatel, that word that could mean so much and so little, you are my friend but poveche ne moga, I can’t do anything more. Hush, Mitko, I said, it’s all right, don’t worry, I understand, but he wasn’t listening to me, he was speaking for himself, the circling of his thoughts impossible for me to follow. Gospod go obicham, he said, and for a moment I thought I must have misunderstood him, he had never spoken of such things before. But he said it again, I love God, no men ne me obicha, but God doesn’t love me, God loves the strong and I’m not strong, and again he was weeping, speaking at that strange heightened pitch the voice strikes under strain; he loves the strong, he said again and again, repeating it like a chant or a prayer. What are you saying, I said to him, gluposti, nonsense, and again I told him to hush, speaking to him as if he were a child, I didn’t know how else to speak to him. God loves the strong, he said again, and I’m not strong. Iskam maika si, he said then, I want my mother, and again the tears came freely, he had taken my hand and was squeezing it hard. Do you love God, he asked me when he could speak again, do you go to church, and now I didn’t try to speak, not knowing how to answer, unable to bring myself to say what I knew would quiet him, though it felt unkind I couldn’t make myself say the words.

He squeezed my hand harder, pressing against me, coaxing me, God loves you, he said, you should love God, God believes in you, you should believe in God. All right, I said finally, all right, agreeing with whatever he said, or making the sound of agreement, and then he was silent for a while, and increasingly still. He was falling asleep, and though I took pleasure in the weight of him beside me I wondered how long he would be there, whether I should wake him, whether I would be able to if I tried. I had no idea what time it was, there was no clock in the room, and though I had gone to bed early I thought it was late now, probably not long before I would have to get ready to teach. Maybe it would be better to wake him now, I thought, before he was sound asleep, it would be unkind to wake him but he couldn’t spend the night. I would give him money for a room somewhere else, I decided, but before I could bring myself to rouse him he roused himself. Ne, he said sharply, I don’t want to sleep, and he let go of my hands to push himself upright again. He sat there hanging his head, propped up by his hands on either side while I kept my own hand on his back, both as a steadying force and also for the touch itself. Soon I wouldn’t be able to touch him, I thought, maybe I would never touch him again. Gladen sum, he said, I’m hungry, I haven’t eaten for a long time. He stood awkwardly, again as if having misjudged the force it took, so that he overshot the mark, as it were, and almost tumbled forward, catching himself by putting his hand out toward the wardrobe door and pressing his fingers on the mirror mounted there, leaving marks I would find myself examining in the days that followed, until the woman who comes to clean my apartment wiped them away. Mitko moved in his lurching way out of the room but I stayed where I was, lying in a half-raised position as I heard the refrigerator door open and the noise of things being taken out. A few minutes later, he called out that single syllable that was his name for me, that called me to myself or rather to that self I was with him, and I got up slowly to join him.

He was more lucid now, the effects of alcohol or whatever else wearing away, or maybe he was refreshed by his few minutes of sleep. He was sitting upright, perched on the very edge of the couch, leaning forward between his knees, having laid out before him a banana and a cup of yogurt, a spoon and beside this a bottle of milk. Ela tuka, he said, come here, and I sat beside him again, closer this time. Trugvam si, he said, I’m going, I’m not going to bother you, I just want to eat something first, and I told him not to worry, he wasn’t bothering me at all. I had checked the time after he left the bedroom, waiting until then to pick up my phone where it lay on the table beside the bed, and I was surprised to see it was early still, not even midnight, my sleep though it had been deep had been brief. Mitko picked up the banana he had placed on the table, and with exaggerated care began to unpeel it, drawing each long strip down slowly, as if every movement required the greatest attention. It was as though he had lost the sense of his body in space, I thought, that unthinking knowledge we have; it was as though nothing could be assumed but must be carefully measured out. His eyes weren’t rolling anymore but they weren’t quite focused either, he didn’t track the banana as he brought it to his lips and bit into the tip of it. He turned slightly to me, holding the banana out in offering. Eat, he said gravely, speaking in English, and when I didn’t eat he said it again, pressing the white flesh against my lips. But I don’t want to eat, I said, though it wasn’t simply that; I was unnerved by the seriousness with which he stared at me, stared or didn’t quite stare with his unfocused eyes, and I didn’t want to participate, it felt sacramental somehow, like a ritual by which I would be bound. But Mitko ignored what I said, pressing the fruit more urgently against my lips, so that I had to turn away. I don’t want it, I said, but he hushed me, blowing his breath between his teeth; Vizh, he said, look, and then he brought the banana back to his lips. I eat, he said, speaking again in English, and then holding the banana to my face again, now you eat. But again I turned away, and he returned his hand to his lips. Dnes sum tuka, he said, speaking again the words he had made his chant, today I’m here, I eat, do you understand, I eat. Razbiram, I said, and again he snapped back at me Nishto ne razbirash, you don’t understand anything. But then his voice softened, as it had before, I understand you, he said, but you don’t understand me, and he looked at me again with such sadness that I did eat, finally taking the gift he had offered, though I could barely swallow, my gorge rose at the sweetness of it.

Good, he said in English, good, and then he set the banana down half-eaten, carefully folding the skin back over the flesh. He picked up the yogurt then, a cheap flavored brand, and after carefully peeling back the aluminum cover halfway (centimeter by centimeter, again as if measuring the force it took) he brought the cup to his lips and took two large mouthfuls, not spooning it out but drinking it. He turned to the milk again, and holding it in one hand and the yogurt in the other, he began to pour the milk into the cup, slowly, as if he were determined to maintain the thinnest possible ribbon of liquid, a process made difficult by the fact that his hands were trembling, both of them, as they always did when he was drunk. Mite, I said, using my own name for him, his nighest name, I thought, or as nigh as I could come, shortened as if for a child, Mite, is there nothing they can do, is there no treatment? Without looking away from his task, as though any break in concentration would disrupt the delicate process, he brought his head up and then down, a decisive gesture, Ne, he said, nishto. I wondered why this was so, whether because of his condition or because of the expense of whatever was needed to treat it, even here where such things are so much cheaper, and I let myself imagine taking it on, the impossible task of saving him, for a single breath I imagined it, and then I let it go.

He set down the milk and yogurt, and having peeled the foil top the rest of the way off he began stirring the mixture with a spoon. He was making some variant of airan, I realized, the watered yogurt that everyone loves in Bulgaria. Mite, I said again, I will help you, I will give you money to go back to Varna. Ne iskam pari, he said, I don’t want money, and he took my hand in his again, squeezing it, though not with the same force as before. I came because you are my friend, he said, many people say they’re your friend but they aren’t, they’re with you and then when you need them they’re gone. But you are a real friend, he said, istinski, you have helped me many times, and I thought but that isn’t what I’ve done, remembering those transactions that had nothing to do with help, I was claiming him the only way I could. But I didn’t say this, I said I’m glad for that, looking into his eyes that looked at me so earnestly and yet weren’t looking at me at all. Let me help you now, I said, you should go back to Varna, you should be with your mother. At this his eyes softened still further, and I watched them fill with tears. Mitko nodded, he would take the money, and I wondered what urge had been satisfied in pretending he might not. Istinski priyatel, he said again, letting go of my hand and turning back to his drink.

But I am your friend too, he said then, the tone of his voice shifting as he poured more milk into the cup, do you know how good a friend I’ve been? Other people, when they’ve seen us together, they’ve said Mitak — which was another one of his names, people here have many nicknames, I had seen others use it with him on Skype or hookup sites but I had never used it myself; it sounded hard to me, Mitak, I never felt it would summon the person I wanted him to be with me. Mitak, they’ve said, what are you doing with that guy, why are you hanging out with that faggot, and he used the word pederast, here as elsewhere it’s the preferred term of abuse. There are other words for what he said, of course, but pedal or obraten wouldn’t have struck with the same force, I would have had to translate them, however quickly; words in a foreign language never wound us like words in the language to which we’re born. But when I heard this word, pederast, I drew away from him slightly and grew very still. But ne ne vikam az, he went on, I say he’s not a faggot, I tell them leave him alone, toi e hetero. He was stirring the yogurt in its little cup as he said this, staring not at me but at it, his eyes still unfocused though he was more lucid than I had thought, I realized, lucid enough to make his threats, since I knew it was a threat he was making. Why are you saying this, Mitko, I asked, giving up our private names, why are you saying this to me? He shrugged a little, still stirring the mixture of yogurt and milk, pointlessly now; maybe the motion was like his chant, a rhythm he had fallen into, something he did for the feel of it. There are bad people, he said, speaking in the abstract as he always did when making his threats, gesturing to that gallery of faces or masks any of which he might choose to put on, though for now he let them hang. There are bad people who might say what you are, he said, they might not keep your secrets, they might make trouble, he said, and as he spoke a deeper sadness came over me, not at the betrayal this implied but at how futile it was, that it was the only threat he could make, or that he thought it was a threat at all. It was a threat in a different world, in his world perhaps but not in mine. But Mitko, I said, speaking gently, not in fear but in pity, I am an open person, I don’t have these secrets, everyone knows what I am, and I used his formula though it made me uneasy, tova koeto sum. Everyone, he said, incredulous, at the College too, your colleagues, your students? Of course, I said as if it could never be otherwise, from the first day I’ve told them, everyone knows, and as he looked down, shrugging his shoulders again, I felt a strange disappointment, as if I regretted my own safety, as if I missed the threat that lay now out of his reach.

Mite, I said, using again my favorite name for him, his nighest name or the nighest to me, I’m sorry, it’s time for you to go, and as I spoke the words I found that I was sorry, knowing that I would truly be rid of him now. Yes, he said, agreeing, trugvam si, but he didn’t get up to go; he remained perched on the edge of the couch, his hands on the cup of yogurt he had emptied. I got up and took my wallet from my coat, which was hanging beside the door. The bus to Varna would be thirty leva, or had been not long before, so I took out twice that, and then a little more, and folded the notes until they were a tight coil in my palm. Here, I said, holding this out to him, this will get you to Varna, and there’s money for food. He looked at the money I held out but didn’t move to take it, as if his unfocused gaze didn’t quite recognize what it saw. Here, I said again, you should go to Varna, you should be with your mother. He nodded at this, he wiped his hands on his jeans and then took the money from me and stood up. He was visibly better now, he wasn’t quite steady but he didn’t stumble. Mersi, he said, nothing more, as he slid the money into his pocket. Then he turned and carefully picked up his crumpled jacket, putting it on slowly, not just out of a need to manage his resources, I thought, but out of a reluctance to leave, so that even as he said again Trugvam si he made no movement toward the door. He went to the refrigerator instead, pulling it open and peering inside. I’m still hungry, he said, I’ll just fry an egg before I go, pet minuti, he said, five minutes. But I stepped toward him and put my hand on his shoulder. Mitko, I said, I’m sorry, I have to sleep, you can eat somewhere else, you have enough for that. And again I did feel sorry, I felt cruel forcing him to leave, though I had fed him and given him money. What would it mean to do enough, I wondered, as I had wondered before about that obligation to others that sometimes seems so clear and sometimes disappears altogether, so that now we owe nothing, anything we give is too much, and now our debt is beyond all counting.

Dobre, he said, straightening up, and then once more, trugvam si. He took a few steps toward the door before he paused again, turning to face me. I’m okay now, he said, at first I thought referring to his recovered lucidity, now that the effects of alcohol and of whatever else he had taken were wearing off; but then he stepped closer, saying again Veche sum dobre, and as he placed his hand on my waist I understood what he was offering. I let him pull us together and press his pelvis to mine so that I felt his cock again, and for a moment I allowed my response, the flood of excitement that only he could make me feel. But then he leaned his head toward mine and I put my hand on his chest, not quite pushing him away but stopping his approach. Mite, I said, and then quickly, lest it seem an invitation or an expression of passion, as perhaps it was, ne, I said, and then said it again, ne. He didn’t argue, but he held me a moment longer, rubbing himself against me, grinding against the hardness that was already evident, as if to reassure himself of the effect he had. He was going, he said again, just a moment, and then before I could protest he went to the refrigerator and pulled out another little cup of yogurt. I can take this, he said, not really asking, and I said yes, of course. Then he was at the door again, and this time he did hold out his hand, returning to the rituals he had neglected on arrival. We will never see each other again, he said, never again, smiling slightly, and then, still gripping my hand, as if to keep me from pushing him away, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to mine, not passionately, though mine softened to receive whatever he would give. It was a brief kiss, it lasted a moment, and then he turned and opened the door, leaving me to close it again behind him.

I turned off the lights, wanting to be in darkness or near darkness, it’s never truly dark in Mladost, it’s only ever twilight with the lights from the street and from the windows of neighboring buildings; and then I crossed back through the main room and stepped out onto the balcony. It was a crisp night, with a spring chill so different from fall or winter, not in its temperature but in the quality of the air, its softness or tenderness, what has always seemed to me like its welcome. It was late but not terribly late, the moon was in the middle of the sky, the only natural light where it hung above the blokove. I could hear the traffic on Malinov, and there were two cars coming down my own street, one of which pulled into a gap at the curb to park, drawing itself up on the sidewalk and letting its lights go dark. I heard the closing of the building’s door down below, the loud sound it made when pushed open and allowed to swing back freely, a discourteous sound, and then Mitko came into view, walking not quickly but with purpose, not steadily but without risk of tumbling over. He was shaking the cup of yogurt, holding it close to his ear as if fascinated by the sound it made. Ahead of him, the car doors opened, and a young couple stepped out, fashionably dressed, returning from dinner, I supposed. The woman closed her own door and then opened the one behind, bending down to occupy herself with a child, extracting it from its buckles and straps and then rising up again with it in her arms. It was a little girl, I thought, judging from her clothes rather than from any features I could make out, and she was sleeping, her body was limp in her mother’s arms. Mitko slowed his pace as he approached them, looking at the little girl with interest, the yogurt still raised to his ear though he had stopped shaking it, and I saw him lean toward the child a little, saying something, though of course I couldn’t make out the words. I had witnessed this many times here, the freedom with which people addressed small children, leaning in as Mitko did now, calling them milichka, sweetness, as I imagined him doing; no one took offense, as though it were granted that children were a kind of public property, something to be cherished in common. There was a crisis, every few months there were alarming articles in the newspapers about the falling birthrate; though there were many children in my neighborhood the country as a whole was imperiled, people couldn’t afford children, or they saw no point in having them, and as everyone who has the chance flees abroad — like my own students, I thought, who are so eager to escape — the population declines and the warnings in the papers grow more strident and the nation itself becomes a little less real, fading away, some fear, to nothing. There’s no hope for it, some of my students have said, not in class but in private, whispering as though it shouldn’t be said out loud, it is a dying country. Small children are a shared joy, then, their parents bask in it, the stroked cheeks and milichkas, but this mother didn’t welcome Mitko’s joy at the sight of the child; she turned from him just slightly, not rudely but insistently, as if shielding the girl from his interest, and then the father was beside them, ushering them toward their building’s door. Mitko stood for a moment, as if perplexed, and again I was filled with grief for him, seeing him standing alone on the street. He had always been alone, I thought, gazing at a world in which he had never found a place and that was now almost perfectly indifferent to him; he was incapable even of disturbing it, of making a sound it could be bothered to hear. Suddenly I was enraged for him, I felt the anger I was sure he must feel, that futile anger like a dry grinding of gears. But from a distance Mitko didn’t seem to feel anything at all; these were only my own thoughts, I knew, they brought me no nearer him, this man I had in some sense loved and who had never in the years I had known him been anything but alien to me. He set off again, shaking the cup of yogurt he had never lowered from his ear, and I watched him until he turned out of sight, headed toward the boulevard and the bus that would carry him away. I stood there for some time, gazing at the corner from which he had vanished. Then I stepped inside, and sitting where he had been just a moment before beside me, I lowered my face into my hands.