“And can it happen in both hemispheres?”
“Why not?”
“OK … Oh, one other thing. If this,” he continues, grabbing a peeled potato from the bowl of water, “is the morning star, Mars … Is Mars the morning star?”
“No. Venus is the morning star …”
The Sophia Planetarium: is he thinking about this too? It was the first time they’d gone anywhere alone together — not that it seemed like a date. It hadn’t occurred to her that this boy in Toitov’s class, the short boy with the clownish face, might be attractive. And she was married at the time — unhappily. Maybe that’s what swung it: the contrast between Dimitar’s sharp but humourless good looks, his glazed, opportunistic eyes, and Anton’s strangely luminous brown eyes, the fat lips beneath them that seemed to be perpetually smiling. Toitov had been lecturing excitedly about the discovery by sponge divers off Antikythera, among amphorae and statues of nude women, of thirty small, corroded bronze plates and gear wheels, dating back to 77 BC, with the symbols and notches of an astronomical calendar inscribed on them — effectively a shoebox-sized planetarium. Anton had jokingly complimented her on her national achievements as they left and wandered up Boulevard Tsar Osvoboditel towards the Largo — she thinking that she’d catch the trolley bus on Narodno Sabranie, and then, when they’d wandered past there, that she’d walk on to Knyaginya Maria-Luiza and catch one there — until they found themselves, coincidentally, in front of the domed building on Positano. Or had he slyly led them there? She never asked. He said Have you ever been in here before? and she said No; he said Me neither, so in they went. There was no contact to speak of: maybe he took her coat for her, brushed against her as they moved into the main hall — nothing more than that. No: it was when the planets, then the stars and then whole galaxies started sliding around them that she got the frisson, felt him tense up with awe beside her, both of them exhilarated by this immersion in pure movement. A mechanical illusion, doubly misleading: what her ancestors had never realized (an error tacitly repeated in the gears and plates of the projector) is that stars don’t move, and here in the planetarium, despite semblances, neither did she and Anton — but when they emerged back into the daylight an itinerant complicity had already taken hold of them. That they should end up fleeing Bulgaria to marry seemed right; and it seemed right that they should leave Europe entirely, emigrate to America, where Anton had an uncle. They’re hosting the World Cup in ninety-four, he’d say excitedly. They’ll need good referees. All the kids play football there: our children will play it as well. Kristof and Larissa too …
Kristof and Larissa were their one point of susceptibility. Dimitar knew it, and knew, with his political connections, what to do about it. So now they’re halted, slowed down by this weight she drags behind her like the moon drags all the oceans. She worries that that’s how Anton sees it, anyway. He’s said he doesn’t mind: he’ll wait until they can all go to America together, there’s no immediate hurry, he can probably get an extension on the visa … Which is all true; she can rationalize it all. But it’s the betrayal she feels bad about. Their whole liaison, since that first afternoon, has been predicated on free, unencumbered transit, movement massing to escape velocity, to warp speed. What she’s done is to go and get herself encumbered.
“But does the evening star show …”
“It’ll have to wait, Anton. The oil’s ready. Give me the potatoes.”
In the kitchen she slices them and slides the slices from the board into the pan. The oil jumps and hisses. Helena dips her fingers in the flour again, then scoops handfuls of mixture from the bowl and pats these into balls, which she arranges in a Teflon-coated frying pan. Earth, Sun, Moon, Venus, Mars, plus one more to make three each: Mercury. Or maybe America. She goes over to the window and opens it slightly. The windows of the other buildings backing onto their courtyard are flickering different colours. It’s the television sets. She can’t see the sets themselves but she can tell who’s watching which channel because the lights in whole clusters and rows of windows change from one colour to another at the same time. It seems that everyone is watching one of two channels: a quickly alternating blue-green-red one and a constant purple one. Anton’s making a phone call in the next room, speaking in English. She can’t quite hear what he’s saying; he’s put on his Santana record. She goes over to the cooker, flips the meatballs, fishes a loose pine nut out onto the counter, picks it up and throws it into her mouth before it burns her fingers. She hears Anton put the phone down. A few seconds later he comes into the kitchen.
“I’ve just phoned Nick,” he tells her, sniffing the air, hungry. “Nick who lived next door. I’ve got to go out later to meet him.”
“Has he …”
“He told me he’s corrected your UNRC letter and he’ll give it to me.”
“UNHCR. Tell him to come here. I’ll make more meatballs for him.”
“No, that doesn’t work. I’ve got to meet him and his flatmate. This artist. Ilievski wants me to ask him for something. But he’ll bring the corrected letter to the party where we’re meeting and give it to me.” He puts his arms around her from behind and kisses her neck. “Can I do something to help? I could clear the table if …”
“No!” That was too aggressive — but he was moving towards the other room already: he’d have messed the letters up. She’s got them arranged chronologically, clockwise from the first one she wrote one week after the kidnap, through to the first draft of this latest. She softens her tone and tells him: “No. No, it’s fine. Thank you, Anton.”
He stands facing her for a second, then turns and goes back into the main room. Plates. She reaches two down from the cupboard. Two, not four. And two knives and two forks. It’s been nine months now: the same time it took each of them to grow inside her. The sheer arrogance of it: the flower seller who’d seen the snatch outside the school told them that the Policie, in uniform, had led the children by the hands into a marked car. And then the spinelessness: Members of Parliament, ministers who paraded their past membership of O.F. as though this made them a priori diligent, unswayable, fearless, to a man cold-shouldered her as soon as they got word from higher up. The sight of Havel on TV, righteous, triumphant, trumpeting the ancien régime’s demise, makes her want to … And Anton’s boss, Ilievski: so well meaning but just not getting it. We’ll have them kidnapped back, he said, and smuggled across the frontier — as though they were goods, chattel, just like currency or stolen cars or artwork or whatever else he dealt in; as though being snatched away by strangers one time wasn’t traumatic enough. Besides, she’d read a book once in which a child hides in a sack of cauliflowers and a soldier sticks his bayonet inside — and misses, but still … Car seats, Helena, not vegetables, Anton told her when she mentioned this to him, or maybe even on an aeroplane with false papers: Ilievski can easily arrange … and she let him know by looking at him in a certain way that this proposal was never to be mooted again.
The letter, then: the thirty-second she’ll have sent … And then there are the Bulgarian elections coming up: if the Communists were to lose … She turns the meatballs again, shakes the chips. Five minutes. She sweeps an onion scalp onto the cutting board and throws it into the bin. She really doesn’t want to cry. As though the onion … Glasses. Pepper, salt. Wait till the water’s gone back in. She walks back over to the window, opens it some more and sticks her head out. The night air is sharp and cold. She tries to push her sadness out of her, expel it visibly as breath, a small cloud forming high up in the courtyard. She looks again at the windows on the far side. Behind one of them a girl is bouncing on a bed. A woman sticks her head into the room and says something to the girl. The girl runs out of the room and the woman switches off the light.