The question is: Can we make that choice, are we ready? K. murmurs. By the way, what do you think of this whole business with the referendum? He suddenly eyes me sharply over his glasses in that way of his.
The evening wind buffets the napkins, the table is covered in glasses and dirty dishes not yet cleared away. And amid that whole jumble suddenly, who knows why, I recall that distant evening in the late 1980s, that seminar by the seaside, as if from a different lifetime. (K. was also at the table then.) And the small porcelain saucer which passed exquisitely over our heads with Gaustine’s creamer.
I don’t know, I reply, I don’t know anymore.
I don’t get it at all, either, K. says.
I realize that I’ve never heard this exact phrase uttered by him. Things are clearly not okay if the most categorical person I know shakes his head, uncertain.
Explosions ring out somewhere behind us . . . then a firework blooms in a trio of white, green and red, hanging above us for a few seconds.
They’re practicing for tomorrow, K. says. Let’s get out of here.
My erstwhile friend, the junior assistant, now Professor Kafka. I feel closer to him than ever, in the way a person feels close to someone he happens to be thrown together with during a disaster. The stars above us twinkle coldly à la Kant, while the categorical imperative is rolling around somewhere on the streets. Down below us the workmen continue building the mausoleum of Georgi Dimitrov with some lightweight materials, surely they’ll be done by morning. (After all, back in 1949 they built it from real bulletproof cement in only six days. In 1999 it took them seven days to destroy it.)
Passing by them, K. can’t help himself and calls out: And who are you going to put inside, boys?
Several of the workmen turn around, give us dirty looks, but don’t say anything. Once we pass by, I hear them clearly behind our backs: Just make sure it isn’t you.
10.
The Soc Parade
I woke up on the next morning with Auden’s headache from September 1, 1939. It was Sunday, May 1. The perfect day for the Soc movement—International Workers’ Day, and for the Heroes—the outbreak of the April Uprising. (Due to Bulgaria’s late switch to the Gregorian calendar in 1916, the April Uprising is now in May.) Rallies for both of these largest coalitions, only a week before the referendum.
I decided I needed to take part in both of them, to go undercover as a supporter and participant so I would have absolutely authentic insider experience and also so I would have something to tell Gaustine afterward. It wasn’t hard to get ahold of costumes for both. A costume was the password, the membership card. The movements had even set up their own booths and were selling outfits at a special discount. On the whole, sewing uniforms had become one of the most lucrative businesses in the country.
Strange as it may seem, under socialism tailors were a privileged class. I remember how, when practicing private professions was forbidden, in our neighborhood alone lights shone from tailor shop windows in little ground-floor rooms. We would go there, dragged by our mothers, to get fitted for new suits. The tailor (as if born bald, just a few strands of hair covering his pate, little round glasses, a mustache, and shiny cuffs, a truly bourgeois character) draped the cloth over me, made a few marks here and there with the chalk, on the second or third fitting I could see how the cloth was taking the shape of pant legs and sleeves that hung off my scrawny body, stuck together with pins. I was afraid of those pins. You’re like a little Jesus on the cross, my boy, the tailor would say with a laugh, taking a step back, squinting his eyes, come on, now, stand up straight, just look what a fine young bachelor you’ll make.
And so, between Christianity and bachelorhood, with a detour through the slap factory, we grew up. But my suspicion of tailors, with their bourgeois airs, their piousness and their pins, has remained to this day. I went on a bit of a tangent there, pardon me, but the past is full of side streets, ground-floor rooms, chalked-up patterns, and corridors. And notes in the margins about things that seemed unimportant to us—only later do we suddenly realize that the goose of the past has made her nest and laid her eggs exactly there, in the unimportant.
Anyway, I got ahold of both costumes easily and at a good price. I first put on the Soc outfit. Their rally began an hour earlier than the other. Socialism was fond of early risers. Revolutions, coups, and murders take place early in the morning, before the daybreak. Back then we all got up at the crack of dawn, not for revolutions, but for school; crusty-eyed and sleepy-headed, we would listen to that signal for the radio show Bulgaria—Deeds and Documents (annoying due to its early hour) and that children’s song Here at home the clock is ticking, wake up, little children . . . For years on end to our still-snoozing ears it sounded like Hearatome theclocky sticking . . .
So there I was at seven-thirty in the morning, already at the underpass in front of the former party headquarters. That was the rallying point for the demonstration. I was wearing a long red tie, which hung down to my navel, its bottom part flared. I looked ridiculous in my mousy gray suit with faint stripes and pocket flaps. As a free bonus, I had gotten a real men’s cloth handkerchief with blue edging and a little comb to put in the inside pocket of the jacket. I must admit that they had thought of everything down to the last detail. If they win, I said to myself, we’ll have to restart production of handkerchiefs and little combs. And the whole haberdashery of that era. “Haberdashery,” when’s the last time I thought of that word? When things come back, language comes back as well. My shoes were shined, my socks were dark green for some strange reason, probably taken from some military warehouse. I had brought my flat cap just in case, but for now I was holding it in my hands.
Despite the early hour the square had begun filling up with early-rising Soc sympathizers. Everywhere the once-ubiquitous “comrade” could be heard . . . At first I thought that there was still something facetious in the use of that appellation, which my ears had long forgotten, but I don’t think there was. I remembered how, since my father’s first name is Gospodin, which in Bulgarian means “Mister,” and his last name is Gospodinov on top of that, when some acquaintance called out to him on the street “Heeeey, Mister, Missssster!” everybody would freeze. Who are you calling “mister,” comrade? some watchful citizen would butt in. Yet “Comrade Mister” sounded equally ridiculous.
An old man with a white beard had sat down to rest on the stones in front of the Archaeological Museum and was now struggling to get back up, without success. He was clutching his little flag in one hand and his cane in the other, and he didn’t think to set down his flag so as to steady himself. I went over to help him.
Are you here for the demonstration, grandfather?
Indeedy, for the demonstration, sonny boy. I’m from the Fatherland Front, been a member all my life. Back in those days they whooped me good lotsa times, ’cause I was always pokin’ my nose where I shouldn’t, but I still wanna go back then if need be. ’Cause that there socialism might’ve been a load of hooey, but at least I got its number, it’d fool me once, but I’d fool it twice, we always found a way to work things out, but in these here new times, they rob you blind just by lookin’ at you. Run you right over like a freight train, fyooom and that’s it, you’re standin’ there stripped down to your underpants and no one gives a hoot.
He brushed the dust off his trousers and looked at me, his eyes narrowed. Well, now, if we turn back time, will I get all them years back, too? They can whoop me all they like, as long as I’m twenny-somethin’ again.