[Monday, December 30, 2013]

Mila searched for the poet day after day. She went to all the Sofia police precincts, stood for hours outside the prison, visited the civil prosecutor and the field court prosecutor. Nothing. Public Safety told her they had no copy of an arrest warrant issued in the poet’s name, the prison said he’d never been brought there. It was the same thing everywhere she went. When she heard detainees were held at the First Infantry Regiment—she immediately went down to the First Infantry Regiment. She went straight to any place rumored to be housing arrestees. She’d been to the Fourth Artillery Regiment, and inside the Military Academy—everywhere! After which she returned to the throngs of people by Lavov Most.

Heavy clouds hung over Sofia, and Mila didn’t think they were clouds at all, but the souls of all those who’d been gathered up and disappeared that spring, summoned to silently keep vigil somewhere high up—at the threshold of heaven and earth.

One Thursday she overheard that the Fotinov School was also full of arrestees. She went there too—rushing off along the river and turning down the boulevard. The school was occupied by an army, but an officer came out from his post to speak to her, and when he heard whom it was she was searching for, he immediately let her go inside to the gymnasium to see with her own eyes they had no such person. She was shocked by what she saw inside, but not by the sight of a hundred or so men meandering about between the wall bars, gym horses, and climbing ropes. The astonishment came from the men’s complete lack of consternation. Quite the contrary, right as she walked inside the stale-aired gym hall that reeked of rot, sweat, horseradish, and goat shit, the detainees were falling over with laughter as three hapless men—arrestees like all the rest—had pushed three tables together, climbed on top, and were now performing a satirical skit and singing a dirty song.

So repulsed was she at the men’s bubonic cackling, she never stepped foot inside that school again.

But she did keep visiting all of the police precincts and heard the same thing everywhere, “Geo Milev has never been here!” One day, amid the soundless crowd outside the Police Directorate, she spotted Viola Karavelova: she was dressed head to toe in white and had pinned to her skirt a photograph of her husband, Joseph Herbst. The women stood so close to one another that Mila could see into Viola’s eyes—blue, piercing, and vacant. Mila at once thought this is it—our lives were sundered and this is what remains. Their men were never friends, their paths had not crossed, and they did not share the same acquaintances, but now the two women would wander the city together, looking for them. Together. The same places, the same reason; they’d wade through the same mud beneath the same May rain, united by a common nightmare from which there was no waking.

Her face darkened with each barren day, her exquisite femininity betook itself into the black hole of unease. It was as though all those old premonitions of woe now befell them and she chased them away, and just when she felt like she might keel over and give in to the desperation and her world reached the brink of collapse, she would get up and take off to yet another place someone tipped her off about, with even more determination.

[Tuesday, December 31 2013]

The very next day after they took the poet away, Mila’s brother-in-law, the poet’s little brother, Boris, immediately arrived in Sofia from Stara Zagora via the overnight train. He jumped into the first available taxi or phaeton—and went straight to Nachev. He wasted no time going to the Police Directorate, he went straight to the man’s house, because the two of them went far back, they’d served in the same regiment together . . . It wasn’t easy to get to Nachev in those times, it was a known fact the communists had issued him a death sentence and hence the man was fiercely guarded. But they let Boris in. Only after that did Boris go to his sister-in-law’s house on Maria Louisa, but he had a bewildered air. He told Mila everything would be fine, Nachev had given his word he would look into it and take care of it—they’d been friends, after all—but Mila felt as though he was afraid to look her in the eye. She had reason to be anxious: Nachev had promised to call first thing the following day, but he did not—perhaps because the following day had been a Sunday, Boris thought. But on Monday, concerned the man may have forgotten what they’d talked about in the diabolical chaos following the attacks, Boris again up and went into the Police Directorate. He did not return until the afternoon; even more disconcerted, he now looked afraid, plain and simple, and his eyes were red. Mila and Boris sat down and wrote the first official complaint letter, and Boris departed for Stara Zagora the next day.

It was already the nineteenth of May. On the twentieth, a Wednesday, Mila’s father-in-law, Milyo, arrived in Sofia. He came into town but got a hotel; he didn’t stay at their house on Maria Louisa. Mila knew the man did not care for her, but her getting angry at him about it now was futile. Her father-in-law went around and did what he did, and on the twenty-fourth of May he caught the train back to Stara Zagora, because someone had told him the poet was in the Sliven prison or maybe in the Haskovo one, perhaps he’d be well advised to go check on it in person. He stopped by Mila’s long enough to embrace Leda and let Bistra play with his mustache, gave them both a couple of leva bills and a kiss, and left, and Mila continued to make the rounds at all the police precincts, lodging yet more complaints.

One Thursday, she remembered her sister-in-law had had the idea to get all the writers together to make a stand on the poet’s behalf. Mila immediately up and went to the imposing building of the Central Bulgarian Cooperative Bank, situated on the corner of Bazov and Rakovski Streets—right behind the National Theater. She knew the writer Konstantinov worked there as a legal adviser, in addition to being the secretary of the Writers’ Union, and he was a close, trusted associate of the new union chair, Vlaykov, and had, for that reason, combined one with the other, and in addition served as editor of Vlaykov’s magazine Democratic Review. He also signed everything as Dushechka. Mila found him and informed him what had brought her to him, all of which he was very surprised to hear! He shuddered and yelled that this was a grotesque disgrace, that he would at once inform the chairman, who, as a writer, lover of mankind, and a political man, would by all means be able to do something. Mila got the chills when she heard that a writer, the secretary of the writers, no less, was hearing about her husband the poet’s disappearance from her, but she let it go. Afterward, she could barely wait for Monday to come—right after the twenty-fourth of May, the day of the Saints Cyril and Methodius, the day celebrating the written word, which that year fell on a Sunday—so she could go back to the bank. Dushechka wasn’t in on that particular day, and the policeman at the entrance with the caryatids and the heavy, wrought iron gate, sent her to the Writers’ Union—not too far, at 129 Rakovski Street. She went there, too, and Konstantinov told her mister chairman had gone to the director of the police, but he was told the writer Geo Milev had neither been arrested, nor detained there, and that they had no idea as to his whereabouts.

“And as I am sure you understand,” he added, “Todor Vlaykov is not the type of man people lie to!”

Mila had begun to despair at that point, and she humbly insisted that they check once more. Konstantinov promised to do so, but who knows why he still avoided her gaze, and Mila did not return, not to the bank behind the National Theater, and not to 129 Rakovski . . .

[Wednesday, January 1, 2014, 12:17am]

On the last day of May, nineteen twenty-five, a Saturday, when she again returned to the Police Directorate building in the late afternoon, she was taken to someone called Nikola Geshev in the brigand criminal pursuit office. The office of those in charge of the pursuit was at the bottom of the dark stairwell—somewhere far down the basement labyrinths, where dark men roamed and where the stench of the detainees mixed with the heavy aroma of opium. This same Nikola Geshev told her he knew her husband personally and greatly admired him, but he had not seen him as of late . . .

“Geo Milev was never here, madame!” he said. “Honest! Do you think I wouldn’t know had he come here? I would never lie to you!”

His demeanor appeared convincing, but she saw the man was hiding something.

[Tuesday, January 7, 2014]

She got up and left without saying goodbye. She headed down Maria Louisa Boulevard, where the red trams rattled down toward the Lions’ Bridge and back up the hill toward the gutted remains of the St. Nedelya Church, where soldiers with helmets, armed as if for war, strode tensely; she went inside her apartment building, across from the mosque—with the drug store at one end, and the boza fabric Radomir on the other, the post office on the first floor, and the import-export bank on the second, and the Bulgarian offices of Longine on the third. She listlessly climbed the seventy-seven steps to their then home, walked in, and asked her sister-in-law if she could watch the kids for just a little while longer. Maria hiccupped through her sobs and nodded, and Mila went inside the space, curtained off by an ebullient drape, which the poet and his wife considered their matrimonial bedroom. She lay down on the bed and before she could even think about how exhausted she was, she fell asleep and began to dream how

[Friday, January 10, 2014]

a snow-covered wilderness crawled with an endless procession of people clad in black. The line of people was so long that when, one day, those in front overheard the people farthest in back, crazed with hunger, had eaten a person, they had no way of knowing for sure—if they were to send someone all the way back to find out, he’d never catch up with them again . . . And they couldn’t possibly stop, either, for anyone who stopped fell and died on the spot: the road was blackened by hundreds of corpses that the eternal cold gave no chance of decaying. Every three days those up front lit fires, warming the people in back as they passed . . .

A long time ago, a man had told them about a faraway land, so far it was all the way at the other end of the world. The Promised Land. There, everyone would find a house, there would be work for the men, rose bushes, colorful flower beds, and vegetable gardens for the women to tend to, milk and ice cream for the children, wooden toy guns and merry-go-rounds for the boys, and for the girls—dolls and mirrors with pictures of actors on the backs . . . The people repeated this like a prayer chant. That same man had also told them not to fear the long road ahead—there was nothing to fear. They would cross many lands, he told them, and they would meet good people. And the good people would hire them for small jobs—to dig a well, to mix mud and straw for mudbrick, to erect a stone wall, to dig up beets and potatoes—and they would get by until they got to the Promised Land, and when they got there . . .

But they came across no good people who wanted to give them jobs. The bitter cold was permeating and no one dug wells or mixed mud and straw; the houses were made of red and black stone, the stone walls had already been erected in another time, and there were no potatoes or beets to speak of. The locals peered darkly through the narrow embrasures of their northern windows, and none came out to offer bread or cured meat to the travelers.

True, this had taken the people by surprise, but they kept on walking . . .

In the fourth year, when the glimmer of the Promised Land appeared on the horizon, the people spotted a somber horseman riding toward them. They stopped him and asked him whether he was coming from the Promised Land. He answered that yes, that’s where he came from.

“Is it far now to the Promised Land? And,” they went on, anxiously, “is there work waiting for the men, flower gardens for the women, and milk and seesaws for the children?”

The man gave them a long look.

“Nonsense.”

The people grew anxious and began to fret, what did he mean, nonsense, but the stranger repeated:

“Nonsense! Flower gardens, seesaws . . . complete nonsense.”

Frightened, they laid into him, shouting at him that he had no idea what he was saying.

“How dare you call that nonsense,” they yelled furiously, “when a man told us about the Promised Land many years ago! He said there would be a house for everyone and work for the men, and rose bushes and flower beds for the women, and vegetable gardens they would tend to while the men were at work, milk and ice cream for the children, wooden toy guns and merry-go-rounds for the boys, dolls and little mirrors with the pictures of actors on the backs for the girls . . . We trusted him, that’s why we set off in search of the Promised Land. He told us to!”

“He told you to. So what?” the horseman grunted. “He told you a fairy tale and forgot to mention it was just a story!”

[Wednesday, January 29, 2014]

[The snow is mixed with rain—exactly like in Chamonix in January, nineteen twenty-four. Then as now, the rain mushed the snow, and when the savage cold set in, it turned into a hellish ice slick.]

“That it was . . . what?” the people gasped.

“A fairy tale! Don’t you know what a fairy tale is? The man wrote a story, read it to you in a church, and you went and believed him. Now you’re dragging around like meanderers without kin, you yellow, emaciated tatterdemalions . . .”

He then dug into his horse with the gleaming spurs of a fallen angel and galloped in the direction from which they all came, past the entire train of people wrapped in black tatters, ragged blankets, and bedraggled scarves, who’d yet to realize they’d been duped.