EVERYONE is unfailingly polite: the starched duty officer who escorts him up the marble stairs, the thin aide with protruding eyes who ushers him into the formal room, the Minister himself who rises when he hears the soft footfalls on the thick carpet.
“Ah, I was expecting you. Can I offer you a coffee” — the Racer shakes his head — “tea then, or something stronger, a vodka, a whiskey perhaps?”
Again the Racer refuses, and the Minister dismisses the aide with the back of his hand and sits down.
“About the Flag Holder: naturally there can be no question of a state funeral.”
The Racer shifts uncomfortably in his chair, aware of the black armband on the sleeve of his jacket. From the outer office comes the sound of a typewriter.
“Naturally,” he says, and he is struck by the oddness, the inappro-priateness, of the word. Nothing that has happened has been natural.
“You are authorized to bury him privately in” — the Minister lowers his eyes, but not his head, to the single sheet of paper before him and names an obscure cemetery in a workers’ district of Sofia. He glances at his male secretary, who inclines his head; he has noted the order in the notebook open on his lap.
A functionary comes in and lavs a dossier on the small gilt-edged antique table that serves the Minister as a desk. A prewar telephone is on one side, a porcelain inkwell on the other. The Minister sits with his back to an open window. The curtains are drawn, and billow inward every now and then when a breeze catches them. The Minister plucks the pen from the porcelain inkwell and scratches his initials in the upper-right-hand corner of the dossier. The functionary withdraws the dossier and leaves without taking notice of the Racer, who sits on an antique chair across the table from the Minister.
“Above all,” the Minister is saying, “the cortege must be — how to phrase it? — it must be discreet. Surely you catch my meaning?”
“What are you trying to hide? Thousands of people saw the suicide — “
“There was a suicide, no one disputes the point,” the Minister agrees quickly. He waves absently with his hand toward the secretary, who closes his notebook and retreats to the far corner of the room, out of earshot.
“But who, I put it to you, committed suicide? Ah, I can see the question startles you. Surely you’ve heard the rumors?”
“Rumors?”
“Rumors, yes. One has it that the deceased was a retired engineer whose wife just died of cancer. There are others who say the man was one” — the Minister scans the paper for a name — “Korbaj, a Serbian who escaped last week from an insane asylum in Plovdiv. I myself was a stone’s throw from the victim, you will remember. Now I grant you there was a resemblance to the Flag Holder, but one can never be absolutely sure— “
“And the death of the Flag Holder— “
“Ah, yes, there is the death of the Flag Holder to account for. I must tell you that my people have already heard rumors concerning this too: that he got roaring drunk and cut his wrists after visiting his son, Georgi, who was mutilated by the Czech revisionists; that he shot himself in the mouth after he discovered he had terminal lung cancer— I might add that the name of a prominent doctor is associated with this story; that he gassed himself in the kitchen of his apartment when he caught his mistress in flagrante delicto with his best friend and her former lover, the bicycle racer Abadzhiev; that he choked on a chicken bone in Krimm — there are two waiters there who swear they saw him being carried out on a stretcher; that he died peacefully in his sleep of a coronary. It goes without saying, my people are passing on the rumors as they hear them. Within a few days, take it from someone with experience in such matters, nobody will know for certain what happened.”
“The Flag Holder immolated himself in protest against the suppression of Socialism in Czechoslovakia.”
“How very interesting you should mention that; it coincides almost exactly with one of the rumors in circulation. But I tell you frankly, nobody puts much stock in it. It is simply not like him. Oh, he liked to play his games with us now and then, but a death such as you describe would have been out of character.” The Minister scrapes back his c hair—for an instant he seems to step outside the role of Minister. “I am not without feelings,” he says quietly. “I knew him a long time. I was there, I actually saw him pick up the flag. I only regret …”
“What is it you regret?”
The Minister looks up; he is every inch the Minister again. “I regret that somewhere along the way he stopped being one of us.”
“Somewhere along the way you stopped being one of him.”
The Minister’s face tightens into a smile. “That’s the kind of thing he would have said. Are you thinking of playing his role?”
The telephone rings softly. The Minister lifts the receiver and listens, his eyes glued to the Racer’s; he seems to be seeing him in a new light.
“Tell him I’m on my way,” he says, “and have the car brought around to my private entrance.” He places the receiver back on its cradle.
The Minister rises; the interview is terminated. Tacho rises also, and the two men regard each other across the vast gulf of the small table.
“It seems to me,” Tacho declares, “that whatever you think of him, you must give a man his death — “
“Where national security is concerned, we give nothing.”
The Racer starts to leave, then turns back. “It is very difficult for me to think about what he did. But when I can make myself think about it, what I think is this: He … burned himself to death … so the world would know there was one person in the Communist world who detested with every fiber of his body the suppression of progressive forces in Czechoslovakia.”
“If that was his reason,” the Minister replies—they are both speaking very quietly — “more’s the pity, for the world will never know about it.”
“There is no way you can keep it in.”
“On the contrary, there is no way it can get out.”
The Racer spots them as he descends the marble staircase of the Central Committee building. One, in green socks, is reading the sports page of Narodna Mladej under a giant photograph of the Flag Holder leading the way into Sofia. The second, wearing a trench coat, is chatting with the duty officer at the check-in desk. The Racer tosses his visitor’s pass on the desk — he has a fleeting impression that the duty officer no longer regards him politely — and pushes through the door into the street. When he stops for the traffic light at the corner, Green Socks and Trench Coat are a dozen paces behind him.
The Racer swings aboard a trolley heading down Ignatiev toward the stadium, and hands two stodinki to the ticket taker. The old man deposits the coins in his worn leather pouch, pulls a ticket off the roll, punches it and hands it to Tacho. Green Socks and Trench Coat climb up behind the Racer and flash laminated identification cards at the old man, who hardly glances at them as he punches their tickets. The trolley jerks into motion.
“ ‘Bout time they switched to buses,” the man next to the Racer mutters conversationally, and he is insulted when Tacho makes no answer.
At the stadium, Tacho pauses before the entrance to the locker room. His racers are changing into their sweat suits.
“Eight days,” Tacho reminds them quietly, meaning there are only eight days until the big race. The racers usually respond with yelps and shouts. Today they are strangely silent, embarrassed almost.
At his office door, Tacho inserts his key in the lock. It takes a moment for him to realize that it doesn’t fit. He looks at the key. It is the right one. He tries again and turns away, puzzled. Green Socks is lounging at the far end of the tunnel that leads to the stadium. Tacho looks back at the lock. It gleams against the gray of the door. A new lock! The four riders file past the Racer, wheeling their ticking racing bicycles toward Green Socks and the stadium.
“We want you to know how sorry we are,” Tony murmurs as they pass. The others mutter agreement.
Thinking they mean the Flag Holder, Tacho nods his thanks. On a hunch, he asks:
“Sorry about what?”
“About you being suspended as coach and all,” replies Boris. “The Federation people came around this morning and kind of told us.”
“We’re gonna win,” vows Evan. “We’re gonna win, and we’re gonna let everyone know it was you that made us win. Isn’t that right, you guys?” The others nod in agreement.
“Sure you are,” Tacho tells them. “Sure you are.”
His eyes narrow with the first faint inkling of a crazy, wild dangerous idea.
The idea is still percolating when Tacho stops by the funeral parlor on his way back to the Flag Holder’s apartment. The chore is a painful one, but he must make sure all the arrangements are in order. The parlor occupies the ground floor and basement of a rundown, prewar house in a part of the city that used to be, but no longer is, fashionable. It is bracketed on one side by an appliance store full of Russian refrigerators and Polish gas heaters, on the other by a pastry shop with large peasant baskets full of loaves in the window.
The director of the funeral parlor, an extremely tall man by the name of Ivkov, wrings his hands as he talks to the Racer. He reminds Tacho of a doctor scrubbing up for an operation, and he wonders vaguely whether it is an occupational gesture or a tick.
“I’m very sorry to have to tell you this,” Ivkov is saying, washing away on his hands, “but our hearse is hors de combat.” He laughs nervously. “We have taken it upon ourselves to substitute an open pickup truck — draped for the occasion in black, to be sure, to be sure,” he adds quickly when he sees the expression on Tacho’s face.
“And the coffin?”
“The coffin has been attended to, but I’m desperately afraid the only thing available on such short notice is a simple pine box.” Again he laughs nervously. Tacho notices the black curtain at the far end of the room sway slightly — or is it his imagination? “You understand that nothing in the way of” — the director picks at his words as if they are morsels of distasteful food — “cosmetics is possible.”
“I understand.” Tacho stares at the curtain; it sways again, but there is no draft.
“I should tell you too, there is a problem with the funeral band,” Ivkov continues. “It has been requisitioned” — Ivkov clears his throat—”by the Commissariat of Public Parks to give a concert to old people.”
“Has that ever happened before?” Tacho inquires.
“It is very common, yes,” the director answers without conviction.
Abruptly Tacho turns to leave. Ivkov leaps ahead to open the door for him. “Concerning the note,” he says. He coughs discreetly and hands Tacho an itemized bill. Tacho glances at it — the total comes to one hundred forty-five leva — and hands it back.
“The Dwarf will settle with you.”
Ivkov actually bows. “We are at your disposition,” he says.
Tacho departs without closing the door behind him. He is afraid the closing of it will become an expression of his emotion, and it will come off its hinges.
The Racer intends to pack the Flag Holder’s personal effects in a carton and take them back to his apartment, but the door to the Jewish Centre is locked. A handwritten note taped to the inside of the glass so that it can be read on the outside says:
“Closed for repairs.”
As Tacho turns away, he almost bumps into the Scream Therapist. “I remember you,” the Scream Therapist insists. “You were at the Dwarf’s wedding.” He looks toward the door of the Jewish Centre.
“It’s closed,” Tacho tells him. “For repairs. There’s a note in the window.”
“Damn,” the Scream Therapist says. “Say, I don’t mean to be crude or anything, but you wouldn’t happen to know the disposition of the Flag Holder’s apartment.” He lowers his voice. “I’ve pretty much decided to stay in Bulgaria, and I’m going to need a roof over my head. I’d be willing to pay a pretty penny if I could get the inside track on it. Say, where are you going. Hey, come back.”
Valyo, the Dwarf and Popov are in the living room of the Flag Holder’s apartment when the Racer arrives — Valyo and Popov on the worn sofa, Bazdéev pacing back and forth in front of them with giant dwarf steps. Kovel is drinking beer at the kitchen table, reading in the Party newspaper about the new coach for Stambolij-ski, his favorite soccer team. Octobrina and the American girl are in the bedroom with the Rabbit. Tacho looks in for a moment. Melanie smiles sadly at him, and the Rabbit jumps from the bed to grab his hand.
“Tell me, you, how could he do this thing to me?” she pleads. “Tell me, for I am begging the answer. How is it he could do this thing to me?”
The Rabbit shivers and sinks into his arms, drained of energy, and he helps her back to the bed.
“He used to say he was a man without a mirror image or a shadow,” the Rabbit says. “You were there, Tacho. Tell me — did he cast a shadow when he …” She sobs, but the sobs are tearless, as if her ducts have gone dry.
“Take comfort, Elisabeta, he cast a shadow the length of the square — “ The Racer is unable to say more.
“Take comfort,” Octobrina tells her. Her voice is soft but strong; secret strengths are flowing through her like underground streams. “It was a thing ripe with hope — “
Elisabeta hardly hears her. “How is it he could do this thing to me?” she asks again. “The whole thing is beyond comprehension — “
Back in the living room, Tacho talks to the Dwarf near the window. Down the street he can see Green Socks and Trench Coat lounging against the window of a garden supply store. Over their heads, in giant red letters, appear the words “Chemical” and “Fertilizer.”
“There are problems,” Tacho says. He points out Green Socks and Trench Coat, and explains about the band and the hearse. The Dwarf nods his large head.
“I am organizing all,” he frowns. “Kovel. Dog” He starts for the door.
The Racer watches from the window as the Dwarf lifts Dog into Kovel’s taxi and climbs in behind him. As he turns back into the room, he remembers the Minister, cocksure, saying:
“There is no way it can get out.”
He must talk to the American girl.
“But I want to attend the funeral,” Melanie insists.
“This is just not possible,” Tacho tells her. “You must understand that everything here has changed.” He takes her by the shoulders. “Melanie, you must do as I tell you.”
She nods reluctantly. “Is it sure you’ll come?”
“If I don’t it’s because I’m arrested,” he promises. “Now you must remember everything I have told you.”
“I remember.”
“Good. When you get there, take a guide and ask many questions about the history and the architecture. Make notes of what he tells you. They must think you are a student.”
“What if they have seen us together? What if they won’t let me leave Sofia?”
“They have only just begun following me,” Tacho assures her. “They cannot know about you yet. Just walk out of the building as if you lived here. As long as you are not with one of us, they will leave you alone.”
“What will you do about Mister Dancho?”
“Yes, what can we do about our dear Dancho?” Octobrina echoes, joining the conversation.
“About Dancho,” Tacho admits heavily, “there is nothing that can be done.”