WANDERERS

WANDERERS

The van stopped, pushing a whirlwind of dust in front of the big gate. The gate was opened by a servant who only greeted the driver. The van pulled in and accelerated through a side street and stopped directly between two barracks.

There were dozens of men and women in the yard aimlessly walking about. They were wearing diverse outfits, Russian, Polish, Czech, Hungarian… When they saw the newcomers arrive, most of them ran towards the vehicle. Those who remained behind seemed to be arguing about something… they were sitting down on the pavement arguing about the Hungarian national development in the Carpathian Region under Romanian control. The caretaker of the shelter, with a bundle of keys in hand, stood at entrance number three and waited. The newcomers got off the van and picked up their suitcases and various bags. A man, skillfully holding a piece of paper in his teeth, wearing an Asiatic overcoat and a lush Russian “forashka”, led the way walking in military steps. He was followed by two women and a child. The driver turned the van around and left while winking at the child. The only sound made in the corridor was that of the caretaker’s footsteps. He wore heavy shoes. The caretaker handed them the key to room number thirteen; an asymmetric room with five beds, a sink and a mirror.

When the caretaker figured that Dobrin Suvogorski was the head of the family, he asked him to sign the register and take charge of the room. He also showed him the latrines and the dining room and informed him of the times meals were served according to the shelter schedule. When the caretaker left everyone sat wherever they wanted. The beds rattled and crackled. One bed was left empty.

Before sitting down Rumena Suvogorska examined the room, looking at the stained sheets on her bed, stained with oil drops. Every corner of the sheets and every pillow was stamped with the administration’s stamp. The floor boards were smeared with black burned oil. The faucet was dripping. A coat hanger hung on the door. There was a large speaker above the door, slightly tilted, through which soft music was playing. Rumena glanced at the

ceiling and stared at the light. It was a weak light. She cynically grinned and looked at Dobrin.

“The shelters are the same everywhere! For ten years we have been wandering from one shelter to another... someone elses sheets, abused beds, dirty pillows and shared latrines. How long do I have to smell the stench of someone elses urine?” she asked Dobrin.

“How much longer do I have to wait at the door of a collective toilet? How many more times do I have to crouch on a stinking toilet? How many more times do I have to listen to strange men urinating in the stall next to me…?” she added.

She then looked down and, with a sad look on her face, said: “My child stinks of disinfectant, chorine and DDT…” she then angrily stormed off the bed and went to the mirror hanging over the sink and began to comb her hair:

“I feed him (her son) with common spoons that other people have eaten with… who knows what kind of diseases they had… who knows what kind of idiots they were… Look at him!” she said pointing at her son while looking at Dobrin. “He looks like an agitator… a propagandist. Even his limbs lost symmetry. He doesn’t know how to play… all he does is hang around us… us, the good for nothing… He has learned to eavesdrop and confidentially whisper… ‘only to you...’ like he is some sort of illegal alien. And what can I say about the ten years I have been ogled by senile old men? Sometimes full of malice because they have become powerless…” she let out an ironic laugh then placed her long hair over Dobrin’s shoulder and reminded him of how much she hated these shelters. She said: “Applications… stamps… statements… proof... I have ten different baptismal dates. Which one is the real one!?” she said and laughed out loud. “I used an alias at the first shelter they took us in. In the others I only provided wrong dates…”

Dobrin turned around and said: “Why do you want to upset me so much?

I know there are two-faced people out there; one for the women and the other for other people. It is not my fault the revolution created

people like that. I know that women, even now, are not made to be understood but to be loved my dear dove…!”

Her mother Petra looked at Rumena, still combing her hair in front of the mirror, came closer, tenderly stroked her face and said:

“My dear Rumena, although you have gone through a lot of pain, you still have a beautiful character…”

Petra has lived with Rumena in five different shelters. Rumena, seeming like she was uplifted a little, turned to her mother and, in a childish like voice, said:

“Oh, mommy, mommy! If only Dobrin had such love for me, like he boasted when he married me, I would not have the time to comb my hair in front of this mirror.”

Rumena then turned, looked at herself in the mirror and said: “Hmm, where is my power… without a male revolutionary with self-importance? This is what happens when they come to power, they become refined egoists. Mother! When a woman is no longer desired she needs to do everything… except cry. Am I not the woman of a revolutionary…? He knows enough to convince me that any pomp will spoil a man. This is how revolutionaries are treated…” she said, shook her head and lost her comb which tumbled to the ground. Dobrin kept quiet and to himself. He did not listen to anyone let alone to his wife… and he did not participate in any conversation… the less people knew about him the better. But he did feel guilty for all the failures. Now, listening to Rumena ramble on, he felt he had to say something.

“May I say that you did have a choice; you had a choice to choose your husband…” he said. Rumena, seemingly eager, immediately responded: “Yes, I chose you because you were handsome and a noble man and occupied a good position in society. I wanted to be the wife of such a man. And now I have the right to be happy and respected for my position in society next to you. And as you say ‘The truth will win’. But please be reminded that lies and slander can revisit us here again, my good Dobrin! You my good Dobrin spent eight years in the camps.

You see, our lives have been one relentless struggle, wandering around and lost in space…” she said and then angrily turned the handle on the tap that was constantly dripping. Then, with an apparent grimace of desperation on her face, she shook her hand and said:

“Now we expect to spend our time and lives in shelters and camps… and there are many of them… Do you remember? Elbasan, Bureli, Warsaw, Wroclaw, Zgorzelets, Liublianka, Butirka, Lefortovo, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Varkuta, Alma - Ata, Tashkent, Craiova and what next? For us justice is delayed… I just want to say I have this feeling…” she concluded.

Dobrin wanted to say something strong but decided not to. He turned to her and said: “It would appear that you were expeting to be liberated by some nobleman… But so what if I am a common man? I want to be free from everyone’s mercy. Mercy for me is humiliation. A man should not be granted mercy. If he does he will feel like a prisoner...” he said.

“Do you think that you being welcomed depends on you exclusively, my dear Dobrin? No it does not depend on you… it depends on others… and you should very well know that,” she said.

“I was a soldier and I served my people. And if now it is still too early to be recognized, then what…? But you, with your great pessimism, know once and for all that you cannot make me lose hope. But I really can’t find any other way for you to love me more. You can see that I am nothing now... Were your expectations of me so unrealistic that you now lost faith in me…?” he said and went to bed. He then placed his hat over his eyes and, through his teeth, muttered: “Enough!”

“My dear daughter, I had performed my duties with your father. You are not like me... When I suffered for your father I was happy. Now, when I return to Lerin I will tell him that. Your father spent a long part of his life in the Greek island prison camps. What should I be demanding of him? And know that a man looks further down the road…” said her mother Petra Prstenarova.

“Mother, I did this for ten years… in these shelters. They put me on duty… it was demanded of me. Now I want to be a woman! It is no longer my duty to do what others demand of me!” she replied.

Rumena nervously settled down. She pulled items out of her suitcases, readjusted them and put them back again. Once in a while she looked up, casting a glance at the walls, looking at the various scratches, patterns, signatures left behind by others who came and went. She then began to mumble: “Oh, it doesn’t matter where I look; where I cast my eyes… my thoughts… nowhere do I find happiness… Everything stinks, everything is rotten, and everything is grey and old...

Something is suppressing my feelings. I feel like I am full of apathy, deep and dangerous apathy leading me to despair. I feel empty in my heart. I am a woman and need time to live in hope because I am the wife of a revolutionary… a worthless revolutionary…

Shelters! They are everywhere. They all look and smell the same… the caretaker… the clinking of dishes… the music… the marches… My son is always listening to all of it and has lost his right mind... He calls the marches the God of opus! Am I mad for speaking like this? My son was unfortunately born in all this. And this is what he wants now...”

Rumena went closer to the window, glanced over the bed and pulled out the notebook in which Dobrin had written various notes. She then began to read:

“The Slovenians left us on dead guard and we waited thrown into oblivion, even before Samoila, we lived in the crick of time which excretes malice...”

Vicho, 1947.

Rumena flipped over several pages and began to read again: “They say we look like mummies wrapped during the Bronze Age...”

“Well, what can I say Dobrin?!” she sighed and stared out the window somewhere far away. “That’s my poet!” she added and fell on her bed overcome by laughter. They all woke up listening to her laughing hysterically and yelling out loud: “Hey, poet of mine!”

She then kept looking at them lying in their beds and said: “Now we really look like mummies...”

Dobrin rubbed his eyes and humbly said: “I was having a strange dream. Do you want me to tell you about it?”

Rumena, looking at him indifferently, said:

“You still idealize some things, don’t you? You have the right to, we live in hope. So, there is still something to dream about eh... they say that hope is the second soul. Okay then, tell us about your latest dream…”

Dobrin felt uncomfortable in the silence that followed.

“You think I idealize things? Hmm…” he said with a guilty tone of voice.

“You should know that he who loves his homeland passionately is very sensitive about what belongs to him, is excitable by insults, but is elated and proud of what he supports!” he added.

Rumena looked down at him sideways and said: “Hey, my Dobrin… what can I say…” and waited for him to tell her about his dream. Dobrin in the meantime, red in the face, lowered his eyes and looked down at the ground. He looked angry and did not want to say anything. It seemed like his throat was constricted with anger. So instead of talking about his dream, Dobrin waited for a moment until he calmed down and, with a sad tone of voice, as much as he could make himself sound sad given the circumstances, asked her:

“Did I ever hate your mother? And why would I hate your mother? Yes, I happened to hate my own birth mother...” Everyone turned their eyes towards Dobrin and looked at him, waiting to hear what else he had to say.

“When I was a student I hated my mother for not being able to speak Greek. I hated her until I finished high school. This is how much my Greek teacher had brainwashed me. When he said ‘these natives here are of barbaric origin’, I felt humiliated because I was born of such parents. But at the completion of my studies, in Solun, I felt very guilty down to my soul, a guilt I carry with me to this day,” he said and paused for a moment.

Everyone watched him with interest.

“But I said I was going to tell you about my dream. I dreamt I was giving a lecture on the Macedonian National Question in Lerin. There were many people in the audience. I got much applause and all the older people ran up to me and kissed me. At that point I felt like I was reborn… but I felt ashamed in front of my mother and father. Within me I still carried the guilt from my high school days when that someone whom I respected and trusted poisoned my blood and wanted to uproot me from my bloodline…This is how my dream went. And now in the summer of 1949, in the glare of the great military fire, I, along with others, was accused of being a spy and a traitor to the revolution. This was done to me for the second time; this time by the Greek communist party leadership. The first time this was done to me, it was done by the Greek government regime; that time I was accused of awakening the Macedonian masses…”

Rumena looked at him strangely and said: “Well, you dreamt of something you shouldn’t have…” and began to laugh. Then suddenly there was a loud voice coming from the speaker:

“Attention! Attention! Dobrin Suvogorski please report to investigator Strogov in pavilion one, room number two.”

The announcement was repeated several times. Rumena, listening carefully, stopped laughing. Then when the announcement was over she waved her hand in front the mirror like it was no concern of hers. She then picked up a pencil and began to write things on the walls, different things including slogans she had heard during the

revolution and in the shelters. Her mother, in the meantime, repeated the announcement several times, whispering it to herself.

Everyone went silent. The only noise heard were the caretaker’s footsteps outside in the hall coming towards them.

* * *

“They gave us lunch,” said Rumena excitedly to Dobrin. Dobrin had spent the entire day with Strogov. He looked pale.

“What’s wrong Dobrin? Here too they opened a file on you? What did he say?” she asked.

He said: “These are the rules... We can’t make claims because we have no evidence, but we think maybe you were re-educated ... we think that you came here as a Russian spy...” that’s what Strogov said, explained Dobrin looking at her with a heavy heart and then said: “Oh, God of mine, this sentence has no end… How ironic! For us, who they now call ‘Aegeans’, there is no end as to how long they will be judging us!”

Idrizovo Prison in the 1960’s.