of those adolescent feelings. Thinking back on Boris too many times has buried him with rememberings, and turned him into a shining icon that glides unblinking through the past without smell or voice.
There is one event he can still call to mind. He was sixteen, perhaps, when the two of them were invited by other men to a foray into the brothels of Serdika. Ulrich had never been with a woman before, and was terrified; but he could not find an excuse that would pass in public, and he found himself carried along against his will to the streets of pacing men where whores beckoned from the windows. Once inside, a cudgel in his chest, there were women stacked up on the stairs, smoking and talking, their breasts peeking out, and Boris, pointing, said, ‘You like the one in green?’
Ulrich was startled by his friend’s self-possession, but the woman had already responded to the signal and led them away into a corridor with gold-framed mirrors, her pale behind clearly visible through her robe, and Boris went in ahead. Ulrich sat in the armchair outside, wretched at his own uselessness. The curtain over the doorway was inadequate to its function, and he could see the whole room through the chink, where his friend hopped on one foot then the other to pull off his boots. The woman sat on the bed, watching him coolly and removing her gown, while Boris threw off his clothes. He stood naked in the lamplight, his penis tall, and the woman pulled him close. Boris lifted her up and fell with her fully on the bed, where he kissed the breasts she offered and moaned over them and suddenly, so expertly, entered her! And there was a cold burn in Ulrich’s heart at the realisation that Boris had done this before without telling him. He stood up and ran from the brothel, not stopping till he reached home, and the refuge of his laboratory.
Perhaps that is the last memory, in fact, that Ulrich has retained from his garden laboratory, for it must have been immediately afterwards that the house on Dondukov Boulevard was sold. After it no longer belonged to his family, he used to walk past it every day on his way to school. It was later destroyed in the bombings, and now the site is occupied by a car showroom.
5
THE FAMILY MOVED INTO A HOUSE on Tsar Simeon Street. It was much smaller than the previous one, and built in the old style with clay and straw. It shared a courtyard at the back with several other houses.
A girl lived in one of these houses, whose name was Tatiana. After dinner, she used to take a lamp up to her bedroom so she could read novels, and Ulrich liked to sit at the top of the steps outside his house watching her. She spread out in a chair with her bare feet up on the windowsill, and, during the long hours when she read, Ulrich could follow the unfolding of the story in the splaying and clenching of her toes.
He decided he would make a photograph of her sitting there. He discovered the principles of glass-plate negatives, and he built a pinhole camera out of wood, sealed at the joins with tar. On one visit to Boris’s house he made an excuse to go up to the laboratory alone, and, with beating heart, he sought out the bottle of silver nitrate and purloined enough for his secret project. He knew it was wrong, but he would neither compromise his experiment nor make it public.
One evening, he set his camera up on the steps. He estimated an exposure of twenty minutes in that darkness, and he waited for Tatiana to become comfortable in her position before uncovering the tiny hole. But instead, to his alarm, she got up from her seat and came to the window, calling out to him,
‘Why do you always sit there watching me?’
Ulrich was paralysed and could not reply.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I’m coming down.’
He waited for her to retreat into the house before snatching up his camera and running inside.
‘What is the matter?’ his mother asked darkly, and Ulrich could see her suspicions were aroused. He shut himself up in his room.
Later on he tried to make a print from his negative. But there was hardly any exposure, and only Tatiana’s lamp showed up, an almost indiscernible smudge in the night.
One night, when Ulrich was approaching his eighteenth birthday, Boris came to visit. Ulrich’s mother opened the door, and embraced him effusively. Boris was now fully a head taller than her. He wore his tie loose, like an artist, and there were dark circles under his eyes. Though it was quite dry, he carried an umbrella: it was his latest affectation, and he took it with him everywhere.
‘You know our house is always open to you. Just because Ulrich is going away, you mustn’t stop coming to see us. Come for dinner whenever you want. You’re part of our family. You know how proud we are of you.’
Boris smiled at her, assenting, and murmured a greeting to Ulrich’s father, who was staring in his armchair.
‘Ulrich is out in the courtyard,’ said Elizaveta. ‘He doesn’t like to sit with us in the evenings any more.’
Boris went out of the back door and climbed up to where Ulrich was perched on the steps.
‘So are you ready to leave?’ he asked stiffly. They had recently got into an argument over Ulrich’s departure, and had not spoken since. Down below, four young boys were kicking a small rubber ball around.
‘I still have another week.’
‘I suppose so.’
Boris offered a cigarette. Ulrich shook his head, and Boris lit one himself. He tried to lighten Ulrich’s mood:
‘When you come back, can you bring a chorus girl from the Admiralspalast? That can be your gift to me. I met a trumpet player who told me Berlin girls are like a more evolved species. They do things that Bulgarian girls won’t be able to imagine for centuries.’
Ulrich said nothing. Sometimes Boris irritated him. The boys downstairs shrieked in dispute over a goal.
Boris sighed smokily. He said,
‘What are you going to do in Berlin? Day to day.’
‘I’ll study. Do my experiments. I’ll go to lectures by Fritz Haber and Walther Nernst. I’ll live and breathe chemistry. I want nothing else.’
‘I still don’t understand why you couldn’t stay here and study.’
‘I’ve already told you: there’s no chemistry in Sofia. If you want to learn chemistry you have to go to Germany. They invented chemistry, and they lead the world.’
‘They lead the world with oppression. Their chemical companies are great tentacled monsters, exploiting the poor of all nations, and making fuel for wars.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. German chemical companies are saving lives every day with their new cures and treatments.’
‘I know Bayer invented mustard gas. Is that the kind of cure you mean?’
‘Why can’t you see the good in anything?’ exclaimed Ulrich. ‘A great new age is being born through chemistry. Polymers. That’s what they’ve discovered in Berlin: long carbon molecules they can use to make furniture, utensils and houses. It is all completely new, and society will be better for it. One day you’ll understand.’
Their arguments were often like this. They were still young, and they spoke sententiously, reproducing opinions they had read or heard.
Boris was watching the sport in the courtyard, his long hair over his eyes, his cigarette burned down to his lips. He had his hand tucked in his belt, as he often did. He said nothing to Ulrich’s outburst. He wanted to tell a story.
‘Last night I went with Georgi to see this Yiddish theatre troupe from Prague. The story was absurd: people were beheaded and shot and set on fire, there were love affairs, and a scene with Lenin and Mussolini which had us shrieking on the floor. The female characters were played by men with enormous lipstick but there was one woman in the troupe, a beautiful Jewess, and the climax of the play comes when she is taking a bath in red wine: she’s dragged naked from her bathtub and viciously raped by a group of marauders. But this Jewess was a magnificent