Velko Miloev
	THE POPLAR
	The courtyard reminded me of an enormous aquarium which had
been drained - it looked dismal and as if sealed water-tightly
between the houses. Withering grass, empty bottles scattered all
over them. Lonely castaways on the balconies probably entrusted
them with distress messages, but they had never sailed away,
someone had taken out the messages and had laughed at them. I
wonder who that could have been, since the doors of the dark
staircases leading into the courtyard had long ago been locked.
Torn newspapers from a long-faded time. The broken swing stood
painfully still beyond its point of equilibrium, as though swayed
by someone's careless hand - as if time had stopped at that very
moment, having realized that no one was ever coming back and that
that was the end. The rust had stiffened its joints in a flash,
because in this courtyard strange things had happened to time
from the moment that people had left it alone till the minute
when, in its desperate lapping among the yard walls, it had 
found numerous slits in the walls and had flown away from here
forever, leaving the yard looking like the bottom of an aquarium
covered with the dirty tracks of a life that had left for good.
	Or rather, this yard looked like an old mutilated porcelain
cup facing the sky. At the bottom there were dregs, decades deep,
everything had fallen down in it and slowly decomposed - all
sounds, the rumbling scream of jet-planes, the shadows of scared
birds, the scared words flung between balconies by scared men and
women, the gleams of faraway sunsets, accidentally reflected by
the upper-floor windows, red suns, golden gleams that had been
tossed between the windows. Sometimes one of them happened to
penetrate into the cool somberness of the kitchens but it was
chased out and away like a fly, like a dirty red rag, the door of
the balcony was closed with a slam and it went on its way again -
from one window to another, till the red sun and the golden
gleams  reached the bottom where everything settled, melted and
decayed. Thin layers of the reflected starry sky covered the hot
slime of summer afternoons. The depths of the dregs mixed what
was after with what had been before, and before, before the
moment when the fear behind the curtains finally found its
desperate justification. Sometimes, from some crazy window, the
turbulent muddy waters of electronic music gushed forth, the
roaring beat of the drums broke the frozen air into big pieces,
the piercing scream of the strings ground the big pieces into
thin powder, the music blended with the pieces of glass air and
then everything settled down again. Or some other time, from the
room with the balcony and the ever empty rocking chair, which
looked like no one had ever sat in it, one could hear the sobbing
sound of a piano that was long out of tune with loneliness, the
music oozing down in little streaks through the slit under the
door, and falling in crystal drops into the stagnant swamp of
silence in the yard, the destruction of the nearing end slowly
crept up along the grey houses, the thin sprouts of despair
crawled along the facades and twined round the iron rails of the
balconies. The rusty spots on the metal were the metastases of a
malignant degeneration of things in the cancerous air of human
absence. I wonder if it was then or only recently that the
cracked flower-pots had turned into urns for the mortal remains
of the doomed earth; the bare walls, the blind walls ceased to be
the eternal canvasses on which life drew silhouettes of birds and
shadows of clouds, and the residents' imagination added the
reflections of far-off mountains and still farther-off hopes for
the future. Now the only painter who drew on the blind walls was
destruction, the skin of the corpse houses cracked and came off,
and red wounds blossomed out underneath. Destruction had already
reached the roofs, it was hatching dead century-old eggs in the
birds' nests, it weakened the chimneys in an exasperating effort,
as if wanting to make them kneel down and pray to God for the
peace of their dead masters' souls; destruction spilled out of
the roofs, ran down along the tiles, dripped from the leaky
gutters, moaned in paper-thin drain-pipes on its way back down in
a depressing cycle. But most frightening of all were the dead
windows, black as a blind man's spectacles, for the corpse houses
had dozens of dead eyes, all wearing black glasses, or maybe the
windows were black as photographic plates that had imprinted the
horror of the last moment, that had become black with the
unbearable glare of neutron explosions.
	Only the poplar was alive.
	How the hell had it happened to appear here - in this yard,
in this town, in this world in which all poplars were dead, where
they ought to be dead. And yet it was here, in the most desolate
corner of the yard, between a dark facade and two bare blind
walls, as if it had hidden in the most secret place. I could see
it perfectly from the window of my room, exactly like the room I
was born in, and its presence in the yard was perhaps as
miraculous as my presence at this point of space or in this
dimension, or whatever you might call it, a world absolutely
identical to the world I came from, in all details but the most
important thing. It was dead. Dead and gone was that brief moment
when reason, having become its negation, had switched on the
uncontrollable machine of death and destruction. This world was
the reflection of ours in the convex mirrors of a sinister
wax-work exhibition, which was already open to all, but I was the
only one to have gone in, so far. I was locked in the sinister
stillness between the convex mirrors which reflected every little
detail of the house I was born in, and of the yard I had not been
able to roam in my childhood, and I had been forced to come to
know them afresh in the horrible contortion of a very close
opportunity. Hardly anyone could explain, nor did it matter much
to me, how this world had appeared, having given flesh to the
daily nightmare of my mankind, and yet it existed alongside ours,
merciless in its reality - like a monstrous omen. I have no idea
what you might call the dividing line between the two worlds,
whether you call it space or time, illusion or coincidence, but
to me, what I had gone through was an enormous lens which focused
here, now, the fear and the watchfulness of the billions, the
misgivings of my mankind. It could be that in its turbulent
history mankind had created some other worlds - hideous replicas
of ours in the moments when millions of people had been obsessed
with a single idea, with a single feeling, if such things had
really occurred before. Maybe these worlds also languished or
agonized each in its own suicidal epoch, maybe some of them had
managed to refute the fears of their unintentional creators, and
maybe they were happy worlds, but we had not yet found the way to
them, except to  this one, to the worst of all. Did the world I
had come to visit have a past? Had we created it the way I was
seeing it or had it been born out of the womb of fear long before
the day of the holocaust, and if it had been inhabited by people
then, by live people, my neighbors, my parents, me myself, had
the rocket explosion seemed long to them? Perhaps time had
stiffened with horror and then had run away with fear so fast
that the century of destruction had already passed, and finally,
gasping and beaten, it had again slowed down and stopped,
desperate with loneliness. Yes, time had been trapped in the
cobwebs of the empty rooms, in the springs of the run-down
clocks, but somewhere it continued to run and I had made up my
mind that if I wanted it to run into my world, I had to come
here, and if I didn't die of the misery of this courtyard, I had
to tell about everything I saw.
	I had to tell about everything.
	I had to tell about the poplar. It was a cry. It was a green
arrow pinned into the blind eye of the sky. It was a wonder of
life among the innumerable wonders of death around it. There were
no green leaves along its tall stem as far up as the third floor
of the buildings. Its dark cracked bark bore the marks of a
painful growth. Slender dry twigs like little soldiers had
perished in the cruel war with height. Then suddenly, having
reached the third floor and the sunlit space between two houses,
it had burst out. The green explosion had torn the stuffy air
apart, while green leaves, like little green flags, triumphed
over the impotence of the dead facades, a green youth in the
centennial senile sleep of the world, a green rocket dreaming of
its first flight. This was the poplar. And I could now understand
why it was here. In this world, a projection and creation of
fear, it was a projection and creation of hope. Its roots drew
the sap of life from the hope in my world, and that was
wonderful, because I thought - if it is here, green and alive,
then the worst has not yet occurred over there, there is still
there, life still goes on and I have something to work for.
	If I don't die of the misery of this courtyard. If I don't
die of the misery... But is it really possible to survive in the
death-fraught space, when every time you inhale your lungs burn
with the incandescent loneliness of this endless summer, with the
suffocating silence, and your hands get numb every time you touch
dead things; every touch is painful and charged with danger -
won't you get burnt from smoldering time, won't black spots
appear and stay on your skin from the things that have been
infected with destruction?
	I cannot leave this gloomy house, I am not allowed to. My
soul wanders like a ghost among the frozen things, their sharp
edges stalk it and catch fluffy white pieces of it, so do the
jutting-out nails, the mummified remnants of big indoor plants,
the coat-pegs in the corridors and in vain does my shivering soul
try to wrap around itself the burnt out rags hanging on them. I
feel cold, but the clothes I touch crumble, the doors in front of
me collapse and turn to dust, the dust haunts the threshold of
the room like a ghost, then it lowers to the floor with a rustle
which awakens other ghosts. Still drowsy with centennial sleep,
they slowly rise, casting furtive and startled glances around;
that one, for example, has lain on the couch on one side, its
arms around its own skeleton. Or this graceful ghost - wriggling
out of its silk rags which can no longer hide the indecent
nakedness of the  bones, it is a woman, she must have been
beautiful till the last moment, and maybe some time after that,
sitting in front of the darkened mirror and the dressing table
with the perfumes that have long ago lost their fragrance - what
a fine place to die. She must have been beautiful, I say to the
mirror which has gone gray with the boredom of reflecting the
centennial immobility of the room, but the next moment I regret
my carelessness because, having torn the fine net of dust,
hundreds of reflections rush in from the glass, new ghosts who
have once lived in, visited or just peeped into the room. I dash
out but there I see others who are lying in wait for me; alarmed
at my heavy footsteps, the ghosts silently move their lips and
yet what a horrible noise they make! I know, I know what they
want, each of them wants to have a little piece of my soul, a
little bit of my memory, where it could tell me about its happy
days, about its unhappy days, about the affairs it has gone
through or just apprehended, and where it could hear my story
about an untouched future...
	... Please, shut the door, son, I can feel the draught, I
was always cold once, and now it's a hundred years since anyone
has come around to shut the door. Just look, my clothes are all
rags and the window has been broken and it's a hundred years
since anyone has come to change it...
	... My name is Maria, I am sixteen, and this is my favorite
poem, there, in the open book on the table, I left it open on
purpose, because I knew that sometime someone must come here and
see that this was my favorite poem, only please don't forget that
my name is Maria, sixteen, this is what's written on the title
page - To Maria, on the occasion of her 16th Birthday! ...
	... The picture, please take away the picture. It's cruel,
it's saddening, it is just opposite my bed, I hung it there on
purpose and every morning the first thing I saw was her picture,
she was smiling and the day was wonderful, and now I am a
skeleton lying in my bed, and she can see what has become of me,
please take it away, I feel ashamed, how could one smile at a
skeleton, look how beautiful she is, remember her face, and take
away the picture...
	... Hey, boy, come here, let me tell you something, don't
you know who I am, well, well, how could you know, by the way,
everybody in the house and in the whole neighborhood knew me and
so did lots of other people as well, yes, indeed, my life was
interesting, look at this picture, I was thirty five then, it was
taken in Algeria, gosh, was it hot then, we simply roasted in the
sun, just like the other day, ha-ha... Oh! You do look
frightened. Please don't go, stay for five more minutes, don't
go, listen, that's great, isn't it! You sit here waiting for
years, for a hundred or a thousand years, you've no idea how
long, you wait for someone to come around so that you can tell
him everything, and when they finally appear, they've got no time
to spare...
	The leaves of the poplar are still green. This morning as
well.
	Yet I did not know whether they would be green in the
evening, when yet another endless day was over, the day on which
I would again not have time enough to listen to all the stories
of this house, and there are so many houses on this street, and
so many streets in this town, and so many towns in this world. It
would take more than a thousand years to listen to everybody, and
I was given no more than three months which I have to spend in
the dusty rooms and along the dusty corridors before I can leave.
Three months and only here, this had been the last cautious word
of science before I my mission here began, three months - it was
close to nothing  for the ghosts and too much for me, we had made
a mistake, one simply couldn't bear to live three whole months
here. I fell ill right on the third day of my stay.
	Take away the sun! For Christ's sake, take away the sun!
Hey, can't anybody hear me, take away the sun!
	Something has happened to time, something has happened to
the machines which transferred me here, or maybe something has
happened to my world, the most fatal thing; something has
happened since the moment I fell ill. By my wrist-watch it is
seven days since then and in seven days the sun hasn't moved an
inch, it is still there, hanging low above the opposite roof.
	I can't see the poplar. From here I can't see whether it is
still alive or it is already dying, wizened and yellow in the
sharp rays  of that reckless sun, or if hope is still alive in my
world, my hope. Won't the wind blow at least a single leaf
around?
	There is no wind. Just the sun. Every time I wake up or
regain consciousness, I don't know which of the two is more
correct, it is still there, as if someone has glued it onto the
colorless sky, as if someone has pierced a red wound in my eyes
and all my blood will drain out through that wound, I can't
recover with the sun watching me furtively, motionless, how can a
damned sunset go on for seven days!
	It is not there, it's no longer there. I woke up thinking
about that accursed, forever setting sun. I did not venture to
open my eyes, I tried to guess whether it was there or not, and I
was determined that this time I would rather die than see it
again. With my right hand I felt for the box with the medicines
by my bedside, I opened it, then fingered the little weird-shaped
bottle with the bright label and the dreadful forewarning sign on
it, but I'm not going to open my eyes, till I've opened the
bottle, when I've gotten ready to act quickly, so that I won't
see the cruel sun if it's still there, oh I'll get the better of
it...
	It's not there. It's not there. Just the slim silhouette of
the poplar against the bright background of the sky. The poplar's
green, it's alive, and the sun's not there. My fingers let go of
the bottle, the pills spill onto the floor, the bottle rolls
under the bed. And then it showed itself. A red radiance at
first, and then a thin red streak behind the poplar trunk, so it
had been there after all! But it was on its way, it was on its
way at last, and night was going to set in... The poplar! Only
then did I think about it. It had been growing in the far end of
the courtyard, how come it had hidden the sun?
	I had vainly hoped that I would be able to rise to my feet
the following morning, that my agony would be over once  the sun
had rolled down the sky at last. I was still ill, we had severely
misjudged the endurance of a human being in the face of
all-embracing death, of overwhelming silence and loneliness. I
could not get up, I could only look at the white cracked ceiling,
I tenaciously studied its abundant geographical sites, I gave my
favorite names to the rivers and precipices on it. Look at that
one, for example, it looks like the Amazon, that crack - like the
Maritsa, the Amazon flowed into the Maritsa; and that one over
there looks completely strange to me, I shall name it Maria,
there should be such a river, it is sixteen, Maritsa-Maria, you
will save me... This went on till the ceiling started to fade,
its surface became more and more even, the Maritsa, the Maria,
and the Amazon were losing their tributaries, and were wearing
thin. Perhaps my sight was failing in those hours, perhaps this
was simply due to my illness, but I decided that once again
something had happened to time or to those extremely
sophisticated  machines, and I was going back in time in this
world, still farther away from my loved ones, still closer to the
moment of death and there was no return from it. I managed to
lean over the edge of my bed and my hand fingered the dusty
floor, one little ball, then another, a third one, two at a time,
five in all. Damn it, I've dropped one, O.K. then, there we go
again, four, five, six, maybe ten will be quite enough, oh, the
bloody silence...
	Then someone knocked at the window. I held the pills tighter
in my fist, this time I was not going to let myself be fooled
again.
	The poplar.
	It was the poplar. From my bed I could see its slender
branches touch the window, it couldn't be, I couldn't believe it,
I couldn't believe it, and then the poplar, in despair, gathered
itself up, swayed its top and waved it in a blow, the window
frame broke down, the clinking of broken glass was heard, a real
sound, a clear sound in the silence in which I had begun to hear
the pounding of my heart, the window frame broke down, the pane
broke to pieces and I felt the acute green pain of the broken
young stems, the dripping sap, the green cry of the cut leaves
falling down to the bottom of the yard, I did not understand
anything but I was alive.
	It hadn't occurred to anybody that there was such a complex
two-way connection between this world and the one that had
involuntarily created it. What was it and how had it been able to
detect and transmit my sufferings? Who in the living world had
received the message of my deadly sorrow? Had it been my mother
or Maria, or maybe everybody? What magic power had worked the
miracle? I asked myself such questions in vain  while looking at
the deep furrow which the roots of the poplar had dug from its
initial position at the far end of the yard, along the short cut
to its guard post between my window and the arrogant sun, and
from that point - to my home. Still stunned, I touched the
slender branches and the green leaves, I felt like picking a leaf
off the tree and crushing it between the palms of my hands,
because I wanted to smell its scent and try its taste, but I did
not dare do that for fear of spoiling the wonder and causing pain
to the only living thing around me, to my saviour, and still I
could not believe my eyes. But the poplar understood that as
well. It leant through my window, a couple of its leaves dropped
off and fell beside my legs. I knelt down and looked at them for
a long, long time...
	I could hear music. A guitar was playing in the yard. I
could hear the distant rumble of the street traffic and the
squeaking of the tram wheels around the bend, but these were not
the scared sounds and voices of which I spoke at the beginning,
they were the sounds of my yard, of my world. "Mum...my,
Mum...my, Mum...my, please get me the ball," the neighbors' kid
was shouting, familiar sounds of the late afternoons when I was
beginning to work on this book, when I was overwhelmed with the
crazy idea of coming here and seeing everything with my own eyes.
I could hear the voices but I did not dare think that I had
already been taken out of the dead yard and transported back
home. Yet I was thankful to the voices, to that stubborn child,
for they were all a proof that life existed. Life existed, it was
not a figment of my imagination, it was not a life-saving image
from the long days I had spent among the vestiges of death, life
actually existed and it went on in my world. Life existed in this
yard as well - the poplar, the green aerial which had received
and transmitted those distant salvaging messages for me.
	I shall not tell at such length about the other days and
nights of my forced stay in this house. I was at least able to
work then. I gathered strength enough to be able to walk down the
stairs resounding with horror, to break the doors corroded by
time. Behind me the locks ridiculously jutted out of their
sockets, their tongues bitten off by the teeth of rust. Now I
could patiently talk with the perturbed ghosts. Evenings, when I
went back into my room, I found consolation in the poplar, I
poured my heart and my fear out to its branches. It bestowed upon
me the simple wonders of life which we carelessly overlook in our
world. It also bestowed upon me some unusual wonders which
perhaps would not have seemed so unusual to us if we had thought
of ordering them.
	Sometimes I happened to fall asleep with nostalgia for the
white springs in the eternal seasonlessness of that yard, and I
woke up to find the room filled with gossamer white fluff from
the poplar, the way it happened in the month of May in the world
where the change of seasons had a meaning. The fluff was also my
snow and my winter; I also got autumns - little yellow leaves
fell through the window onto my table, and then the lyrical and
groundless sorrow of a far-away autumn was a cure for the sorrow
which had been caused by thousands of reasons and which sighed in
the dark corners of the house. In the hot summer days I enjoyed
the green shade of the poplar, its green wind cooled my forehead
which was sweating with the death heat of that horrible summer I
was telling you about.
	It was the day of betrayal. I collected the sheets of paper
I had filled with writing as well as my few personal effects, and
went out into the yard through the broken door, having overcome
the fear of the strict prohibition and the unknown dangers of
that infringement, and poured onto the roots of the poplar the
last amount of water I had left. I  couldn't do any more.
	"Listen." I said to it. "I am not begging you to forgive me,
I am human, and we humans cannot be as good as you. We cannot be
that strong and that proud and bear the loneliness the way you
do. But I will be back. I want to take you away from here. Maybe
we all shall come back here. There should not be a place on Earth
or in a world so much like the Earth, where death should reign.
Do wait for us."
	I dare not think how long it has been since then. I could
not go back to it. I was not allowed to. They did not believe me
that it existed. The others decided that everything had been a
figment of my tormented imagination in those unbearable days. Yet
I knew that the poplar was there and that it was waiting for me,
it was green, and this was my consolation, because life went on,
which meant that the poplar was alive.
	After the long months I spent in various hospitals, I was
allowed to go back home at last. I dared not look through the
window of my room into the courtyard, I was afraid that I might
see it through the convex mirror of my memory of that yard,
ravaged by death and destruction, but I ventured at last, and I
saw the poplar.
	Right before our house.
	I couldn't believe my eyes, was that really the same tree?
It seemed a bit older and sadder. I put my clothes on and slowly
went down the stairs leading to the yard, I softly opened the
door and went out. I went up to it hesitatingly. A child was
playing near-by, I held it by the hand, trying to keep calm,
because I wanted to ask it the admittedly ludicrous question as
to how long this poplar had been growing here. The child stared
at me in wonder, I was expecting it to laugh and say that it had
always been there. The child stared at me in wonder, thought for
a while, looked at the tree, and said:
	"Well, it was not here yesterday, it wasn't here for sure,
so it must have grown today, no, it has been planted out."
	I touched its bark. It was real. "Now they will believe
you." I thought. "Now they will believe that you exist."
	And to the child I said that such a big tree couldn't be
planted out.
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