"People" chapter 2

I fall asleep at dawn. I have a nice dream. I am walking in an airport, it looks a little bit like the Moscow airport and suddenly watching a group of other passengers, I recognize my friends from Beijing. I am so happy, that I see them again, I feel so nice. Everything looks so simple and easy, it is like there are no thousand  miles between us, it is like they are so close, like if I strengthen my hand, I can touch them…

I wake 5 minutes before the clock starts ringing at 7.30 am. So clearly, so surely I know that if I open the door, I will see them, that they are there, just behind the door… The alarm. Leaving this so calming and so joyful feeling is painful. Something inside of me is shrinking and I feel like I have to walk with a lump in my chest, with some kind of completely tangible and heavy emptiness, compressed, condensed and turned into a lump.

We have breakfast, we laugh, me make fun. It feels nice. The lump is inside me, but I don`t think about it, it stays somewhere very far from my consciousness

We are going down, call a taxi… The goodbyes are short, we will meet again soon.

Central railway station. I buy my ticket. I still haven`t removed the airplane stickers from my suitcase. Absolutely childishly, I want everyone to see that I have been traveling, that until yesterday morning I was in a completely different reality, I was in Beijing and left there so much.

I travel with an old lady and a girl. I few stations later the old lady gets off the train and me and the girl start talking, it fells nice, the conversation is interesting for me.

She  says she has never been abroad and I answer that until now, I hadn`t been abroad too, that I was only dreaming some day to go to China and didn`t know if I will ever have that chance and … well, I went and it was much better than I have ever imagined. I wish her to travel too and she laughs happily . They meet me at the station. I am really very happy, I can not have enough of looking at them and hugging them.

Home is home. And I have Internet here which completes the pleasure. I enjoy sleeping in my bed, but I catch myself missing the one from Beijing too, with the Beijing blankets in the Beijing room. For such a short time it started feeling like my own too and I really didn`t want to leave it.

Bulgarian food… they are spoiling me with different meals to welcome me.

I find a job by accident. At the end of the first week, a friend from Chinese studies surprises me with a preposition and since finding a job would be one of the biggest problems, in jobs.bg there are no many offers with Chinese, I immediately accept.

I start living in a hotel in Student city until I find a permanent place to live. The first week I try searching the newspapers, but almost all the ads are from agencies and they don`t allow me to go and take a look at the places until I pay half of the rent . The bad thing is that their working time is almost the same as mine. In  one of the lunch breaks I take a taxi and manage to go there and pay them. I start looking at  different places in the evening after work.

Very often I think about the people I have to meet, the people that have been waiting for me to come back, but I can not do it like that, I know I don`t have a place to live now and even if I meet somebody, all I will be able to do is complain. I have always been like that, when I have problems, I just want to become invisible, to hide for a little bit, to escape the necessity to communicate with other people.

I have post-China depression. Everything looks grey here. Deserted and empty. There are so many different people around me, but I am alone, completely alone, completely different.

I develop my Chinese habit to listen to music on the mpsan. Sometimes I even fall asleep with the earphones in my ears. Before going to China, I never actually could fall asleep listening to music. But now, the music sounds like China, smells like China, makes me feel in China… I catch myself walking on the street, dreaming that one day, when I am walking as usual, I will suddenly meet a friend from China who decided to surprise me. Didn`t call, didn`t tell me anything and suddenly I just see him or her on the street.

When I fall asleep I have strange dreams. I am in a place I don`t recognize. I see nearby some girls from our course in Beijing. The kind of girls that are not used to get vulgar looks on their bodies. Some man I don`t know are undressing them with eyes. It is repulsive, nauseous. I hurry to go there. This must stop! Must stop! Must stop! I must help the girls.

I get  there and spreading my arms wide open like I could protect them, to keep them safe that way, I start yelling: “Stop!”. The man get afraid of my yell and step  back. I feel somebody touching my shoulder:

-It is so good you came, Nikolay, it was so scary before you came!

China is always in my head. It is really hard not to talk about it. People, who don`t really know me, probably think I am a fanatic or something.

Every night I fall asleep and my brain takes me back there, I wake up in the morning and can`t realize where I am. Outside, it is nightmarishly cold, -17, -20 C, there is snow. I walk on the street and all I can think about is how warm my African friends feel now and how funny it would be for them to come here for a day or two, to take a look at the snow and the cold weather… If only they could come!

They have warned me, that when I come back I will be wondering where all the Chinese went, but I didn`t suppose that the people will look  so terribly whitish to me.

It feels so great when I meet an Asian or an African on the street. I am always ready to argue if someone starts judging their habits.

The feeling, that I had before going to China comes back, it is like I am not in a normal place. It feels like a nightmare and I really want to wake up! I want so much to wake up and go back to China! It feels normal there, it is not like a nightmare there… Here… it is just clenching teeth and surviving…

I will be OK. The most important thing now is to find a place to live. I apologize in Chinese if I accidently touch someone on the street. When I have to speak, my brain starts constructing sentences in English, Chinese, Russian, but never Bulgarian. I want so much, I need to talk to someone in Chinese… If I try, even in English, it will look like pretence, like affectation. People will think I am trying to look more interesting than I actually am and it feels so painfully boring to speak only Bulgarian. If I hear someone speak Chinese around me, it sounds like music…

The streets on my way to work are muddy when it is not too cold, it makes you forget it is Sofia. People in buses 280 and 94 look normal, the life still haven`t killed their youth freshness  and belief in life, but in all the other buses, it feels really strange. I try to be to the limit imperceptible, not to bring anyone`s attention, it would be best if I could be invisible. The people are so tired of problems, so tormented, they complain to each other, yell at each other if they accidently touch each other…

A co-worker of mine startles if you move fast around her. An other co-worker says she has been beaten up. Watching her good natured naivety, I can`t realize what kind of a  degenerate could hit her. It turns out it is true. Sometimes she speaks about her ex-husband…

Where am I? I don`t like it here! I want to get away!

I catch myself missing the sensation of a woman, not intrusive sexuality, but a woman. A woman that makes me feel a man, makes me want to be a man, makes me like being a man…

I am gentleman with all the women around. I open the doors for them and so on just because I have to, it is a habit, but it doesn`t give me the kind of satisfaction that being a gentleman with a woman like that could give me.

With one of my Chinese friends we often debate about which one is better, he enjoys being here more, I enjoy being there more, but he is there and I am here.

I guess it is because unconsciously people try to show the best to the foreigner. When he comes here, we show him the landmarks, we try to save him from the not pleasant things.

When I was in China, I saw the best of it too, the non pleasant things were unconsciously hidden from me…

Besides that, how they said in a movie, you have to get out of your country to realize you really belong to it, to be proud to be its citizen.

Being Bulgarian when there are only Bulgarians around or Chinese when there are only Chinese around  is not so interesting like being Bulgarian when there are Chinese people around, or being Chinese when there are Bulgarian people around.

I guess if I had enough money, didn`t need to work and could afford to continue my education, to travel a lot and if my friends were here, I would like Bulgaria very much too.

I rent a room in an old man`s apartment and move there. I will need some time to kill this little kicking creature in me, refusing to be alone, fighting with loneliness without realizing that it only hurts itself.

A week later I am already calm. I don`t feel pain. I am lifeless, I hide behind the glass wall and continue watching how the other people live. Me… I am alive only in front of the computer. It is my connection to everyone. But, although I look completely like before going to China, something very important in me is already changed- I believe that the good is still to come  and I hurry with all my strength to get there as soon as possible.