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the need to assert my presence, and also to place myself between him and the pile of my belongings I had gathered in one corner; I felt threatened by him, which was what he intended me to feel. At first it was as though this had its effect, he seemed to beat a kind of retreat. But I’m not that sort of person, he said, though this wasn’t a retreat at all, it was just the start of a new theme. If it weren’t for me you wouldn’t even have them, he went on, stepping up to me where I stood, nobody needed to steal them, you left it all on the bus, and again he gave an inventory of what I owned, what I had brought with me that might fetch him a few hundred leva in the pawnshops of Varna. Ne e li vyarno , he said again, working himself up, if it weren’t for me you would have lost them anyway, you owe me, and he punctuated this last with a touch, not quite adversarial yet but assertive, putting his hand on my shoulder and pushing to see how far I would give way. All the while he held his face close to my own, his new face, and I felt the beginning of fear like a light current, a prickling along the nerves. Mitko, I said, softly but I hoped with confidence, saying his name again as if to call back the face I knew, Mitko, you should leave now, it’s time for you to leave. He smiled at this, he widened his eyes with amusement and took a half step away, Is it time for me to leave, he said, quoting my words back to me, is it? And he turned a little and made a sound, hunh , a sound of puzzlement and continued amusement, not an angry sound, and when he turned back his arm swung in a wide arc and he struck me, with the back of his hand he struck my face, only once and not very hard, so that when I fell back upon the bed it was as much from the shock as from the force of it, from shock and from the passivity that has always been my instinctive response to violence. We both froze then, I on the bed and he standing in front of it, as if both of us were waiting to see what would happen next. I felt real fear now, physical and immediate and, strangely enough, already fear of the more distant future, as I wondered how badly I would be bruised and how I would explain it to my students. I watched Mitko, and it seemed to me he was surprised by what he had done, that maybe he was frightened too by what he might do next. He only stood there an instant before he propelled himself forward and fell on top of me, and I must have flinched, I must have shut my eyes, though it wasn’t a blow I felt on my face but his mouth, his tongue as it sought my own mouth, which I opened without thinking. I let him kiss me though it didn’t seem like a kiss, his tongue in my mouth, it was an expression not of tenderness or desire but of violence, as was the weight with which he bore down on me, pinning me to the bed as he ground his chest and then his crotch against me; and then he grabbed my own crotch with one hand, gripping it not painfully but commandingly, and I thought whatever happens next I will let it happen. But nothing happened next, he was on me, unbearably present, and then he sprang off the bed and was gone, without taking anything or speaking another word, though of course he could have taken whatever he wanted.
    I lay there after he left, feeling my fear, which grew more intense, so that for a minute or perhaps for two or three I couldn’t force myself to move, not even to close the door. I observed, as if at a distance, my quick breathing and the pain I felt, not an especially bad pain, maybe there would be no bruise to explain away. Finally I hauled myself up, surprised by how unsteady I was though so little had happened, everything was fine, I said to myself, I was safe now. But as I turned the latch on the door I realized I wasn’t safe, that the thin tongue of metal between the two wooden wings might easily be forced, it offered almost no resistance at all. And the latches on the windows were flimsy too, a push would be enough to snap