The Bulgarian Army is on the brink of making its first killing in Mexico, and I am the designated victim.
Goran has me pinned against the outside wall of the hut. I feel his military knife pressing on my neck. Both of us are shaking. His pungent odour is exacerbated by the heat of the morning and by his anger. He is not one of our country's new, deodorant-using generation.
“You mafia-ridden lot,” he yells, “think you can buy anyone: referees, players, journalists … It’s all money with you, Ivaylo Ivanov and your dirty Levski team! Filthy money! No honour, no tradition!”
Even in my precarious position, there is no way I am going to let that pass.
“What?! Your team belongs to the army that never won a war! What kind of tradition is that? Where’s the honour in breaking your opponents’ legs, eh?”
Goran’s knife presses harder against my neck, so I shut up. Goran has not sharpened the knife recently.
The silence is filled by Beethoven played at full volume on the sound system.
A door slams.
“What on earth are you doing, killing each other before breakfast? How can I afford to pay a cook to make the best chilaquiles on Playa Chisme if you’re dead before you can buy them?”
The calm voice comes out of a short, slim woman who has emerged from the kitchen hut on to the sand. The aroma of sun lotion and grilling peppers comes with her. Milena shakes her blonde curls and fixes her green eyes on us.
“Sit down and eat something before I lose my temper. And stop arguing about bleeding football!”
She pushes past us to the tiny computer that controls the sound system, and tries without success to turn the music up.
Goran’s eyes bulge like a puffer fish out of water. Nevertheless, he finally moves the knife away from my neck, turns away from me. Then he turns back, grabs the hem of my Levski Sofia replica shirt and slashes a tear into it.
I stare at him with even more hatred than usual. He smirks as he saunters to a table under an awning over the sand, and sits down with two other breakfast regulars, Stanko and Yulia. He looks at the skinny man of indeterminate age.
“Don’t you start,” he warns.
Yulia laughs. She gestures enquiringly toward Milena.
“Botev Plovdiv,” says Goran, “Second Division”.
The two of them laugh again. After a few seconds, Stanko joins in.
Milena comes back from serving customers on the beach to find me standing transfixed outside the kitchen door, glaring at Goran’s thick back.
“Will you have some coffee, then?”
I don't answer.
“Take the weight off your feet, and I’ll fix you some breakfast.”
She leads me to the main table, where the other Bulgarians are sitting. I fall into a chair, reach for Stanko’s packet of cigarettes, take one, settle it in my mouth and look around for matches.
Goran proffers his lighter. I snatch it and light my cigarette.
We sit and watch the day grow hotter.
Brahms is drowning the noise of the surf beating on the beach when Milena brings a plate of tacos to our table.
“What’s inside these?” Goran asks.
“Minced beef in half of them,” Milena answers, “potato in the others.”
“Any mushrooms?” Yulia asks, opening the one on the top of the pile.
“No,” says Milena, “not the season.”
“It’s the season at home,” Goran says.
Stanko swats Yulia’s probing fingers away from the pile of tacos, then from his thigh, sets out the four plates Milena has brought, and divides the food among them.
“I know the best place for mushrooms,” says Yulia, licking a finger and gazing at Stanko. “A certain wood in a field on the slopes of Mt. Vitosha.”
I set her straight.
“Vitosha’s rubbish for mushrooms.”
Then I turn my attention to Stanko. “Why have you given Yulia the extra taco? I’m the one with the right to be hungry.”
Back to setting Yulia straight: “Everyone knows you’ve got to get well away from the city to find decent mushrooms.”
Stanko ignores my comment about the tacos.
“When my brother was mayor of Plovdiv,” he says, looking disinterestedly at Yulia's weighty breasts, “the best mushrooms were in the hills near there. These days the ones on Vitosha are better.”
We have all heard about Stanko’s brother before.
“Since when do you know anything about mushrooms?” Goran bellows at him. “Before you came to Mexico, you’d never been outside a city!”
Goran turns his hard eyes on Yulia, then grins.
“Give Ivaylo the extra taco, Yulia. It’ll save you putting on any more weight. And listen to what he has to say about mushrooms. The fool doesn’t know much about anything worthwhile, but he knows a lot about mushrooms.”
That is my cue. I tell them in detail how to recognise the poisonous ones, and what the poison each one contains will do to the human body. They should know by now; I've told them often enough.
The aroma of coffee is strong. Yulia gets up and waddles into the hut to see what has happened to it.
I tell them about the recipes my mother and my mother's mother have made over the years with the mushrooms I have picked for them.
Stanko gets up and goes into the hut to see what has happened to the coffee and to Yulia.
I have barely started explaining the role of mushrooms in Bulgarian history when there is a commotion.
Stanko backs out of the kitchen with a bottle of mescal in one hand. He uses the other hand to protect his face from the slaps Yulia is aiming at him.
“What’s going on?” I ask, as though I cannot see. Why do they have to interrupt me now?
Yulia turns to me, pointing at Stanko. “This bastard,” she says, “was pouring mescal into your coffee.”
“Very kind of him.” It doesn't happen often.
Yulia turns to the others.
“For heaven’s sake, we’re having breakfast. Everyone knows Ivaylo can’t take liquor at breakfast.”
“Who says I can’t?”
“I just wanted to divert his attention from mushrooms. You know, shut him up a bit. Give us all a rest.”
“Give him liver failure, more like it.”
“Why do you drink that stuff anyway?” Goran cuts in. “Tastes like lighter fuel. What’s wrong with rakia?”
“Yeah, right,” spits Yulia. “Where in Mexico is he going to get Bulgarian liquor? Never mind in a village in the State of Acaxao? It’s not exactly the centre of the world, is it?”
“Never heard of air carriers?” asks Stanko. “My brother keeps me supplied, and Ivaylo can buy a few bottles off me any time he wants.”
“Like I do,” says Goran. His large hands move instinctively to lay over his money belt.
“As a matter of fact, you have a slight debt towards me in that respect. You owe me for thirty-seven bottles of the finest Bulgarian rakia.” Stanko's lips offer a smug smile over his bared teeth. He knows he doesn't have the physique to take on Goran. None of us does.
“It just so happens,” I enunciate, since I know they can be slow, “I prefer mescal.”
Goran backs me up. “Better taste, better immediate effect, less awful after-effect. Plus you don’t have to pay through the nose for it to someone who thinks he’s doing you a favour.”
“And since we’re in Mexico,” Yulia points out, “we might as well drink what the Mexicans drink.”
“And since we’re in the European Union, I suppose we have to eat over-cooked vegetables and plastic bread?” Goran has worked in Britain.
“We’re in Mexico now, not the European Union,” I point out.
This does not wash with Stanko. “Bulgaria is in the European Union. That’s why we’re all here, isn’t it? To get away from all that.”
“All what?” asks Yulia, stroking her left nipple.
“All that commercialism,” Stanko retorts, looking her in the eyes. “The rat race. The pursuit of money at all costs.”
“I’m just here to have a good time,” I tell them, as though anyone could have any other reason. Apart from spiritual development, of course.
“Stanko is right. Bulgaria isn’t what it was.” Yulia sounds homesick, timesick.
Goran taunts her. “Yeah. It’s no longer poor, backward and isolated. Damned good thing.”
I can't let him get away with that. “Isolated was good. We didn’t have all those foreigners.”
“Oh, no? Only the Greeks, the Romans, the Turks, the Germans, the Russians, and whoever else chose to subjugate us from time to time.”
I can feel my spirits recovering. “Those people taught us things. This lot …”
“Which lot?” Goran senses another stimulating row brewing under the Pacific sun.
“Asians, Africans … they take our jobs and they don’t want to work.”
“Was that why you left Bulgaria?”
“No. I gave up my job so I could come here and pursue my spiritual path. And they try and steal our women.”
“Who was that lady I saw you with last night? Margarita? Carmencita?”
“What time, precisely?” It could have been either.
“Never mind.”
“Anyway, they’re dirty. And they have different beliefs. You people have been away so long you probably don’t know that some Vietnamese wanted to build a temple. Can you imagine that? A Hindu temple in the middle of Sofia?”
“Buddhist, maybe. Anyway, now that we’re in the European Union, we have to respect freedom of religion.” Goran can be really infuriating.
Stanko chips in. “What about freedom from religion?”
Yulia is with him on that. “Yeah. Who needs gods?” Apart from her.
I'm not going to let them divert me. “No, I mean freedom from their religion. There’s nothing wrong with ours!”
“We’re lucky the Mexicans don’t care too much what we believe.” So can Stanko.
“If Montezuma and that lot hadn’t let those Spaniards just walk in, they’d still be running the show!”
Goran thinks he's being funny.
“Look, joking apart – ”
“Who’s joking?”
Stanko starts to lecture. “Once the dictatorship collapsed, our fellow citizens went abroad in droves, in search of a better life. They worked like crazy and in return got treated like dirt.”
“Exactly. So we’ve got to show the foreign scum in our own country that we are the masters now.” That was telling them.
“No. We’ve got to treat them the way we wish we’d been treated.” Goran is going to hurt himself if he falls off that high horse.
“Rubbish! Some of them can’t even speak Bulgarian. What can they ask for?”
“You heartless swine!”
“Blind fool!”
“Fascist!”
“Traitor!”
It's obvious to everyone that I am right, but Goran’s hands are around my throat, pressing. I have a nasty sense of dejà-vu. His face is crimson, his eyes seem about to launch themselves out of his head. He moves one hand from my aching throat to his own chest. His pupils roll backwards to leave only the whites of his eyes visible. Then the lids close over them. No sound comes from him as he falls to the sand.
Milena’s scream rises above Beethoven. For the first time in several days, she turns the music off.
Stanko bends over Goran and tugs at his CSKA shirt. Yulia’s voice stops him.
“Leave him alone!”
Stanko hesitates. Yulia moves over to him and pushes him gently away from Goran.
“His shirt is loose enough. Just stay out of the way while I take his pulse,” she says.
She kneels beside Goran and takes hold of his thick wrist. We all close in, but draw back when Yulia glares at us.
“His heart is still beating, but the pulse is faint. Help me move him into the shade.”
Milena whips a cloth from a table and spreads it in the shadow of a beach-hut wall. Together, Yulia, Stanko and I lift Goran and carry him to it.
“Lay him down gently.”
“Recovery position?” I ask.
“Right.”
We lay Goran on his side on the makeshift groundsheet. He is unconscious, but sweating.
“Anyone got any aspirin?” No answer.
“I’ll go and get some from the pharmacy,” I tell them.
“Quicker if I go,” snaps Stanko, and heads off at a run.
Yulia looks distraught.
“I’m going to do mouth-to-mouth.”
She again kneels beside Goran, presses his cheeks to open his mouth, lays her mouth over his, and forces her breath into his lungs. After a few minutes, she stops, looks up.
“He’s coming back to us.”
So is Stanko, panting from his exertions, and clutching medicine in both hands.
“I got some nitroglycerine as well. That’s what he needs, isn’t it?”
“Does he have it on prescription?” Yulia asks.
“He never has anything on prescription,” I point out.
“But does he take it?”
“He doesn’t take anything for his health except rakia,” I remind them.
“In that case, it could do him more harm than good. Just the aspirin will be fine, when he comes round. Where’s the nearest phone? We need to call an ambulance.”
I pull my mobile from my shorts pocket. “I can’t usually get a line here, but if you tell me the number, I’ll give it a try.”
Milena tells me the emergency medical services number. They fall silent as I try to get through.
A loud groan breaks the silence. We all look at Goran, who rolls onto his back.
He tries to speak, but no words come out.
“Stand back from him,” Yulia orders. She tells Goran to relax, not to move.
“No line,” I murmur.
“It’s quicker if we take him ourselves. Stanko, did you see a taxi in the village?”
“No, but they come and go all the time. Maybe now …”
“Goran’s Dodge is right here,” I tell them. “If someone can drive it.” I don't remember how to handle a car.
“I can.” Milena smiles. “Don’t often get the chance to drive here.”
Stanko looks crestfallen. “Goran was saying the ignition’s on the blink.”
“No problem. I can hot-wire it. I knew I’d put that skill to honest use one day.”
Yulia looks at Milena with wide eyes, then turns her attention to Goran.
“Goran, nod if you can hear me.”
Goran nods.
“Are you in pain?”
He nods again.
“Where? Just nod if it hurts where I point to.”
She points to her own chest, shoulders, neck, jaw, teeth, arms, abdomen. Each time, except for the teeth, Goran nods.
“We’re going to drive you to the hospital in Pochatlu. It won’t be fun, but we’ll be there in half an hour. If you chew an aspirin, it’ll help with the pain. Can you manage that?”
Goran nods once more.
Yulia puts her hand behind his neck and lifts his head up.
Stanko slips an aspirin into his mouth. Goran chews.
Milena locks up the kitchen shack and goes off to start Goran’s car. Six minutes later, she drives it up between the rows of beach huts.
Stanko and I again lift Goran, who moans softly. We lay him along the back seat. Then the two of us squeeze into the front seat, next to Milena.
Yulia gets into the back and cradles Goran’s head in her lap. Goran groans.
Milena reverses down the sandy path and on to the tarmac road.
It is not yet noon when we unload Goran onto a stretcher outside the emergency department of Pochatlu hospital. The paramedics wheel him inside, and our group hurries after them.
Milena, who is fluent in Spanish, explains to the duty nurse what has happened. The nurse glances at Goran, issues an emergency classification, gives Milena a sheaf of forms to fill in on Goran’s behalf, and goes off to arrange an immediate examination.
Milena is still wading through the forms when the nurse returns with another team of paramedics. She tells Milena that a cardiologist will see Goran right away, but it’ll be a couple of hours before there will be any news.
“That’s okay,” says Milena, “it’ll give me time to park.” She gives us an ironic smile.
The paramedics converge on Goran. A look of panic passes across his face when they start to wheel him away. Then his features settle, and he fixes a gimlet stare on Yulia.
“Vitosha’s rubbish! Absolute rubbish! Everyone knows the best mushrooms grow way down south.”