by Maria Genova
‘At the time, I read the word hedonist in a philosophical dictionary I knew it referred to me. My adventurism is sometimes dangerous, but I enjoy it. The adrenaline rushes through my veins when I get to test myself in risky situations. It feels special to be the eye of the tornado, to experience things that other people are afraid of. I have more dreams than words. That doesn’t matter, because I do not want to dream. I want to live. On the presumption that they both exist, I love the Devil more than God. The Devil is more exciting. I am not afraid of his temptation. I have agreed with myself not to regret the mistakes I make. My existence is exciting because of this. And because of my search for true love. Perhaps that is too difficult to achieve, but I love fairy tales. Love is like a fata morgana, you can never be completely sure that it exists or that it suddenly disappears.
The fata morgana’s make my life more exciting than it is, although I sometimes hate my shallowness. You could say that an intelligent girl can’t be superficial, but I am superficiality itself. I jump from boy to boy without getting to know them better. As if I only have a few months to live and am afraid to miss out on any interesting people. I have always been this agitated. No patience to stand still in one spot.
I am driven by my sexuality and ambitions and I don’t even know which of the two is stronger. Perhaps my growing ambitions are connected to my growing sexuality, which has the aim of getting more men under my control. I am a control freak. If I don’t have something under control, then I am overcome by a sense of self-pity. I even try to dose my life’s adventures so that boring periods do not follow each other.
I often feel both powerful and powerless at the same time. My brains are aware of everything that can be gotten through money, ambition, charm and intellect and that is such a massive amount that they sometimes become stressed with the amount of choice and they cannot choose. I don’t even know what type of man I like. Perhaps older boys. The younger ones are so obsessed with my appearance, that I get the feeling that the rest is not important to them. Sometimes a decent looking painting in a beautiful frame is seen as something wonderful. The adornments distract from the essence. That is the problem with all young men: their inexperience makes them look no farther than the frame. Only mature men also value your personality and become interested in the artwork itself. Not that I consider myself a beautiful work of art, but I have come to realize that one way or the other I can manipulate the stronger sex. I don’t just fancy men in general, only men who admire me. Perhaps I fall for their admiration more than for the men themselves’.
I never opened my diary to look back. I was too young to have meaningful thoughts about life and the meaning of life. I hoped to find these in the literature.
‘Young people imagine that money is everything and when they become older, they know for sure,’ I read in an Oscar Wilde book. Was life really about gaining more wealth and power?
After many years, I still had not found the right answer. Here in Las Vegas it all seemed plausible, in this glitter world of neon full of expensive obsessions and human weakness. Or was it about looking for beauty? Even that seemed plausible. The mega hotels had risen like a fata morgana out of the dry desert and radiated with their excessive architecture a beauty that I had not experienced so intensely anywhere in the world. Maybe it was simpler than that and the meaning of life was just to enjoy it to the full? This was the most satisfying answer for the 14-year-old girl. For a woman with a past behind her, that was the question.
In the elite prison
Enjoying life, money, power and fame. For years, I lived with the delusion that I could achieve this with an impressive tennis career. But this came to an abrupt end when I was admitted to one of the most renowned schools, the Grammar School for Foreign Languages. I could do nothing else but obey my parents and mentally prepare myself for a year at boarding school. My parents were convinced that a good education would benefit me more than a tennis career.
The girls boarding school was fiercely guarded by an old maid. I was certain she was a very frustrated woman, because her hysterical voice constantly echoed through the halls. If mother nature had made her a little bit more beautiful she probably wouldn’t have been so miserable and vent her frustration on us. Since a facelift was out of the question, she devoted herself to her job as a guard. She would lock the central door early on in the evening. At 10.00 o’clock lights had to go out in all the rooms. If you dared read a book after that time you were punished by not being allowed to visit your parents for a few weekends.
I felt like I was confined to an elite prison. Protesting against the establishment was impossible, but I found it a challenge to secretly break the rules. If I had a date with a boy, I would leave via the balconies. That was not without risk, but staying in my boring room seems even more deadly to me.
Once you are imprisoned there is a natural desire to break free. The strict regime strengthened my aversion from everything that was forbidden and as such the boarding school became a crash course in adulthood.
It was a great feeling trying to avoid the guard, sometimes even more exciting than dating boys I barely knew. They usually asked me during lunch break if I wanted to meet up with them in the evening. That was the best time to ask something like that, because most of the lunch break was spent queueing up for a croissant or a warm cheese sandwich.
The shop in the school yard did good business, because hardly anyone brought their own lunch. Despite the limited choice, I did not mind eating the same thing nearly every day. I often drank ‘boza’ with my lunch, a beige coloured wholesome drink made from fermented wheat, barley and millet, and at the same time I would look to see which boys were trying to catch my eye. Sometime secret admirers would send their best friends to arrange a blind date. I always said yes, because there was nothing to do in the evenings anyway. The school was quite isolated and the city was difficult to reach.
During communism, all schools were strict. We wore dark blue uniforms and even the smallest deviation was punished. We were not allowed to wear red or brown shoes, distinctive jewellery was out of the question, make-up was forbidden and your hair had to be tied up in a bun or ponytail. Even though the temperature in the classroom sometimes rose above 35 degrees centigrade, the boys were not allowed to take off their blazers. Comrade Taneva decided a shirt was not neat enough. They would sweat profusely, but she was unrelenting: ‘If the Director keeps his blazer on, you will also.’
At least we could not complain about the temperature in the winter, because in the big cities the schools were heated well. This was not always the case in the countryside. A friend told me that it was so cold that once they ripped up the wooden floor during their break and threw it all in the stove. The bonfire did not last long. The culprits were sent to the Director straight away and immediately had to look for another school.
The punishments at our elite school were not so severe, because most of us were sons and daughters of prominent party members, directors of state-owned companies or important civil servants. Despite this many teachers were constantly on the lookout for a scapegoat. I was often chastised for wearing earrings that were considered to be too long, but they were no longer than two centimetres. Luckily, I could keep the peace by taking them out. Milena, the girl I shared a desk with, had a real problem. She had natural highlights in her hair and many teachers complained about this. It cost her a lot of effort to convince them that she had been born with this hair, but the history teacher did not believe her. That meant war: Milena was constantly bullied by her.
One day my friend appeared with a boyish haircut.
‘Did you surrender?’ I asked with a touch more sarcasm than sympathy in my voice.
‘You don’t think I cut my hair because of the highlights?’ she replied with a question in return. ‘You’ll always see them anyway.’
‘Then what made you cut your hair so short?’
‘Orders from the Director. Yesterday I let my hair loose when I was leaving the school yard. The Head saw
that, ran after me, and told me that I had to cut my hair very short the same day. To make sure that I would do it he took away my report. The only way to get it back, was to follow his orders.
I stroked Milena over her boyish head, while she wept.
‘Don’t worry, hair grows back very quickly. Look at it in a positive way. Perhaps Comrade Taneva will be delighted with your new look and you won’t have to study so hard for History.’
‘Do you believe that yourself?’ Milena asked.
I didn’t believe it. Her highlights were still visible and Comrade Taneva would surely notice the war had not yet been won. Studying less for history did not actually free up more time, because we would get oral exams in at least three subjects on a daily basis and we never knew in advance which of us had to appear in front of the blackboard. If you hadn’t studied enough just for one day, then that would have a great impact on your grade. Then you were more or less going to have a bad report and you would be denied entry to university. If you wanted to have a career then you had to ensure you only scored sixes, the highest possible grade in all Bulgarian schools.
Milena would always skip class if she had not studied enough. She usually done this through official channels, by producing a doctor’s note that she had been ill. She could do this through good connections, but if this was not possible there were other tried and tested methods. Milena swore by drinking a lot of Schweppes in combination with two aspirins. That gave a chemical reaction which results in a fever. Before the effect wore off she would run to the infirmary to have her temperature taken. Proof delivered: you couldn’t go to school with a fever.
Because I could not be bothered studying every day, I had also thought of something. When a teacher would forget the class book on his desk, I would quickly change a few grades. I was a good student and the forgeries all seemed plausible. Usually I changed fives into sixes. Satisfactory grades were not good enough, because then I would get a scolding from my parents. They thought I was better than that. And I was: I had become a master forger. Sometimes I would also forge my fellow student’s grades, if they weren’t brave enough themselves. I didn’t only do this for charity, but also for self-protection. Imagine if someone was to change the grades with ugly handwriting or in an amateur way, then I would eventually get caught.
I was almost certain that I would get the highest grade for all my subjects. I didn’t believe in God, but I was grateful that he had given me the gift of remembering things without any problem. This meant I did not need to study hard and it left me enough time to explore the peculiarities of the male species. During my first year at boarding school I did not come any farther than profound discussions in the dark, walking hand-in-hand and a single kiss goodbye. I was in fact quite a good girl, while everyone thought I was a femme fatale. I wasn’t sure if I should be pleased with this reputation. The only benefit was that it attracted more boys, whom I rejected in return.
‘Why do men fall for someone they hardly know?’ I asked my sister.
‘it’s because they don’t know you,’ she replied. ‘Men mostly think with their bottom half, because they are pumped up with testosterone. The fall for your sensual confidence without realising you will hurt their ego.’
‘But that’s not my intention. I play this game for the fun and without bad intentions.’
‘Mer, you don’t have to defend yourself. Be grateful for everything you have.’
I was grateful for what I had and also a little bit for what I didn’t have. The latter made life a bit more exciting. The nicest thing about all new relationships is the uncertainty what would happen next.
Shooting with Kalashnikovs
The flickering advertising sign brought me back to reality. Las Vegas, the best place for day dreams. A tribute to luxury, excess, excitement and romance. The only place in the world where project developers would buy hotels worth more than $ 100 million and then blow them up to create something more luxurious on the same site. Everything I saw seemed so surreal. From the waterfall in front of the casino that turned into a volcano, to the pirate ship that sank into an artificial pond along the main street. It seems more surreal than believing in the nice lies of communism.
Every day, in rain and wind, we would stand on the school yard jumping and waving. If you did not bend your knees far enough you had to report to the Head. No one was allowed to sabotage the divine morning gymnastic session. To finish off we sang communist songs, a choir of hundreds of young people, most of whom could not sing. The class that sang the loudest was always allowed by the Head to enter the school first.
The morning gymnastics were just as obligatory as school itself. If you arrived late, you got a mark for absence. After a few times this would result in a reprimand and if you played truant more often you were expelled from school. We even had a page for good behaviour in our report which was of great importance for our future career. Elite schools did not want any pupils whose grade had been demoted from ‘exemplary’ to ‘good’.
If you did something stupid, you were dragged on to the raised podium during the morning gymnastic session in front of the whole school. A comrade would then inform everyone what you had done. Even the best-behaved girls sometimes had the dubious honour of climbing this podium. For example, Petja had entered the school through a side entrance instead of the designated main entrance. This shorter route earned her a place on the podium of shame. She was extremely upset, because she was one of the most proper girls at school.
I hated morning gymnastics, but I liked the real gym lessons. Finally, I could take off that silly uniform. My body was nicely toned because until recently I had played tennis for three hours a day. Strong, agile and quick was an ideal basis for many sports. I was often asked to represent the school in a variety of competitions: from high jump to volleyball to short track and cross country.
Some boys could not stand being beaten by a girl. That made my victory all the sweeter. I had a whole collection of medals and trophies, which I usually saved for six months. After that they ended up in the bin, because I would win new ones anyway. I was a born winner. I believed that it was a good thing to have setbacks every now and then so that I would value my victories all the more, but how did I achieve this? Everything was in my favour, at school, in sports and also in love. That terrified me. Surely it was not possible to be happy for your entire life? It has to go wrong sometime.
‘Hart breakers pay the price later, ‘ my mother warned me at a young age. But I could not stop myself breaking the hearts of the young men who fell in love with me. My life was based on collecting exciting experiences, for those moments in which my heart would beat faster. Even when I was a child, I was not happy with just hearing if something was good or bad from my parents. I wanted to experience it myself, even if it was something as simple as tasting soap. My parents claimed it did not taste nice, but it smelled so good that I could hardly believe that it would not taste good either. Only when I spontaneously began to blow bubbles did I realize they were right. I rinsed my mouth out with water for half an hour. Yet I did not regret it. At least now I knew one hundred percent how soap tasted.
Worse than the mandatory morning gymnastics at school was the military training. All school children would practice using Kalashnikovs during special training camps, which we would use to protect the fatherland. Every now and then the school alarms would sound as a sign that an enemy attack was taking place and we all had to flee with as little panic as possible. We did not live in fear, but we did reckon that there would be war. America and Russia held each other hostage for years by continuing to stockpile nuclear weapons. We were certain that capitalism and communism were incompatible, but no one knew for sure if the enemy would impose their ideology with force. We practiced with gas masks, learned how to tend to the injured, marched and sang patriotic songs. Sometimes we would enter fully equipped bunkers, where you could find everything you needed to survive a while under the ground.
Russia was always a step ahead: they did
not only build nuclear shelters, but whole cities which they then proceeded to destroy with their own nuclear bombs. This way the experts could decide on the thickness of the walls of important buildings and the best construction method for bridges and metro’s if a nuclear war broke out. The communist block had detailed plans how to destroy all large cities in Western Germany with a nuclear attack and reduce them to ash. After that, the tank division would enter the contaminated area so that they could occupy Belgium and the Netherlands. These kinds of plans were ‘top secret’, but the threat was tangible and we were well-prepared for it.
Sometimes highly ranked party leaders would visit us and then we had to ensure that the entire camp looked brand new. We swept the tiles on the sports yard and carefully removed every blade of grass. We were then ordered to move all the smelly bins. The question was where to? We moved them about six times over the entire yard, but the leadership did not deem any spot to be good enough. On the seventh attempt, we were allowed to leave them where they were. The place they had been standing before we started moving them.
After this failed mission, we made significant progress on the building by brushing new white paint over several weathered layers. We needed quite a few pots, but the results were spectacular at the end of the day. Of course, we knew that this was not the right way to go about it, but we were sure that the new layer of paint would stay intact long enough to pass inspection. I had my doubts about the durability of what we laughingly called the highlight of our hard labour: we were given green paint to cover up the bald spots on the field.
Despite the uselessness of these activities we never doubted the usefulness of the military camps. Karl Marx had said ‘promise a capitalist three percent profit and no crime will stop him.’ Perhaps not all Westerners were criminals, but their governments were. Amerika had preyed on our communist paradise for years. The CIA experimented with hypnosis, drugs and torture so they could brainwash prisoners into making false confessions. But they would not get us! We believed in our patriotic upbringing with heart and soul.