by Maria Genova
He had also noticed the great variety in cars. In our country, you could only choose a few types and you had to wait years for them. Even if you had the cash, then you still couldn’t buy a car before it was your turn, according to a never-ending subscription list. People with the right connections would get their name bumped up the list, which meant that regular citizens never got a look in. You just moved increasingly farther away from your dream car.
The favourites were Soviets: Lada and Moskwitch. The Moskwitch rattled like an old tractor even when it was brand new, but could withstand rough treatment better than a Lada. With a few hundred repairs, it could last at least twenty years. Everywhere on the streets you could see people lying under their cars. Most Bulgarians repaired their own cars and would get helpful advice from passing motorists as most people drove the same car.
From the few types of car available, the East German Trabant was the least loved. It was not even that cheap, but it had a cheap image. Nearly everyone knew why Trabants had luxury rear window heating: so you didn’t get cold hands when you had to push. There was also a joke about a man who wanted to buy a rear mirror. ‘I would like a mirror for my Trabant,’ he asked the salesperson. ‘Okay, that’s a fair trade,’ the salesperson replied.
If you owned a car, you would do anything to get it fixed, because public transport, especially in the rush hour, could not handle the number of travellers. I went to school by buys every day and after my stop the bus was already full. People would still get in and would hold on tight, while the bus continued its journey with its doors open. The driver would shout out every now and then: ‘Make room and move to the middle,’ but that was practically impossible. Sometimes I would be standing on one leg and lose my balance. That was never a problem, because the crowd would catch me. Once I fell on the lap of a young man who had managed to get a seat.
‘Oh, sorry,’ I said startled and tried to stand up.
‘Don’t worry. You can stay seated,’ he replied without batting an eyelid.
I tried to stand up again, but that was impossible, because someone else had already filled my spot. So, I just sat there on the lap of a complete stranger thinking how I would get myself out of this difficult situation.
‘I’m feeling a bit foolish,’ I told him, while I tried to dodge his gaze. ‘I can’t get up. It makes me look like your girlfriend. ‘
‘If only that was true,’ he replied. ‘I’ve been looking for such a girlfriend for quite some time.’
Now I dared to study him closer. He was attractive, too attractive for someone without a girlfriend. Perhaps had had just broken up with someone or he was too picky.
He looked at me knowingly.
‘Okay, if you want, we could find out if I am the new girlfriend you’re looking for,’ I quietly told him, while I tried to stand up again. ‘As long as you don’t think I’m going to sit on your lap on our first date.’
It was less effort to get into a full bus than it was to get out of one. You had to start worming your way to the exit two stops in advance, otherwise you would miss your stop. I was lucky that my school was situated at the edge of town, because everyone got out here. With a little bit of luck, I could even grab a seat towards the end of my journey. The seats were upholstered in some kind of fake leather, that was ripped in different places. Sometimes I would play with the bulging filling, because there was little else to do on the bus. Sometimes I would try to read a book, but that was usually impossible. Then boys would start to chat with me or I would get pushed or someone who lost their balance would stand on my toes.
Luckily there were hardly any thieves during the communist period, because in those stuffed buses you couldn’t feel if someone was putting their hands in your pocket or bag. I felt so many limbs around me that I couldn’t tell if they were those of a thief.
Such stuffed buses seem an excellent location for unwanted attention, but this never actually happened to me. The social control was vast and potential assailants obviously knew that also. Of course, not everyone kept their hands to themselves: some men thought they would be safe because many women dared not open their mouth. They didn’t try it with me: apparently, I looked too confident.
The boy on the bus appeared on our date with a bouquet of red roses. I inhaled their wonderful perfume and we entered the semi-dark cinema. It was a romantic film and towards the end I felt his hand slide over my thigh.
‘What are you doing?’ I snapped. ‘Do you want me to leave?’
The severity of my threat had gotten through to him, because he immediately removed his hand. For him to later slide it over my knee. I secretly took my secret weapon out of my bag. I hesitated for a moment, but when he moved his hand towards my thigh, I hit out at the same moment there was shooting in the movie.
Krassimir yelled. Even though my timing had been perfect, most people turned to look at us.
‘You pricked me with a pin,’ he stuttered incredulously.
‘It’s a shame our acquaintance has come to an end,’ I said and left the cinema.
Krassimir was apparently still busy with his miniscule wound that he didn’t even think of coming after me.
The magic of winter
In the winter, I would always go cross-country skiing with my parents. I loved it, but my heart would beat faster when I saw someone skiing. I wanted to do that also and I hoped that I wasn’t too old to learn at 16. I rented a pair of skis, checked out the young gods who whizzed past and tried to copy them. Unfortunately, I spent more time on my backside than standing on the skis. When I had once again made a spectacular fall, a man came to me and asked if I needed any help.
He gave me private lessons and my skiing improved. Vassil took part in competition skiing and asked me to join his team. I couldn’t believe it: I almost fell at every turn and he was asking me to take part in competitions!
‘You’re talented,’ Vassil claimed.
‘Yes, I can see that myself,’ I groaned after I had once again crashed into the deep snow. ‘If you want me to learn faster then you’ll need to help me up. Otherwise I’ll still be trying into the evening.’
After practicing for another skiing season I was ready: I never fell and I loved skiing so much that I didn’t want to go to school in the winter. My parents tolerated me skipping class on the condition that I got the highest grade for each subject. One of our best family friends was a paediatrician and arranged fake prescriptions and evidence, which I showed my teachers. I had no idea what he had written, but I suspect I had the most diverse diseases. Luckily the teachers could not decipher the Latin names and that his handwriting was illegible.
We mainly trained in Pamporovo, a ski resort that attracted a lot of foreigners. We admired their colourful snowsuits and gloves. You could only buy these in Bulgaria in a few dollar stores, where they cost a fortune. I wasn’t greedy, but it was wry when I saw a clumsy foreigner in a flashy snowsuit.
When I was seventeen my parents allowed me to travel alone to my niece in Sofia. I phoned enquiries to ask about the departure times of the trains. The woman mumbled a few times at a rapid pace and hung up. I had only managed to write down the first time, an express train at six thirty in the morning. I didn’t like getting up early, but I had no choice. I was afraid that if I called back to enquire again she would shout at me.
My cousin Julia was a few years older than me, gorgeous and very shy. I left for Sofia with the aim of finding her a boyfriend, without asking myself where I would find one. I would have the most success in the disco of course, but it was not my style to pick up drunk men. In the moonlight, many men looked attractive, but you had better not wake up next to them in the morning.
There was snow on the Vitosha mountains, that could be reached by public transport from Julia’s apartment. I rented skis and went on a man hunt. Usually it was easy to find a date for someone, but this time it was more complicated. I had to arrange not one, but two dates, because my shy cousin would never go out without me and three’s a crowd.
After a while I saw two boys that fitted my criteria. They couldn’t ski very well. I followed them unobtrusively down the slope and when one of them fell I offered my help. I gave him some tips to improve his technique and he didn’t want to let me go. An hour later I told his friend that I had a gorgeous, but very shy cousin and that I wanted to arrange a blind date for her. He was keen and we arranged to go on a double date the same evening. Of course, I first had to ‘sell’ the blind date to Julia.
‘You did what?’ my cousin’s voice sounded both surprised and angry.
‘It’s just a date with no strings attached. If you don’t like him, then you can walk away. And I’ll come with you, I promise.’
Julia let it sink in. Her curiosity won and an hour later we went to get ready for the blind date. I could finally wear make-up without fear of my mother over-reacting. She felt that young girls should not wear make-up and that mother nature had given me enough good looks. I knew it was useless to argue with my mother. I always stopped at the first car to make myself up in front of the outside mirror, even if that mean bending my knees and putting my head on the car door. All my girlfriends used make-up and I didn’t want to be left behind. When I came home I would remove all the make-up by the front door, but sometimes my mother would find traces of make-up. She would be angry, but powerless. Grounding me wouldn’t make any difference. It’s actually quite sad how little influence mothers have on their teenage daughters. They can prohibit everything, but they can’t prevent it from happening.
My mother had no idea what an adventurous life I lead, that I drank alcohol from an early age and that even the combination of wine, rum and cognac didn’t bother my strong stomach. Until she caught me one time in a smoky bar. Her reaction was a mix of surprise and anger, but then multiplied. She pulled me outside by me ear. I was lucky I didn’t smoke, because my parents were avid anti-smokers. She believed it was hereditary, because no one in the family smoked. I didn’t see the heredity link. But I didn’t smoke, even though it was so trendy at school that you more or less had to smoke to belong to the in-crowd. Luckily the group of popular girls tolerated me as the only non-smoker, because I didn’t find it attractive. I thought cigarettes stank and I didn’t want to get yellow teeth.
My father was still worried that I couldn’t resist temptation and decided to do something about it. He offered me a cigarette. I looked at him surprised. Surely it was a joke?
‘You must be curious what a cigarette tastes like?’
‘I’m not sure I am. Some girls at school smoke, but I’ve never felt the urge to try one.’
‘This is your chance and you don’t even have to hide it from your parents,’ my father smiled.
‘But why are you doing this?’ I protested.
‘I know you’ll light up a cigarette sooner or later. I’m giving you the chance to find out that it’s not as nice as your friends claim.’
My lips gripped the cigarette like a vice and I took a draw. I nearly choked. My father beamed.
‘Try it again. Perhaps it went wrong the first time.’
‘No, I don’t want to.’
‘Come on. Then you’ll know for sure.’
I took another draw. It felt like it was coming out of my nose. I didn’t need any further proof. My father’s unorthodox strategy had worked: I never touched another cigarette. Luckily the group of popular girls continued to tolerate me, despite my abstention.
Julia was enamoured with the boy I had arranged for her bind date. The next few days they were inseparable. I almost thought I had done a good job as a matchmaker, but it turned out differently. At the end of the week Julia got into a fight with him and made an impulsive decision. She was going to marry someone else. I was completely surprised, because she hadn’t even told me that she had a boyfriend.
‘Do you know him well enough?’ I asked.
Julia nodded. ‘We’ve been dating for about six months. He’s really sweet and nearly as she as I am. A few days ago, he got down on his knees and proposed. I didn’t give him an answer straight away, because I wanted to get to know your ‘blind date’ better. But now I know who my true love is.
The more Julia told me about her fiancé the more I was shocked. My cousin was marrying a farmer! Her parents were furious. In their minds, they could already see their pretty daughter walking among the chickens and picking beans. I felt sorry for them, because I also thought she was making a mistake. When I met him, I already knew my prejudices were right. He had a ridiculously old-fashioned haircut and he wore brown trousers and a checked shirt, that could have belonged to my grandfather. As if that wasn’t enough, he was even more shy than Julia and only said a few words during the entire conversation.
Unexpected meeting
Marry a farmer? Never! I was looking for a knight in shining armour and not a knight on a tractor. Owning a villa in the mountains, where you made contact with the local farmers, was different from marrying into one. I would be deeply unhappy about being a peasant girl, because I was neither used to working the land nor listening to gossip.
Besides, the villagers had unusual customs. One tried to win my heart by bringing my parents a live chicken when they phoned to say they would not be on time for dinner.
I also had no idea what to do with the bird, which in the meantime my admirer had slaughtered on the street. I put the bird, feathers and all, in a pan of boiling water. It never occurred to me to pluck it, so I cooked the bird long enough until it no longer looked appetizing. I can’t remember what we ate for dinner that night, but it wasn’t chicken.
The train rushed past many small villages. I looked at the hardworking people who were working the fields in the bright sun. As an outsider, I found the farmers to be friendly, but I hoped never to make their acquaintance as an insider. I tried to forget Julia’s words by looking for an empty coupé, where I could close the curtains and read without interruption. After looking in several coupés I found one where the curtains were still in one piece. I was only bothered by the music that I couldn’t switch off and by the roasting central heating. But if I was reading a good book I wouldn’t hear the music and after stripping a little bit the heat wouldn’t bother me either. I opened the window and enjoyed the fresh air that blew in.
We always copied things from Russia, but our trains were the big exception. Here they had coupé guards who guarded the window keys. I had to laugh at the story of the English man who had asked the guard to open the window a little bit. He was so happy to have found a way to get fresh air that, with a typical Western naivety, he asked if she could open another window. She had gone back to her seat and had no intention of standing up again. When he asked again, she did stand up. She walked to the window that she had just opened, closed it, locked it and sat down again.
No one dared protesting to civil servants, because that didn’t make any difference. We could only secretly hope for a more democratic system. When the communist express train suddenly slowed down, people wondered why. Had Western spies tried to derail the train or had domestic traitors loosened a few bolts? We already knew that Stalin had gone down the wrong track with his inhuman bloody cleansing and that Lenin had literally had his enemies taken down, but we believed we would come back on the right track.
My train of thought was interrupted when my coupé door opened.
‘Hello, Mer. Nice to see you again.’
‘Ivan? How is the tennis?’
‘I quit. A bad injury can change your whole life.’
I felt truly sorry for Ivan, even though he wasn’t worth it. I remember clearly the day he tried to take my virginity against my will. I was 17 years old now and less naïve, even though my parents probably thought otherwise.
Since Ivan didn’t know how else to entertain me during the train journey, he started to whisper anti-communist jokes. That was one of my generation’s favourite pastime. Humour was a subtle way of hiding our fear and as a vent for all our other emotions. The anti-communist jokes took us to a mental sta
te that was physically forbidden. We had doubted the all-knowing party for ages, but not yet the ideals of communism.
Looking back, it seems surreal that a whole country could be so gullible. Actually, more than one country, because the situation in Bulgaria was not much different in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland and many other countries. When the truth slowly began to get through to us, we were not quite brave enough to act. The line between words and action was thin. You could go to jail for both. No one knew how many secret agents in plain clothes were still walking the streets. We didn’t feel spied on as such, but after Stalin’s death the Russian secret police counted seven million employees, and since everything in Bulgaria was modelled on Russia, we could not afford to think we were safe.
We didn’t feel like we lived in a police state, but some people were arrested for innocent jokes. Like Olga’s brother. He worked as a printer and when his girlfriend came around during a break, he dipped his fingers in the ink and made two handprints on her white shirt. They were ratted out straight away and locked up in a police cell for immoral behaviour. After questioning his girlfriend was allowed to go home, because she had in fact done nothing wrong. But she first had to wait for her mother to bring her a clean t-shirt, because walking the streets with such a provocative print was against the communist moral.
Olga’s brother quickly made up a better version of the story why he had landed in a police cell. ‘I said that party leader Zjivkov was an idiot and I was immediately taken in. For revealing a state secret.’
Despite these incidents, my generation were lucky they weren’t raised in the first years of communism, when the party reigned with an iron fist and arrested all dissenters. They never said what happened with the dissidents in the re-education camps, but when some of them returned, they had gone mad. Like one man who had once travelled in the West and spoke various foreign languages fluently. Before he was one of the most intelligent men who lived in the small coastal village where a friend of mine lived, but since his forced incarceration he wandered the streets with a bottle of alcohol in his hands and babbling incoherent words. No one knew for sure if he had lost his ability to speak or if he only pretended to, to distance himself from society and the people in power.