by Maria Genova
‘And your parents? Did the not stop you when you said you were getting married?’
Wanja sighed. ‘On the contrary. My future husband came from a well-off farming family, so I would not have any financial worries. I didn’t think that was important, but as usual I listened to my parents. After my engagement, I regretting it greatly, but I couldn’t turn back time. You might be able to call off an engagement in the city, but in a village, everyone would find it disgraceful. Besides they all thought I had already slept with him. No one in the village wants a second-hand bride.’
I felt sorry for Wanja. She was that afraid she would get pregnant that she often rejected sex with her husband. That put a lot of pressure on their relationship and she was even looking for clues that he was cheating on her. ‘I can use that against him,’ Wanja said. ‘But I won’t get divorced. Friends have told me that it’s impossible. Even women who are abused find it difficult to leave their husband, because the communists don’t want to ruin their nice statistics with a large number of divorces. A woman in our village was always covered in bruises and when her husband tried to strangle her she finally had enough evidence to get a divorce. Still she didn’t go through with it. Turning him in would have meant their children would grow up without a father, because he would have had to go to prison.
‘It’s better to have no father than such an animal,’ I responded coolly.
‘That’s easy for you to say. There’s not as much gossip in the city and as a divorced woman you’re not dragged through the mud. In a village, you are constantly reminded of your past.’
I tried to think of moving house as a possible option, but the party’s strict housing policy didn’t take personal situations into account. Quite a lot had to happen if you wanted to get permission to move to another town. For example, you had to have a husband who was already an inhabitant of that town, but of course a recently divorced and bitter woman had no intention of starting a new relationship.
I pretended that we were not so prudish as the previous generation, but apparently, I was wearing blinkers, because Wanja’s story was proof that the moral views in the villages had not substantially changed. That reminded me of my own parents. Through prudishness I had almost not been conceived and once I had been, I was actually an accident. My mother was halfway through her training at the music academy and had no desire for children. It was nearly a miracle that she and my father had made it so far. My mother’s prudishness knew no limits and each time he got intimate, she didn’t want to see him for a while. The worst thing was that once my mother listened to a secret tape, on which her loved had taped a romantic conversation with a girlfriend. He invited her to visit him, but she claimed it was impossible. ‘The only thing that’s impossible, is trying to remove your underpants over your head,’ was my father’s reaction.
My mother was outraged. She had been raised with values and norms and could not stand his vulgar remark, so she broke off the relationship. My father sent flowers, apologised a thousand times and even got her parents involved as mediators. He made sure that he didn’t blow his second chance, which he was finally given.
Thanks to the moral accomplishments of communism my generation also grew up protected, but it was now common to be intimate with your steady boyfriend and that you didn’t have to wait before marriage to sleep with each other. Except in the villages, where prudishness formed an immense social problem. We played the communist game without giving it much thought, but girls like Wanja were always the losers, because problems were never discussed. As prisoners of the system we told white lies of we wanted to keep something silent and if we had to tell the truth we also lied to prevent complications. We were passengers in a car, driven by a drunk party leader, who ignored all the rules. You don’t just get out of a car that’s driving at high speed.
Western tourists
‘Mer, you’re just like a butterfly. Each time I want to catch you, you fly away,’ Dimitar moaned, after I had agreed to carefully build on a kind of intimate friendship.
‘Maybe you want to catch me too fast?’ I replied.
‘Too fast! Until known I have shown the patience of a saint, but apparently, you haven’t noticed.’
I saw the vein in his neck beat intensely. Anger and passion were a remarkable combination.
‘Mer, I’ve fallen in love with you. Do you love me too?’ he whispered.
It was as if I had been waiting for that question. Dimitar sounded so hopelessly pathetic that it made me shiver. Where was the self-assurance, the intriguing personality, that I had fallen for? I found the idea that he wanted to claim me for himself suffocating, because I felt so happy without a steady relationship.
‘Luck is just like decorating a home,’ Olga had said once. ‘Throw away all the rubbish and give all the valuable things pride of place.’ Dimitar didn’t belong in my soul’s home. It was strange that I felt so attracted to him without loving him.
‘Give your friend everything his heart desires and at the same time he’ll realise that there is more,’ I said out loud.
Dimitar looked at me questioningly. I was not planning to give a straight answer to his declaration of love. I was afraid that he would not accept it, so I asked him about his future plans.
‘I want to leave this country as soon as possible. I would love to go to America,’ he replied.
I was amazed by the calm way he talked about it. Communism was already exhibiting some cracks, but feeling to the West was still serious. The funny thing was that Dimitar had predicted his future without a crystal ball. A few years later he married in America, a marriage of convenience. Once he had found a good job, he got a divorce. I heard from his sister that he soon remarried, this time out of love. What surprised me the most was the end of the story: Dimitar had gotten a second divorce and went to live as a monk in a monastery. How large was the change from playboy to monk, I asked myself?
I didn’t see myself studying holy scripture, but life still had its surprises. Funnily enough fate also took me to America. Admittedly in a roundabout way, but I did go there. I was almost hypnotised by the flashing and rolling sea of lights of Las Vegas.
A limousine stopped close by. No one got out. Out of curiosity I tried to catch sight of the passenger, but that was impossible. A few hours previously I had been driven through Las Vegas in a similar limousine with tinted windows and I could see everyone, but no one could see me. Now the tables were turned: the passengers could see me, but I couldn’t see them. I recalled the Bulgarian limousines: all black Russian cars, reserved for the party elite. For the ordinary mortals, bureaucracy was part of the car purchase: you placed your name on an endless list, put down a deposit and hoped that one day you would actually get it. There were very little cars imported and my parents were lucky to be able to buy one after seven years. You often had to wait ten years or longer to buy a Lada or Trabant.
We could even laugh at this undesirable situation. ‘You can pick your Trabant up in exactly ten years’ time,’ the garage owner says. ‘Would you prefer the morning or the afternoon?’
‘What do you think is better?’ the buyer asks.
‘In the afternoon, because the mechanic will be present then.’
We were eligible for a ‘ZAZ’, a Russian car with the appearance of a bumper car. Of course, we would have preferred a Lada, but then we would have to wait for another few years. My father didn’t want to buy a second-hand car, because that was more expensive than a new one. This is the way the communist market forces worked: if you didn’t want to wait for years, you had to pay more.
In any case I was pleased it wasn’t a Trabant. I had sat in my uncle’s Trabi enough times to know that the two-stroke engine completely overshadowed the radio. It was simply impossible to hold a conversation at a slightly increased speed, or you had to shout the whole time. The suspension was so hard that every hole in road made my head hit the roof of the car. Some Trabant passengers got queasy from exhaustion fumes because the air for the radiator pas
sed through the exhaust.
My uncle claimed that he had the longest four-wheeler: three metres of car and ten metres of smoke. The Trabant did seem to have been designed to ruin the air. The only good thing about it was that it was of a type of plastic, Duroplast, which meant it lasted longer. This way the drivers could avoid the holes in the road following the necessary repairs. This was quite tricky and favourite hobby of every experienced driver. Only beginners, such as my uncle, braced themselves and steered the Trabant straight through the holes, so as not to end up on the wrong side of the road. That wasn’t any safer, because once when he was driving the clutch came loose in his hands. This was usually mounted on the steering column but after a few large holes it had spontaneously broken off.
Although we were very happy with our ZAZ to start off with, it seemed it was just as bad as a Trabi. On our way to the Black Sea we had to stop regularly to let the car breathe. My father would pop the hood and wait until the engine had cooled down before we drove any further. Despite these precautions, about halfway the engine overheated anyway. Even worse: one of the parts had melted and we had to spend the night in the garage, because working quickly wasn’t in their vocabulary.
My sister and I slept in the car, which had been taken apart. Our parents found two old chairs in the work place, surrounded by dirt, grease, rusty bolts, worn tyres and unreliable looking spare parts. No one slept in this strange environment. When we reached the Black Sea the next day, we were all just as hot and bothered as the engine of our Russian car.
I was looking forward to a carefree holiday, but after waiting so long for a car, it seemed my father had forgotten what he had learned during his driving lessons. On the second day, it happened. He reversed in a narrow street and rammed into a metal trash can. There was no time recover from the shock, because when he tried to avoid the trash can on his second attempt, he rammed into the communist party building. The façade had no damage at all, but the bumper of our brand-new car lay on the ground and both headlights were broken. Luckily, we did not have to spend the night in the garage this time round.
A holiday at sea is a culture shock time and time again. The beaches were invaded by a colourful mixture of Western tourists without any morals: Swedish women with bare breasts, Dutch men with long hair, French with tattoos and German machos with earrings in both ears. We were amazed at all this immorality and were surprised that this was allowed in all these countries. On the other hand, we were jealous of their cars and clothes.
The Neckermann catalogue was passed from hand-to-hand in Bulgaria as proof of the existence of a world of pretty and strange fashion. The catalogue had become greasy and dirty from the hundreds of fingers that had turned the pages to discover clothes and appliances that we could only dream of. When a group of Germans told me that this thick book filled with desirable articles was distributed free-of-charge in the West, my mouth dropped open in surprise.
The same Germans claimed that there was a special vinegar store in the town we were staying in. I didn’t believe it, but they insisted and we finally went to visit it together. I already saw from the outside that they were wrong: it was a state-run store for groceries. Once inside most of the shelves were empty. Everything had gone, except the vinegar and the salespeople displayed that on as many shelves as possible.
I was ashamed of our party’s failing planned economy. The Germans beamed.
‘You see, you didn’t even know they had special stores for vinegar in your country.’
‘No, I didn’t know,’ was the only thing I could say.
Almost every day I walked past the fence of a holiday camp on the beach. Most of my friends spent their summers in camps in the mountains or at sea, which mostly cost nothing, because they were subsidised by the communist party. I was never allowed to go, because my parents were afraid that I would come into contact with sex, smoking and alcohol. I couldn’t suppress my jealousy: my peers were free to do what they wanted, while I had to do my parents’ bidding.
Of course, my perception of the holiday camps was strongly romanticised. My peers weren’t that free. They had to play a cat and mouse game if they wanted to escape the constant supervision of the comrades. They were woken early each day with the sounds of a fanfare and every day they had to raise the national flag and sing patriotic songs.
My parents at least let me do as I pleased during the day, as long as I stayed close. My two-year younger sister was told to keep an eye on me. Actually, I was the one keeping an eye on her because she thought every sweet boy was her true love. I never fell in love and if I did, I didn’t even dare to admit it to myself. A strong woman had to keep her feelings under control. That became more difficult when I met Bojan. I met him in a disco, where he unashamedly stared at me.
‘Can I help you?’ I asked
‘I wish!’ he replied.
It made me laugh. The ice was broken and it clicked sooner between us than it had ever between myself a stranger. I don’t know if things would have gone differently if he had said something else. I was so fed up with men coming up to me with stupid questions like: ‘Haven’t we met before?’ or otherwise with exaggerated compliments: ‘I think you’re the real reason behind global warming; you’re so hot’. The remark ‘I wish!’ was simple, charming and I hadn’t heard it before. Bojan was also so handsome that he earned a living as a model alongside his studies. He had a deep dimple in his chin and radiated endless energy. I was almost 18 years old and I had become fed up waiting for a knight in shining armour. Bojan was the perfect person to lose my virginity to, because he did not live in my town and if it didn’t work out, then we didn’t have to see each other again. After the holiday, I was bold and visited him in Sofia under the pretext that I wanted to visit my niece again. Bojan was delighted when he heard the news and rented a suite in one of the nicest hotels in the capital. When he closed the door behind me I felt my knees go weak. I was almost certain that it was going to happen and was mostly afraid of the unknown.
Bojan took a box of matches out of his pocket. ‘We’re going to play a game.’
He grabbed the box and ticked his index finger against the side. It tipped over and fell on the flat side. ‘The flat side means that I can ask you a question,’ he explained. ‘You have to give an honest answer. We’ll take turns. If it falls on the narrow side, then the other person has to carry out a request here and now.’ Bojan shoved the matchbox towards me. I ticked it and it fell on the flat side. A question.
´How many girls have you slept with?’
‘About ten. Now it’s my turn. The flat side again. Do you enjoy your nipples being sucked?’
‘Only when it’s done tenderly. Now it’s my turn again. Flat side. What are your erogenous zones?’
‘You’ll have to find out for yourself.’
Now it was my turn. The narrow side, I was allowed to make a wish. That was harder than I thought. If I wished something erotic, then the game would probably end pretty quickly, and I was just starting to enjoy it. The box of matches gave you an insight into someone’s past, desires and secrets. I couldn’t think of a better wish thank asking Bojan to top up my wine glass.
‘Gosh, that’s original,’ Bojan sighed and topped up my glass. He ticked the box of matches and how he could also make a wish. His face was so close by that I could count the brown flecks in his green eyes. ‘Take off an item of clothing of your own choosing.’
I didn’t want to expose myself yet, even though the hotel room was sweltering hot. I could never figure out the system of district heating. All the hotels and apartments in the large cities were connected to large plants that heated up the water, but neither the hotel rooms nor the houses had their own thermostat. If you were too warm in the winter, you had to open the windows. Efficiency was not part of communism. Better hot than cold, the party leaders must have thought. The people didn’t care, because it didn’t affect their wallets. Not only were the prices of the most important groceries mostly symbolic, neither did water, heating or r
ent make a large dent in the family budget.
Every time I visited friends in apartments, I felt like I was visiting a sauna. I felt the same in this luxury hotel, but Bojan hadn’t deserved a striptease yet. Of course, I had to take something off, because he had made a wish. I wore black pantyhose underneath my skirt. I pulled my skirt up, pulled off the pantyhose and demonstratively pulled my skirt down again.
‘We’re not getting far, are we?’ I laughed happy at the thought that it could take a long time at this rate before I had taken all my clothes off. I hadn’t considered the fact that he could also have asked me to take all my clothes off at once. I grabbed the magic box. It fell on the flat side.
‘Have you ever made love to a man?’
‘No, not yet. And I probably won’t either. And you? Have you ever slept with a woman?’
We had forgotten all about the matchbox and started asking each other questions in turn.
‘I was once approached by a girl at ski-camp,’ I answered. ‘I was shocked at first and said I wanted to think about it. The next day she had to go home suddenly. So, nothing happened. By the way, it’s my turn to ask a question. Why did you take me to a hotel room instead of inviting me to your house?’
‘It’s not because I realized I couldn’t do anything disrespectful at home with my parents,’ Bojan replied. ‘Of course, I’m secretly hoping you want to go as far as I do, but that’s your own choice.’
‘I’m not sure what I want. Shall we continue with the game? Ask me a question.’
‘No, I have a wish. Will you let me watch you masturbating?’
‘Gosh, that’s kind of private.’
‘Do you still know the rules of the game or should I throw the matchbox on its narrow side first?’ His eyes laughed ironically.
‘Don’t bother, because you’ll eventually get lucky.’ I pulled my skirt up, shoved my panties to the side and started rubbing myself. A little while later I was shivering from top to toe from the powerful contractions.
