Maria Genova - Communism, Sex and Lies

‘I don’t know. I think you’re attractive, but I don’t want a relationship with a playboy. Maybe we should just accept that we’re not meant for each other.’

‘You are really attached to that image you have of me, aren’t you?’

I now knew he was not some reckless womanizer, but I didn’t want to admit that. His romantic side had made too much of an impression on me and I was afraid to fall under his power. I preferred to have control. I knew that Dimitar wanted to have sex, but I didn’t even want to admit to myself that I was also open to this at this point. Deep inside I was a prudish girl, because this was part of my upbringing. Sex was not discussed, the subject matter could not be found in any magazine, your parents told you nothing and the sex education at school was limited to information over the fertilization of an egg by a seed. That was very brief, but we didn’t dare ask any questions so as not to embarrass the teacher and also not to give ourselves a bad reputation.

Olga was the only one with whom I could openly discuss this taboo subject. I vividly remember the first thing she told me about this subject: that my parents had sex. As a thirteen-year-old girl I found this difficult to believe. My parents had a good relationship and still walked hand-in-hand like a couple in love, but still I thought they were too old to play dirty games in bed.

I was determined not to pay any attention to Olga’s chatter, until a school friend told me that she had caught her parents in bed. That was a sign that I had apparently missed something.

‘How am I supposed to ask Mum and Dad if they still have sex?’

My sister burst out laughing confronted with so much curiosity and naivety.

‘Just don’t ask, because they won’t tell you anyway,’ she advised. ‘Do you think they would tell you something like that?’

My sister was right: I had to think up a trick question to get an honest answer. Perhaps I should ask them how often they have sex instead of if they even had sex? After thinking it over for a while and practising in front of the mirror, I approached my mother.

‘Mum, how often do you do it?’ I asked very seriously.

She stood petrified like a mummy. It seems as if my question hadn’t gotten through to her. The long silence made me uncomfortable, but I didn’t dare repeat my cheeky question. My mother’s expression suddenly changed, as if she had just woken up in shock by a nightmare. She went completely mad.

‘How dare you ask about such private affairs?’

It was no use trying to explain that my question wasn’t meant to be personal, but that I just wanted to know if adults who don’t want any (more) children still had sex. My mother was so outraged that she even got my father involved. That was her trump card. Every time she thought it was above her to get into a discussion with such a small and brainless creature, she would get him to re-educate his foolish daughter.

‘Repeat what you just asked me!’ my mother ordered.

I had to choose between two evils. If I asked the question again, the situation would escalate further, so I decided to ignore her order and keep my mouth shut. I wish I had listened to my sister! When my mother realised that I had no intention of saying anything, she repeated the question herself. My father looked shocked, as if he wanted to say: ‘Did we really put that much energy into raising such a rude child?’

‘That’s none of your business,’ was his redeeming reply.

‘Get out of the room.’

‘And?’ my sister asked out of curiosity when I walked into the other room.

‘Just don’t ask. They’re both angry. And they said nothing. But I think I know the answer. They didn’t deny anything, so they do have sex. If they didn’t then they wouldn’t have been so annoyed.’

‘Okay, enough nonsense,’ my sister resolutely said and grabbed the telephone book to phone her boyfriend for the umpteenth time. If you didn’t know she was studying to become a violinist, you would think she wanted to be a receptionist. She never got bored with the telephone and she could stay on it for hours on end. The upstairs neighbours, who lived on the second floor of the house, sometime bonked on the floor in exasperation as a sign that they also wanted to use the line, because the duplex line meant we had to take turns. But we were still lucky, because without the right connections you couldn’t even get a duplex line. You had to wait years to be connected. The upstairs neighbour also had a boyfriend she could talk to for hours on end, but we often used to throw a spanner in the works. The duplex box hung in our hallway and if we needed to use the line we simply pressed on a button to disconnect her. She probably didn’t even realise this, because disconnections occurred often.

A consequence of the taboo on sex were the numerous teenage pregnancies. In the big cities, the girls would carry out abortions and some even used it as a regular contraception. In the country, it was much worse: nearly the whole village would know that a girl was pregnant before she did. In the villages, a date was more or less tantamount to an engagement and although arranged marriages were not common, many diligent parents found a way to match their child to an approved candidate.

As a city girl, I luckily did not have to experience this, but in our villa in the mountains I heard poignant stories from my village peers. Our neighbour Wanja was only 17 years old and already married. She was terrified she would get pregnant. Contraception was an unknown phenomenon. There was no pill, a coil was not recommended for women who had not yet had children and the majority of men were insulted if they had to use a condom. Wanja had no other choice than wait for the unwanted pregnancy to arrive.

‘Why did you get married so young?’ I asked her one time.

‘Out of ignorance,’ was her surprising answer. ‘My parents had arranged a date with because he came from a good family. This was my very first date and I did not know what to do. We soon thought that we matched and proposed that we got married. Marriage? I thought I was too young, but he claimed that that was the only way I could prove that I loved him. And I didn’t want to lose him.’

‘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.’