Maria Genova - Communism, Sex and Lies

I felt so bad for my grandmother, because I knew she had lovingly deposited the money in the bank account each month in the hope that years later I could buy myself something nice. I couldn’t come home with a toaster. My grandmother would be ashamed that she hadn’t saved more money, even though she hadn’t eaten expensive bananas for years but saved the money for me instead. I couldn’t find the words to say how much I appreciated it, even though the savings were of no value.

During my final year at grammar school I earned a lot of money as a private tutor for English and German. From the moment that it was no longer forbidden to travel to the West, everyone wanted to travel and speak foreign languages. I had that many customers that I could have opened my own school. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to get rich quick, because this final year at school was very important for my further career. I had to get the highest grade for nearly all my subjects, if I wanted to guarantee myself a place at university.

I never had much chance to spend my savings, since my parents bought everything for me and my dates paid all the restaurant bills. A woman was never allowed to pay the bill, because the men were immediately insulted if you proposed this. So, I diligently deposited all my money in a bank account, until I heard rumours that most banks were about to go bankrupt. I went to withdraw my money straight away. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who thought it was safer to put your money in an old sock. It was like mass hysteria: hundreds of people stood in line waiting to withdraw their savings. Some people in line claimed the cash registers were almost empty. I wondered if there was any point in waiting. At least I had made up a good excuse why I urgently needed the money.

After waiting for hours, it was my turn. The counter clerk looked at me gravely.

‘Everyone has a reason, but we do not have any more cash.’

‘You can’t be serious. Look, I have it in writing how much I have deposited in my bank account and that I can access this any time I want.’

‘I’m not blind, but you’re not getting your money. At least, not for the time being. Next in line please.’

I sighed and backed off. These types of scenes belonged to communism and not to capitalism. Who had promised us it would all get better? Only the rewriting of history had had a positive outcome, because now no one had to fear those ridiculous political exams, in which they asked for all the ins and outs of the communist party. Yeltsin, the first Russian President after the revolution, gave a typical example of the questions we were asked in his biography.

The examiner: ‘On which page and in which part of Das Kapital does Marx talk about the commodity-money relations?’

Yeltsin: ‘I was absolutely certain that he had never even read Marx and didn’t know on which page and which part it was mentioned and even had no idea what commodity-money relations meant, so I replied half-jokingly, half seriously: in the second part, page 387. I said it without thinking.’

‘Great, you have an excellent knowledge of Marx,’ the examiner said and Yeltsin was admitted to the local party committee.

We no longer had to know about Marx, but instead about survival techniques. Suddenly there were shortages in everything, even the daily groceries. Luckily, we were no longer prohibited from travelling to the West and my mother would bring back butter and cheese from France when she toured as a manager with her folk dance group. Otherwise we had to wait in endless queues.

Do you know what democracy is? You can choose which queue to wait in,’ Olga joked. Unfortunately, we were already familiar with that freedom. I would have preferred for something substantial to have changed and preferably right now.

I was too impatient to waste my time standing in queues and tried a different approach. A new admirer who worked in a small supermarket was prepared to save anything I wanted behind the counter. My parents considered this to be a creative solution until they saw my boyfriend.

‘He has no brains and his legs are too short,’ was my mother’s commentary.

I usually paid no attention to her scathing remarks, but this time it made me think. She couldn’t have assessed that he had no brains that quickly, but his legs were indeed very short. It was strange that I hadn’t noticed that before. I especially abhorred his smoke-stained teeth and didn’t want to kiss him for that reason. When I confessed this to him, he turned up the next day with teeth so white that I couldn’t believe my eyes. They had been whitened by a dentist with a super modern laser machine. What was the next step? A prosthetic leg? I thought he was coming dangerously close and ended the relationship. There was no point starting something with a man my parents didn’t approve of in a country where family always came first.

The next day I joined a long queue for groceries.

Materialism and individualism were the new magic words of the post-communist society. You hardly ever saw propaganda images of Bulgarian workers gratefully shaking the hands of Russian soldiers. The facades were painted and draped with advertising, which played to a completely different set of emotions. Not to brotherhood and solidarity, but to satisfying material desires. We no longer swam like a school of fish towards the clear light of communism. Everyone went their own way.

I had no idea that the moment for a radical change in my life had nearly arrived. I could only see what was happening within the limits of my own horizon, but the change came from far away.

I met him during that disastrous post-communist period, marked by scarcity, unemployment and insecurity. I fell for his white shirt, which shone so brightly in the black lights at the disco. I was also wearing a pristine white top and it seemed to attract him as if I was the only ray of light in the dark. At first glance, he didn’t seem to be my type, but our shirts were in some strange way attracted to each other. He came closer and started to dance across from me. His sharp jawline exuded masculinity, his moves were sexy and his tight bum caught the admiration of a few other women. He asked if he could buy me a drink. I wanted to say ‘no’, but funnily enough I landed next to him on a bar stool. Had I gone crazy: I was following a luminous shirt, while the man who wore it wasn’t my type?

Luckily this Dutch tourist didn’t turn out to be a pushy and conceited macho. Frank seemed to be more of a charmer with a see-through shirt: he gave a piece of himself bare, but not completely. That made him interesting, just like his smile and sense of humour.

This was Frank’s first time in Bulgaria and all his friends thought he was mad to travel to an unknown country for winter sports, since he had always skied in France and Austria.

‘But it’s not so bad here, even though I’ve experienced a few strange things,’ he said. ‘Our airplane had to divert to an airport on the Black Sea because of fog. We slept in a hotel with broken windows and no water, about 300 km from our travel destination. The hotel was actually closed and not prepared for visitors in the winter. We were picked up by a shoddy bus the next day. After driving for hours we were allowed to stop for some fresh air, because the driver had to repair one of the parts. We took photos of him lying under the bus doing his repairs. After a few hour’s delay, we finally arrived at our winter sports destination. The skiing is perfect, but I keep on being harassed by strangers wanting to exchange dirty money and by prostitutes in the hotel. One even had the audacity last night of knocking on my door. I was half asleep when I opened the door. She asked if I wanted sex straight away.’