Maria Genova - Communism, Sex and Lies

The local market was overrun with unknown products after the collapse of the Wall, such as peanut butter which we didn’t know what to do with because the pot didn’t say you could spread it on bread. The French cheeses were also an attraction. Olga treated me to some brie, but first removed the white layer of cheese under the assumption that this was some kind of soft packaging. Packets of chewing gum with pictures of naked ladies were sold all over the place. They were so hard that you had a sore jaw from chewing the rest of the day, but many people didn’t mind because of the surprising pictures in the packets. The entire country seemed obsessed by sex: everywhere on the streets there were people selling erotic newspapers and poor-quality magazines. Some even sold the Playboy, but for people on an average salary this glossy magazine was simply too expensive. Where they used to have pictures of the party leaders hanging in the offices, they now shamelessly hung calendars of naked models. I had to admit they were more photogenic, but I could imagine that the older generation did not appreciate this total lack of morals.

Most Bulgarians had discovered within the year that freedom of speech didn’t help them much, but that free entrepreneurship, which was no longer prohibited, did. Commercial companies shot out the ground like mushrooms. The state run stores were just as empty as they had been previously, but no one minded, because they could find everything they needed in the private mini stores. Because they could not pay the high rent otherwise, most enterprising citizens started out in renovated garages and all kinds of booths. They would pile their goods up in high towers and if you tried to get something, then the whole tower would fall down.

Those who could not afford to rent a unit, could always display their wares on a stall. The whole city had turned into one large market. There was no resting place for the eyes due to the large amount of clothes, cosmetics, shoes and household appliances. The owners of the stalls also tried to display as many products as possible in as small a space as possible. If you wanted to buy Western cosmetics you often had to bend down under a tied piece of string, hung full of bra’s and underpants, to pay for your goods. If it was sexy lingerie, then I didn’t mind so much, but often there were D-cup bra’s and size XXL underpants dangling above my head.

There were also a large amount of book stalls, were they displayed philosophical books next to science fiction novels and magazines with busty blonds lay next to the Bible. There was also a lively trade in military items in the city centre, gold coins, army uniforms and souvenirs with communist images, which mostly attracted the tourists.

Western chains like McDonald’s and Pizza Hut had also got foot on the ground. The customers poured in. Everything that was Western was trendy and money played no role in these cases. Prices had seemed to have lost their grip on reality anyhow and the economy was more out of control than ever. No one could live on a normal monthly wage, but most people earned on the side and managed this way. Only the small towns were in dire straits after the crash of the state monopoly because of the complete lack of job opportunities. In such desolate places, Greek and Turkish businessmen set up sewing workshops with working conditions which dated from the last century. No windows, no ventilation, poor lighting, ban on union membership and compulsory overtime. Yet no one complained. The communist unions had more or less been dismantled and the employees themselves were too afraid of losing their jobs.

When I read the latest of Frank’s letters my heart started to beat faster: he was coming to Bulgaria to see me again. I didn’t expect my parents’ blessing, but they agreed to let him stay at our home.

My heart skipped a beat when I saw Frank walk through the sliding doors. A little while later he pressed me against his hard chest. It felt so right, even though I hardly knew him. I mostly knew him from his letters, in which he had written that he missed me every second and it was as if I could feel that yearning when he held me in his arms.

Frank was surprised at the changes around him.

‘Has anything stayed the same in my absence?’

‘Yes, our prejudices,’ I grinned, thinking back to our conversation in which Frank tried to break my glass tower or prejudices. He was dismayed with how much contempt we treated the gypsies.

‘Just imagine you had been born a gypsy. Would you like it if everyone treated you like trash?’

‘Frank, you don’t understand. They are lazy, thieves and they smell. Just go and stand next to a gypsy in packed bus.’

‘They are poor and they can’t have a shower every day like you can.’

‘I don’t think they even have a shower in their slums.’

‘That’s even worse. But surely they can’t help being born poor gypsies in a ghetto?’

It was true about the ghetto. I hadn’t realised there was a ghetto on the outskirts of my city until I once got lost in my car and ended up there. It was so surreal: muddy streets with potholes, naked children running through the puddles, men with no teeth, women without decent clothing, houses that were disintegrating. Even though I had locked all the car doors, I felt so scared in this miserable environment that I had tears in my eyes. I was scared they would wreck my car. A few gypsy children ran after the car for a while, but they didn’t throw stones or anything else. Perhaps they had wanted to do some begging.

I drove shivering out of the ghetto. I had lived in this city for 18 years and I had considered such scenes impossible. This was a hermetically isolated world, even though it was not surrounded by a wall.

I remember my parents trying to teach me manners by threatening me with this ghetto: ‘You can’t sing at the table, otherwise you will marry a gypsy,’ they said each time I hummed a song. Even though that sounded like a serious threat at the time, it only now got through to me the ghetto was worse than even my most distressing representation.

‘Aha, your prejudices!’ Frank said in a neutral tone of voice.

We both knew there was no use in discussing this again, because even sensible arguments would not take away the stubborn prejudices about gypsies that every Bulgarian had been raised with. Now that the communists no longer had work for the gypsies, the cheeky minority would steal all the manhole covers to sell them as scrap metal. You had to watch out if you didn’t want to break your neck.

The gypsies hadn’t just targeted state-owned facilities, but also those privately owned. They took down the chicken wire on a large plot of ground we had been given back by the government. They even took the dirt grid away that we used to wipe our feet on. My parents decided not to get a new one, because they knew it would be gone the next day.

The communist ideal had made room for traders and millionaires with no education and the gypsies apparently wanted to keep up in this respect. They profited from the fact that the almighty party no longer controlled the lives of its citizens and in a smart way played to their uncertainty about the future. Because who was better at predicting the future than the gypsies? I was approached on a daily basis by dark-skinned fortune-tellers and palm readers. That usually went according to a standard procedure. In first instance, they would hint that they only had good predictions for me. When I politely refused, they would follow me for a while and they eventually went on the lookout for a new victim. But not before they had cursed me such as: ‘May you remain an old spinster and may you never have any children’. Of course, time would tell, but seeing as several cursed girlfriends had been both marriage material and fertile, I wasn’t that worried.