From sunset to dawn – nurtured in the sky of hope,

under the darkening solitude of space

shouldering my earthly lot

over the glowing coals of shame;

through the grief of a hundred torments,

through exceeding smart and distances

driving the risky curves of time –

I return to you again! – Have I left it too late?

*

Your eyes watch me with a quiet tenderness

and your rough hands are still soft in their caress.

Am I really still darling in your eyes,

am I really not forgotten through my exile,

have I really not lost my shine?

*

My worrier! You ask why I’m grown so dark,

why I am slow and sour and sad today –

what casts me down and inks my soul?

Have I slept on my elbow last night,

has frost slept on my cheeks,

can the heart not stifle its cry?

Don’t ask me questions! Just keep shtum!

About the road I’ve trod, about my pitiless burden;

not everyone has motherly eyes wide open.

Don’t let folks’ petty spite

touch me with their schadenfreude!

My festering pain gains no support

from the filthy hands

of hypocrite reassurance!

Don’t break my heart!

*

Mother!

I have many tears to weep, Mother!

Oh yesterday was an unmourned grave!

And I would have wept like an ice-storm on dry bushes

but I am not born in this world to weep,

my eyes aren’t in a wet place!

**

I too grew up on garlic bean soup.

And my table has lacked bread.

Was my fate cursed by an evil witch,

I was hardly born weak and sniveling?

What enemy breath seduced and sank

my filial duty in tavern stink?

Love betrayed now cast aside

and just how sad is a rainy sunset!

**

Who? Our enemies? What a cunning show!

They’ll soothe you with their treacherous flattery.

When you’re alone, as if they hear your sighs,

as if they grieve twice over, when you grieve.

They pretend to worry about your worries

and later they’ll twine you in their evil plots.

Today they’ll stand you a drink in the pub

and tomorrow they’ll cut you over a petticoat.

In order to stop you on your way –

they’d glue together earth to sky!

I know them! I got to know them well! –

I had drinks with them, I spoke to them

about whatever they’d put inside my head….

They poisoned my daily bread.

***

Life, life! On my youthful shoulders

you placed your heavy hand, last evening!

All dreams drained in pubs,

the glass – drunk, the laughter – laughed out.

Then from everything I turned cold face,

I passed by silent and outside.

I’d forgotten all I love

and I was never ever happy!

You, tell the story of these days,

of the poisoning hypocrisy,

killing faith and trust at once

with slander and duplicity…

Over my heart it lies,

the cold stone of memory.

A heavy burden weighs on me

The misery I brought under my roof!

**

I cared not for yesterday – alone in plain sight,

a layabout propped by the public house bar.

And do you remember?  When the nasturtiums flowered

and by the fountain, white breasted swallows

pecked out stuff for their nests,

while my family nest was left empty,

when my days were suddenly stripped.

*

The lustre of white roses died, early blooms –

drowned in my pent up molten tears.

**

Drunk I’ve staggered through the night…

And now I grieve for wasted days.

Like bullets that missed their target

they ricocheted offstage,

missing the enemy, no fight.

And who’ll give them back to me, who?

**

My heart now labours, falls sick

over past acknowledged guilt.

And my hair is blanched

by the first autumn frost.

*

Last night’s wine still bites my guts:

will it pass –  makes no odds!

It passes time…It winds me in a bandage

and takes the edge off my recent wounds.

*

But I know – every wound leaves a scar!

The cliff of my crumbling conscience is high.

In me there’s the meeting of two epochs,

their harsh combat echoes within me!

**

Again a raven-black hail-cloud hovers

a cloud presaging war

and a black shadow smothers

our sun-lit meadows.

Now we’ll fall dead, mother! –

Did you wean us for this?

**

Just a second faith faltered, a cause for regret.

I wrote an epitaph for the world.

I glugged belief like a drunkard,

I sobbed in the shadow of heart-wrenching fear;

*

Alas you people – comrades in the dream.

Alas you people – perched on tractors,

populating earth and sky,

just now looking out to space.

*

Lucky you, who are barren! With no darling kids.

Lucky you, with fruitless wombs!

Lucky you with unsucked tits!

**

Will you get my fear, my generation?

Will you get how it gives birth

To the bitterness of threat and doubt;

*

Isn’t man today an empty cave,

where shouted slogans echo on

the days in breakneck torrent?

*

Isn’t this century my step-mum?

Aren’t I this century’s step-son?

Didn’t victims repay it in blood?

Was I born too early… Or was I late?

…

Don’t you hear my voice? I didn’t hear yours!

…And I walked on,

and I hurt,

whatever hurt inside me – I got sick!

And I didn’t turn a renegade,

though I peeped into another’s house through the old keyhole.

I passed through fire, I returned – steel!

Even steel softens in tempering!

– I know what is grief and hurt!

– I know beating and the road!

*

I lost my step in the march of the multitude,

I stepped out of the ranks for a little – checking direction.

I checked by my heart, the accurate compass,

I cooled the heat in the fridge of reason:

I saw! The direction is true! The summit is there! Before us!…

**

Haven’t you seen how a mother seeks a ford and wades

with child in arms through a rising river?

Through the rapids of time and dark eddies,

the Party carried me just like that!…

Mummy, forgive me my previous deviations!

Forgive my desertion into needless suspicions!

Forgive me the songs of horrible sorrow!

Forgive me my slanderous utterings!

Tanned in your sun, your trainee,

I’m ranked a soldier again astride the racing days!

And how hard it is to follow on the path of war and cherished dreams!

***

I tightened my nerve every day, every hour.

My enormous duty answers for everything here!

I’ve tripled fears and worry on my own!

*

Today, humming like rails, every poem written

throwing a bridge over the ravines.

At my post my sentry-thought awakes with you!

*

A great, a brutal century collapses before me

and my fate remains in my lap forever.

The endless rope of awkward moments

tightens round my brain in cruel knots.

Oh, knots of stress!

*

Behind my forehead, born out of suspicion,

converging winds battle, fearful gusts,

tear the cliffs from irrevocable tasks,

overturn heaven in fury, thundering ominous;

storming heavy clouds, rumbling and weeping

and my temples are spaced in lightning strikes;

a seething storm, a hellish storm, boiling in the depths of soul

she makes a jangling string of my tightened nerves

and my brain is a flash fire….

***

The day dies every evening,

it grows through the night and my sky is born

from the chasm of conscience.

it glows over pallid greening tiles,

and it sets into the well of distant lament.

And you, my weeping eyes,

You couldn’t turn from iron, scaffolding and concrete!

**

Living, hunched by cares already, overloaded,

every day we burn up a little.

And some are exhausted soon, too soon.

*

Listen you breadmunchers!

I too am a breadmuncher worried about the price of flour

and I run for onions and cabbage and guard my place in the queue,

I too follow the lottery results.

But fearless dreams and elevating aims,

are they really found in cabbage and winning tickets?

To watch a match twice a week,

to get goosebumps if some player

kicks the ball with left or right foot here or there –

is this the summit of our yearning, our ideals?

Is this the biggest thrill of our age?

It wasn’t with this onion breath and lotto-madness,

that you, my wise, my fearless generation,

built the factories,

power stations

and huge white buildings!

***

…I know … only the throat doesn’t lie,

but did our armed struggle

pass through fires for this,

through blockades and traps,

was it for this through the mountains

the partisan funeral pyre,

was it for this it bore in its hands

not one wounded comrade

and is it for this on the scaffolding

today its hardened indomitable shoulder

is white from cement and lime –

to be enslaved by home-wares?

Is this our only sacred fighting aim?

The world’s become a kitchen and a bakery!

Stomach, you’re appointed their party secretary!

**

Damn it to hell! –

the farting fair of empty vanity! –

I didn’t enter this world

for a match and a tasty stew!

Mounted on the huge roller of the iron epoch

I come with a clatter

on the day of sharp gravel.

On my conscience the new government declares:

they’re not for me

the blessed moments, when once more

the human heart screams on days darkened by handfuls of cordite!…

***

I came into this world

to see the sun,

my fingers to pluck

the fruit of joy,

pouring sweetness over centuries.

My fate is a poem written

in liberated blank verse

and with you, epoch, we do not rhyme,

but the self-same rhythm is within us!

*

And we didn’t start fighting yesterday

and it wasn’t yesterday, in filth and frost,

my working smock faded on my back

soaked in the salt sweat of laboring days.

***

Don’t know if I’ll see old age,

Don’t know if stick in hand

I’ll seek out doors and pathways.

Even if I leave early – it’s OK!

It’s enough that I was born on time!

This century is my debtor now!

I paid for it in blood and sweat,

I paid its every second,

I paid it a lifetime,

And I have accounts to settle with it!

I’m written into Party directives

in each and every five year plan –

it’ll pay the interest on my dreams.

Oh what a fortune it has to pay me!

***

I will die with hands outstretched,

and I’ll die with open eyes.

And after my death, at dawn’s breaking

my eyes will be gazing,

they’ll be watching up till then –

and my soul will be awake,

until, taking the right course,

it finally reaches its multitudinous destiny

and passes all problems of passage.

And again I’ll beat the drum of progress,

and again I’ll lead the people’s marching step –

I, voice and conscience of the epoch!

***

The years will flow through the lunchtime crossroads.

And the earth will still turn on its ancient path –

the people’s dawn will glow in growing joy.

There’ll be regular express rockets to the moon.

*

There’ll be stars again…and dogs… they’ll be

baying at them… just as before.

This quiet day clears outside. Hit the road!

Man is a man when he’s hit the road!

Man is born, to give love to others.

Whoever spares no drop of love to even a dog,

their presence in this world is pointless.
Better instead their mother gave birth to a stone
Such as them know no pain or joy, they find no place in people’s hearts
they won’t be remembered fondly.
To hell with such as them!

Anyone conversant with the history of Bulgarian writing will know that the best classical and contemporary authors excel in the short story format. Perhaps this is down to a natural Bulgarian story telling talent, which reveals itself round every table where a company gathers to eat and drink. This is Jochan’s first published book of fiction, but he has learned his craft well – from his father, whom he describes as the best raconteur he has met and from his encounters with so many writers when he was working as Cultural Director in Plovdiv.

The stories in Man and a Half  have masculinity as their common theme, with the Bulgarian contexts ranging from the Turkish subjugation  through the Communist period to the present day. They share a poignancy, a sometimes humorous, but more often tragic reflection of patriarchy under threat. The male characters are often isolated, obsessed, filled with remorse and seeking redemption for misunderstandings and lost opportunities. The dramas are played out most often in small tight knit communities where the individual is pitted against the locals. In his story “To murder a Forest” a misanthropic ex-forestry manager is at war with the local Communist Women’s committee – he refers to them as “slipper slappers” , not just because of the sound they make as they walk around block entrances, but also the way they slap down on your soul. For extract, follow link.

The stories encompass a rich variety of mood. “Inheritance” gives us a larger-than-life portrait of an Armenian whose plan to emigrate to America is thwarted and delayed by encounters with fraudsters, a brothel madame, a band of vigilantes, and finally by the sight of a female ankle in Plovdiv. “The Double Girl” is a disquisition on the wonder and absurdity of human love – with an ending that might remind readers of a similar reflection on love by Philip Larkin in his poem “An Arundel Tomb”. In “Mercy”, a young soldier awaiting court martial and inevitable execution is horrified to witness  a young boy killing a white dove through the bars of his cell.

Importantly in the context of recently fanned racist prejudice, the stories celebrate Bulgaria’s diverse ethnic population – a genuine respect for the culture of Bulgarians, Jews, Armenians, Turks and Roma is conveyed in the richness of the language.

Annie and I are looking forward to Wednesday, where interested Bulgarians and non-Bulgarians will meet Jochan who will talk about his stories and also reflect on his time as a Cultural manager for over 30 years from the time of  Lyudmilla Zhivkova to that of Vezhdi Rashidov.

Vladimira Zhivkova was one year into a degree course in Journalism at the University of Sofia but her writing talent had already been noted by prominent editors.  Her fluency in English and German her voracious reading and  her irrepressible curiosity led her into easy contact with the widest range of people and environments.

The following is my translation of an early piece published in Pod Mosta.

My Grannie’s cuckoo clock

by Vladimira Zhivkova

In my Granny’s village house, there always hung in the entrance hall an old cuckoo clock. This cuckoo clock was the noisiest, most tedious and irritating contraption imaginable. Because it was a genuine antique, passed down to my grandmother from her grandmother, who’d surely bought it in the middle of the last century but one, it either speeded time up or slowed it down. We’d sometimes hear the cuckoo sing three times in an hour or not sing at all for four hours. This clock was an extraordinary item, it had its own opinion about what constituted time and allowed no repair. Sometimes it ticked slowly, counting three seconds for its one, and sometimes – so fast that it was as if the day was passing two frames faster than it should.

One day I was waiting for Granny to come back from the shop and I was just lying on the sofa in the hall, reading the latest boring book from the school summer reading list. I was around seven or eight and I remember that it was about ribbons and sparrows.  It was odd, I suppose it still is quite odd, but I had one of those Grannies who insisted on their grandkids reading the whole school list.  Well anyway. So I was lying and “reading” – just listening to the ticking of the old wreck on the wall. Tick tock, tick tock, it ticked quickly, it ticked slowly, then three times quickly, four times slowly. Well what a botched job! But I took to thinking. This clock perhaps marks a person’s life time more accurately than the most expensive Cartier, Rolex or whatever other Swiss watch. Time is the most subjective concept in existence.  It’s divided between productive and unproductive, as we define unproductive as wasted or lost time.  We associate lost time with activities that do not answer to the productive stereotype.  For example if you’re going to work or school, you’re dashing round getting stuff done, running after buses or trains or even running to keep fit, this means you’re productive, in other words your time is not being wasted. So what that while you’re doing all these things, you’d rather shoot yourself than be pleased at how much you’re achieving. On the other hand if you spend the whole afternoon in carefree schlepping around the shopping mall, or slouching with a hot coffee or cold beer in front of the TV, or eating or sleeping, in other words with things that bring you the most pleasure, your time has been irretrievably wasted on trivia. So, if you and I have successfully followed my train of thought, we’ll arrive together at the conclusion, that things which we find tedious and boring, are things which require our attention and dedication, because they’re productive. But things that provide us with pleasure are a waste of time, because they are unproductive.

But hang on a minute… So does this mean that so as not to waste my time I have to be unhappy and bored to death? I’ll save time on this quandary and shamelessly proclaim. There is not (or at least there ought not to be) any such thing as “time to lose”. Time to lose, spent in pleasure is never lost time.

The world exists in such a speeded up turnover, that the measuring of time really resembles Granny’s clock. If I must be scientifically accurate: time is at once subjective and objective. Objective because it’s a linear progression of universal change.  Subjective because the speed of turnover depends on the awareness of the change, the sacred accumulation of everything.  The higher the awareness, the faster time flies by. The lower the awareness the slower time flows. When you are happy, time flies.  When you’re depressed it’s as though time drags by forever. Because higher levels of awareness bring a finer (lighter and quicker) energy to work on your experiences. Thus, when we are at a higher level, we deal with our experiences more quickly, and when we are at a lower level we deal with our experiences more slowly.

Nowadays people’s level of awareness is always high.  And not because they are happy. In their conscious lives everyone uses a finer energy, because they force time to pass more quickly. More and more often we direct our attention to reading our watches, rather than the clouds in the sky. Everything has to keep to an accurate schedule, with every second accounted for.  From getting up in the morning to closing your eyes at night. Because time is money, time is a resource, time is valuable and should not be wasted. It seems as though time is all these things but there is never time enough for ourselves.  We’re not a train or the metro are we?! We’re not pizza delivery kids to have our lives controlled by various hands on some clock dials?!  It’s true that everyone has a biological clock, but even so it doesn’t wind us up everyday. Time cannot stop but we can stop it. We can for a second forget our step, hang back, slow down our tempo.  The clock hands aren’t going to turn backwards but we can.  We can go back and drink our morning coffee, hug our kids and wish them a nice day at school, spend those fifteen or more minutes in fixing our hair or putting on that expensive lipstick, kiss your man and as in the films rearrange his tie.  Let’s go out and breathe the cold morning air filled with lime tree blossom, gaze at the clouds playing tag,  smile stupidly,  laugh maniacally,  cry inconsolably. Because a life lived to the full is not counted a thousand times every sixty seconds, but in the several thousand moments and memories which fill the film strip which will play before our eyes in our last minutes.

Yes my small seven or eight year old brain managed to give birth to this deep meditation, I turned out a child genius. At the same moment Granny came home with a bag full of shopping and quickly fell to scolding me for wasting my time staring at the old clock, instead of reading the book from the list.

copyright Vladimira K Zhivkova

Translated by Christopher Buxton

In Svezhenov’s absurdist mirror, Bulgaria is portrayed in all its deficiencies – corrupt officials, drug addled priests, brusque and cynical doctors, but the sheer pace of the narrative, the vigour of the main characters,and their colourful  language leave no time for depression or self pity. The result is a hilarious breakneck ride which never loses an essential sympathy  towards all his characters .

I’ve included an excerpt in translation.

From Anarchy on the Three Seas by Jordan Svezhenov Siela 2014

Translation Christopher Buxton

Dr Pandora Katastrova picked up the oily doughnut with two plump fingers and stuffed it into her mouth even before she’d swallowed the previous two, spraying powdered sugar and maple syrup all over her desk. Her routine was to treat her Kamenar village patients every Friday afternoon in her private surgery, but this did not include her starting on time.

There was an urgent volley of knocks at the door.

“Ye-e-s!” shouted the GP, her over-stuffed mouth adding another salvo of sticky crumbs to those already strewn across her desk.

The office door creaked and a round face was framed in the opening.

“Excuse me, when are going to see us because our kid’s got the runs and is throwing up, and just now he’s working up to do both?  It says that you start work at twelve, and now it’s twenty past!

“Can’t you see I’m filling in forms?” yelled Katastrova through a cloud of powdered sugar and made a show of bashing a few keys on her computer.  “When I’m ready, I’ll call you!”

As soon as the door closed, the doctor grabbed the remaining doughnuts from the box, stuffed them into her mouth and wiped her hands on an old diagnosis.

“I don’t need that anymore,” she spluttered to herself. “He forgot to tell me he was allergic to laxatives. God rest his soul.  Do I have to think of everything?”

Doctor Pandora Katastrova had an unwavering policy on the treatment of all her patients. According to her, all illnesses arose for three reasons – constipation, colds or stress.  And they were to be treated in three ways – laxatives, aspirin and tranquilizers.  Everything else was a world conspiracy on behalf of the drug companies. The Kamenar GP did not dispense prescriptions.  She opened a battered chest and sold medicine directly to the patients.  They called this chest “Pandora’s box”.

Katastrova wiped her chin on the sleeve of her jacket, stood up puffing from her creaky chair, which had lost two of its five wheels, opened the door and looked out into the corridor. At her appearance the throng gathered outside her door thickened.

“Who’s first?”

“Me…” an old man barely croaked, squeezed among another twenty pensioners, four schoolkids, two sniffling women, eight mothers with small children and a worker with a bleeding hand.

“But what happened to the child with diarrhoea and nausea?” the doctor knit her brows.

“Couldn’t hold out,” someone called out.

“Couldn’t hold out at the top or the bottom?”

“Well looking at the puddle, I’d guess the top.”

“Certainly from a nervous disposition,” Pandora concluded and nodded to the old man.  “Come in!”

“Could I ask you something, just for a minute?”

A snooty middle aged lady with chin lifted high and far too much lipstick applied to her fiercely pursed lips was elbowing her way through the crowd. She pushed her way to the very front, crushing the old man in her wake and waving a piece of paper. Katastrova looked her over and barked:

“Just a question – four leva. Just a question and entering my office – six leva.  Just a question and following examination – fifteen leva. The Ministry of health doesn’t pay me for just a question.  It’s not within the clinical rule book.”

“Well I…” the woman froze on the spot.

“Make up your mind!” The doctor waited a few seconds and then as she’d got no reaction, she grabbed the old man by the collar and barked, “Come in and sit down!”

As soon as the old man was settled on the couch and the chubby Pandora on her long suffering chair, the questions began.

“What brings you here, Grandpa?”

“Well, for you to measure my blood pressure, Doctor.”

“It’s all down to nerves.  I’ll give you a tranquiliser to calm you down for now.” The doctor bent down towards her chest.

“But I mean, you haven’t even checked. Is it high or low?”

“What am I supposed to check?” Katastrova raised her eyes to the ceiling in frustration. “Whether it’s high or low, it all comes down to nerves.”

“Well but what if it’s normal?”

“You, how old are you?”

“I’m 92” the old man announced proudly but with a trembling voice.

“Well, how could it be normal at your age, are you normal? Are you constipated?”

“No. How could I be when I haven’t got anything to put in my tummy. I practically don’t eat.”

“Why?”

“My pension’s not enough.”

“Well how do you expect to have normal blood pressure, then? Do take aspirin for your heart?”

“No.”

“Well now you’ll take it and everything will be as right as rain.”  Pandora opened her chest. “Here’s a blister. Seven leva forty stotinki.”

“That’s a lot, Doctor!” the old man’s eyes bulged. “At the chemist near us they’ve got them for stotinki.”

“They’re no good. They’re for pickles. Don’t experiment, you’d pickle yourself with that fakery, you’ll get constipated, you’ll be stuck in the toilet and you’ll get a heart attack brought on by nerves alone.  Give me Seven leva sixty and off with you – alive and well!”

“Wasn’t it forty?”

“No.”

The old man sighed deeply, pulled out a hankie in which he’d wrapped his meagre funds, counted out the exact sum, pocketed the blister and made his perplexed way to the door.

He still hadn’t reached it when an indescribable din broke out in the corridor. You could hear shouting, strange booming music and women screaming.

As soon as the old man pulled the door open, the cacophony burst like a wave into the room, and the second patient whose turn it was to enter, was swept aside by a dozen local swarthy gypsies, yelling unintelligibly and carrying some kind of white bundle. When they dumped the moaning package on the couch the astonished Pandora managed to identify under the many layers of white a young gypsy bride with the dimensions of a medium size whale. The whale emitted an intolerable howl – something in the middle between “gonnadieegonnadieegonnadiee” and an air raid siren. Pushed to one side, there was a creature, looking like a walking rake, in a light grey suit and spiky hair smothered in gel, joining his voice to the chorus calling for divine aid from at least half the world’s religions. This was obviously the bridegroom. At his back, mothers, stepmothers, aunties, in-laws and another thirty relatives seethed and screamed in horror, while the men who’d carried in the victim, stood in front of Pandora and belched out a barrage of conflicting information in three languages, from which The GP understood nothing.

“Hey wait a minute!” Katastrova tried to out-shout the travelling circus and almost succeeded.

At that moment the gypsy wedding band turned up playing a wild dance and began to push their way in to join the others in the room, but the drummer and the fat tuba player the got stuck in the door frame, so the musical accompaniment was left to blare in the corridor. This didn’t help reduce the noise, as in the corridor the reverberating Balkan pop became even more deafening.

“She’s having a baby! A baby! Help Doctor! You’re father and mother!” Katastrova at last managed to make out something comprehensible from the screams, yells and billowing waves of belly dance music from the band.

Pandora pushed through the relatives who were squashed against each other in the tight space like bus passengers at rush hour, she reached the unfortunate bride, whose extremities overlapped all four sides of the couch, and she pressed her stomach lightly.

“Now let me see if you’ve got contractions! Does it hurt here?”

“It hurts everywhere, Doctor, gonnadieegonnadieegonnadiee, Lord, Lord! Vasil, I‘ll bite your head off, putting this baby into me, without me knowing, fuck your dirty mother!”

“Who are you calling dirty you slut!” yelled the bridegroom’s mother and leant forward to slap the expectant mother.

But in all the confusion she struck the bride’s father on the back of his neck. He roared like a branded bull and began punching all about him. His frenzied reaction dragged the thirty squashed gypsies into an uncontrolled melee. Everyone tried to thump someone else while at the same time avoiding the whizzing fists, slaps and bottles. Only the restricted space, which did not allow for much mobility, saved the participants from serious injury. And the band provided enthusiastic backing to the scrap with a fine galloping tune.

“Stop this minute, before I don’t whack the lot of you!” Pandora’s voice rose above the chaos. “I think that the contractions have started. Has the water broken?”

“What idiot brings water to a wedding, hey!” yelled the bridegroom’s father. “Pour the Doctor a glass of rakia! I’m going to be a Granddaddy!”

“He’ll be a boy, a bo-o-o-y! If it’s hurting that much, it means it must be a boy coming out. We’ll call him….” The Bridegroom’s mother looked hastily about her, read a product label and made her decision, “Rivanol.”

“Long live Rivanol,” shouted the best man and, to the booming drum out in the corridor, led a spontaneous line dance, which got a little stuck in the crowded room.

Goodness knows how but a live cockerel appeared in the hand of the best man.  In his drunken devil-may-care state, the youth waved the bird madly over the crowded relatives. In a second the poor creature suffered a massive shock and a rain of feathers and droppings poured over their heads.

“Here, grab this knife, Horatio! Kill the cock for the baby’s health!” came the encouraging yell and in the next second a sharp blade cut through the bird’s shrieking throat.

Hot drops of blood joined the feathers and shit flying through the air. The agonizing headless bird, slipped out of the hands of the unreliable best man and jumped spiralling over the heads of the guests, increasing their screams, which even drowned out the drum beating out a belly dance out in the corridor.

It took all of Doctor Katastrova’s strength to suppress this spontaneous outbreak, and turn back to concentrate on the suffering mother-to-be.

“Help us to push this baby out! If it gets stuck, it’ll suffocate!” she yelled at the crazy crowd and began to squeeze the gypsy bride’s tummy.

The bridegroom’s mother and two aunties joined in pummelling the folds of flesh, as if they were kneading an enormous cheese loaf, and a small bridesmaid, jumped with both feet straight onto her big sister.

“One!… Two!… Three!…” the doctor ordered and the band took up her beat.

The gypsy bride, gave a powerful push, and her face got as red as an Easter egg. She was convulsed in pain, but felt that relief was close at hand. Just one more heave, and yet another, and…

Suddenly from beneath the layers of white cloth and folds of fat, came a continuous roll of thunder, a mixture of non-stop machine gun fire caught in a cheese tin and an erupting volcano, and the air was filled with the sharp smell of fermented beans and sour cabbage.

The musicians choked and their instruments quickly fell silent, as the crowd of relatives attempted a panic evacuation from the surgery, almost demolishing a wall in the process. Only the terrified bridegroom walked in circles and asked in a high pitched voice:

“What’s going on? What’s going on? Is there a baby? Is there a baby?

“No baby!”  Katastrova’s replied, coughing with relief. “Just gases!”

by Petko Slaveikov translated by Christopher Buxton

We’re not a nation, not a nation, but carrion,

people who refuse occupation.

Everything’s heavy, everything hurts us

“I don’t know! I can’t do it!” sung in one voice.

We don’t know and we can’t and we’ll not

work for ourselves in time’s allotment.

We only know and we can and we will

Eat each other to our spiteful fill.

Amongst ourselves we’re bad, rude, irascible

With others we’re docile, quiet, pliable.

They still walk over us, whoever comes

Because we’re inept, all fingers and thumbs.

Everyone shouts “Curses on our plight!”

And every ambition is  squashed flat.

We’re not a nation, not a nation, but carrion

Again I say it, and end my oration.

Who when they pause to consider themselves they get all reticently thrilled and tinglish,

Because every Englishman is convinced of one thing, viz:

That to be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is:”

Ogden Nash

This is a playful charitable start to considering the national stereotype of self-deprecating superiority, which all English living abroad should be wary of. The moment an English person presumes to judge aspects of life in another country they lay themselves open to accusations of an assumed superiority – “treating the natives as if they were aborigines,” (in the words of my Russophile former student).

Worse below the surface of strained conviviality there is a whole shoal of poison barbed puffer fish, that represent the memories of every wrong committed by the English nation in its imperial history. It would be hard to find any nation that does not bear justifiable historic grudges.

Iran, Iraq, Palestine, the Kurds, the Irish, the Kenyans, the Greeks post WW2 and the Bulgarians (the Bulgarians?) have felt themselves the wrong side of “Perfidious Albion”.

The following extract is taken from the longest story in Lyudmil Popov’s excellent collection of short stories Gypsy Stories, published by Smart Books. In this story set in a provincial private school, the Headteacher and pupils are getting extremely frustrated with an Englishman, called Michael, whom they have taken under their wing in return for his native speaker input. Michael turns out to be a freeloader, taking Bulgarian charity and hospitality for granted, particularly after he loses his credit card.

“If someone tells me that English people are clean,” Paul declared. “Well, I’ll spit on them and march them off to see Michael. There’s nobody dirtier than the Englishman”

They convinced Michael that the souls of the English are equally dirty – they’ve always played dirty tricks on Bulgaria and the rest of the world. The slogan of their great statesman has coloured all their politics: “we don’t have friends, we have interests!” Mikho (that’s what we’d begun to call him recently) “hadn’t heard” of this slogan – just fancy that. England is Bulgaria’s greatest enemy through all time – this we managed to prove to him with historical examples – tragedies for Bulgaria.  Well they’re dirty dogs everywhere these gentlemen. And it was according to the above slogan that Michael lived without realising it.

It is ironic in a book that sets out to eschew racial stereotyping and to set the balance regarding gypsies straight, that the author shares a suspicion that Michael is an English gypsy.

But hey, members of dominant cultures need to take stereotyping on the chin.

Arrhythmic Revolution by Jordan Svezhenov published by Iztok Zapad

For sheer entertainment, guts and imagination “Arrhythmic Revolution” will be my Bulgarian read of the summer. Jordan Svezhenov joins Alec Popov and Mikhael Veshim in a select band of writers that make me laugh out loud in public places.

With a host of well described characters and an extraordinary range of starting points all the way across Europe and beyond, Svezhenov has a script writer’s eye for detail, ear for dialogue, and brain for drawing together all the strands of his narrative into the Balkan mountains climax. Throughout the cleverly plotted cliffhangers and often hilarious misunderstandings, Svezhinov’s penetrating satire reflects the new post Cold War criminal order, and the opportunities offered by a borderless Europe.

A disgruntled trio of Bulgarian pensioners plan a shocking act of revolution from their village where they are now the only inhabitants; Johnny Red and Spoiler, two penniless Bulgarian scrap car dealers make their way back from the UK with a disparate band of Bulgarian Roma; an Afghani drug dealer has his world turned upside down when he is visited by an old comrade intent on blowing up Koln Cathedral; a Russian Grannie is kidnapped from a Bulgarian coach, leading to a telephone call to Vladimir himself; a naive Estonian policewoman finds herself the victim of a people smuggling ring; a Russian prostitute escapes her pimps in Spain  to searchfor a better life.

World realities are brutal and yet Svezhenov has a lightness of touch and great comic sympathy for all his characters. This is one book that I was sorry to finish. I wanted more.

An extract

Johnny Red has spent all his cash on a Toyota sports car in England and we now find him driving four gypsies back to Bulgaria so they can help pay for his petrol and share in the driving. Unfortunately Johnny was asleep when Kenzo, the only gypsy possessing something like a legal license, took a series of wrong turns. This is why Johnny is now driving past San Remo in Northern Italy instead of Nurnberg.

“Oh I know that place!” Great Grandaddy Pramod shouts out and decides to relieve the boredom by raising the cultural bar. “This is where folk hold a fair, they give out prizes for international songs. They gather together gypsy masters from all over the world. Italians, Bulgarians, Turks, Armenians, Abyssinians, Patagonians, you can see all kinds. Like Melody of the Year – only international.”

“Mhm…” Johnny Red is hoarse and doubtful. Great Grandaddy doesn’t stop.

“I remember when I got married in ’77. Lilly Ivanova won the Melody of the Year.”

“How old were you in 77?”  the driver cannot contain his incredulity.

“Old enough, old enough!” Pramad reassures him. “Back then Lilly was still a yummy mummy …”

“And I still wouldn’t send her away now …”  Little Lad calls out.

“Ey Granny lover!” Granddaddy is outraged.” How wouldn’t you send her away, ey? Now she’s like an Egyptian mummy. Messing about with her would be the same as messing about with an artistic monument. And we don’t mess about with artistic monuments.”

“We just take them for melting down,”  Kenzo points out.

“That’s different. That’s how we refresh the national economy. We carry the whole metal industry on our shoulders. Ey these two hands have given more metal to the nation than the Kremikovtsi steel works!”

Great granddaddy Pramod spits on his palms and grinds them one into the other, giving life to several new generations of micro-organisms. Then he lets out an irritated roar.

“Come on, stop interrupting me. I was talking about Lilly Ivanova and Melody of the Year. In 77 she won with the song ‘My old friend’. You know it? My o-o-ld fri-e-e-end.”

The gypsy sings straight away, and from the back seat the broken voices of Kenzo and Little Lad join in.

“Hear the ye-e-ears…

Johnny Red grits his teeth. Gypsies are supposed to be a musical race, but right now it is as if the car has been orchestrated for a hungry pack of wolves, whose skins are being flayed along with their balls being squeezed. If Lilly Ivanova can hear this interpretation of her song, surely several layers of her makeup will crack and fall just by themselves. The redhead begins to dream of having another pair of hands, so he can clap them over his ears.

Copyright Jordan Svezhenov; translation Christopher Buxton

It’s a blustery March Saturday. I’m sitting reading by my upstairs window. The view is the same – rain is melting the edges of obstinate snow patches in the muddy yard. I return to Anna Comnena’s  account of the Byzantian court. I hear a vehicle coming up the track. I look out and see a man in overalls and wellington boots get out of a green van. Ole Nefstad, the farmer with whom I lodge, strolls into sight. He greets the man and they walk together towards the barn. It’s none of my business. I return to Anna.

Minutes later I hear air splitting shrieks from the barn. Through its dark doorway I see the two men backing out, bent and straining. They’re pulling a large pig by its ears. Ted Hughes in his poem describes the cries as “the rending of metal”. He was spot on. Anna Comnena has dropped to the floor. I have a presentiment of what I am about to see. A voyeur, I shrink back in my chair but keep looking.

Dragged into the middle of the yard, the condemned creature is released, but it makes no attempt to escape. The barn door is still open, promising warmth food and jostling brothers. But the pig does not bolt.  As the man retrieves a rifle from his van, the pig stays absolutely still, with lowered head.  He presents an ideal target. Standing beside Ole Nefstad, the man aims the rifle and shoots. Time seems to stop for just the long second that it takes a body to realize it is dead and for the executioners to react.  The pig stands for this long second then just collapses into the snow. Ole is on him.  With an agility I have never seen before, he has drawn a sharp knife across the pig’s throat. The snow around the corpse turns red.

Ole runs to his tractor with the fork lift ready. A few minutes and the pig has gone as has the rifleman in his van. When Fru Nefstad returns from a prearranged coffee morning, all that is left from the scene is the blood on the snow and the churned up mud

.