Interviewer: Stefan Simeonov
Photos: Iglika Petrova
The interview was taken for Conte International Club Magazine – issue “The Tale of Life”. That’s why our questions are slightly misleading, metaphorical, so that the great actress can tell her own story.
Tale one – the love we can’t live without.
I have fallen in love very deeply, very truly, with this life, but it has never been the last. Because some say – love comes only once. Always equally strong and equally fabulous, in a different aspect, of course, because people are different and I perceive the person I love differently. But the most beautiful thing in life is being in love. This is a fairy tale. They usually end these things tragically, which is even better because there is development. We do not freeze in one place. So I started with love. If it is not a fairy tale, it is not love.
In general, I love fairy tales and I will tell you, since I can’t see and can’t read, I fall asleep with fairy tales, children’s fairy tales. I bought all the tapes and various CDs and in the evening, if I don’t play a story, I can’t sleep. This replaced my reading. In the beginning I suffered a lot because I used to fall asleep reading, but then I remembered – I will fall asleep with stories. And my life passed like a fairy tale. I’m not a realist in the rough sense of the word, I’m not a dreamer, I’m aware of things, but I’m so far from practical that I call my life a fairy tale.
The story of the men in my life.
I’ve always been madly in love. And that’s nice. After my husband died, I somehow naturally said, from now on I can’t love anymore. I felt it. For many reasons, it happened naturally. And I don’t even know if there is an afterlife or not, if it is somewhere, I would hardly be angry if I continue to love. But by itself I did not continue. I had no need.
It was very nice with him. Our life was, in a sense, like a fairy tale. Not that we didn’t fight, we didn’t get into a fight, but we broke up, but there was something that didn’t bring routine into our lives and that was the best thing about my marriage to Neycho. It was like that in my marriages. By the way, it wasn’t like that with the second one. There was something to cook there in general. I can’t stand it. Let a man and a woman sit and talk to each other – now what are we going to cook, what will be the dessert. It’s not about creating an artificial holiday, but we’ve never allowed business in the simplest sense. In all my marriages, I have avoided routine because it seems to me that marriage breaks down because of it.
I saw this at home. This is given by the family, it is the natural rod. I lived freely, my family did not bother me. The girls of our relatives made curtsies, knicks, various ones, and I played with the children from the basements, I was interested in them. My father shouted, “Let the child play with whomever he wants.” “Yes, but it will be like them.” “It simply came to our notice then. We do other things at home, read, talk. The street is a good thing, let your child know. I grew up on the street and in a good house and I think that’s very nice. And so far they call me the hooligan of the theater. I don’t like pretense, pretense, I drive just in a good way. And in marriage, if I had to reunite with a man who pretends to have a lot of finesse, but to be a simple man, I can’t live. This culture must somehow be in it, but we must not emphasize that one is such and the other such. This should happen naturally. The story is that there should be no pretense, everything should be real, both earthly and unearthly. These intertwined things are good in life, in marriage, and in love.
For example, one case: I had just finished high school and I was very much in love with a famous artist, I wrote him love letters and signed Maria below.
I am Stoyana, not Stoyanka. I was mistaken in the People’s Party. And I had just gone to Nikolai Liliev, you know that then the playwrights of the theaters were figures, and not like now just graduated knights, I’m going to tell him to change his name. Then Andrei Chaprazov met me. “Where did you go?” “Well, I’m going to Liliev to ask him.” Go back. A name with a “k” is lucky. It will start in your career. ”I was named after my grandfather Stoyan to stay because I was going to die. My parents are late married, late born, I was a little weak. My old mother gave birth to me, she had no milk. So are smart kids. My father brought a goat from Knyazhevo to drink goat’s milk. It was closest to the mother.
For the artist – I only wrote letters to him. He died, of course, was very big. Every day I wrote him a letter, analyzed what I had seen and heard, and when I watched Boyan the Magician at the time, I must have exposed myself terribly. And one day I was visiting a classmate and she yelled at me, “Look what, finally reveal yourself to this man.” And he is married on top of everything. Me: “How will I reveal myself, then what will happen, it’s better that way.” But she made me. And I picked up the phone in a trembling voice. He said, “Yes,” and I said, “Maria is on the phone.” And he said, “What are you doing? I want to see you, please. Your letters are here on my desk and I can’t do without them, I haven’t read such a thing. ”And I wrote it with inspiration. And I say, “Okay.” And I go to his seventh exhibition. This happened one Sunday. My father had promised to buy me a leather coat. And when I pressed it, I had chosen my coat. Right next to a shoemaker, Finzi, I snuck in. Make me shoes for a day. He yells at me, “Are you crazy, ma.” The leather coat was bought, gray, gorgeous, like a cloud. I bought a hat, I got dressed. I let my girlfriend go first. She enters, he spreads his arms, runs to her. “No, it’s not me.” “Tell her to come in.” And she yells at me, “Come in, man, you open your arms, you grab me.” I come in, he starts asking me, “What are you doing?” . “I’m studying, I’m studying.” “What?” “Classical philology.” “Okay, let’s take a look now, let’s see if you like the exhibition.” And he leads me, leads me, finally stops in front of a grandmother and granddaughter, very beautiful. I like this picture the most. I like my grandmother’s hands the most. They stood out so much next to the girl’s arms. I told him about my classical philology – I followed at my father’s insistence. “Tell me about that speaker who stuttered and with many exercises, with the stone under his tongue, stood by the sea, who was he?” And my love was there. I just said, “Demosthenes,” and that’s it. Something cut inside me and I shouted to myself, “God,
Are artists so simple? ”They may be complex, but very rarely, to this day, does it impress me, artists are rarely educated. They may be very gifted, they have a gifted gift. But something cut in me, so far was love.
Here is a story about my love. How much he chases me after that. Because he sees spirituality and we complement each other. The funny thing was that before that, to meet him, I was with a babysitter who gave me water to wash with her every morning. This nurse told me to spray it with this water, if I did, it would not come off me. But how to spray it. I will buy a small enema machine with it. For babies. And I gave it to my brother, three years younger than me, to buy it. My brother was very mercantile, I bet things with him and took them with interest. I called him Gobsek. And I told him to come with me to the Royal Cinema, where the intellectuals gathered, then they moved to the Tsar Osvoboditel cafe, this is the Balabanovs’ house, how could they demolish this thing. They were all there, all the intellectuals, when you pass by, you look at them as if you see the elite of Bulgaria. I knew when he was going out, never with his wife. So I wrote to him, his wife was 15 years older than him. I had also decided to divorce him. I told my brother – I’ll show you the man, you run after him and spray him nicely from everywhere. I gave him the money in advance. It all happened, my brother says, “I did everything, but he didn’t burn, so what.” He thought I hated him and wanted revenge. And I tell him: “One day he will burn with his mind. That’s how it happened, he followed me, it was a big pain to get crazy. This was one of my first loves and years later, when I was Maria Grubeshileva’s daughter-in-law, we come back one day, I watch it – he paints. I felt such inconvenience. I tell her, and she says, “It’s very important, it’s a past job.” Later, as I walked to my husband’s grave, a little further on was his wife’s grave. And I saw him coming back, and I immediately hid behind Lyapchev’s tomb. After all, the deserving are always on the front line.
In general, there is a poem by Blaga, we were in the same class with her, in which it is said that when you have had a lot of love with someone, it is difficult to be just a friend with him. It’s violent. How you become friends with someone you were ready to die for. I don’t remember it, poetry, I just read it without studying it. The verses may be good, but I’m a little pretentious and very picky. I do not perceive this. There is pain in separation, what is this separation – goodbye and as if nothing had happened, and when it was, something remains, if nothing else, then at least an inconvenience. Love in general is the deepest tale for me. I experienced such happiness only when I gave birth to my child, but it turned out to be a child.
A little girl lived in Sofia, Vienna, Prague and again Sofia.
Well, really, thank God for diversifying my life. I do not regret having been married three times and in three countries. I got married in Prague after graduating from the Theater School and the University. My father had decided that this education was important. According to him, the theater was lucky. If you don’t succeed, you have to have an education, a security to step on. Many times I regret that I did not listen to him to study archeology later, because it is really a fairy tale. Schliemann, for example, when digging in the city where Troy was, does not find it, passes it. He goes down a few layers below and finds all the jewelry with which he adorns his wife and calls her Elena. No Troy is this, and he thinks so. Isn’t this a fairy tale? Because I told my father that I wanted to create, I didn’t want to collect pots. and he answered – and this is art, and this is theater.
Let’s get to the word. Prague, Vienna. That love started in Sofia, I can’t fall in love with anyone. The person must be cultured. It should not be dry, of course. Culture to go with everything else – with a sense of humor, strangeness, to love to eat, to please, to be human. But I can’t stand the lack of culture. I want him to surpass me. That’s why I broke up with this Demosthenes right away. Then I married my professor Robert Rosner, he was the second person after Reinhard and a lot of things went through him. He was a Jew, he barely escaped. In Hitler’s time, 40 and some years it was, Jews fled Germany, others died in the camps. It reaches Bulgaria, but it cannot from now on. And one man manages to save him. He hid it, he was very grateful. After the 9th he stayed in our Academy. For him, however, the world was narrow here. There was a lot of talk about Marlene Dietrich, Elizabeth Berger, a very great artist. She graduated from Reinhardt. Everything hers was filmed, all her theatrical productions were made on film. Even Hitler sent to call her and the man £, saying that they were his ideal Aryans, and they were pure Jews. They, of course, do not return because they are my big figures, and he wants them with him.
And the love was very great. I may not have loved anyone more than this man. Suddenly he had to leave the country by force. I’m on vacation in Obzor, he stayed here to finish some work. Suddenly one of our class calls and tells me, “Go now. Robert has to leave Sofia tomorrow night. ” I ask, “What’s going on?” Unfortunately, a Jew betrayed him again. This is a rarity for them. He was very fair. I remember Gisela Anska had one, an artist. She once asked me, “How do you deal with an anti-Semite, huh?” “What anti-Semite?” “Well, Robert.” “Well, he’s Jewish, how will he be an anti-Semite?” He is a pure Jew, don’t you know? ”“ Why did Aron Aronov break up then? ”But not this one, we had each other, very incompetent. When I said he was a pure Jew, she was struck. I didn’t tell him what Gisela told me, I just asked him: “Well, why did you break Aron Aponov?” I did well for him, what he will do next, he will not see a role, he is an anti-talent. ”
We parted in Borisova Garden, he told me: “Stop here, you will not come to the station tonight and do not turn around, neither I nor you, it is not good.” Such was the pain, great suffering, but he arranged a scholarship for me. At the Conservatory they had departments: theater, music, and then I left, I held a competition for the history of music, I played the piano, I had an idea. I immediately moved there. My love was very great indeed. He was so erudite, I just sat and listened. For Stefan Zweig, for those years, I sat and listened with my mouth open. He traveled a lot, he was called all over the world. There was an invitation in London. I tell him:
“Look, I only know German, I can’t struggle.”
And so, we were very divided, he in London, in Paris, everywhere. He asks me: “Where do you want?” “In Bulgaria.” He shouts at me: “Don’t go back where there are no thinking people. It won’t take you long. Let me create you. I’m much older than you. You are much younger, you will probably fall out of love with me, I will either close one eye or accept everything. I want to create you. And he kept showing me a picture of an artist I never knew. As an adult, she really looked like me. “You will become like her.” Tyrla Dirio still remembers the name. We were separated for a long time and at that time the second one came in between us.
I will never forget when my husband and I got divorced, we were divorced by a judge with white hair at three crucifixes, even though communists ruled there, there is a church there anyway. The next day I realized that I had done a great fool of myself, that I loved that man. And I say, “Let us annul the divorce.” When we went to the judge, he started laughing. “There is no such thing in law, I can only remarry you.” This meant being returned to Bulgaria immediately.
The first was really great love. When a young girl falls in love with a much older man, and I have always liked older men as a girl, you can learn from them, learn many things, they have a past that you do not know. You know it through your parents, but it’s different. I have a very good memory of Krastyo Sarafov. I held a competition for Radio Sofia, I was still a student at the Academy. The theatrical. I had to play a play on the radio and I really liked the role of an old woman. And Mara Penkova was, but the one from the operetta, she was a director, and Krastyo Sarafov plays the main role. And I keep saying, “Please, like Maro, give me this role.” “What am I going to play, huh?” You have played so much, will you play? ”Mrs. Matseva gave me to play. And Krastyo Sarafov and I are together, live. He just pinched my cheek and said, “Shit my eye, shhhhhhhhhh, become an artist of yours.” He had a speech impediment from a young age, he even wanted to commit suicide. Such a rustle. And from there he went straight to us and in the evening my father called me: “Come here, come, Krastyo was here, I can die in peace. She said you were very talented, she would become an artist of yours. And, I flew like … There are no such artists today. I like to praise young talented artists, they make me happy.
So, I will not forget this good memory. He was a very great artist. I do not know in Bulgaria bigger than him and so sensitive, I often think of him, because I am also very sensitive and easily hesitate. I say very easily: I have made my mistake. And not as a pose, but inside myself, when something stretches me. But I remember, I am comforted by only one incident, when he did before his death Egor Bulichov. Boyan Danovski, who was very erudite, everything, everything, except that he did not have much sense of the artist’s talent, was sometimes confused there. Of course, he admitted his mistake immediately. And Manda Kolchakova told me that I had a case with Danovski and that made me overcome my embarrassment that I was not an artist, and she said to me: “Well, don’t, he is useless about what the artist has in himself. . Don’t trust him, trust only yourself, understand that you are talented, if you believe in yourself in this case, you will do what you feel.
It was up to Chekhov, the annoyance of coming with her husband’s medical to get an even bigger pension, all the same. Like a horsefly, they chased her out of one door, she entered from the other. I play this role as written by Chekhov. It was played before me, I didn’t want to repeat it, and then, it didn’t speak to me like that. I started making her look like an annoying horsefly, no knocking, no shouting, nothing, as if she understood, and she came in again, and so on. Is there anything more annoying than that? However, Danovski did not believe me because I was embarrassed by him. “But you have a temperament, but tap with the umbrella.” “Well, I do not want to. I don’t want to repeat Zueva, everyone remembers Zueva, she is big and great, but I’m looking for another way. ” “But it’s the wrong way.” It was a terrible battle. Until finally, Magda opened my eyes and said: “Danovski had ruined Krastyo Sarafov. He had decided to
refuse. And that was his biggest role. ”
So, the artist is very sensitive and can often break with his career only out of sensitivity and unsubscribe from the profession, as if it were nothing. And Sarafov did his best role and that was his swan song.
This is on the occasion of this battle of mine with Danovski. And everyone was afraid of Danovski and I was afraid of him. He respected us with his great culture, an interesting man. He had no sense of what you were going for, and it confused you. It can confuse you. Totally. If you listen to him to the end. And it confuses people’s talents.
And I’m starting to look for a role in this plan, but it stops me, it doesn’t leave me alone. I go so far as to ask Magda Kolchakova to come and play her. I shout, “Magda, go, play, I don’t want to play it that way. You have temperament, you will do it. “It’s worth listening to, ma. Listen to yourself. Listen to your inner voice. ”And Neycho knocks on my dressing room door and yells at me,“ Come on, good luck. ” And I had an opal that brings me happiness, but I had lost it. And without him, I will do nothing. And when he opened the door, 20 minutes later he came with an opal. In the years when it was impossible to find a stone. That was our love for Neycho. Right, it’s worth it, he brought me opal before I stepped on stage. I took it, put it in a piece of paper in my bag, with which I play old-fashioned, the premiere went brilliantly.
Danovski came, he gave a big prize – 20 stotinki, a small one was 5 stotinki, and he always rubbed his long nose. He dropped 20 cents on my table and came out. He was honest, respectable, but he couldn’t tell where you were going.
And as I make up, where is the story. Something glistens in the corner of my dressing room. He was not with me, he fell. Here is the suggestion. I have always been convinced that there is something special, especially to make things happen. I do my roles like that, I walk on my bushes, if I get fucked by various twigs, I feel better if I go on the right path, I don’t do anything. And I don’t like this kind of directors who lead you on the asphalt, on the big highways, because it’s the same, there you often fall asleep only from the uniform driving of the car. While the side roads are more like that, various things go through your mind, etc.
So my way of doing the roles is the same, in the bad roads, holes, on such paths, whether mountainous or valley, between bushes and thorns, and that’s how interesting it is to me.
The partners on stage?
The partners are also good artists. Above all, I love this very much, the good 1000 times more than you will bring you closer to you, the weak pulls you. You go below, it’s always like that, I’ve noticed. I’ve played with a lot of talented artists, thank God, and I’ve worked with talented directors. I loved working with Grisha Ostrovsky, who was not gifted, to put it bluntly, he was erudite, cultured, but he didn’t have a talent for theater, but anyway. He invented things that didn’t work, they weren’t true. It was made up. I’ve worked with the best directors, I don’t want to list them now. Metodi Andonov, he didn’t play a role without me and I didn’t do without him, he whispers in your ear, but he won’t say it, nothing, well, the important thing is that he was good.
It’s awful to work with a gifted director. It’s also awful with a gifted actor. He worked very well with Kalata while he was healthy. Then when he got sick, he …
For Parcalev – I aspired to another stage, but it didn’t get there. But he did a great role, which I will never forget, in The Gin Game. With Ivanka Dimitrova in “199”. The role is not who knows what, two people play one game – gin. But in the end he has a dramatic monologue that he did brilliantly.
Mladen Kiselov and I had made exactly that play by Ostrovski, where Glumov is the main character, a famous play, there we fell in love with Mladen Kiselov, in 4 plays I played him. So Parcalev made the monologue then, Mladen and I were speechless. He then walked through the audience and left. I couldn’t say goodbye to him and shouted at Mladen: “Well, Mladen, this is a whole academy, yes. Why does this man waste his talent on other nonsense? That’s how it was. He loved money and devoted himself above all else
the stage and it didn’t go on stage. Such were the times.
The same goes for me. How many times have I done nonsense. Obligatory – New Year, May 24. Well, a case with Todor Zhivkov. I would die of horror. We play bear and bear. Ragged bear, but not real, dressed him in bear skin. And all from above, from the Politburo, there. Yes, but I don’t recognize them and I say to Paco: “You will tell me: Aisha, tell someone who you are, and point it out to me, let me know.” Because everything was strictly written, you can’t go wrong. When I finished with Todor Zhivkov, I knew him very well, he loved the theater, I knew him there and Georgi Traikov next to him, and I knew him, these two, from then on I can’t know anyone. And when I took Todor Zhivkov’s hand, I was very worried, mine trembled and his jumped, and at one point, to calm me down, he said: caress me.
That’s how we played every New Year, naked, haha, hahi, sponges, gossip for the Politburo. Exact text for everyone. Ivanka Dimitrova was even. Finally, I allowed myself improvisation. But the stage was depressing me.
In Prague they did something similar, Ladkovets and Verich, but one of them had escaped, I forgot who. And we went – it was a half-ester yes-half-theater, very interesting, such a drastic one, it spared no one. It was freer there than here. The Czechs did not leave. When Hitler entered, a window was not open. As after.
One day I was walking like that, I had already learned Czech, and I heard vegetables and fruits being unloaded in a shop and one shouted: “What are you doing here, boys. Are you two years old? A hint of the five-year plan as in our country. At that time, if you make such a joke here, you won’t be very happy. But he left, they pretended not to hear, it was different in Prague.
I only went on tour in Vienna, but I didn’t play German because I had already broken up with my husband. I played in the Czech Republic and I was hired and I’m sorry I didn’t stay there, because so far I can’t explain how the Czechs appreciated me so highly. They are great chauvinists, they do not like foreigners, especially us, the Bulgarians. We invaded with tanks in Prague, they didn’t have a good attitude, but they had to me. My first role was in Aristophanes, I had very little, the other with a text with verses was, Moliere in Misanthrope, the lead role. I had learned Czech, but not to play a verse on stage. Let’s say I play on stage in prose, I’ll think of something, but I can’t do a verse in any case. And I was very worried. But there were three of us in the role, the first was Kachirkova, a very good artist, the second was Shtamberkova, and she was very talented. Because of the language, I went first, it was like in a fairy tale. I go home and tell my husband, “What is this thing,” because I always worked with him on the role, he didn’t know a language, he just didn’t know Hungarian. All European languages. He was just saying, I had lived in Hungary for so many years, I couldn’t learn Hungarian. So I tell him, “I have to be the first lineup.” “When they tell me, you will be, rejoice.” “But,” I shout, “I’m afraid if I’m wrong, that’s a verse. Well, the others, I’m a foreigner, we are gossips here in Bulgaria. ” As I was divorcing, my husband told me, “Abe let me create you, you are returning to a country where your first trait is envy. They will ruin you, you know. You are too sensitive, too easy to digest. What are you doing”. He stopped talking about love, he wanted to create something for me, he was very successful in the Czech Republic. And I began to think that this was some kind of policy. I shout: “They are doing something to us, the Bulgarians, they are such chauvinists.” I just didn’t believe it. And the play came out with great success, some articles started for me – from good to better. My husband just comes and shouts, “Here, come, see you again.” I say: “This is just a policy. They will dare me. But they loved me, I felt it. My colleagues loved me, everyone. That’s how it ended. I’m always sorry I didn’t stay there. I would make a good career with a very cultured nation. In a very cultural theater. Abe, Europe. They are the center of Europe, very cultural
people with a sense of humor.
Parcalev and I were in Hungary, there was a table theater there. Very expensive tickets. Our embassy in Sofia found us two places where the English ambassador and his wife were. We both don’t know English and the show started, pop, at that level, and Farkas came out first, he was a pure Jew, says Hitler. And I shout – well done, Ashkolsun. This is satire.
Another Czech comes out. We really liked them. There was a very funny number, a very funny one, it was West Germany, they were making fun of it, and then it was Willy Brandt, and he came out with his pants down, his relationship was red. She asks him, “Why don’t you dress better?” And he said, “Why, red isn’t bad.” “Well, look at your pants.” . ”Yes, the two Germanys. Just what is a mockery is a mockery.
And I’m going to ask them to let us do it. Then I shout to myself – well, idiot, when was the time when ours had invaded with tanks there. “Good afternoon, I really liked it,” I begin in Czech. “I’m here with a Bulgarian colleague, we do what you do, I liked a few numbers, would you give them to us.” “Yes, with pleasure.” When I said Bulgarian, he became like a wall. He said very quickly, “I have a job,” and it was over. I was tormented a lot, idiot Nedna, but say you’re Czech, ma. Well, I don’t look Czech, say something else, say Hungarian. I’m sorry, they would give us something interesting. But change course immediately. The Czechs are great patriots, they hold on to themselves and they hold on to their situation.
And I came, so it was written. I had a lot of prospects, but I still don’t know how far I would go. I was a foreigner. I had in my head that something would happen …
Prague is interesting, but you talk about that period in very few interviews.
Well, what can you tell them about Prague. What a nice gallery they have, Manes. Prague with this baroque, it is almost all baroque. There I became close to Pani Viktorova, realizing that I would not betray her, she showed me something very secret, “not to tell anyone”, she shouts. When you open some rooms, their baroque rooms you know what walls they have, all covered with Rubens, real, hand-embroidered tapestries. The Germans intended to flee with them as trophies, but they could not. They lived with them because the house is very nice. I was dizzy to see that they were real. I say, “Tray, hold him, so that no one understands you, because they understood you, you will go to the pandiza first, second, you will never see them.”
I loved coming to Manes’s gallery because they had a painting by Gauguin, Bonjour, Monsieur Gauguin. He returns the hangover with the cloak on top with the addition, and a grandmother, just like Granny Ant, tells him, “Bonjour, Monsieur Gauguin.” And I keep imagining how he comes back drunk, how this granny tells him that. There are big things there. We don’t have such a gallery, someone said, they would make the Louvre here. What are you going to do with this Louvre here? We are the third classic country in Europe: Italy, Greece and us. Rome did not deal much with this part here, and criminals were sent to Romania politically, and they learned languages very easily there as well. Their language is so Romance, Italian, French, they immediately catch them. We easily catch Turkish and how can we not catch, as half of us are Turkish. 500 years is what you want. We have the same manners. We are the same. Here is how the Turkish TV series are accepted as something native.
Well, they claim that this is because the patriarchal model of the family has escaped from the modern Bulgarian society, so we have an interest in the Turkish series, due to the desire of the Bulgarian society to return this model.
I don’t know if it was so developed in our country, the Bulgarians. More precisely, a generic one. I have never had this feeling. There was no such thing, we didn’t have many relatives, my mother had a sister, but she turned out to be a swindler, not her, but the man. We had a lot of property, come on, Dondukov’s house has already been demolished. But my grandfather graduated from Robert College, then in Paris, a lot of paralysis, but he was a Russophile, then the intelligentsia was towards Russia. And he bought, he bought – on Sixth of September Street, a house, gorgeous, with a bay window, with stained glass, and Battenberg’s palace was where the Ministry of the Interior was.
So my mother told me, my mother got married late, she died at the age of 97, she fell, she was very busy, she was a big broom, and all her friends were dead, only Mihalchev’s wife was left and he called on the phone: “Please, let mother You came because I can’t walk. ” So he fell and shuddered here. Otherwise it would have lasted up to 100 years. The relatives were her sister, and my father was only one, because his mother gave birth to him very late, she is Macedonian from Bitola, Sofia, my mother really wanted to be named after her, but my father did not want to. I don’t remember my father saying anything about his mother, as if she weren’t there.
There was an aunt who had lived in Romania with a rich merchant, and she came and lived with her nephew, this father, still a bachelor, she was childless. There was a lot of good jewelry, and my mother’s aunt had stored the jewelry separately in Knyazhevo, which one was better.
They had a grand piano Bösendorfer, we had a piano, and they had a grand piano, and she didn’t know how to play and we made fun of her – she played a little and it was like a melody. All the White Guards passed through Turkey, then through Bulgaria and from here – Paris. And to visit my aunt there in the nice house, Count who-who are you, who with a foot, who without a foot, and she always tells them where she studied. She had also graduated from Robert College, there was a women’s ward, I didn’t know. My mother – here is the French College in Sofia, she was the younger, always second. And so many properties, so many properties, already on Dondukov the bombs crushed us anyway. My aunt grabbed everything, my cousin, and her name was Stoyanka, she died in Italy, she had a magical voice. He died of tuberculosis and my brother and I remained. But before my aunt died, she hadn’t gotten sick, she was very much in love with her husband, but very much, and she begged my mother: . And who will have everything left – these two children. There is no other. Tonka died. ” My father just said, “Drink some cold water and that’s it.” My mother: “What to drink was, Costa, cold water. There is no one. ” “We’ll talk”.
Andon annoyed me a lot … a gorgeous yard in Knyazhevo, I climbed a cherry tree and he passed by, the lawyer: “I don’t like that, I like to collect, to serve.” I shout to him: “You will not teach my grandfather on the cherry. To command me. ”I had a three-wheeled bicycle, I jumped from the cherry, straight on the bicycle, from Knyazhevo to Sofia. Then there were only fields, meadows, here and there of this professor’s villa, of that one. Some horse-drawn tram passes it, it doesn’t pass. Wow, I tell myself, I was scared. When I saw the Russian monument, I calmed down. I realized that I was in Sofia. I call Dondukov. My father was sleeping. It turns out, “What’s going on, why are you here?” Andon told me not to pick from my grandfather’s cherry and I came by bike. And he looked for Dad, we had a cousin very rich, his car, we never had a car . My father always drove someone else’s car. This one had four or five. A Ford was for us and the car went and picked up the whole family. And he said, “You don’t have any more work here.”
We went to Koprivshtitsa. So, when my aunt died, she left a will to Andon Gruev. And now I do not like to go through Knyazhevo. He left everything to his relatives, to strangers. Dondukov’s house was demolished, on September 6 there was only one wall left, my mother, when she turned 97, gave up a little, but she was smart because she was moving a lot. He was just yelling at Muki, “Let’s go to our father’s house, come here.” And I hear and say, “Where is she, Mom?” September 6 and Aksakov. ”“ Is that so, and who were your neighbors? ”Who is our banker, I don’t know who else he lists. They had a big tree in the yard that gives the red flowers.
My mother wrote a 96-year-old “Memories of Old Sofia” and we took them to the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, they paid BGN 2,000. She wrote many valuable works.
A few years ago I saw that Raina Kostentseva’s book had been published, they evicted her, took everything, she was ugly in her face, they called her the Gorgon, and in her body she was beautiful. Her husband was German. A very cultured woman, very interesting, she moved around the most interesting circles of Sofia and I remember when she left the camp, she came to us, there was no underwear, so she was wrapped in newspapers underneath. For nothing, because the man was German. Hard, scary times. If you slander someone, if someone slanders you. At least that’s not it now. But I don’t know how far we will go. Something is wrong with us, I don’t know why Bulgaria is not doing well. We have buried many cats around the country.
