My mother nodded in understanding when I told her the story of the packet of butter.
‘Mum, I will go back to the store in half an hour,’ I promised. ‘I hope the saleswoman will have finished here telephone call by then.’
‘If she’s still on the line, then wait for a while, because I don’t have any butter left for dinner.’
Sometimes we would stand in the queue without knowing what they were selling. Of course, we could ask the people in front of us, but they often did not know either. There was even a joke about a grandfather who stood in a queue under the assumption they were selling pastry. After waiting for a while it’s his turn. ‘How many packets would you like?’ the saleswoman asks. ‘I’ll have ten, because my wife has a large baking tin,’ the old man says. He still does not realize that they were only selling sanitary towels.
In reality, the salesperson hardly ever asked you how many you wanted. I remember, after waiting for nearly an hour, asking for three packets of sanitary towels. The saleswoman looked at me like I had gone crazy.
‘I only give one packet per person, because otherwise there will not be enough for everyone,’ she barked at me.
‘But there are three of us at home. My mother and my sister also need sanitary towels.’
‘Then they will have to come back themselves,’ the saleswoman replied dryly.
I gave up and walked home. Once there I quickly put on other clothes, changed my hairdo and ran back to the store. I was determined to get another packet of sanitary towels for my mother. She was at work and by the time she came home, everything would be sold out.
Luckily my parents were well-connected, which meant we rarely had to do without. In her spare time, my mother gave piano lessons and her pupils would bring edible gifts. Some of them were farmer’s daughters and if their father had slaughtered a pig or chicken, our freezer was filled up. Networks of reciprocal services created a second economy in the country and my father had ‘friends’ all over the place who would save scarce good for him behind their counters. Of course, they wanted something in return, but that was never a problem. A gigantic circle of vague acquaintances ensured that you could always refer someone to the right person.
The scarcity of many products also had its positive side. Life was uncomplicated: no advertising trying to seduce you into buying unnecessary products, no cars with flat tyres and because there was never anything interesting on television, this left you lots of time to visit friends. If your television broke, even that was not much of a problem, because due to a lack of competition nearly everyone had the same television set and you could ask all your friend for advice and help.
Competition was a Western fabrication that only complicated life. We were not interested in comparing packets of laundry detergent, toilet paper, soap, oil, butter and milk. Most products only had one type and that was more than enough for us. I only had issues with the Bulgarian sanitary towels. That was so large that it reached from my belly button to the small of my back. This meant I could not wear trousers, because I did not want everyone to know when I had my period. The worst thing was that the towels moved so much when you walked that every now and then I had to check if I had not lost it along the way.
The problem with the system was that you never knew if a product was going to be scarce or not. For some items, such as good quality toilet paper, you expected this might be the case, but how much toilet paper could an average person stockpile in their Bulgarian home? The regular toilet paper could not be any stiffer. My grandfather wiped himself with a newspaper. He saved the old newspapers, squashed them into large balls and then carefully flattened them out. I also used these pre-treated newspapers at my grandfather’s, even though I did not find it hygienic. I had to agree that the newspapers were not any stiffer than the regular toilet paper.
I preferred to vest my hope on my parents, who managed to get a supply of toilet paper every now and then through their connections. In the meantime, I tried to decipher the secret of the planned economy together with Olga. We done this by making up a game, in which we had to react quickly to the other person’s thoughts.
Olga got to go first.
‘In our country, there is no official unemployment, but no one does any work.’
‘Even though the people do not do much work, we always have a record level of production.’
Olga: ‘Despite this record level of production there is nothing for sale in the shops.’
‘Even though there is nothing for sale, we can get anything we want.’
Olga: ‘Of course we can get anything we want, but we would rather steal it from the companies we work for.
‘People steal at work, because no one is every arrested.’
Olga: ‘No one is ever arrested, but because so many things are stolen many companies cannot continue work.’
‘That doesn’t matter, because after all there is no unemployment.’
We would burst out laughing. If two young girls could complete the wondrous circle of the communist economy, then it was a breeze for the party leaders.
The meaning of life
My first years at school were mainly spent fighting with boys. Later on, I realized this was not the only way to get them to do what I wanted. My new weapons were a deep cut décolleté and a seductive smile. I also paid a lot of attention to my hair and followed the latest hair fashion: a wild hairdo like Tina Turner which was a result of a lot of my father’s shaving foam and backcombing. Such a hairdo was forbidden at school, but no one could stop me in my own free time.
My father was continually surprised by how quickly his shaving foam ran out, but I could not find any other alternative, because hair gel was not available. My biggest worry was that it would rain. Especially since that one time that I was completely soaked and my hair started to foam in the middle of the high street. Everyone stared at me in surprise, but most people had no idea what kind of chemical reaction was taking place in my hair.
A whole new world opened up for me from the moment I was admitted to the selection group of a well-known tennis team at the age of 14. I played throughout the entire country, drank cocktails in hotel bars and would flirt with players in other teams until late in the evening. The trainers had great difficulty waking me up in the mornings. They never understood why, because they always personally switched off the lights in my room.
I wanted to flirt, seduce and get experience making love. I had no problem sharing my body with handsome young men, but I wanted to save my virginity for someone special. I soon realized therefore what I wanted: to be an experienced virgin. Strangely enough, all the boys I shared my bed with agreed to this. It was wonderful to make out this way, because I could let myself go without having to worry about any unwanted pregnancies.
It seemed like I was using the tennis as a cover for my romantic adventures and to escape from my parents’ control. Nothing was farther from the truth. I trained at least three times a day at a murderous pace. I enjoyed all those nice trips to unknown cities, but I was more interested in winning. It was just a nice coincidence that there was also time for flirting after each game.
That was also how it went with Ivan, one of the best tennis players of my generation. From the moment we first met I found him attractive, intriguing and a little bit dangerous. He looked smug and did not even try to hide the fact that he wanted to get me into bed as soon as possible. When he knocked on the door of my hotel room after a game, ten alarm bells went off in my head, but I could not resist his tender and assertive approach. As an experienced lover, he soon had me undressed. Ivan then lifted me up and placed me naked in front of the mirror, following which he slid his hands along my body like a professional sculptor. I smiled at his reflection. It was both romantic and arousing at the same time how he admired my body.