Have you noticed that the richer and more successful someone is, the more free stuff they get? Despite the purely human logic that free things would be far more appreciated by people of more modest means.
Just once, things went my way too, in the direction of cosmic justice. An unexpected free blessing, meant only for the Rich People's Club, poured down upon me. Contrary to the unwritten laws of society, but perhaps in keeping with the unwritten laws of karma, who knows?
Well, yes, it worked out for me thanks to a misunderstanding. But our society is built to work in such a way that unless Karma steps in and some misunderstanding happens, there's no way a mere mortal gets a free blessing.
I work for a company whose owners are forever winning business awards. So many, in fact, that they've grown tired of going to collect them at parties, ceremonies and cocktail receptions. So they send me instead, and I, dressed in some frock like the one in the cover photo, scoop up the awards on their behalf. My frequent appearances at all sorts of business parties in Sofia have left certain people with the impression that I hold a C-level position in the company – quite possibly even CEO.
I can find no other explanation for the following incident:
One day, walking into the office, I found a large envelope on my desk. I suppressed the eternal fear that grips me whenever I see an envelope. That some institution wants to punish me for something. With trembling hands I tore it open – I was expecting some ticket for bad driving. Instead, I pulled out of the envelope a beautifully engraved invitation… In gold letters and calligraphic script, I was invited to spend a weekend at A-Fabulous-Estate. The invitation came from its owner, whom I had chatted to at a cocktail party following an awards ceremony for our company.
Blimey! I looked the estate up on Google and saw how lovely it was, and I also saw the price of a night there. If I didn't go now for free, I don't think I'd ever sacrifice such a pile of money.
That evening I told Emo we'd been invited to spend the weekend there.
Actually, hang on… I stopped Emo, who had already started packing his bag for the free holiday… Hang on, just let me have a look at the invitation… nowhere does it say Nia Yotova +1. They're only inviting me.
On the other hand, it sort of goes without saying that I should bring a +1. Am I supposed to sit there all on my own like a cuckoo for a whole weekend?
I decided to ring the estate and, just in case, ask whether the invitation was for Nia Yotova or for Nia Yotova +1. Emo thought there was no need to ask anything at all, we should just turn up there and present them with a fait accompli. But he still loomed over me to supervise the conversation.
A warm voice listened to me at the other end. It asked what the invitation said. I said just my name.
“Then it's only for you,” the warmth did not diminish.
“And what's my husband supposed to do in the meantime?” My tone was almost accusatory. It couldn't have been anything else. Emo was right next to me, goggle-eyed, making a gesture with his index finger as if he were about to slit someone's throat, while rumbling something.
The voice on the phone, for its part, took several breaths in order to keep its tone at least neutral, if not to bring back its former warmth. And to keep to itself its opinion on the matter, which was surely: “I couldn't care less what your husband does all weekend on his own.”
Instead – it did, after all, work at a classy resort – the voice said:
“Let me get in touch with Mr (….the owner's name), he's in Paris at the moment, and ask him whether you may spend the weekend at his estate with your other half. I'll call you back.”
A little later I got a call from the estate. Yes, I could spend the weekend there with my husband; he was to consider himself included in the free invitation too. I thanked the voice. I was burning with shame. I wished I would never hear it again. I was sure it wished the same.
I delivered the news to Emo. I was very happy that I'd fought for his well-being over the weekend too.
He, however, hissed reproachfully through his teeth:
“Have you got no children, or what?” What followed was the main accusation he used to level at me. Actually, there were lots of them. But while, in his view, the damning “What kind of housewife are you” and “What kind of wife are you – all you know how to do is gawp at me” had no power over me whatsoever, this one hit me straight in the heart.
And it was: “What kind of mother are you?????” “So our lady's off to an estate,” Emo went on, strategically omitting to mention himself in the “off to an estate”, “and her children are to rot in the flat all weekend without a breath of fresh air, is that it?!”
I once attended a negotiation skills course. They asked us a question: “If you ask for something in a negotiation and the other side agrees, would you consider the negotiation successful?” I, like a fool, said of course. But the correct answer was no. A successful negotiation is one you come out of with MORE than you asked for.
Emo would have thrived on that course.
If you're like me – children crushed under the iron boot of late socialism, whose first 7 years passed in constant nagging not to be “cheeky” and not to “bother people” – then you, like me, wouldn't consider it polite to ring the now former Warm Voice. And to ask it the logical question that Emo had helpfully formulated on my behalf. Namely:
“What does he (the voice) imagine my children are going to do while I'm living it up all weekend at his boss's estate?”
But let me explain something about Emo. Even though he's my age, he didn't let the old system crush him. When he believes something belongs to him (and in his view all the good things in the world belong to him by birthright), no manners or boundaries of acceptable social behaviour can stand in his way.
Here's a simple example. Last summer, Emo's year from school was getting together in some tavern in Pleven to mark 25 years since they'd graduated. He was the one put in charge of organising it. After drenching me in a waterfall of his constant rumbling, along the lines of “this world will fall apart without me, there isn't a single competent person, I tell you!!! Look at that bunch of plonkers from our year, they can't organise a thing without me”, Emo got down to the task.
He opened a notebook to keep notes on his conversations with people and started giving them a going-over. And what a going-over it was…
Emo conducted the series of conversations from the breakfast bar in the living room, while I was poking at some stew in the kitchen. I had no interest in listening to his conversations, but after accidentally overhearing the first one, I sat down next to him, mouth open in admiration, to listen to all of them.
I witnessed the following:
Emo (E) rings Classmate 1 (Vanka)
E: Heyyyyyyyy, Vanka, hello, guess who's calling you.
V: (can't hear what he says).
E: What do you mean you can't guess? It's Emo calling.
Why on earth should he guess, they've only not seen or heard from each other for 25 years.
V: (can't hear what he says, but clearly he can't place Emo. However incredible it sounds, the years of careers, children, marriages, divorces, highs and lows have managed to erase the memory of his classmate's elegant and dazzling figure).
E: What do you mean which Emo?!?! – Emo can't believe his ears – EMO YOTOV!!!
V, probably out of courtesy, pretends to remember who Emo Yotov is. For 2–3 minutes Emo explains to him where they'll meet, which restaurant the event will be held in, and how much lovely food will be laid on for the anniversary.
E: So now all that's left is for you to transfer 150 leva for your place to my bank account and I won't waste any more of your time.
Vanka is taken aback by this unexpected blow below the belt. Only a minute ago he'd been living blissfully, unaware of the existence of Emo Yotov. And now he had to top up said Emo's account with 150 leva as fast as humanly possible.
Vanka wanted to think about it. He wanted to look at other options for the price per head.
I gathered all this from Emo's lines; he really can't stand people who want to think. Emo drew a question mark next to Vanka's name in his notebook and parted from him with the accusing: “You can't put a price on a good time, Vanka.”
“Blimey, what materialists they all are,” Emo complained to me after the call ended. “Clinging on to their money as if they're taking it to the grave with them.”
After analysing his conversation with Vanka, Emo drew a valuable lesson from it, which he applied in his conversation with his next former classmate – Pavka.
We rang Pavka. I use the verb in the first person plural because I had by now joined Emo on a tall stool at the breakfast bar and was eagerly drinking in his every word. I too wanted to be part of this magnificent performance, and I knew I could never pull it off on my own.
Pavka had no choice at all. He was like the prey of an anaconda, who could only watch helplessly as the predator tightened its coils ever closer around him.
We rushed through the formalities:
E – Pavka, hello! It's Emo calling.
P – (already on speakerphone, so I could learn) – Which Emo?
E – What do you mean which Emo! EMO YOTOV!!!
P – (total silence)….
E – We were in the same year at the Maths High School in Pleven. In the school canteen in Year Nine I tipped my compote down your collar because you'd jumped the queue in front of me, don't you remember?
Pavka remembered. He didn't seem pleased to hear from my husband.
E – Right, Pavka, enough pleasantries. Let's get to the point. Our year is getting together on the 25th, at the “Lilacs” restaurant.
There followed the details warming up the main act, about the abundant and delicious food the old classmates would be enjoying. To Pavka's delight, there was no compote on the menu.
As the subject of paying for his place approached, Emo took a new approach. He didn't attack head-on.
E – I say, Pavka, have you got a piece of paper and a pen to hand?
P: Not right now.
E: Get your wife to nip off and fetch you some.
Pavka, who perhaps wanted to show Emo that there was no trace left of the former wimp with a cherry-compote-stained collar and shirt back, called out to his wife commandingly for paper and a pen. Poor thing, he didn't know that this was, so to speak, his last macho act before the anaconda Emo finished him off.
P (in a proud voice): Done, the wife's brought it.
E: Write this down then…. Are you writing…: BG52UNCR10000…. – Emo dictated his IBAN.
To my amazement, Pavka wrote and wrote, without asking any questions. I imagined him with his tongue sticking out in concentration. At the end he dutifully read back what he'd written down, to check he hadn't missed a digit. As if that was the biggest problem in this absurd conversation.
E: Well done, Pavka, you've written it down correctly. That's my account, transfer a cool 150 leva to it for your place as fast as you possibly can.
Before Pavka could react, Emo wished him a lovely, smiley day and hung up. He put a well-deserved tick next to Pavka's name in the notebook.
So my partner in life has precisely these qualities. That's why, however absurd it seemed in my eyes, his demand that I “fix up” the boys with a free weekend at the estate too was, in Emo's eyes, nothing more than a routine phone call.
I've wandered off a bit. Back to the moment when Emo made me ring the Warm Voice again and inform it that we'd be bringing the children too.
I felt terribly awkward about calling, but Emo had already dialled the estate and shoved the phone into my hand. It was ringing.
Please, please, please let nobody pick uuuuup…..
Fat chance of that. My old pal picked up again – the Warm Voice.
“Hello, it's Mrs Yotova calling again.”
The silence that had wafted from Vanka when he realised he had to transfer, im-me-di-ate-ly, 150 leva to some Emo Yotov he hadn't seen since '97 was a couple of degrees warmer than the silence now freezing my ear.
I remembered a refined phrase from those films about lords and ladies on English country estates. There, the aristocrats were always resting in someone's “company”. And we were, after all, going TO an estate, albeit a Bulgarian one.
“In our last conversation I informed you that I would be spending the weekend at your estate together with my husband. But I forgot to mention that I also wish to relax In-The-Company-Of-My-Sons. I am providing this information in advance to make it easier for you to arrange a larger suite for 4 instead of a room for 2.”
The Warm Voice, or more precisely the former warm voice, was left speechless. I had actually intended to offer to pay for the children, but Emo firmly forbade me.
“If they really want us as their guests,” he declared, “they won't make us pay for the children.”
Although I could have sworn that by this stage the team running the estate really wanted us not to be their guests, the miracle happened. The former Warm Voice, having come round, said resignedly that they would prepare a whole villa for us. It didn't even ring Paris any more to get the green light from the owner who had invited me. Everyone had given up on us.
At the weekend we load up the car and set off. Approaching the regional town where the estate is, Emo stops at the local Lidl. After consulting the Lidl special offers leaflet (his bedside reading), we bought bread, pork neck, lyutenitsa, yellow cheese, olives, napkins and plastic forks.
“We're not having dinner in that la-di-da restaurant of theirs,” he announces gloomily.
At this point I'd had enough of us being Bai Ganyo through and through. What kind of CEO of the company am I if I can't afford one dinner in their restaurant (the only restaurant in Bulgaria with a Michelin star at the time, or at least that's how it had been presented to us. After checking online, it turned out the restaurant had a Michelin star about as much as I was the CEO of our company).
Look, I can give way on lots of things, but not when it comes to my eternal worry: “What will people think of me?”
Once they've been misled into thinking I'm the CEO of a world-class software company, that delusion has to be kept up to the end. Even if it means half-emptying my credit card on dinner at their restaurant.
We arrive at the estate in style. Emo and I have had a bit of a row over the dinner, but for the estate staff we put on smiles.
Clearly my telephone sparring partner had retired for a well-deserved rest. I gathered we'd been welcomed by another member of staff who hadn't yet spoken to me on the phone, because the name Mrs Yotova continued to inspire universal admiration and respect.
There followed a splendid welcome with a welcome drink. Then a tour of the estate in a sort of golf buggy. During the ride we heard about the history of the estate's lands from the time of the Thracians up to the present day. Everything comes at a price, and as Emo says, “You can't put a price on a good time.” I reminded him of this while he and my younger son shot tormented looks at me.
Only our elder son, the intellectual of the family, pretended to listen to the fascinating historical facts.
All of this came to an end at some point, and the whole family plunged with relief into the outdoor pool of hot mineral water.
To be continued…
