On a path at the foot of Vitosha there is a wise sign: “No forest trail will lead you to the pharmacy door.” Although I was a regular hiker, every now and then I had to go into a chemist's, and there I often got muddled. For example:
Quite a few years ago I needed something for a cold. I had recently seen TV adverts in which people, the moment they took a sip from the glass with the miracle dissolved in it, lit up at once. Behind the counter at the chemist's stood a beautiful young assistant who radiated cleanliness and a pleasant, unobtrusive perfume. To my mind, her place was in a fashion boutique. I would have preferred someone with a bit more professional and life experience, but I plucked up the courage to share my problem. I asked her to recommend something nice and soluble. She suggested a few options, and I chose the middle one in price.
“Do you want the whole pack?”
“Yes. How do I take it – please, explain it to me – so I don't have to read the leaflet.”
“You take one shashay morning, noon and night.” Her stress was on the ay. Because of the glass screen, or my damaged hearing, which struggles to tell consonants apart, I wondered whether she might actually have said shot-ay. We hard-of-hearing folk interpret what we half-hear and rely more on our inner ear. Right at that moment I remembered that, as a little boy, I'd been on holiday with Mum, and there a granny was showing off her grandchild, who had recently started talking. She would point: “What's this?” “Table-ay.” “And this?” “Chair-ay.” Both with the stress on the ay. They were from Dupnitsa. Aah, I see, I said to myself, the pharmacist is from there too. Here in Sofia a shot is a small glass. I assumed the pack contained the medicine and a few little glasses, which I didn't fancy paying for – I had all sorts at home. But which of them would be suitable?
“But this shot-ay,” I said, delicately stressing the “ay”, “what should it be like?”
“It is what it is. The pack is for 10 shot-ays.” So I'd been right about the “shot”.
“Still – how big should it be?”
“Well, they're standard. They are what they are.”
Mine were what they were, too. I'd bought them long ago, back when there were no knock-offs, and they were certainly made to the Bulgarian State Standard. If she had given me a clearer answer, for example: a shot-ay for rakia (50/100 grams), a wine one, a tea one, a coffee one, a beer one and so on, I'd have left straight away, I swear. The idea crossed my mind that I could steer her delicately towards the size of the shot-ay if I hinted with a smile:
“Look, miss, you know what they say, ‘Size matters’, ha-ha.” But it would have been inappropriate, given my age. I myself hated dirty old “pirgishes”.
A.N.: “pirgish” – colloq. – a repulsive, loathsome old codger, a lecher, a creep. This is the place to point out that I am a Virgo and I insist on everything being crystal clear. At that moment there was no one else around, and the pharmacist had perfect conditions for getting a customer, even if it were Alzheimer himself, to at least nod. I raised a questioning look at her, which she withstood in silence. She had the air of a woman who had already explained blindingly obvious things at great length – out of duty, otherwise she'd have told me to sod off long ago. Clearly she didn't feel like repeating that the shot-ays are what they are and are standard. Her look said she was convinced that if she went outside right now and asked 100 people the riddle:
“Small, standard, it is what it is – what is it?”,
all of them, except me, would answer at once: “A shot-ay!”
For her, “Size” probably didn't matter. I had to quickly find the right path to her lazy little brain, and I tried a more roundabout way:
- Excuse me, but I'm worried about getting the dosage wrong.
- It's very simple: morning, noon and night – one shot-ay. You dissolve it in a glass of warm water, not hot, say 200 millilitres, and you drink it.
At last she had said something specific – _2_00 millilitres. But then it turned out that I dissolve the shot-ay in a glass. By that logic the glass itself would dissolve too. The pack, she had said, was for 10 shot-ays. I wasn't sure I had 10 shot-ays of the same kind at home, so I enquired:
“And do the shot-ays absolutely have to be identical? I might be two short – I mean, of the same model.”
“Then buy two more separately!” Her tone was like a schoolmistress's, and she no longer looked so pretty to me. She began drumming her manicured nails nervously on the change tray and after a few bars snapped:
“Do you want two shot-ays separately or not?”
“No, thank you, I don't think I do. I'll manage somehow without them.”
I concentrated again. A moment earlier, perhaps unintentionally, she had also uttered the word glass. In her little blonde head, which was a shot-ay and which a glass was probably, in principle, eeny-meeny-miny-mo. In my strained head a picture appeared of me, like Mr Bean, walking in at home and picking a smaller shot-ay – maybe a hundred-gram rakia glass. Then I divide the medicine into 10 equal parts – I had fine scales. I stuff one of the 10 doses into the little rakia glass and plop it into the 200-millilitre glass, filled halfway in advance with warmed but not hot water. Bubbles will start appearing in the glass. That was a clue. I decided against asking her to take the shot-ays out of the pack, since I had my own, and I offered resignedly:
“All right, let's settle up!”
“Four twenty.”
I pretended to be slowly putting away my change. I couldn't come up with anything cleverer than:
“And will the shot-ay dissolve easily in the glass?”
“It's soluble. Mega easily soluble. Even for you, sir!” Her “sir” sounded like “you numpty”.
To our mutual joy, another customer appeared.
I left feeling that my cold was the last thing on my mind right now. I really hated words like “Mega”, “Wicked”, “Hyper” and the like, so typical of today's generation, and I tutted to myself:
“God, how first impressions can deceive you!”
At home I opened the leaflet. It said the pack contained 10 soluble Sachets. With an S, not an Sh. There was a neat drawing showing how to open the Sachet, how to pour its contents into the glass of warm water and even how to stir it – clockwise. Hats off to the manufacturers – “Made in France”. My mega-wicked conclusion was that the Shot-ay was a Sachet, and a Sachet (stressed on the ay) was a little packet. And that the pharmacist might not have been from Dupnitsa after all. In my defence I will add that back then the word Sachet was as well known as the words dzhangar, penkeler, pirostiya, pirgish, Stakhanovite and Gulag are today.
