Even before I turned 45, I “acquired” dentures, and for several days I was cross with the whole world. I needed sympathy, so I rang Mum to tell her the “news”.
She tried to cheer me up:
“My grandfather, God rest his soul, was a priest. By 35 he already had false teeth, which he was forever grumbling about, but at 92 he grew new teeth and little by little started eating with them.”
This was the first I’d ever heard of it, and it crossed my mind that she might well have made the story up on the spot to give me courage. She seemed to sense this and suggested:
“Come on, drive over to ours! It’s Saturday and you’re not at work. I’ll get to see you, and it’ll cheer you up!”
The moment I was through the door she made me smile, saying in her typical style that I looked like a film star. She offered me lunch, but I asked only for coffee. For once she didn’t scold me for eating too little, but with the coffee she served a tulumbichka and a little éclair, and stirred me up a glass of soluble multivitamins.
She gave me the packet – I was to take one every morning. From somewhere she produced a photo of herself at twenty and made me look at it carefully, and then at her. I told her she was the same, only with the wrinkles that come inevitably with age. She put her palms on her cheeks so that they stretched from her forehead to her chin. She pulled the skin of her face out to the sides and asked:
“And what do you say now? Don’t I look just like the photo again?”
I confirmed it, and we chatted a little more. On the way home I suddenly felt sorry for Mum.
I remembered that when she was young, everyone said she was “a woman who gets things done” and a great optimist. Sometimes I’d “collect” her from work so we could go home together. There she was always surrounded by friends, whose fortunes she often read in their coffee cups, and they adored her, as did her colleagues, because she was always “dressed to the nines”, cheerful and had a sense of humour. She worked as a cashier at a big factory and was clearly very efficient too.
When she paid out wages, some people would remind her that before her there had been three cashiers in that same room, and now she managed on her own, faster and more accurately than they had. Once the factory director had burst into the room and reprimanded her for coming to work at 10 and leaving at 4.
Mum had answered him unflappably:
“Fine, then I’ll take my hat and go first thing tomorrow!” – and he had hurried to apologise sheepishly and leave.
She had told me:
“I don’t need more than 6 hours to get my work done. I know my worth, and as you saw, so does the director. In my view, it’s better to be the talk of the town than a doormat!”
I don’t remember her ever waiting in a queue. She’d step to the front as if it were the natural order of things, and usually no one protested.
Once she had again planted herself at the head of a queue for newspapers, as if she owned the place:
“Just one ‘Sport’, please!”
The citizen whose turn it was had been outraged:
“And what am I queuing for, love, a kilo of tomatoes?” Mum had retorted:
“Well done, you! Call yourself a gentleman!”
Even though almost everyone in the queue was a man, they called him “a cheeky so-and-so”, and he had stormed off, fuming and without a newspaper. I had often wondered how she managed to sway people like that. Was it charisma, or some mystical gift? In our family, if anyone needed a document from some public office, she would take on the unpleasant task with pleasure and handle it with ease.
Her motto was: “Anyone who doesn’t like me has no taste!”
In our family they said I took after her. So why shouldn’t I too try to look at life more optimistically, like her? Perhaps, stretching her face in front of the mirror, she had been hinting to me that it was all a matter of perspective?
I was now the age she had been back then, and it was high time I followed her example. I’ll tell you about a few incidents that I managed to look at from the right perspective, and this helped me not only quickly knock out my new complex about having false teeth, but also give my zest for life a boost.
The first was when, yet again, I had left the dentist’s with an empty mouth /not a single tooth/. He had made excuses that the dental technicians weren’t ready with my dentures again, but had promised to bring them to him around 4 p.m. There was no way I could go to work looking like that, so I decided to take a little trip up Vitosha.
I got off the tram at Knyazhevo and set off towards Kopitoto. As if by Murphy’s law, the smell of kebapcheta wafted out of a ramshackle tin-roofed eatery, and it tempted me.
I went up to it, wondering not only how I’d chew them but also how I’d order them, but I plucked up the courage and went in. Inside, a little woman was turning various things on the grill and asked me what I’d like. I didn’t want her to see that my mouth was empty, so I mumbled through my cupped hand that I wanted two kebapcheta and a beer.
And for her to serve them at the table outside, since I’d be smoking. After three repetitions, she seemed to get it. When she brought them, she stood in front of my table with the plate in her hand, stamped her foot and declared firmly:
“But I want you to pay first!”
Only once I’d paid did she put it down. I told myself that I now looked untrustworthy even in places like this, but then I burst out laughing and never did eat a thing. That evening I came home with my false teeth in and told my wife what had happened. She laughed and said my new teeth weren’t stained with nicotine and I ought to smile more, until they went yellow too. Pity they weren’t bigger, she said – she liked men like that.
The second was when we went with a group of friends to the Skakavitsa hut in Rila. It turned out we could have a shower there. I hadn’t expected that and hadn’t brought any pants for after the shower.
My wife said she had brought two pairs and gave me one – they were black, very high-cut and with lacy bits. Late in the evening we all turned in. It was warm and I fell asleep naked, without my false teeth, wearing only the knickers.
During the night I needed the loo and set off towards the end of the long narrow corridor, where the toilet ought to have been.
A young woman came towards me and, on seeing me, stopped hesitantly. I gave her a broad smile, waved her on and even joked:
“Don’t worry, I don’t bite!” She had slipped, frightened, between me and the wall, with her back to me.
There was a mirror in the toilet. Looking back at me from it was a balding man wearing nothing but lacy ladies’ knickers.
I grinned at the sight of him and gave him a thumbs up – as in, good one.
So did he, and things fell into place in my sleepy head. I went back to the room without even having had a wee, and held it in until morning.
At first I was upset by how I looked in the mirror, but then it struck me as hilarious that, with my toothless grin and the ladies’ knickers, there had been little point in telling the girl:
“Don’t worry, I don’t bite!”
In the morning we set off for the Lakes. On the way I spotted her in another group and waved to her. At first she couldn’t work out who I was, but soon she returned the greeting. Then she started telling her companions something, and most of them kept turning round to look at us, roaring with laughter.
Clearly I hadn’t seemed all that frightening to her the night before. I calmed down completely, bearing in mind too that, according to psychologists, at night we people often feel unfounded fear that comes not from our rational mind but from our subconscious, which aims mainly to give us a bit of a scare so that we stay on our toes all the next day.
The third incident was when some friends of ours came to stay at our villa in a village near Kazanlak. They had got up early the next morning, made coffee and were waiting for us on the terrace. They had even bought pastries from the banitsa shop next door. I was smoking with them when my wife appeared too. She must have been terribly embarrassed that, as the hostess, she hadn’t been the first to jump out of bed, and she started making excuses to them:
“Last night, before going to bed, I poured myself a glass of water and put it on the chest in our room, which stands between our corner beds. You know perfectly well that ‘my one’ was already asleep. He was snoring loudly, but very irregularly, and at times he’d suddenly stop breathing, as if he’d given up the ghost. Only after a good deal of prodding from me would he take a breath. His breathing after alcohol has always been like that, but I’d never been so frightened before. In Sofia we sleep in separate rooms now and I don’t hear him, but the nights here are so dark! I’ve been begging him for ages to buy a torch so I can shine it on him instead of jabbing him. I hope he realises he’s only alive thanks to my heroic midnight efforts!”
Our guest said that hers had been snoring last night too, and added “that’s our lot in life”, but my wife objected:
“But listen to what happened next! When he quietened down, I felt I must have got dehydrated from the fright. I lifted the glass of water and took a big gulp, but dropped it at once. While I was busy prodding him, he had somehow managed to put his dentures in it! I felt like throwing up, but by the time I found the basin, it had passed. I didn’t get to sleep until the first cockcrow – and the cockerels here are so loud they probably woke you up while it was still dark. Tonight, though, I’m going to pour some water into a little bottle and hide it in my bed.
No more glasses.”
Our guests were very close friends, otherwise my wife would never have allowed herself a story like that. For a whole hour all four of us couldn’t stop laughing. It seemed I had already infected my wife too with looking at things from the right perspective. She had overdone the hyperbole a bit, though. It’s hardly likely I put my dentures in the glass while she was prodding me – more likely it happened in one of the pauses in between.
The fourth incident: we were visiting some friends of ours who had come into quite a bit of money, and the host announced that he would personally prepare a “fondue” in front of us.
He lit a flame under something like a luxury bowl. He kept checking his watch to see when to add various things to it, which he named in French and garnished with historical notes on their origins.
After “the first little cheese”, my wife waved her hand in front of her nose, meaning: “Something smells.”
I trod on her foot, meaning: “Don’t embarrass me, you’ll just have to put up with it!”
Then came the stirring process, and finally the cooling of the fondue. After a while the hosts announced that the dish was ready. We were to spear a morsel of bread on our forks, dip it, and raise it slowly to our mouths so as to savour it.
I followed the instructions and hastened to “go into raptures”, but my false teeth had stuck together as if with Loctite. The others had already expressed their delight, and I looked helplessly at my wife, who ought to have saved our blushes. She, however, seemed to be trying not to throw up, and just gave a thumbs up.
It was a good idea, so I did the same, then went downstairs to the bathroom. With warm water I managed to unstick my dentures. Someone started knocking impatiently on the door – it was my wife. When we came back, we too praised the fondue. She added slyly that it was “very filling”, which would hardly have held water for long, but I had already taken far more far-sighted measures.
My phone rang. I put it on speaker, and everyone heard our daughter asking if we could possibly look after her little ones – she’d bring them over in an hour.
My wife laid into her:
“That’s not how it works, sweetheart, you need to warn us the day before. Look, we’re out visiting right now and…”
I panicked that in all the commotion I hadn’t let her in on my conspiracy, but I trod on her foot and she got it: “All right, darling, if you must, your dad and I will get a taxi straight away and be home soon.” I hurried to end the call and started apologising that we’d have to go, nothing for it, you know what kids are like – always at the last minute….
After which the two of us, like a well-oiled family machine, thanked them for the invitation and especially for the wonderful dish. The hosts filled a little container with fondue for us to take home, so we could finish it off and our grandchildren could try it too.
The little container is still sitting on our balcony, to remind me that when I too, like my great-grandfather the priest, grow new teeth, they won’t stick together even after fondue.
