Below I'll tell you how my wife behaves in front of, inside or behind a car. I'm sure there are other long-suffering men out there.
Coming down in front of our block of flats in the morning, she takes a fancy to some car of the same colour, always-cleaner, and stands waiting beside it. I whistle to her to come over to ours. She stands on the driver's side. I tell her to go round to the other side. I quickly get into my seat and lean all the way to the right to pull up the lock button on her door from the inside. Usually she's beaten me to it and is already yanking the handle. The door won't open – the yanking jams it. I watch her movements. When she lets go of the handle, I try, but again she's beaten me to it. I make gestures with my hand meaning “No, no!”, which she understands as “Pull harder!”
I get out and explain that she should pull o-o-o-only when I give her the signal. I slip back inside and manage to pull up the button. I signal with my hands: “Get in!” But she's already given up and is staring straight ahead. I tap on her window. Several times. She gets in and remarks:
- “Before, I wasn't supposed to pull, and now it's the other way round!”
Option 1 – driving her to work in the morning:
She launches into her favourite topic of what insane traffic there is in Sofia. With a Metro like this, why do people use their cars? She's very keen on me being tolerant at zebra crossings. I slow down from a long way off and crawl, waiting even for people still travelling down in the lifts of the nearby blocks.
I stop outside her work with the hazard lights on. She's in no hurry to get out. She's just halfway through the topic of human impudence. Behind us they start beeping in unison. Indignant, she gets out without closing her door. I reach across, half lying down, close her door and pull away. I drive slowly for a full 300 metres. I have my reasons.
At some point she appears in my rear-view mirror. She's waving as she runs – for me to stop. She's filled the sky with enormous signals. Unnecessary. I'm mostly looking backwards anyway. A new wave of horns behind me. She runs up to the car; she's remembered something important. She tells me – for example – that when I get home I should put the soup from the balcony in the fridge. Or the other way round. I promise. The horns behind are now like a school prom night. I pull away with so much throttle that I leave a kilometre of clear road behind me. Now I'm driving like a white man – eh, a slightly sweaty one.
Option 2 – picking her up in the car after work:
She gets in but doesn't close the door, first – to say “bye” to a colleague, then to greet a passing client. Then she adjusts the mirror in front of her. I dictate: Door, seatbelt, we're off! She can't understand why I talk to her as if she were a small child. We get home. We stand in front of the lift door. My hands are full of various bags – mine and hers. There's no way I can press the button. She waits, as if she's been standing here since puberty. I press the button with my elbow. In the lift I can't do the same – the button is too high.
- “Eighth floor,” I tell her, and point with my eyes at the eighth-floor button.
She does it, but her look expresses a silent question as to whether it's always she who has to
press things, as if she were married to a cripple.
Once we're out in front of our door, she waits again.
- “Get your key out!” I command.
She starts looking for it in her handbag. In there is a Bermuda triangle for all sorts of
practical things – keys, phone, glasses, cigarettes, make-up, little notebooks, little notes of all kinds. They randomly change places every single day. She never looks in her bag when she puts something in or takes something out. Maybe she doesn't want to lose eye contact with whoever she's talking to. On her bunch of keys, the one for our flat is together with the one for the hair salon where she works. Perhaps that's exactly what jolts her: did she lock up there? She finds her phone by feel. She starts ringing one of her colleagues. What follows is a mental check – a monologue for my benefit, the fidgeting one:
- “I was the last one out of the salon. Down below that cheeky old bag from
the block we're on the ground floor of walked past. The one who's always complaining there are cigarette butts outside our place. I remember very clearly that I invited her to come up onto the landing and see that it's not true. She told me that…., to which I replied…. No, oh, yes, yes – I'm sure I'd put the key in the lock! I'd decided to tell that woman this time…..”
Somewhat calmer on the subject of locking, my wife stops ringing her colleague even before the other one has picked up. I remind her that I'm waiting for unlocking, with bags in my hands. At that moment the colleague rings her back to ask what she was calling about. My wife drops her bag in the middle of the most frantic rummaging for the key. Out fall two hairpins and a lipstick. She shares with her colleague the joy of having finally found her favourite little lipstick. And it only cost 3 leva. Their conversation veers off somewhere, I gesture to her to look for the keys. She signals to me not to pester her right now. I put down the bags and take out my own key. I unlock the door and invite her inside in the middle of the newly arisen topic of her conversation concerning the third colleague. Or rather, I gently nudge her over the threshold.
My wife in front of a door loses the connection with what comes next. I have named this ailment of hers door-neck syndrome. As you'll see below, the neck part is no accident either. I reflect on what a stressful life she leads. Something's gone missing, and something else she's not sure where it is. Silly domestic trivia strains her poetic soul. In fact, life also gives her unexpected pleasant surprises – look, today she found that lipstick. Yesterday she found in her bag the 50 leva that had sort of disappeared on her. She was happy about it only briefly. Then she started worrying whether it hadn't been 100.
Option 3 – going off somewhere with the kids:
The topic of how she finally manages to get the luggage ready I've touched on in another story of mine. I'll skip it, and we'll go back to how we're just about, just about to set off somewhere in the car.
In the car she adjusts the mirror in front of her. While she looks at herself in it with her lips pursed into a little funnel, I mustn't pull away. After a minute she asks me what I'm waiting for. I make her put on her seatbelt. She pulls it out but doesn't put the buckle where and how it should go. I start the engine. The unfastened-seatbelt beeper starts beeping. She looks at me – “What now?” – “Well, you haven't fastened it properly!” – “Can't you see how tightly I'm strapped in? I've squashed my boobs flat and I can barely breathe! Come round to my side and see for yourself!”
So far we've had five cars. What they have in common is that the seatbelts on her side are always strangling. It would seem her boobs are like a porn star's. Three or four minutes after setting off I drive slowly, looking around for where it'll be convenient to make a U-turn. She'll remember she's forgotten something. During the first kilometre from our home, all possible U-turns are a very easy exercise for me. I positively enjoy them. Even the kids knew that only after we passed the “Momina Cheshma” stop would I put my foot down and stop “crawling”. That happens rarely.
Usually my wife remembers: “Did I switch off the iron?”
She irons once every six months. But today of all days she wanted to give something a quick “press”. She starts rummaging in the countless drawers of her memories. No, she didn't iron. She's sure. Probably. And anyway she didn't feel like ironing any more, because the ironing board wobbles and I still haven't fixed it. I stop and wait for a command. I set off again. But what about the hob? And the glasses? And the flowers?
We go back. I try to park. I announce that I'm going to reverse into the space. I move off smoothly. She looks at me with eyes like a loaded double-barrelled shotgun – can't I see she's opened her door and her foot is outside? I park, mostly watching her movements. I've developed exceptional peripheral vision. She starts to get out. Naturally, she hasn't taken off her seatbelt. Because she stands up so abruptly, it locks, like every right-hand seatbelt in a car of mine. I free her.
I never let her go up for the forgotten things on her own. She's a conscientious person and she hurries. She doesn't like to annoy “people” in any way whatsoever, or to keep them waiting. When going into the entrance of our block she always checks with her finger in the slot of our letterbox whether there's any post, while running. Her finger gets stuck in the slot of the letterbox. This is another easy exercise for me. So far I've never once allowed her to shoot off up the stairwell with the letterbox impaled on her index finger. I am, after all, chairman of the residents' association. In the flat I take matters into my own hands and dictate to her:
Hob – Off, Iron – likewise. Heating – on “Snowflake”. Washing – brought in. Flowers – watered! Glasses – here you go! I lock the door of the flat personally and announce this in a speech therapist's voice, even though it annoys her.
We go back to the car. We pass “Momina Cheshma”. The tension drains from my face and from the kids' faces. With every gear change I take care that it happens smoothly. My wife, however, lurches drastically back and forth, as if I've slammed on the brakes or pulled away revving like a maniac. According to her I'm a bad driver. I don't say what I think – her feet aren't resting on the floor, she's pulling her seatbelt away from her with her hands. She wobbles about like a cuddly toy of the kind that were fashionable to put in your car 30 years ago – a tiger cub or kitten that nodded as you drove. Her otherwise solid neck turns out, in a car, to also be hung on a little hook, just like those toys'.
She looks around and makes a series of remarks about the cleanliness of the car. Then she puts her phone on the sloping dashboard. It falls down. Despite the seatbelt she tries to lean down far enough, looking at me. I wish I could add – in silence. She always insists on having a bottle of fresh cold water on her side. She takes it and puts it on the gear stick. It falls somewhere under her feet and rolls about.
If our little kids in the back had gone quiet, I'd ask her:
- “Have they fallen asleep yet?”
- “Well, how should I know?” she'd answer, without turning round.
Apparently her neck can't turn more than 90 degrees, especially with a fastened, strangling seatbelt. If the kids in the back were squabbling, she'd order them to stop. She'd try, with words of wisdom – about how good she'd been when she was little – to shame them. And she'd carry on looking straight ahead.
Seeing the “End of Sofia” sign, she puts her left knee even further forward to slacken the wretched seatbelt. The gear changes have to get smoother and smoother. If our route was to Troyan, at some point I'd ask her to look on the map where we need to turn off the Varna motorway. The map is in the “glovebox” of the car, I tell her.
- “Other people's gloveboxes open and close easily.”
When a sentence of hers begins with “People…” or “One…”, I keep quiet.
Shortly before a major junction, her inner voice prompts her to ask me an important question. For example – in my opinion, was Katya right yesterday when she told her that….
She demands an honest answer and that I look her in the eye. I try to be sufficiently cross-eyed. After my answer, “Hand on heart, looking you straight in the eye”, I'd sometimes take the wrong road.
I remind her to answer my long-standing question: “We're on the Sofia–Varna motorway, we've passed Yablanitsa. See how many kilometres until I should expect the ‘Pleven–Troyan’ turn-off.”
At last she opens the map:
- “Ooh, Blagoevgrad is closer to Sofia than I thought!”
Our map was in pages. At that moment she was looking somewhere around Petrich.
There follow reflections on the scale of maps. She's not a superficial person and examines every page thoroughly. She doesn't have my sneaky habit of keeping quiet when I'm looking at something. The towns and villages she mentions are far from the subject. She really ought to flick through some pages faster. I throw in, typically womanly:
- “Have you found the page with the relevant part of Bulgaria?”
This jolts her and she starts searching at speed. Something that wasn't in her
nature. She'd always explained to me how hurrying exhausted her.
Naturally, the people who made the map have left out precisely that page. At some point she gives up:
- “Fair's fair, but this is just too much!” she declares, and indignantly puts her feet
up on the dashboard to rest. In the cars coming the other way they think I'm driving a woman in labour.
I stop, it's time for the turn-off. I look at the map. It's all clear. I show her. She swears I've just made that page up.
She's getting sleepy. I don't know anyone else who yawns so
sincerely. The same can be heard from the back. She takes her long legs down from the dashboard. Before falling asleep, she wraps herself up a bit.
I don't know how it is in “other people's” cars, but in a car of mine there's always a draught coming from somewhere for her. On her lower back, on her neck, on her knees, under her skirt, on her back. Even on her Eustachian tube. She got top marks for that anatomy lesson in Year 7. While she's asleep she doesn't wobble. Clearly I'm doing better with the gear changes. It gets to 33 degrees in the car. I secretly switch on the air conditioning. On the very-very-very lowest setting. She stirs a little in her sleep. I switch off the air conditioning. After a while I switch it on. I sense she's about to wake up. I switch off the air conditioning completely.
Now she's watching the scenery. So far – in silence. The kids have woken up too.
From the back seat one of them tells me off for going over the “sleeping policeman” too fast. My wife suddenly turns a full 180 degrees!? She condemns the child for saying such nonsense. And the child, instead of being ashamed, repeats the same thing. She goes wild. She hasn't seen any policeman, let alone one lying by the side of the road or on it. And why would he be lying there? Her neck is now turning a full 270 degrees to take me in too. The other, even cheekier child confirms it. I don't take sides. They explain to her, laughing, what this new term means. They don't spare her the ironic remarks. Little rascals.
As we near our destination, she starts on the subject of the road surface, the drains, public procurement, corruption. And all this happening against the backdrop of such natural beauty. She insists that I look in the relevant direction. Again I go “boss-eyed”. Next she starts drawing up business plans. She looks around – to the left, a forest. There follows a business plan for a forest. To the right – a field, a new plan. What her business plans have in common is: “You pay people well and they work properly.”
Several times she makes me stop. She's seen chestnuts or needs a wee. I only stop when it's possible, which annoys her. When having a wee she always opens both right-hand doors and squats between them. Tinkling away, she comments on how boorishly we Bulgarians throw our rubbish by the roadside. With a nation like this, why shouldn't she throw away there the little bit of toilet paper I give her before she squats? Still, she doesn't do that. She stuffs it into a pocket. Amid similar little bits of paper, a pine cone, several scraps of paper with phone numbers written on them, oak and chestnut leaves, a sprig of wilted geranium, a few rosehips. According to O-Shoe, U-Sho or whoever, these are spiritual things. A connection with the cosmos and energy. I mean – without the bits of paper and the scraps.
Stopping at her insistence at some landmark, she gets out and shoots off. Behind her you can hear her tutting. If it isn't aimed at me, it means admiration. She doesn't wait for anyone.
The kids and I don't even try to catch up with her. Like normal plebs, we sink into vulgarities. For example – I fancy a smoke. One of them needs a poo. If by chance I'm not there and she has to take them for a poo, they'll still be wandering around to this day until they find a clean toilet with water, soap and toilet paper. With me they're relaxed and don't hold it in. I quickly find a suitable spot – a bit of scrub with poor visibility from the side. I smoke with my left hand and wipe bottoms with my right. I always carry an almost full roll of toilet paper in my pocket. /“Why do you always stuff your pockets like some tramp?”/
When we come out of the bushes, we look around anxiously. Not so much at whether some old local has seen us, as at whether she might pop up from somewhere and inspect their poo like a gastroenterologist. After that she'll sniff our hands to check they've been washed with soap down to the bone. Where we'd have got it from is our problem.
If we've arrived at our country house near Kazanlak, she starts with an inspection of the garden. I hurry to unlock the house and turn on the water and electricity. She goes into the rooms. Inside, according to her, mice, rats, butterflies, moths, woodworm, bats, spiders, flies and scorpions have been running riot. And they've all crapped and crapped some more.
- “People buy pest sprays, and we don't.”
I go back to park in the narrow garage.
I sweat away – forwards, backwards. She comes round in front of me “to help”. She'd be useful to me if she told me – back a bit with left lock, then forwards with right. But she's already on the phone to a friend. She's explaining to her what a nightmare journey we've had. Well, somehow we've arrived. The garden looks like a jungle. She hangs up and goes back into the house. I carry the luggage from the car into the house. Every one of the rooms has by now gone red with shame at its filthiness. The kids stay outside, bored.
The sun begins to set. This is the “tastiest” time in the countryside. The bees and flies calm down. The crickets start tuning their instruments. The hens go to bed. The moths circle the lamps, waiting for me to switch them on. I sweet-talk my wife into going to the restaurant. She promises we'll go, but only after she's removed the most glaring filth inside. By my expert estimate, this will take at least two hours. I egg the kids on to say they're hungry. Besides, the restaurant has Wi-Fi! The darling children manage to talk her round.
We walk there. In a place enclosed by an old Bulgarian stone wall stands a National Revival house, which is a restaurant and hotel. In the courtyard there's a little pool with fish. One of the houses is an ethnographic museum. The music is quiet, no chalga. The kids click away silently on their smartphones. The food turns out to be perfect. The artificial little waterfall murmurs away, and the fountain with its two big spouts gurgles.
God, how many lovely things there are in this world!
