Shutaranga

The three families from our yard had gathered at Grandma and Grandpa's house for somebody's birthday. By tradition, we, the six grandchildren, got stuck straight into the food, while the grown-ups started on the salads, the rakia and the toasts. This time they seemed to have had a drop more than usual and decided to have a sing-song before they'd even eaten. They gave Grandpa the right to pick the song, and he launched into something none of us had ever heard before – at least not us little ones. It was one of those “Old City Hits” numbers. The grown-ups joined in with gusto right after him. The tune was a bit sad and drawn-out. Every ten seconds or so the chorus came round again: – ….“Forgot his shuta-ranga”….

We children exchanged glances. I suppose they were thinking the same as me – that the words of the song were a bit rude – and we asked to go outside. They let us with a wave of the hand. Their favourite chorus was coming up, the one the grown-ups bellowed at the top of their lungs. For the first time ever, they just pointed us to the yard, with no instructions about what to put on or take off, about not drinking water while we were sweaty, and so on.

Outside it turned out that even our cousin Tomi, who had “a mouth like a sewer”, didn't know what this shutaranga meant. We were absolutely sure of one thing – the word was very, very dirty. We gathered in a circle. That was usually how we agreed which game to start with, but right now games were the last thing on our minds. Not knowing something in maths or Bulgarian – fine, whatever, but not knowing a word like that – who knew when and where you might make a fool of yourself. We started guessing. The girl cousins whispered something to each other and announced that, in their opinion, the word was feminine. My big brother, the eldest of us, in fourth grade, our undisputed authority, shot them down at once:

“Listen – ” just then, from inside, came again: “Forgot his shutaranga” – “It's masculine, otherwise it'd be forgot her shutaranga.” The girls were stumped. But then we boys couldn't imagine how anyone could forget their shutaranga somewhere. The irritating song finally stopped and was replaced by the clatter of spoons on plates.

In this stalemate, and in our helplessness to find the right answer, one of the girl cousins, Tomi's sister, said she was disappointed in the behaviour of the grown-ups, who had allowed themselves to sing indecent songs in front of their children. Each of us added our own outrage, but somehow steering clear of our own parents and aiming mostly at Grandma and Grandpa. Who, on top of everything, were of a venerable age – pushing sixty.

Here my brother stepped in. He'd started reading at four and had read us fairy tales, while the rest of us listened open-mouthed. He had big blue eyes and was the eldest among us. I think he wanted to excuse Grandma and Grandpa, because he said the climacterium must have got them. The youngest cousin corrected him – two months ago they'd put their other grandma in the crematorium, not the climacterium. My brother started explaining which of the two meant what exactly. By then we were fed up with unknown words and started a game of blind man's buff, but somehow rather half-heartedly, and rushed through it.

In the end we promised each other that the next day each of us would ask our classmates whether they knew the word that had worried us so much today.

Before falling asleep, half-dreaming, the idea came to me that it was a swear word, maybe a Gypsy one. All night I tossed and turned in a dream in which shutaranga was even a kind of snake, or a poisonous herb they were making me drink. When I tried to run away, it turned out I couldn't even run – I tried, but my legs wouldn't obey – an old weakness of mine: in dreams I ran very slowly.

The next evening we children gathered in the yard, all worked up. It turned out that none of our classmates knew that cursed little word either. At that moment we all seemed to be thinking the same thing – we'd been living perfectly well until yesterday without this nasty shutaranga. We rushed through a game of “Cops and Robbers”. That's how it was the whole week. It was as if our games – Red Rover, volleyball over the washing line, word games, hangman, leapfrog, football, marbles, hide-and-seek and so on – had lost all their flavour. I'm sure the others had looked up the nightmare word in dictionaries too. I'd even joined a library. Not even the librarian knew it.

To put it poetically, the ghost of Shutaranga had taken possession of the yard and nothing was the same as before. It was as if it was haunting us and poisoning our lives. Only a month later, just before falling asleep, did I get the idea to ask Comrade Kozhuharov – he'd recently become the Bulgarian teacher at our school and was our form tutor in third grade. He even played football with us. He was cool. I slept like a log.

The next day, during the match, my only aim was to catch his eye, not only as a footballer but as a boy who doesn't insult his opponents during a game. At the end of the match he personally came over to congratulate me – not just on the three goals I'd scored, but on my sportsmanship. The moment was right and I didn't miss it:

• “Comrade Kozhuharov, I have a difficult question for you – about Bulgarian. When and where would it suit you for me to ask?”

• “Well, Bogomil, if you've decided the question is difficult, best come round to my place after 16:00. Do you know where I live – right next to the school?”

• “I do!”

At 16:00 on the dot I was at his place, and he showed me into his study. He treated me to a pastry, which I struggled to eat – maybe because of the enormous question in my mouth. And how exactly was I to ask without him taking me for a hooligan, a cheeky so-and-so, a cynic or a lout? I even thought about leaving, but he seemed to bring me back to life:

• “So, Bogomil, what's your question for me?”

• “Comrade Kozhuharov, what does the word shutaranga mean?”

• “Depends on the context it was mentioned in. That is, what other words did you hear it with?”

• “It was in some song the grown-ups sang, and us kids didn't understand it.”

• “Go on, try singing the song, if you still remember it.”

• “Ta tata ta ratatata – Sing me, jester, a serenade……..

…. Forgot his shutaranga ….”

• “It's clear to me now. That's an old city song.” And he sang it:
• “Once the queen said:

Sing me, jester, a serenade

and if you touch my heart,

a kiss I'll give you as reward.

……..”

Unlike at our party, he didn't yell the chorus. In the end he gave me a little book of old city song lyrics – a “Songbook”. Good thing he also explained what “shut” meant in this case – not a kick of the ball, but a court jester. And “rang” meant a person's rank, their place in society. Being a man of low rank, the Jester hoped in vain that the queen would love him.

That evening, full of answers, I was the centre of attention in our yard. I didn't rush to enlighten them straight away. So, right – …rank – jester – song, unhappy love and so on. I graciously explained it all to them, bit by bit and all together. Gradually they started to catch on. I'd never felt so important before. Finally I sang it to them, reading from the Songbook:

The Jester's Song

They say that in the olden days
there lived a king and his fair queen.
The court jester, day and night,
would entertain them with his songs.

And to his woe he fell in love,
but not with some plain simple maid.
The jester forgot his rank, and fell in love with his own queen.

Once the queen said:
Sing me, jester, a serenade,
if you can touch my heart,
a kiss I'll give you as reward………

To be on the safe side, I added once more what exactly The jester forgot his rank – meant – this time as a whole**.**

To my surprise, they still weren't applauding.

But a minute later it all sank in and they congratulated me on freeing them from that nightmare of a word.

Our parents approved of our new pastime with the Songbook. Soon we got bored of it and went back to singing our favourite children's songs. At the very next celebration we sang “The Jester's Song” together with the grown-ups, and it gradually became a kind of anthem for our whole clan. Since we little ones got sad when, at the end of the song, the king beheaded the jester who had forgotten himself, the verses in question were soon dropped.

It's only right that at the end you get to hear the song itself too: