This true story dates from the days of “socialism”. For the benefit of younger readers: back then, people in Bulgaria lived modestly, with no excess, and entertainment was scarce. Sometime around 1980, a new, luxurious Viennese café and patisserie opened in Sofia – the “Bulgaria”. It was said to be refined, with perfect furnishings and service, but also very expensive. Its shop window was large, and passers-by in the street were struck dumb by the splendour they saw inside. Gawping, quite a few of them bumped into each other. It soon became the stretch with the most pedestrian accidents in the city. Some passers-by plucked up the courage to go in, if by chance there were free tables. Most hurried to leave the moment they saw the prices on the menu.
One Friday I collected my pay, which turned out to have gone up by 20 leva. I decided to treat my wife on the occasion, and so as not to risk queuing outside the place, after work I stopped by and booked a table for the following day at 7 p.m.
On Saturday at lunchtime I told her what I had planned for the evening. She protested:
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“Are you mad? I’ve heard it’s terribly pricey there!”
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“Don’t you worry about money! I got paid yesterday. They’ve given me a 20-leva rise and I want to treat you.”
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“You could have treated me without an excuse. Still, I’m glad about your rise. But you know perfectly well we’re paying back a loan, and we’re saving for the seaside too. Those 20 leva will hardly be enough!”
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“Depends what we have. The never-before-seen pastries, cakes and ice creams there are bound to be expensive. My plan is that around 6 we pop into the little patisserie by the Halls and have some baklava, tulumbichki and boza. And at 7 we’ll be at the ‘Bulgaria’, just for the luxury of it. We’ll order just a coffee and a Coca-Cola each. Having our cake and eating it, so to speak.” The moment I said it, I felt how petty and unmanly it sounded. If I’d been in her place, I’d have kicked up a huge row with that wimp. Perhaps she was about to do just that, but then she had only just been appealing for thrift, so she merely gave me a long look. After a while she decided to lighten the mood with her doubts:
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“Oh yes, of course, and at the ‘Bulgaria’ they’ll put up with us taking up their table for nothing! Besides, we know nothing about etiquette and they’ll wonder which village we’ve come from.”
I shook off my guilt and even perked up:
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“You’re wrong. Last month a colleague was on a business trip to Switzerland, and he said he sat in a place all evening over a single beer and none of the staff pestered him to order something else or to leave.”
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“You know perfectly well that here, in the ‘Bulgaria’ – and I mean the country too – they’ll throw us out, booking and all, the moment they hear what we’re ‘ordering’.”
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“I doubt it. Yesterday I talked to another colleague who’s been there with his girlfriend. They had just a small cognac each. It was cosy, quiet and clean inside. At the end they bring you a sort of little leather folder with an electronic receipt in it – what you’ve had, the unit prices and the total. Civilised, not some bloke in a greasy apron with a pencil behind his ear peering at his notebook while you wonder whether he’s diddled you. The waitress steps aside. The customer checks the bill and, as a rule, leaves the money in the folder. When she comes back over, he hands it to her with the words: ‘Keep the change!’ So it’s clear how we should behave.” I even added with aplomb:
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“Why shouldn’t we, for once at least, feel like big shots too?”
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“Oh, I can see you’re all fired up and won’t give up easily. But we can’t go there dressed any old how. I’ll get some decent clothes ready for you. And after that leave me alone, because I get nervous when I have to dress up.”
Around 5 we set off, spruced up, for the little patisserie by the Halls, where we stuffed ourselves fit to burst with tulumbichki and boza for 1.10 leva. On the way out my wife said:
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“I’ve been enough of a big shot for one day. If you like, let’s go to the cinema or go home. I’m ashamed to go to a Viennese patisserie after I’ve already been to an ordinary one. Look at my waist – it’s now merely an imaginary line.”
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“Ah, but if we go, you’ll be able to tell everyone at work that you’ve been to the ‘Bulgaria’ and give them a first-hand account.” With which I seem to have managed to persuade her.
We walked into the place at 7 on the dot. A lady led us to our table so gracefully and ceremoniously, as if we were newlyweds – and celebrities at that. She presented each of us with a luxurious Menu, in which we hastened to hide our eyes. We stared at the colour pictures of pastries, cakes and ice creams and tutted inwardly. Around us sat dignified couples and groups, talking quietly. Viennese music could be heard. Soon we closed the glossy almanacs. The waitress came straight away and asked what we had chosen. My wife mumbled like a failing pupil at the blackboard:
- “For me… hmm… erm… a coffee… yes, a coffee.”
- “What kind of coffee? We have Viennese, iced, schwarz, cappuccino, espresso, with or without cream or milk, short or long…”
– “No, no, just a coffee… a short one.” I said:
- “For me – a coffee and a Coca-Cola… for now.” The waitress wrote it down and moved away.
I asked my wife why she hadn’t ordered a Coca-Cola too, to which she replied:
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“And what did you mean by that ‘for now’?”
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“Oh, it was a tactical move – so she’d think we’d be ordering something else and she could relax.”
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“She’d be even more relaxed if you didn’t look at her with such a greedy stare as she walks back and forth.”
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“That’s a tactical move too.”
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“But not a tactful one. Especially towards me. Please, stop straining your eyes towards her like that – you’re not short-sighted.”
After a while “my one” served us with precision and servility. For an hour we sipped our drinks drop by drop and relaxed a little. Besides talking, we secretly eyed the other customers and commented on them. At one point the elderly couple at the next table asked for the bill. The man was an old hand and at the end said the standard line to the waitress:
– “Keep the change.”
I asked for the bill too, and our little folder arrived. I whispered to my wife:
– “The waitress will be standing in front of us, waiting. It wouldn’t look good to goggle at the receipt like pensioners. Besides, that’s the gentleman’s job!”
– “Ugh, fine, I’m off to the loo. But afterwards I insist on looking at the bill, just like that, out of curiosity!”
For me the most important thing was that she shouldn’t see the receipt /something unheard of in our country until then/, unless the bill was under 5 leva. I studied it with an air of intelligence, and my eye immediately fell on the figure 20.13. I closed the folder in horror. My wife would turn out to be right, as always. There was no way I could show it to her! I set about doing sums in my head. In the shops back then /if there was any at all/, Coca-Cola was 15 stotinki and coffee about 20 st. Even if the mark-up here was 20 times, the bill should still have been under 9 leva. I hurried to slip 21 leva into the folder and signal to the waitress. She stood dutifully in front of me shortly after my wife came back. With a casual gesture I handed over the folder, weighed down by my pay rise, and casually uttered the magic words:
- “Keep the change!”
- “Thank you,” she replied, but she peeked inside and raised her eyebrows in surprise:
- “But are you sure you want me to keep the change?”
- “Absolutely!”
- “All of it?”
- “Of course!”
My wife got up and headed for the coat stand to put her coat on. After a brief hesitation the waitress delicately slipped the receipt into my hand and floated off to the bar like a gondola, swaying her hips and haunches. I hid the receipt. My wife and I set off home, relieved. On the way she kept asking me how much the bill had been. She had noticed that when the elderly man at the next table had said, like me, “Keep the change!”, the waitress had just thanked him and smiled, whereas she had asked me in surprise whether I was sure, whether she should keep the change, all of it, and so on. Which drastically increased the doubts already swelling inside her. She asked for the receipt, but I said I’d thrown it away. In her view, it was normal for the tip to be rounded up to a whole lev, but she suspected I’d given one more on top. And judging by the looks I’d been giving the waitress – maybe even 3 leva. In the end I couldn’t take it any more and “confessed” to her that the bill had been 5.40 and I’d given 7 leva, and she was outraged:
- “As if the Coca-Cola and the coffee had just arrived from America and Brazil!
I’ll never set foot in that den of thieves again!”
At home I hurried to dash into the bathroom with the receipt hidden in my pants. I turned the shower on so it would make a noise, and meanwhile examined the receipt thoroughly:
Saturday, 30.07.1982. Time: 20.13.
Coca-Cola qty 1 Unit price …..Amount …../can’t remember/
Espresso coffee qty 2 Unit price …..Amount …../can’t remember/
Bill total: 4.60.
As much steam started coming off me as off the hot water. At first I felt like a little kid who’d pooped himself. Then I gave myself a right earful… and dived under the shower, where I always used to sing, but now just scrubbed myself furiously with the sponge, as if my skin were to blame for the fiasco. In the end, after I’d dried myself, I cheered up a bit – that waitress would surely be telling for years how an unremarkable-looking young man had given her a 16.53-leva tip, and for just 2 coffees and one Coca-Cola at that. In today’s money that’s somewhere around 180 leva.
By now I was rather enjoying the thought that in her memory I would remain the biggest big shot of her career. And that I had unwittingly “raised the bar” for her so high that she would hardly ever smile at a tip under 3 leva again. Perhaps every day she would glance over and over at the door of the place, hoping I’d turn up.
For the first and only time I felt that I might have become a legend for someone. And that one of the conditions for becoming a legend is to do something very unusual, or even rather stupid.
