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 new teeth came through and little by little he started eating with them.” I was hearing this for the first time, 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: “Why don't you 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 and said, in her typical style, that I looked like a film star. She offered me lunch, but I only wanted coffee. This time she didn't scold me for eating too little, but with the coffee she added a tulumba and a little éclair, and stirred me a glass of soluble multivitamins. She gave me the packet so I'd take one every morning. She fetched from somewhere a photo of herself at twenty and made me look at it carefully, then at her. I told her she was the same, but with the wrinkles inevitable at her age. She put her palms on her cheeks so that they reached from her forehead to her chin. She stretched the skin of her face out to the sides and asked:
“And what do you say now? Aren't I just like in the photo again?”
I confirmed it and we chatted a little longer. On the way home I suddenly felt sorry for Mum. I remembered that when she was young, everyone said she was “a sharp one” and a great optimist. Sometimes I would “pick her up” 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 evidently very efficient, too.
When she paid out the wages, some people reminded 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 told her off for coming to work at 10 and leaving at 4.
Mum had answered him unperturbed:
“Fine, then first thing tomorrow I'll pick up my hat and go!” – 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 on people's lips than under their feet!”
I don't remember her ever waiting in a queue. She would stand at the front as if it were the natural order of things, and usually nobody protested. Once again she had planted herself at the head of a queue for newspapers, as if she owned the place:
“Just one copy of ‘Sport’, please!”
The citizen whose turn it was had been outraged:
“And what am I queuing for, then – a kilo of tomatoes, woman?”
Mum had replied:
“Well, bravo – and they call this a gentleman!” Even though almost everyone in the queue was a man, they called him “a cheeky so-and-so” and he left furious 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 institution, 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 now, like her?
Perhaps, by stretching her face in front of the mirror, she had been hinting to me that everything is a matter of perspective? I was now the age she had been back then, and it was high time to follow her example.
I'll tell you about some incidents that I managed to look at from the right perspective, and this helped me not only to quickly knock out my new complex about having false teeth, but also to raise my spirits.
The first was when, yet again, I had left the dentist's with an empty mouth /without a single tooth/. He had made excuses that the dental technicians still weren't ready with my dentures, but had promised him they'd bring them by 4 pm. There was no way I could go to work looking like that, so I decided to make a little excursion to Vitosha. I got off the tram at Knyazhevo and set off towards Kopitoto. As if by Murphy's law, from a squat little tin-roofed eatery wafted a smell of kebapcheta that tempted me. I went closer, wondering not only how I would chew them, but also how I would order them.
Still, 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 and lisped through my cupped hand that I wanted two kebapcheta and a beer. And for her to serve them at the table outside, as I'd be smoking. After three repetitions she seemed to have got 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 me first!”
Once I'd paid, she put it down. I told myself that my appearance was now considered dodgy even in places like this, but then I burst out laughing and never ate a thing. In the evening I came home with teeth and told my wife what had happened. She laughed and said that my new teeth weren't stained with nicotine yet and I should smile more until they turned yellow too. A pity they weren't bigger – 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'd brought two pairs and gave me one – they were black, very high-cut and with little bits of lace.
Late in the evening we all went to bed. It was warm and I fell asleep naked, without my teeth, wearing only the little knickers.
In the night I needed a wee and set off towards the end of the long narrow corridor, where the toilet was supposed to be. A young woman came towards me and, seeing me, stopped hesitantly. I gave her a broad smile, waved her past and even joked: “Relax, I don't bite!” She had slipped past, frightened, between me and the wall, with her back to me. There was a mirror in the toilet. From it a balding man looked back at me, wearing only ladies' lacy knickers. I grinned at the sight of him and gave him a thumbs-up – meaning, good joke. 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 at how I'd looked in the mirror, but then it made me laugh that, with my toothless grin and the ladies' knickers, there had been no need to tell the girl:
“Relax, 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 place me, but soon she returned my greeting. Then she started telling her group something and most of them kept turning round towards us, roaring with laughter. Evidently last night I hadn't seemed so terrifying to her after all. I calmed down completely, bearing in mind, too, that according to psychologists, at night we humans often feel unfounded fear that comes not from our rational mind but from our subconscious, whose main aim is to give us a bit of a scare so that we stay alert all the following day.
The third incident was when friends of ours had come 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 very embarrassed that, as the hostess, she hadn't leapt up first, 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 very 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 lot of prodding from me would he take a breath. His breathing after alcohol has always been like that, but I'd never been this scared before. In Sofia we sleep in separate rooms now and I don't hear him, but here the nights are so dark! For ages I've been asking him to buy a torch so I can shine it on him instead of jabbing him. I hope he realises he's alive only thanks to my heroic midnight actions!” Our guest said that her one 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 raised the glass of water and took a big gulp, but immediately dropped it. While I'd been prodding him, he had somehow managed to put his dentures in it! I nearly threw up, but by the time I found the basin, it had passed. I didn't fall asleep until the first cockcrow, and the cocks here are so loud they must have woken you while it was still dark. Tonight, though, I'll 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 wouldn't have allowed herself a story like that. For a whole hour the four of us couldn't stop laughing. It seemed I had already infected my wife, too, with looking at things from the right perspective. Still, she had overdone the hyperbole a bit. I could hardly have put my dentures in the glass while she was prodding me – more likely it happened in one of the pauses between prods.
The fourth incident: we were visiting some rather well-off friends of ours, and the host announced that he would personally prepare a “Fon-due” in front of us. He lit a flame under something like a luxury bowl. He kept looking at his watch to see when to put various things into 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 stepped on her foot, meaning:
Don't embarrass me, you'll put up with it!
The process of stirring began, and finally of the Fondue cooling down. 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 bring it slowly to our mouths, so as to savour it. I followed the instructions and hurried to “go into raptures”, but my dentures had stuck together as if with “Loctite” glue. The others had already expressed their admiration, and I looked helplessly at my wife, who was supposed to save our blushes. She, however, seemed to be trying not to throw up and just gave a thumbs-up.
It was a good idea and I did the same, after which I went down to the bathroom on the floor below. With warm water I managed to unstick my dentures. Someone started knocking impatiently on the door – it was my wife. When we got back, we too praised the Fondue. She added slyly that it was “very filling”, which wouldn't have held up for long, but I had already taken far more far-sighted action.
My phone rang. I put it on speaker and everyone heard our daughter asking whether, if possible, we could look after her little ones – she'd bring them over in an hour.
My wife laid into her: “This won't do, darling, you have to warn us the day before. Look, right now we're visiting friends and..”
I worried that in all the commotion I hadn't let her in on my conspiracy, but I stepped on her foot and she understood: “All right, sweetheart, if it has to be, your father and I will get a taxi straight away and we'll be home soon.” I hurried to end the call and started apologising that we'd have to go, there was 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 put some of the Fon-due in a little container 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 new teeth come through for me too, like for my great-grandfather the priest, they won't stick together even after Fondue.
