AND ANOTHER THING
No time to be lost to sample gay Bulgaria
PAUL JOHNSON
Bulgaria ought to be much better known in the West,' said the parliamentary deputy to me in Sofia last week. 'Then tell me the three most important things it ought to be known for,' said I. 'First, there are unique characteristics to our folk- music, which were used by Bela Bartok. Second, we invented the Cyrillic alphabet and gave it to the Russians. Third, wall- paintings on our ancient churches show that Bulgaria formed a bridge between mediaeval iconography and the Renais- sance.'
It is true that the Bulgarians love music. Some say they are the most musical people in the world. Near our hotel, I watched an exquisite little blonde girl, perhaps no more than ten, beg by playing on her violin the `Ode to Joy' from Beethoven's last sympho- ny. There were other musical beggars: a very old man with once ferocious musta- chios piped folk-rhythms on a long, thin clarinet, accompanied by an even older man on a bowed lute. Down the road, you could see what was described as 'The Screw Spinnig Round by Benjamin Britain'.
It is true about the alphabet too, though in Stalin's day the Russians denied it. The Bulgarians have an overwhelming passion for the printed word, and, despite an almost total lack of physical resources, they are now producing and reading books avid- ly. That was why I was there: the Sofia Uni- versity Press had translated my book Mod- em Times, and had asked me to launch it and give a lecture at the university. The Marxist tyranny is over. The vainglorious Communist Party headquarters building, which dominates the centre of Sofia, has been taken over by a cinema and second- hand clothes-stalls. The gruesome giant tomb which housed the mummy of Dim- itrov, the local quisling who communised the country on Stalin's orders, is still stand- ing, covered in graffiti. But the mummy is gone, incinerated, its ashes buried in the wretched man's home village. Most Bulgar- ians I met do not like the present ruler, Zhelyn Zhelev, though they elected him president a year ago. But at least they can say so publicly. Sitting on the terrace of our hotel, we watched tens of thousands march past in an early-evening demo, shouting, 'Out with the traitor!' and 'No more red rubbish!' Their sad, careworn faces moved our hearts. They can read newspapers too. There are over 600 of them now, a riot of print. After my lecture, in a splendid but dingy marble hall, I was besieged by jour- nalists with microphones and tape- recorders. What was going to happen to Bulgaria? How could it achieve democratic salvation? Would the horrors of commu- nism return?
The deputy's third point, the proto- Renaissance, also has some validity. Sofia is dominated by the huge granite mass of Mount Vitosha. We drove up through its tree-covered lower slopes to the little vil- lage of Boyana, where a tiny pink-brick mediaeval church lies hidden in a bosky fold. In the year 1259, a great, unknown artist covered its interior with a dramatic series of realistic paintings, breaking away in one giant bound from the stiff formalism of Byzantium and anticipating Giotto. Whoever he was, he deserves a high place in the pantheon of the world's central artis- tic tradition. But I was selfishly glad his work is still largely unknown. My wife and I were the only visitors, and afterwards I could sit on a warm stone wall and paint a watercolour of the little church, undis- turbed except by tiny songbirds and a young shepherd boy who was driving his sheep, their bells tinkling, down the lane. The balmy air, heavy with the scent of wild flowers, the absolute calm and quiet, the nearby presence of a great artistic spirit, induced a sense of total well-being.
`That's it,' I was told at one of the west- ern embassies. 'Bulgaria is a kind of Gar- den of Eden. Life here, at any rate if you have hard currency, is perfection, and it's tempting to try and keep it a secret.' That is not difficult, for the moment. Package tours take some British, especially from the North, to high-rise blocks on the Black Sea coast, but the ancient towns and villages of its wild, mountainous countryside are virtu- ally unvisited. A recent survey showed that the third least-borrowed volume in British public libraries was a Sixties tome called Gay Bulgaria. It's hard to decide quite why the country is so delectable. The food, except of the simplest kind, is dull. It is very cold in winter, very hot in summer. True, the wines are good and modestly priced — `Just how I like 'em — big and sassy.' indeed, everything seems absurdly cheap. The ice-cream, too, is delicious. But it is the people who charm.
`We want a quiet life,' another deputy told me. 'No dramas, or adventures, or ter- ritorial ambitions. We leave that to the Serbs. They are the best at fighting. The Rumanians are the best at acquiring terri- tory they have no right to. The Greeks are the cleverest. We Bulgarians have been in a lot of wars and we always pick the losing side. So no more wars for us. All we want to be is good, low-profile, well-behaved Europeans.' The Bulgarians have certainly been made to suffer. Half a millennium of vicious Turkish oppression, then four disas- trous wars, followed by half a century of destructive communist economics. Rusty, deserted factories litter the fine country- side. Bare-backed peasants and their wives and daughters work with ancient ploughs, hoes, even their bare hands, in the hot June sun. Mules and donkeys are commoner than tractors. The people look vulnerable. The girls are remarkably slender, often beautiful in their shy way, with small, deli- cate bones. Even the soldiers, in their absurd, ugly, Russian-style uniforms, and the young policemen, seem lost, bewil- dered. But they all smile: they all want to love and be loved, be understood, helped to a decent life. I did not hear a harsh word while I was there. Even the demo lacked venom.
The Bulgarians have always appealed strongly to a certain kind of westerner. J.D. Bourchier, the famous correspondent who covered the Balkans for the Times between the 1870s and 1920, made his home there. He asked King Ferdinand for permission to be buried just outside the monastery of Rila, 6,000 feet up in the south-western mountains. His wish was granted and his simple granite tomb, outside the great entrance to the monastery, overlooks the tumultuous icy waters of the River Rilska. This is a fairy-tale spot, immense jagged peaks marking the skyline, their tops still snow-covered last week, dense pine and beech woods framing the monastery itself, with fortress walls surrounding its mediae- val tower and its polychrome church crowned with copper-green domes. Inside, there are vast wooden galleries opening into guest-rooms. Who would not be a pil- grim to this magic place? But hurry. Time's winged chariot, with its consumer economy, is on the way.
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