With those trotters you’ll not fail, my man!”
The driver, of course, had not the slightest suspicion regarding the dramatic turn of events. He first heard about it from his chatty interlocutor, who did not fail to congratulate him on his new boss. Miladin, who was also a less than outgoing individual of stunted social instincts, decided to keep the news to himself. There was a mobile phone in his pocket, which he deliberately switched off. After he dropped the Mayor at Heathrow, Miladin headed towards one of London’s famed car-boot sales.
Left to his own devices, Kosta dropped the mask of arrogance and indifference, which he always put on in front of other people, and became as gloomy as a peasant watching thunderclouds looming above the harvest fields. He let his wife’s bitching drift past his ears unheeded – she was, as per usual, railing against the social position fate had decreed for her.
“They come here, the dregs of society, stuff their faces, screw everything up, and then guess who gets to clean up after them!” she complained, carrying a stack of dishes to the kitchen. “They all became big-shots! There’s no life left for common folk!”
She was a tiny, thick-set woman with big, workers hands and a bitter mouth. Through eyes that were forever screwed up, she regarded reality around her with mistrust and reproach. As the wife of an international cook, she had ‘done’ a fair chunk of the world, but deep-down she believed that only one patch of her homeland truly mattered – somewhere between the river Iskar and Mount Vitosha. No matter where she stayed – in Paris, Berlin or London – she arranged the family’s way of life according to her pre-Columbian image of the world, slowly reclaiming from the Western jungle a small clearing for her domestic civilization.
Of late, Kosta had frequently asked himself, why the hell had he married her? Or more precisely, why, for fuck’s sake, did he continue to be married to her? Out of laziness, that was the truth of the matter. He had been too lazy to search for the woman of his dreams and instead had opted for the closest one available. He had been too lazy to divorce her afterwards and here they were, already a good twenty years trundling around together. Sex not working. Quarrelling all day. She despised him. He despised her. They had managed two children with a long interval in between. They had some small savings, but too little to be divided up.
After lunch, Chavdar Tolomanov put in a call to the residence. He had been living in London for some years and presented himself sometimes as a salesman, sometimes as a man of the arts, but in reality he made his living some third way, which he avoided ever having to explain. From time to time, Kosta supplied him with cheap cigarettes from the Embassy’s diplomatic quota, and they had gradually become friends. Chavdar had come up with an extremely brash scenario, even judged by the cook’s low standards.
“I wanted to tell you that I’ve pulled a really great chick! Would you believe it? Real Latin American! Do you want her to phone you? Her name is Juliet. It’s just that she doesn’t speak any Bulgarian, ha-ha…”
Loud music was blasting down the earpiece and Kosta concluded that Chavdar was calling from a pub. He was tipsy and obviously having a good time.
“Listen, mate, lets arrange some business…” continued Chavdar. “Is the Mayor gone? Good. Look, I’m making out to this Juliet that I’m the Bulgarian Ambassador. Is it all right if I bring her to the residence? Just for one night, yeah?”
“No way! The new Ambassador’s already arrived.”
“What?!” Chavdar was surprised “How come so suddenly?”
“He dragged his sorry ass in here two hours ago,” the cook replied dryly. “Anyway, I’ve cleaning to be getting on with…” Try making out you’re the Ambassador to me! he thought and slammed down the receiver.
The news, however, had now leaked out. Chavdar Tolomanov did not have the same habits as Embassy people. Without so much as putting down his mobile phone, of which he was inordinately proud, he dialled the first number he came across. At the other end of the line a woman named Dafinka Zaks answered. Zaks lived off her late-husband’s rent and had a reputation as a happy widow. She thirstily soaked up the fresh gossip and delicately declined Chavdar’s proposition that she play the role of the rich, old auntie who lavishly provides space for the intimate adventures of her nephew. Dafinka Zaks shot off the news in several directions and the news spread like wildfire, along the approaches of the entirely unsuspecting Embassy, where the working day was winding towards its natural end.
At 4.30 p.m. the secretary’s telephone rang and an oily voice said, “Could you put me through to the Ambassador, please?”
The secretary, Tania Vandova, flinched as though scalded. She was familiar with that voice and in no way found it congenial.
“The new Ambassador has not yet arrived,” she declared in icy tones.
“Don’t hide him! Don’t hide him!” the voice at other end sang sweetly. “I know from a perfectly well-informed source, that he arrived this very afternoon. I only want to congratulate and welcome him.”
“Your source must have misinformed you,” the secretary attempted a nonchalant tone. “There is nobody here. Goodbye.”
In reality, Tania Vandova was not quite so sure and decided to trust to her well-honed secretarial instincts. A short conversation with the residence followed and Kosta was forced to spit out the truth (a big black mark for the cook!). The news whipped round the offices at the speed of light. At 5.30pm the Embassy emptied as though stricken by the Plague.
5
The eyes of the diplomats were filled with melancholy. They were sat fidgeting around the long empty table in the meeting-room beneath the map of Bulgaria, with its cold pink and yellow colouring. Malicious tongues had it that the map had been put there not so much to arouse patriotic spasms in the employees, but to serve as a reminder of where they came from and where they could be returning if they were not sufficiently careful. In practice, that was the only thing that could truly make them feel anxious. The ghost of going back! This ghost was a constant, inexorable presence around them. It sniggered maliciously in every corner and poisoned their lives with the memory of the finely scented black earth of their birthplace, from the very first to the very last day of their mandates. The subject of ‘going back’ was taboo, shrouded in painful silence. To ask somebody when he thought he might make the return journey (a blatant euphemism) was considered an act of bad taste, base manners and even hostility. Nobody talked about going back, nobody dared to say it out loud for fear of catching the attention of the evil powers that slumbered somewhere deep in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Despite the fact that everyone, down to the last telephonist, knew that this was their irrevocable destiny, as inevitable as winter or death, deep in their hearts they still sheltered the hope that that dolorous hour might pass them by, that they might be missed or forgotten in the overall mass of people and that the awful notice might never reach them. But the notice invariably arrived, along with its sinister title: Permanent Return – the creation of a vengeful bureaucrat from the distant past, the title had remained unchanged throughout the decades. And then began the time of the great retreat, the slow ebb. The condemned soul took to the road, watered with the tears of their predecessors, back to Heathrow Terminal 2, through Gate 7 or 9, and into the gloomy vessel of the national airline ‘Balkan’, after which the door slammed behind their back permanently.
It was soon after 10 p.m. The presidential chair was still empty. At a reasonable distance of a few empty chairs, the diplomats were sat with open pads, pens at the ready. The technical staff had crammed themselves at the other end of the table – the driver, the accountant, the radioman, the cook and the housekeeper. Very few things bonded those people together as did mutual dislike, slowly built up, layer
