Translation of Atanas Dalchev

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  1. Translation of Atanas Dalchev

    August 18, 2011 by Christopher Buxton

    Novella

    The windows – shut tight and blackened,

    And blackened and shut tight, the door,

    And the door bears the fluttering message

    “The owner has gone to America.”

    And I am the home’s only owner

    Where nobody’s made his abode

    And I’ve set out for nowhere

    And from nowhere I’ve returned

    I never take a step from my house

    And the years are my only visitors,

    But so often the gardens have yellowed,

    And I’m certainly not the same chap.

    All the books have been read long ago

    And all memory’s paths have been trampled

    And how here as if for a hundred years

    I talk exclusively to the portraits.

    And day and night and night and day the clock

    Swings its brass sun pendulum.

    Occasionally I pose before the mirror

    So as not to be always alone.

    And my days slowly climb the walls

    In the flicker of dying embers:

    My life passes away without a trace

    Of a single love or incident

    It’s as if I’ve never lived at all

    And my existence is an evil fantasy.

    If someone happens to enter the house,

    They’ll find nobody in.

    They’ll only see the dusty portraits,

    The perfidious empty mirror

    And on the door a yellowing message:

    “The owner has gone to America.”

    Atanas Dalchev 1925


  2. In Memoriam – David Morena Buxton 1925-2011

    July 16, 2011 by Christopher Buxton


    Happy Days

    I am the son of loving parents – very much in love with each other and in love with their profession which was their world. If I think of Paradise I think of David and Monica working together in some amazing stage production.

    It was a privilege to be their son.

    My father took me backstage to the world behind the curtain. The smell of wood, canvass and paint transported me, the thrill of finding rudimentary doors and windows cut into the towering backs of the flats, I would run up steps to appear on balconies, I would crane my neck and look up at the stuff hanging from the flies – remembering the oft told story of a cantankerous old Scotsmen who worked in the flies in Perth and who didn’t take kindly to shows overrunning as he had to catch a bus to his home in a remote village. One such night as the spotlight lit the hero as he walked downstage for his final soliloquy, the audience could hear muttered rumbling from above their heads. The God was restive – his bus would depart in twenty minutes. Careless of impending calamity the actor took his time. The rumbling increased. There was no lightning, but just as the actor opened his mouth to speak, the God spluttered a gargled oath and a pair of false teeth clattered onto the boards.

    My father became a productions manager after he acknowledged that he was not cut out to be an actor – something to do with the arrival of Ted Woodward and Dicky Johnson in the Perth Theatre. Thereafter he appeared rarely on stage he often told me that you could always spot a member of the production team on stage. They’d be the ones who’d be looking round the set, making sure it wasn’t going to fall down.

    He told me the story of a stage manager who was roped in to play the statue of Eros. Covered in wet plaster of Paris he had to stand behind a couple of actors playing a love scene in a park. Ever practical – this was Scotland in the winter – the manager ran out an electric fire to be concealed behind the statue’s plinth. As the lovers’ dialogue became more intense the audience might have missed the steam rising from the statue. As the lovers leant forward for their first kiss, the audience might have been distracted by Eros suddenly coming to life with a wriggle a yelp and a dash to the wings.

    Dad worked long hours six days a week and so he was quite a remote figure in my early childhood. Once – after he’d been away on some tour – I remember finding a strange man in the bath. I screamed and it took mum some minutes to explain shaving to me.

    After our move to Birmingham and my mum’s increasing number of acting roles, it became Dad’s turn to take on a parenting role. Somehow he found time for us to go to football matches. The walk to West Bromwich Albion and the bus ride to Birmingham City, and then holidays together in Devon and Cornwall enabled us to set all the world’s problems to right – from the Great Train robbery to Apartheid – we indulged our mutual curiosity as I tried to acquire his strong moral sense.

    Dad’s curiosity was unbounded. With a strong sense of history – even when it was repeating itself – he waited impatiently to find out what happened next. His strong belief in fair play, perhaps linked to his love of cricket, led him towards an active sympathy for the weak in society. This informed his direction of cutting edge modern drama as well as explaining his political campaigning.

    My father loved the countryside and he showed complete disrespect for notices that said Private or Trespassers will be prosecuted. Barbed wire was no impediment on Sunday walks where the object was to find a good picnic spot by some water. Dad was renowned in the family as being better than a pair of divining rods.

    My father was a generous, modest and fiercely independent man. His neighbours speak of him walking down the street, head held high, with a smile and greeting for everyone. As a theatre director, as a political campaigner, as a parent-in-law in a strange country, he had the miraculous gift of hunkering down and getting the absolute best out of everyone.

    The last role my father played on stage was in Samuel Beckett’s surreal drama Happy Days. My mother played Winny, a woman buried first up to her waist then up to her neck in sand. Dad played her husband faithful Willy in a natty straw boater and smart blazer.

    This very moving and often funny play was to resonate with me as my father became my mother’s fiercely protective nurse in the last years of her life. My mum and Dad faced this trial with humour. Wot larks Pip!


  3. Dull Tuesday thoughts

    June 14, 2011 by Christopher Buxton

    I’d like Martin Karbovski to go to Lom – a Danube port town in the poorest area of Bulgaria and report on how successful the town has been in integrating its Bulgarian and Roma populations. While there he would enjoy the opportunity of talking to Lom’s Roma ex-deputy mayor, who speaks flawless Bulgarian and English, to discover why with such few resources, he is heading up such a successful integration programme.

    Hey, Martin, if you were positive for a change, you might even get the next TV journalism prize.

    Repetitive coughing – the result of some wild-boar flu, I caught – has forced me to watch some strange late night TV lately. SKAT TV would be so much better if they trained their comperes to shut up. I watched yet another wise philosopher lecture a panel of young people, pausing only occasionally to ask them loaded questions. The youngsters tried to answer but their kind compere would quickly interrupt them and answer for them. This clearly ticks the box for youth appeal. Another night I witnessed a similar attempt at dialogue between a retired teacher and an articulate Roma lad. The poor boy could not get a word in edgeways. This ticks the box for racial integration.

    SKAT did pull off a significant coup in bringing cmeras into a lecture in Germany by Dr Baleva, the Bulgarian woman who in her Doctorial thesis on the relationship between art and patriotic identity, has tried to cast doubt on the Batak massacres. The cameras showed Baleva’s German colleagues casting considerable doubt on her assertions – one even making a comparison with hollocaust denial. This along with evidence that Baleva’s dubious doctorate may have been financed by Turkish interests could have made for a significant sccop. This scoop might have been even more effective if the main commentator had been a little more temperate in his language.But SKAT works on the principle of I can’t stay quiet.


  4. Job swap 2

    June 14, 2011 by Christopher Buxton

    David Cameron sat twiddling his thumbs. Through the window he could see the morning sun shine on the slopes of the nearby wooded mountain. Lawn sprinklers arced mini rainbows across the plush green lawn. Cameron was enjoying Colleague Borisov’s retreat. The stunning views of the depopulated countryside contrasted with the Spartan interior furnishings favoured by Bulgaria’s greatest living statesman.

    Cameron had found five newly pressed Superman suits in the master bedroom wardrobe. In every room fitness machines awaited the return of their owner, like so many reproachful pet Borzois deprived of their daily walk.

    Being Prime Minister of Bulgaria was turning out to be a piece of cake. Boyko had been quite right. A photo opportunity a day keeps the opposition at bay. So in order to show that he was getting to grips with the Health Service, Cameron had dressed up in a white coat and rubber gloves. The headline had read: The Man from London says no to cockroaches.

    And those Bulgarian journalists were so pretty – Boyko called them kittens. They were nothing like those British harridans. The most taxing question he’d had to field was whether he wanted to ban tripe soup.

    Colleague Borisov had been right about the cabinet too. You wouldn’t have found a more terrified bunch of creatures in a Turkey farm before Christmas or a liberal democrat conference. All he had to do was to mime picking up a phone and tapping on the table and the ministers turned white.

    Boyko’s ex-girlfriend had introduced him to the people who really mattered. What a lovely weekend he’d spent in a lakeside development near Haskovo, discussing privatizing Customs and Excise.

    The interior Minister, Tsvetanov, a fellow with a face as long as a Bassett hound’s, had been worried about some upcoming demonstration in Sofia. Cameron had taken a few hours to explain the simple technique of kettling. You trap the demonstrators in some square and keep them there for hours on end. Was it possible for a Bassett Hound to look happy? Tsvetanov had pulled out a map and a mobile phone.

    On Friday he’d dropped into Parliament to find it half empty. Apparently a lot of MPs had decided to attend some religious event in the centre of Sofia. There’d been a long rambling question from a fellow conservative involving a lot of economic theory he’d never read. He hoped he’d made the right noises. Then a man with pink cheeks whose lack of enthusiasm suggested he suffered from severe constipation got up to demand his resignation.

    There had been a bit of a stir later in the day when an angry little man with a shock of white hair like a badger’s, marched into the chamber and straight to the podium, waving a photograph of a clearly distressed woman and a laundry bill. The ensuing confrontation was etched in Cameron’s memory.

    White haired demagogue: Who’s going to pay Bitka Patriotka’s laundry bill, you Bosphoros Turd!

    Cameron: (confused) Who? What? Where?

    White haired demagogue: That’s right pretend you don’t know anything about your bashebazouks, you janissary! You ought to be wearing a fez.

    Cameron: (trying for his most effective phrase) Calm down dear.

    White haired demagogue: That’s right, treat us like Australians you patronizing Topkapi whore! I tell you, I’ll be at your throat every day like a Bulgarian lion until you pay this laundry bill.

    Cameron: I thought MPs could afford laundry bills.

    White haired demagogue: You sit there like a harem eunuch and pretend that this isn’t your fault. My MP was doing her patriotic duty. She was setting out to clear Sofia of terrorists, wailing Mullahs, prayer mats and agents of a non European power. Your police, your Bashebazouks held her up in the metro underpass for three hours.

    Cameron: I still don’t understand.

    White haired demagogue: Do I need to spell it out? She likes beer and Bulgarian tomatoes.

    The session had ended in uproar as a bearded representative of the Turkish Minority arrived to express undying gratitude to Cameron as a worthy successor to that famous friend of Turkey, Disraeli.

    To be compared to Disraeli – that would be one in the eye for the Daily Mail back home. He felt like raising a glass so he rang a bell and a bald headed ex-wrestler bustled in, knocking over a coffee table on the way. As a butler he lacked Jeeves’ ability to shimmer, but he understood a crisp order for a glass of cognac.

    The phone rang.


  5. European Initiative no 55553: Prime Minister Job-swap

    May 17, 2011 by Christopher Buxton

    Based on my local greengrocer’s plea: Can’t we swap yours for ours?

    Bulgaria’s Greatest Living Statesman glared at the Downing Street cat. It just sat there cleaning its whiskers – yet another example of privilege he’d have to deal with. Ey, my furry friend, if I don’t see some dead mice soon, I’ll have you stuffed and mounted for the Bankya Natural History Museum.

    The cat stretched and yawned. It didn’t seem to understand straight talking any more than that useless cabinet of ministers Dave had left him with. All they wanted to do was to reminisce about their school days. When he’d threatened to bang heads together, they perked up but said that they preferred the cane. Parliamentary Question Time was a different matter. That Ed Milliband just opened and closed his mouth like a goldfish. A bit like Stanishev on heat – easy to bat away with some choice words that had his party laughing like jackals.

    In times of stress a man needs to remind himself of his greatness and so BGLS reached into his pocket and unfolded the plans for electrically heated motorways. In a stroke he’d solve the UK’s winter transport problems. He’d call the BBC – make sure there was a picture of him with a spade and some cable on the M1, He would have basked in this imagined glory but at that moment the phone rang with international urgency. Two days into the new Job-Swap European initiative, Colleague Cameron still couldn’t find his way out of a Bulgarian toilet, let alone cope with the rough and tumble of everyday politics.

    What would it be this time? Did he have to explain the Macedonian question yet again? How many times did he have to say that with Berlusconi in charge of Macedonia, all Cameron had to do was send some hot Bulgarian totty over from Kyustendil? Or would it be more complaints about the roads in Sofia? It wasn’t as though he hadn’t warned Cameron about taking his Rolls Royce. If the holes in the roads didn’t smash it up, there’d be Volen Siderov, jumping on the bonnet, armed with a megaphone.

    He picked up the phone and listened to Cameron gabbling away – this time it was about hospitals and cockroaches. Why was Cameron obsessed with the Bulgarian health system instead of something simple like motorways? These English politicians just loved to put hedgehogs in their underpants. “Listen Davecho, don’t worry about the cockroaches. We need them to find out where pipes go. And don’t worry about all our best doctors coming over to your country. Bulgaria has the best health system in the world? Who needs doctors or nurses? We’ve got a hundred medical newspapers and we pay two and a half million pensioners to read them and keep the rest of us informed.”

    BGLS slammed the phone down and looked through his engagement diary: Tsvetelina had laid on lunch with the Governor of the Bank of England so she could arrange their overdraft facilities and that good lad, Berbatov had arranged a kick about for five o’clock with photographers laid on. BGLS frowned. What was this meeting with HRH in half an hour? He didn’t remember seeing a dossier. Was this the pseudonym of some local gangster? He pressed the intercom.

    Well HRH turned out to be the Queen of England. Although she was only symbolic, he still had to see her once a week. It was a lot better than having to put up with Purvanov’s ugly mug. Dave had told him a lot about all the formalities, but BGLS hadn’t paid any attention. The Queen was a woman and she’d be delighted to spend time with a red blooded man for a change. These English were all wimps and her husband was a Greek – enough said.

    Mitko the Ears had an excellent way of cutting through the London traffic in the Hummer specially adapted by Gosho Ganchev.

    By the time they reached the gates of Buckingham Palace, BGLS was ready to rely on his undoubted Balkan charm. If his hair-raising Fireman stories didn’t make the Queen’s knees tremble, then he’d make her laugh with some salty tales from his bodyguard days. Ey, he slapped his pocket to make sure he had his daughter’s photo ready. Prince Harry seemed a lad with a good sense of humour.

    His measured tread echoed through the marbled hallway. A chandelier tinkled. Mighty doors opened. There was the Queen standing by the tea table as if she’d been waiting for such a man all her life. He kicked a yapping corgi aside, grabbed her hand and pressed his lips to her gloved fingers.

    “Oh!”

    BGLS winked. He always had a way with women.