STORY WITH CAKE

This story took place on the New Year’s Eve of my last winter in Bulgaria. Together with my wife and daughter, I greeted 1997 in a rented one-bedroom apartment in a windy, ugly suburb of Varna. I don’t remember this day to have heralded аnything new and different for us. All the same people were cautiously walking and eventually slipping along the narrow path under our glassed-in terrace to the bus stop, in their coats and carrying their plastic bags; the north wind was piling rubbish on the naked branches, patches of dirty snow with marks left by the dogs were still to be seen among the apartment buildings. And yet, if one would look up to the windows in these walls with the peeling paint, they would notice the snowflakes, cut out and glued by children, as well as stars, and also garlands, twinkling lights, and the peaks of Christmas trees. The forecast warned of heavy snowfall.

I remember that it was getting dark and the snowflakes were already falling when my phone rang. I ran ahead of my daughter who, since some time, had begun to have her own phone conversations with friends and relatives without any suspicion about the price of long-distance calls. I heard Dancho’s voice on the other end:

‘’Hello?’’

Dancho was the last one in a chain of family pastry-makers, with the big red cheeks and belly of Santa Clause, and he made the most wonderful cakes in the world in a pastry shop at the entrance of the Sea Garden. After the regime change, however, they turned the pastry shop into a store for clothing from Turkey; Dancho refused to stay behind the counter and sell jeans, lost his job, then tried opening his own pastry shop and went bankrupt from one day to the next. After that he took his wife and his two boys and moved from the city center to a village about 30 kilometers away, where he had been given back a family bakery. There he was able to keep baking his famous cakes on demand, but one by one, even his most loyal clients disappeared, as inflation made his trade impossible. ‘’By the time I make a cake and bring it to the city, the products double in price,’’ Dancho said as we were having a coffee during one of the last times I saw him. “With the money I get from it, I can’t pay for the gas to go back to the village.” Bit by bit, Dancho was forced to leave the baking behind; he baked only cheap banichki with cottage cheese and cheap bread. The people in the village could not afford anything else.

‘’How are you, Dancho?” I ask.

“Hello, I’m calling to see where you’re going to be tonight.”

‘’Here.’’

‘’I’ve decided to make you a New Year’s present,’’ Dancho is laughing.

‘’No New Year’s presents!’’ I protest.

‘’It’s almost ready,’’ he goes on, ‘’I just called to see if you’ll stay home or go some place else, to be in the know as to where to bring it.’’

‘’Listen, ‘’ I pick up speed, ‘’what present, what delivery!?’’

‘’OK, bye-bye,’’ says he, ‘’the cake is baked”.

‘’Dancho,” I show signs of irritation, ‘’look at the blizzard outside, please, don’t do anything silly!’’

‘’I am not doing anything silly, I want you to celebrate the New Year with a special cake!’’

‘’Dancho, don’t…’’

‘’See you in an hour or two,’’ he interrupted me and hung up. I slowly put the receiver back. My daughter was running around the room, with Johnnie, our hamster, in her hand and screaming, followed by our black cat; my wife was preparing the dinner, barely squeezed out of our last salaries; a reportage about an ever-lasting political crisis was running on TV. I touched the frozen window with my forehead and bored a small opening with my warm breath. I could see the red pulsating lights of the airport within a visible distance from our concrete-panel apartment building. If all went according to plan, in three months we would be taking-off from there.

This is what happened after in the course of New Year’s Eve: Dancho was putting the finishing touches on the best cake of the year. From what I know, he used the best products in his fridge. He made it for me and my family, with tons of love, I am sure. I see him in the black New Year’s Eve, in the frozen village, in the desolate center, in front of the foggy window of the bakery lit by the yellow light of one bulb hanging from the ceiling, with the smoke coming out of the chimney. I can imagine how he decorated the cake with crushed walnuts (I love walnuts), with snowflakes, pine trees, Snow White and the dwarves...It was a sweet and delicious cake, his were such. They were not soaked in sugar syrup and boring, but sweet in a soft and complex way. The taste would reach one’s senses as a complex but gentle harmony, played with patience and passion.

At some point, while being fully immersed in finishing his work, Dancho felt that someone was watching him. He raised his head, squinted his eyes, and noticed a man peeping through the foggy window of the bakery. He left aside his piping bag, put his coat over his shoulders and went out to see who was there. Freezing outside, was Boko the Chokoi. They had given him this nickname as there was not a poorer Gypsy in the village. His nickname, I think, meant “master’’ or ‘’landlord’’ in Romanian. With his wife and children, Boko lived at the end of the village in a dilapidated house owned by the city. Boko the Chokoi was standing there with the intention to buy bread, but it might be that he did not have enough money, so would it be possible to write it down in the notebook again…But his eyes were constantly running back to the cake. This was a cake his eyes had never seen before. For whom was he making it? For his children? ‘’My children,’’ said he, ‘’when will they ever see such a wonder…’’ Dancho gave him a loaf for free, one of many, and sent him on his way. Outside it was already very cold, there was a strong wind blowing, and it was snowing. He finished the cake, left it for a moment to stiffen while he dressed, and told his wife and children that he would be back in an hour or two. His wife tried to talk him out of going, to no avail. Dancho started the Volga, put the cake in the front seat next to him, and set off to the city. He went out of the dark village, passed by the farms, the cemetery, and was coming close to the big crossroad to the city. The snowflakes in front of the lights of the Volga were throwing themselves ever wilder, the road was quickly changing, and there were warnings on the radio telling citizens to stay home. Some kilometers away from the village, the field had turned into a flat snow desert, with only the swaying walnut trees to chart the way ahead. I could not know when exactly Dancho grasped the seriousness of his situation because he was a city boy and was not aware of the viciousness of the Dobrudja winters. Thankfully, he came to his senses, turned the car around, and hurried back to his family.

When he was back in the village, though, he stopped by the very first house at the end, the one with the collapsed roof and the frozen sink outside. He turned off the lights, pulled the cake out carefully, removed with one hand the wire holding the gate, and walked up to the shack without paying much attention to the barking of the shabby guards which were jumping as far as their chains would allow. He kicked his way clear of the rubber booths in front of the door, left the cake right there, and after throwing a few snowballs at the window, turned to go. He jumped back into the car, but did not start before seeing some disheveled heads glued to the foggy window. After another moment, the Chokoi came out, and his wife followed. Dancho set forth on his way down to the center with his lights still off, his belly probably shaking with laughter.

Five months later we were already living in a flat American state, trying to get used to its unfamiliar springtime. I found a job at a small bakery near the highway. Our clients were unshaven truck drivers in plaid shirts, workers from the nearbyfactories and farmers. The waitresses had bad tattoos and missing teeth, the stingy owner was Greek, and the chef had just one eye. On the fourth birthday of my daughter, I was busy washing mountains of dishes. This was the first day when I dared ask if I could leave early. The whole day I had been rehearsing my lines in my mind with the help of a conversational booklet. In a short break between the waves of hungry customers, I untied my white apron, took off my dirty striped cap, and headed to the small office where my boss was doing some kind of calculations in a notebook. Country music was blasting from the jukebox inside, it was raining outside, and, in my bad English, I was trying to explain why I wanted to go home earlier.

The Greek stopped writing, leaned back in his chair, pulled down his glasses and stared at me for some time, as if busy with something of his own. After that he stood up abruptly, went to the walk-in freezer, and came back with a cake with Mickey Mouse on it. He thrust it into my hands and then pushed me toward the exit. I remember him waving and standing at the threshold with the door half open, while I, holding the cake, ran across the parking lot in the warm rain.

In February 2024, the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation launched an open call for English-speaking translators to join the inaugural edition of the Bulgarian to English Literary Translation Academy. The Academy was designed to connect experienced translators with emerging talents in literary translation, fostering the growth of a new generation skilled in bringing contemporary Bulgarian literature to English-speaking audiences. Over a six-month period, mentors Angela Rodel, Ekaterina Petrova, Izidora Angel, and Traci Speed guided three mentees each, working across genres including fiction, children’s literature, and poetry. By the program’s end, participants had developed substantial translated excerpts to present to publishers, authors, and partners, and to use in applying for translation grants, residencies, and other professional development opportunities. The Academy has also enabled contemporary Bulgarian authors to have significant portions of their work translated, which they can present to literary agents, international publishers, and in applications for global programs. You can find more information about the Academy participants here. The Academy is made possible through the support of the National Culture Fund under the Creation 2023 program and in partnership with Vagabond magazine.