In the beginning months of our time in Bulgaria, we lived in Marius’s house, a big place that Yana and Ivan had given him as a wedding present for his first marriage. The house wasn’t in Sofia itself, but in a suburb outside of Sofia called Bankya, a town known for its hot springs and mineral water. Marius told me he’d chosen a house in Bankya because he thought it would be a good place to meditate. The air was clean and the village small and picturesque. His parents had bought the house half-finished for twenty-five thousand dollars, and had spent about another fifty thousand to complete construction, and while this seemed affordable to me, that amount was more than an average Bulgarian earned in a lifetime. When we moved in, the house wasn’t quite finished, and workmen were still building the kitchen and parts of the exterior. We tried to make ourselves at home there, but the house was a long way from being inhabitable, especially without money to furnish it. And while I felt lucky to have somewhere to live, and felt grateful to Yana and Ivan for their generosity, I couldn’t help but feel that the house was
meant for a different couple. I felt the ghost of Marius’s first marriage in everything from the color of the bathroom tiles—which Z had picked out—to the kitchen cabinets, also chosen by her. I didn’t belong there, in that house. Z did.
Marius must have felt that way too, because after a month of living in Bankya, he decided that we should leave. Bankya was too quiet. There wasn’t enough to do. We should live in Sofia, where we could go to cafes and restaurants and enroll Adam in pre-school in the fall. When Marius spoke to his parents about this, it turned out that they were tired of living in the city, and so they proposed a trade: They would take Marius’s house in Bankya, and he could have their apartment in Sofia. They discussed this at the kitchen table, in one of their family conferences, while Adam and I sat silently by. At the time, the trade seemed like a good deal for Marius. The apartment in Sofia was the top floor apartment of a building near the Russian Embassy, in a part of town known called Izgrev, which was near the city center. It was also worth a lot more than the house in Bankya, at least twice as much, and so Marius would be doubling the value his wedding gift.
“Don’t they mind that you’re getting the more expensive property?” I asked him later in bed.
“That’s how things work here,” he replied, stroking my hair.
“You mean Bulgarian parents pay for their kids, and their kids’ wives, and their kids’ wives kids?”
“Pretty much,” he said, shrugging, as if this was really no big deal.
“How long does that go on?”
“Until their kids start paying for them.”
This was a totally strange and foreign concept for me. Money had always been a source of tension in my family. When I was growing up, my father would make a point to remind us kids that he was working for us, and that we should be grateful. I grew up feeling guilty about money,
guilty that my father worked so hard, guilty that he spent his hard-earned money on us. As an adult, I felt uncomfortable asking my parents for money. I had been on my own, financially, most of my adult life. I’d worked my way through college, supporting myself by working in a bookstore. My parents paid my in-state tuition at The University of Wisconsin, and I took out student loans to pay books and fees and my rent. After graduating, I went to work in Japan, and by the time I’d met Marius, I’d paid off 1/3 of my student loans. Now here I was, twenty-eight years old and pregnant with my new husband’s parents supporting my two-year-old son and me. I was vulnerable. I was dependent. I didn’t know how to let someone take care of me.
My morning sickness was gone by the end of the first trimester. I was writing every morning, and my afternoons were free to spend with Adam. At night, we hung out in the dilapidated kitchen, with its 1960s cabinetry and cracked tiles. Marius cooked elaborate meals on an old petchka, a Soviet-era monstrosity from the seventies that burned so hot Marius could light cigarettes off the sides. He made mousseka and pasta sauces and curries; he bought me bohza, a thick yeasty Bulgarian drink that was supposed to be good for pregnant women. He went through the stages of my pregnancy with me as if he, too, were carrying our child: we ate together, gained weight together, monitored the baby’s every movement together. We picked out names, boys’ names, trying to find one that worked in both his country and in mine. We had all the time in the world for such things. Marius quit his job teaching Tibetan at the University. It took too much time for too little money. Now we had nothing to do but to wait.
A letter from the US Embassy would be coming any time. We’d applied for a visa waiver, stating our case and providing proof of my pregnancy. In the meantime, I looked for work as an English teacher. I had business cards made and I began trying to find language schools that might hire me, but Bulgaria’s economy was struggling, and even those who could find full-time work made an average of $250 a month. The cost of living in Sofia was lower than in the United States, but not as low as the salaries might suggest. Yana and Ivan were giving Marius 1200 leva a month,
which was about $500 at the time, an amount that paid for groceries and occasional movies or dinner out. Even with their help, we didn’t have enough to actually live on—at least not as I was used to living in the States.
And yet, I felt lucky. The situation could have been much worse. Women get themselves into bad situations all the time, blindly following their hearts to distant places with charming men, only to find things different than expected. As it was, Marius couldn’t be faulted. He was doing exactly as he’d promised: He was taking care of me. With his parents’ help, he had arranged for everything from medical care to maternity clothes. It was a strange feeling, letting myself fall into his hands, relinquishing my independence. I didn’t know how to do it. I had never allowed myself to be so vulnerable before. Always, I had been responsible for myself. Always, I had been responsible for my son. And now, I was completely under Marius’s control. I resisted every step of the way, and in that resistance I also began to resist the magical powers of Marius, the Magician who had created my dependence.
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To reach Dani, email DaniTrueRomantic@gmail.com.
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Rumpus original logo and art by Max Winter.