ZDRAVKA EVTIMOVA
1) Where are you from? Why?
I was born in Bulgaria and I think I am lucky that both my father and my mother come from the western part of the country. The town of Pernik, my place of birth, is notorious for its clever hard-drinking men and hardworking beautiful women who are very independent. There is a well known saying in western Bulgaria “A man does not take a cat from Pernik, let alone choose a wife from this particular place.” I like this town very much. The drivers from Pernik used to be very reckless and their notoriety had long ago turned into a persistent myth. I am glad the number plates of the cars have the letters PK on them. It means the car belongs to somebody from “that dangerous place” i.e. it’s better to avoid any discussions with the driver. Now the fines are so exorbitant that the whole of Bulgaria is afraid that the fame of Pernik will vanish into thin air. In my view, there is only one way to keep the myth alive – by writing about the town and its people. In Pernik, every street is a short story, and every man you meet is an unfinished novel. The children are fairytales and women are coded messages. Welcome to Pernik. Well, you’d better look around first. It’s a small place. The first thing a foreigner does on setting foot in Pernik is to fall in love with the town. In my place of birth love and hatred last for good.
2) Generate a relevant formula.
The formula I reveal has to be followed very strictly in order to acquire the necessary qualities to become famous in Bulgaria: you have to speak as little as possible. That is the reason there are so many writers. No one reads and writers are out of harm’s way. There are, however, magnificent Bulgarian writers Yordan Yovkov, Yordan Radichkov, Vera Mutafchieva. Second, although they try not to show it, Bulgarians are very intelligent. They’ll catch you in a lie the minute you shut your mouth. They won’t show it, but they will leave you in the lurch the minute you need them most. Ergo: do not lie. This will positively impress them. Do not get me wrong: they will never show they like you if you told them the truth. They will inform their friends about how honest you have been and the friends will say “Come off it!” Somebody will write a poem about your honesty and a street will be named after you. To cut a long story short: a Bulgarian will survive hunger, oppression, heat, cold, lies and treacheries and his heart will remain unperturbed. But he will cry with gratitude if a stranger or a neighbor gives him a hand on a black, rainy day without expecting to be paid for his kindness. Kindness is so rare. So the most important component of my formula is kindness. If you see a Bulgarian crying you already know why he’s doing that. Somebody else has been kind to him and he cannot believe this has happened. That is the reason I write about kind-hearted people, I hope I can meet them one day not on the pages of a dusty book. I want to meet them in the street.
3) A couple I know lived in Bulgaria for a few years. They said the wild dogs are very dangerous in cities and that a pack of them once ate a British woman. What’s it like to live in Bulgaria, and how does your country affect your art?
To live in Bulgaria means to want to write all the time. Yes, there are stray dogs in the streets and a Bulgarian professor in physics invented an appliance called KUCHEGON i.e. an apparatus for driving the dogs away via microwaves. Then the same man founded a shelter for stray dogs. The establishment lasted a couple of months. Angry neighbors destroyed it for it attracted packs of waifs and strays that barked and howled all night long. Now I know that the state has developed a program to deal with that problem, we are trying not be so cruel to the beasts and I know a woman whose son was bitten by a dog and she too founded a shelter for dogs in Pernik. These days a woman was bitten and chased by a bear in the Rhodopi Mountains, so it is an acute problem we face. People are short of money and they throw out their pets. I wrote a short story “Jivil” about a man who drove his old dog deep into the mountains and left him there. And the dog returned home. I still don’t know whom I am sorry for: the man or the dog. I think that Bulgaria is a Klondike for writers. You don’t have to invent, you have to go to a local pub and drink a glass of rakia, that wild Bulgarian brandy, and you’ll go home with a dozen of short stories that will haunt you until you sit down and let them live on paper.
4) You’re an accomplished translator. Can you describe the sensation of transferring meaning between languages? What does that process include? What happens in your mind when you’re doing it?
While I translate I see pictures and words of different languages glow and flow into sentences by themselves. The easiest and most pleasant sensation is when I translate from the English because the words feel like friends and have colors of their own. The English words are like painters that long to hold firmly their palettes and rush to give life to the picture they have in them. I am always cold when I translate from the German and constantly make corrections. Friends tell me that the first draft was the best, i.e. the version when I didn’t feel so cold. When the piece I’ve been translating for ages is finally ready it feels like I reached my warm room after a day in a freezing rain. I lived in Brussels for four years and I spoke French there. Translating from the French is like playing poker with a very clever adversary. I have the feeling I am constantly stalked and watched by the author of the book I translate, at the same time I feel very much at home with his work. I can predict the way the sentence will continue and where it will lead me. It feels like writing from memory. I love translating Bulgarian authors into English.
5) You also write in several languages. Is there one that you prefer; that is, is there a language you think is better for expressing what you want to express?
I love the Bulgarian language. It is a language that has been developing 1 300 years now. It is a Slavic language, close to Russian and Slovakian, it has many Turkish and Greek words in it, and it has ages upon ages of beauty and power in it. It is very difficult to learn to speak Bulgarian, and it is a defensive device to keep us Bulgarians close together and help us survive. I even think it makes us kind-hearted. Writing in English gives me a sense of the weight the words have, and the stories I write in English are like planes that have to be powerful enough to be able to take off the ground.
6) What is there and what should we do about it?
You should visit Bulgaria and listen to schoolchildren reciting a poem by Hristo Botev, our most beloved national poet. Perhaps you’ll feel the sharp unsurpassed cutting beauty of my Bulgarian language.
7) Compose a flash story for this question, fictional or non, whatever length you like, in your native language.
This is my short story “Blood of a Mole” in Bulgarian.
Zdravka Evtimova was born in Bulgaria where she lives and works as literary translator from English, French and German. Her short stories have appeared in twenty-three countries in the world including USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Japan etc. The following of her short story collections were published in English: “Bitter Sky”, SKREV Press, UK, 2003, “Somebody Else” MAG Press, USA, 2005, “Miss Daniella”, SKREV Press, UK 2007, “Pale and Other Postmodern Bulgarian Stories”, Vox Humana, Canada/Israel, 2010. Her novel “God of Traitors” was published by Book for a Buck Publishers, USA 2007.
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