I have been returning to Bulgaria regularly for 30 years. I often hear on the streets - Bozhka, is that you - and then - did you recognize me? Of the dozens of repetitions of this question, the meeting with Dorothea Voleva gave me the greatest pleasure.
We were neighbors at the corner of Solunska and Samuil. She lived alone with her father and spent hours watching passers-by on the street from the top floor window. She was a pretty meek girl.
One day I waved my hand and she came to me. She was 14 years old but looked older. I took her with me to the Sofia party world. I owned Grundig - 4 tracks and accordingly the evenings dedicated to rock and roll followed one after another. Beatles records appeared, which displaced Elvis in my records and infected several groups of Bulgarian guitarists.
In July 1968, the World Youth Festival took place in Sofia, in which "Crickets" and "The Bandaraks" they played on the rooftops of the Student City, along with bands from abroad. The feeling that this is the "thaw" of the totalitarian system was universal. This spiritual euphoria actually began with the Prague Spring and ended on August 21 with the "normalization" of Czechoslovakia from the "fraternal armies" of the Warsaw Pact.
In those fateful days I went to the border, and the "little" my friend Dorothea probably went to the first man of her life - Kiril Marichkov. When we met again, my lovely childhood neighbor had become a beautiful woman. She gave me a quick account of the tribulations she had been through. Her unsuccessful attempt to become a film actress, the divorce with Marichkov, the son who succeeded in Rome, and her new marriage with Nikolay Volev.
We promised to see each other again because it was very nice to remember the romance, purity and carefreeness in which we grew up. Dorothea kept her word. He invited me to dinner at his home on "Krakra" street. to the Doctor's Garden in Sofia. I had never experienced a more painful dinner than this one. I had seen Nikolai Volev in Paris at a screening of his color version of "The Goat's Horn" before a select audience. When the organizers invited him on stage to present his film, he took the microphone and said only one sentence - I wish you a pleasant viewing!
I really liked his concreteness. I told him at dinner while Dorothea was running between the kitchen and the dining room. Volev's face remained motionless. Not a word, not a gesture. Dorothea and I recalled funny, unforgettable incidents, experiences and meetings. We laughed like children. We even clapped our hands for joy. At one point I got up, thanked for dinner and left. I never met Dorothea again. The death of Kiril Marichkov coincides with that of Nikolay Volev. In this tragedy, in which words are not enough, I embrace Dorothea as a brother, the woman I have known since childhood, with the warmest feelings of which I am capable.