Zdravka Evtimova Bavarian Style Any minute now, I expected that the man I was having dinner with would produce a letter typed on a sheet of yellow paper. I wasn’t too happy about it, yet I tried to enjoy my Hare with Chestnuts Bavarian Style, sipping at my glass of fabulous Chardonnays d’Oc. The guy who had asked me out was very attractive. His Chardonnay was excellent, his dark suit was immaculate, his blue eyes were interested in me and his name was Udo Fischgrund. He was the senior manager of the company which dealt in a wide range of French, American, and German cosmetics of worldwide repute. I’d eaten half of my Hare Bavarian Style, yet the yellow letter I disliked with all my heart, hadn’t become a topic of our conversation so far. This made me feel uneasy and alert. The reason why that letter gave me cold feet was, by all means, ludicrous. My mother was at the bottom of it all. She was a woman of character, that was all there was to it. If the old fair lady had something on her mind she was sure to get what she’d bargained for. This sort of thing had happened to me quite a few times before, so I was well aware of the trap Mother had laid for me. She was good at making everybody around her suffer. The turn the events would take as they followed the plan my mother had drafted always hit me hard. My admirer i.e. the man expected to propose to me, at a certain point at dinner would produce a letter scrawled or typed on a yellow sheet of paper. That particular tinge of the yellow color gave me bitter headaches. It exuded smells of the drawer in which my mother stored her cosmetics. I had the feeling the paper had absorbed the memories of all her wrinkles she had concealed under thick layers of rouge. To put it mildly, the yellow paper smelled of problems that Mother hoped cosmetics could resolve. So when my prospective husband asked, “What is this?” showing me the yellow letter, I sensed I’d lose the battle one more time. The yellow document was the letter in which Mrs. Schwarzmuller, i.e. my mother, had thrown light upon some remarkable facts. The epistle read: Lieber Herr (Dear Sir), I doubt you have the vaguest idea about the woman you intend to share your future with. She is my only daughter, Sir, therefore I feel responsible for you. It was me who brought her up doing my best to share with her the human values of our civilization. I put in quotes the noun “civilization” because my daughter and the civilized world are totally incompatible entities. In short, she is a liar. If she says she loves you, lieber Herr, this can only mean one thing: you are a very rich man. She is after your money, believe me.
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