Here is an article I found. Read it carefully to understand it:The Bulgarian Anastasia?
Part I
Myths and reality
The deeper I dig in my memory of the past, the more convinced I get that some moments from the life and social contacts of Nora, Zhudin and the Doctor remained hidden for Gabarevites, and hence they made up their explanation-myths. I would like to set them apart from real facts.
The first myth: The three of them avoided any meetings or contacts with their compatriots – high-ranking whiteguard officers in emigration lived in the International Red Cross boarding house in the village of Shipka, Kazanlak district. But on pictures taken in 1928-29 they, together with their ever-present dog, are in front of the temple-monument among their compatriots.
The second myth: Nora was haughty and did not associate with the local people. Absolutely untrue. Stefan Djenanov, son of one of the Gabarevo notables, told me that in 1931-32 he, his two brothers and his sister Anka were in the same company as Nora and Dr. Alexiev, in the summertime they hiked in the Stara Planina, went for picnics by the river Tundja, on holidays they went to the dances in Pavel Banya. For years on end Nora eagerly associated with the intelligentsia and the village women in Gabarevo. There are pictures of her participation in the machine embroidery contest, organized by Singer, of the opening of the Karlovo-Tulovo railway line, etc. I managed to trace down the address of Anka Djenanova-Smith, who studied dentistry in Germany during the war, married an American officer and lives in Georgia, USA. In a beautiful Bulgarian language she wrote me touching memories of Nora, including the fact that she sent Nora music scores, and strings for Dr. Alexiev’s guitar.
The third myth: After the coming of the Red Army to Bulgaria, Nora panicked and closed herself up at home like a hermit. This is a downright fabrication. Eyewitnesses told me that when Russian troops were quartered in the village, among whom two women – a nurse and a pharmacist, Nora met with them and together with other women from Gabarevo they spent unforgettable hours!
It is true that in the late 1940s Nora withdrew into herself, but the reasons were hardly political. Because in a period of acute political suspiciousness and “alertness’ Gabarevites never treated her and Dr. Alexiev as white-emigrants or, God forbid, as “class enemies”. The Gabarevo intelligentsia was up to par! With its pronounced Russophile convictions and broadness they would not encroach on some of the most useful and respected persons in the village. As far as the common villagers are concerned, I have heard they treated Nora with extreme respect. They even stopped their carts when they met her in the street, to make way for her.
The fourth myth: During her 32-year stay in the village, Nora “did not leave the boundaries of Gabarevo”. There is definite evidence that in 1936, during the Olympic Games in Berlin she went there and stayed for almost a year. The version was that the rose-oil merchant from Gabrovo Lalyu Kolev and his wife, the German Elka, invited her to paint pictures of their home. In October 1939 she left for Sofia to be a witness in the wedding of Lalka, daughter of a Gabarevo woman who was close to her. She made her a wonderful wedding gift – a dinner set of Bavarian porcelain, which Lalka keeps as a family relic. When I saw it at her home I thought: “How fragile are human beings! The porcelain survived, whereas Nora turned to dust long ago.” Nora often visited the young couple in Sofia, she visited museums, libraries, went to the theater, opera, concerts, maintained contacts with certain publishers for which she translated from French.
The fifth myth: Perhaps it is closest to reality. There was talk in the village that she took opium. I never saw her do it. I only remember she smoked long cigarettes with a peculiar smell and the stub-filled ashtrays in her home. However, from students who had been longer around her, I found out that every autumn she received from the Petrich district a chocolate-like extract of poppy, like a cake of soap. She made small balls of it and swallowed them. Now I realize that certain critical moments that came over her ever more often – absent-mindedness, depression, irritation, insomnia, tremor of the hands – were probably symptoms of narcotic abstinence.
In the last years of her life Nora looked like a woman dying slowly and painfully of some hidden suffering. Bad heart, climacteric agony of an unfulfilled woman, drug addiction, incurable nostalgia for everything taken away from her in her youth, or the nightmares that drove her to walk at night as a somnambulist? Who haunted her dreams? I think nobody understood. But even hidden behind the curtain of social life, Nora left an imprint with her intellect – sometimes she was asked to design the sets for a play, to make up the amateur actors. And if in the Kazanlak secondary schools they said that of all village students the Gabarevo children are best prepared in languages and mathematics, it was doubtlessly due to the lessons with Madam Nora!
Link:
http://www.diplomatic-bg.com/c2/content/view/471/47/1/0/
