4. The (literally) dark film noir images of The Mask of Dimitrios. The feeling of strangeness, of impending threat, which is a constant component of the suspense that permeates the film, slops over to saturate my imaginings of some of the real countries it is supposed to depict. The film is a complex blend of spying, assassination, drug smuggling and illicit sexuality. The hero—if that’s what he is—is played by the ex-Austro-Hungarian refugee Peter Lorre in the role of a curious writer. Though the film purports to take place in Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Switzerland and France and the story is based on recognisable political and economic models and characters, it was shot during World War II and is pure Hollywood backlot. The novel that formed the basis for the film was published in 1939 and written by Eric Ambler who, during that same war was, amongst other things, assistant director in the British army’s film unit. I have to read the book…

The fact that Bulgaria was blocked off behind the Iron Curtain until the early 1990’s meant that it was only ever mentioned in history lessons in school (and later in the British media) as part of the Balkans/the Eastern Question/the Balkan crisis/the Communist Bloc. It also still bore the curious aftertaste of a country that was a member of the German alliances in both World Wars.

What seemed to interest British historians most about the country was its role as a pawn in international adjustments of power, as a ‘passive’ piece in the games of influence juggling. That provided no information about the people involved. They were almost exclusively concerned with political decisions related to maintaining the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire and, when that proved an impossible goal, of activating the back-up policy of using Greece as a buffer state to check Russian ambitions in the direction of a strategically desirable warm-water (Mediterranean) port. As a policy of containment it was reflected almost due east in the the so-called ‘Great Game’ played in Afghanistan on the northern borders of India. Since moving to Vienna the deep-rooted cultural attitude here that, as Metternich put it, ‘the Balkans begin on Rennweg’ has done little to qualify the persistence of mental shadows over Bulgaria. This attitude is supported by media reports of assassinations and attempted assassinations, of spies, defectors, Popes and others, carried out in the West, thus underlining the impression of an extremely fertile espionage culture (e.g. Georgi Markov, the umbrella assassination, 1979). Only L and those friends and acquaintances who spent summer holidays on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast in one of the Pioneer summer camps and ‘lived to tell the tale’ presented the sunnier side of the country.

5. Bulgaria slipped from under the Iron Curtain in 1990 and is slated to become part of the EU in 2007.
My inventory also contains two images: a picture of two men, one in uniform, and a dancing bear and a photograph made by L a few years ago showing a road in Sofia, a (literal) ‘yellow brick road’. It’s one of these historical connections between Austria and Bulgaria – the yellow bricks were a gift from Emperor Franz Joseph I.
The photo is part of one of L’s on-going projects and resonates with many associations to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a political allegory wrapped up as children’s fairytale. For L and for Frank Baum who wrote the book, though each in their own way, the association is with capitalism and monetary policy in particular.