BORIS TETOVSKI : MEMORIES OF A FRIEND
On Friday I was given the
news of the death of someone I was proud to call a friend. Donne’s observation
that,
‘Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved
in mankind.’ [1]
Only ever feels true of
the death of a friend. I wake this morning diminished, the world a poorer
place.
Some people live using as
little as thirty percent of their life force, some fifty, or even seventy five,
rare is the person who throws themselves one hundred percent into the world,
fully engaging with life. Bobby was just such a person. To live fully does not
necessarily mean to live ‘well’ in the sense that that is most often propagated
as being a good life. To live fully does not necessarily mean to live virtuously.
Bobby lived life to the full but he was no saint, and to my mind the better for
it.
Bobby disdained religion
and piety, though was strong on friendship and loyalty. Indeed sometimes he was
loyal to those who harmed him and his best interests, and he knew that they did,
though through generosity of spirit he forgave them. Being fully human himself he
understood human frailty in a way the pious cannot.
Bobby must have been in
his mid forties when I met him, though I was always unsure of Bobby’s age and
anyhow someone’s age is always the least interesting thing about them. His real
age was the age of defiance and rebellion, the age most often experienced from
17 to 25; he never outgrew it. One of his greatest loves was The Rolling Stones
and his spirit was the Stones at their best, the Stones of Street Fighting Man
and Jumping Jack Flash.
I met him in the early
hours of a summer morning in 2001, in Tsaravo on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria
I had an instant affinity
with Bobby; it was not just his bonhomie or avuncular manner but something
deeper, initially hidden from him, it was a shared symbiotic relationship with
alcohol. Though at the time when I first met Bobby I was teetotal.
My friendship with Bobby
grew over the years as I spent more and more time in Bulgaria
One morning during the
summer of 2002 I was sitting outside a small café in Sofia
I quickly finished my
breakfast and hurried to the agreed rendezvous point. Bobby asked me to clamber
into the small minibus that became so synonymous with Bobby, the ‘yellow
submarine.’ He was vague about where we were going and uncharacteristically
secretive, simply saying “I need a witness when I sign some documents.” Shortly
we arrived at a small municipal building where we were greeted by Maggie.
The tale of Bobby and
Maggie’s relationship would itself form the basis of an interesting story.
Suffice to say that having divorced some years previously they had now decided
to get back together.
It took me a few minutes
to realise we were at a registry office and I was there to witness their
re-marriage.
Ever after Bobby always
referred to me as his ‘best man.’ I have enjoyed no greater honour.
The story of a friendship
is the story of a thousand moments of intimacy, argument, empathy, and most
importantly laughter. I laughed a great deal with Bobby. He had lived through
Communism, I only knew Communist era jokes, and he loved my communist satire.
Humour, either in its belly laugh,- and Bobby had plenty of spare tyre to
gyrate when laughing, - or its ironic variety, provided a thread throughout our
friendship.
We argued too; I remember
Maggie putting her head around the door of the so appropriately named Bobby’s
Café, to find out what we were arguing about. “Bakunin,” I announced to a
bemused Maggie who shrugged her shoulders and told Bobby to keep the noise
down.
Keeping the noise down
however was not in Bobby’s nature, the music must always be loud. Bobby’s
musical tastes were in complete harmony with my own. ‘Gimme Shelter’ never
sounded so good as it did belting out of the bar’s sound system, rocking a
Sinemoretz basking in the heat of a July afternoon.
One memory; over the
course of an afternoon, which on our separate journeys throughout a day when,
we had both consumed large quantities of varying assortments of alcoholic
spirit I made my way back to the Villa Philadelphia. Bobby greeted me with his
usual effusion and we both repaired to the bar. In clouds of cigarette smoke and
with the taste of ice cold beer in our mouths we belted out the chorus of Bob
Dylan’s ‘Rainy Day Woman.’
‘But I would not feel
so all alone
Everybody must get stoned’
Everybody must get stoned’
I felt the years fall
away.
Written like, that cold
and lifeless on the page, the memory feels flat. Of course the thousand moments
that go to make up a friendship are by their very nature incommunicable.
The last time I saw Bobby
was in September 2009, the holiday season was over and the coming winter felt
like a threatening presence, both to Sinemoretz and to my self. Inadvertently
Bobby caused some friction between me and my girlfriend and it saddens me more
than I can say that this clouded our last meeting.
We embraced and parted and
I am, I think, grateful that I did not know it was the last time I would see
him. Better to think of that extraordinary life force continuing to dynamite
its way through time.
We spoke I think maybe
three times on the phone after that, though the conversations were short and to
the point. A great wheeler and dealer on the phone it was not for Bobby an
instrument for intimacy, he was a face to face person.
I know that Bobby touched
the lives of many people who stayed at the Villa Philadelphia. I was one of the
lucky ones honoured to be able to call him friend.
When reflecting upon loss
cliché intrudes and cannot be avoided. Bobby greatly enriched my life and the
world is a poorer place for his light having gone out. I will miss him
greatly.
[1] MEDITATION XVII Devotions
upon Emergent Occasions John Donne
