Afterwards they found out what had happened, but they couldn’t do a thing about it. What Sabri said about a meeting though, and all that business about the pardons and the promotions, that was all lies thought up by the police so they could trap Metyu and finish him off.
Sabri’s wife never got over him and went off her rocker. And since there was no place for him in the village Sabri took off over the border and was never heard of nor seen again.
And little by little things got back to normal.
Metyu had vanished, and bit by bit that’s what happened to the forest too. They burned it and they stole it, they chopped it up, sawed it into logs and turned their cattle out to graze in it. Inch by inch and tree by tree they gobbled it away till only these lean and hungry hills were left…. But there was one bit right up under the cliffs which they didn’t touch. And when the nights are very dark, you can still hear that voice calling out:
‘Hey! You there! Hands off the forest! You’ll pay hell for your sins!’
Whether it’s Metyu or whether it’s a spirit, I wouldn’t like to say. But as sure as my name is Aga Hassan Meshov, that voice is real enough. When it’s dark and quiet, you can hear it calling :
‘Hey! You there! Hands off the forest! You’ll pay hell for your sins!’
You Never Can Tell …
There’s a single star for each and every one of us, but there must have been two for me. For as long as I can remember one’s been shoving me into my grave while the other’s been pulling me back again…. It’s been like that since the day I was born. Or before that even!
‘What?’ you may say. ‘How’s that possible?’
Well, you see my head’s kind of lop-sided? It was grandma’s feet did that. She tried to stamp on me when I was still inside my mother’s belly, because Mother had got herself pregnant two months before marrying Father -and you can’t hide things like that for long! She made Mother lie on the floor, then stamped and trampled on her. Mother passed out, but nothing much happened to me. Only my head got a bit squashed.
Back in our village we used to call babies as came along before time ‘early poppers’, and it was always them that paid for their parents’ little games. People looked at them sort of sideways. Anyone would think it was their fault they popped out early! And all my life things have been topsy-turvy.
For a start my mother refused to suckle me. She said I bit her. And if it hadn’t been for my aunt, who fed me on goat’s milk, I’d have been pushing up the daisies before I’d even learnt to walk. Not yet five, I wasn’t, when I was sent into the mountains with the sheep so I’d be out of the way, and so folk in the village wouldn’t be reminded of the wicked things my parents had done.
Sometimes it was nice with the shepherds, and sometimes it wasn’t. It was nice lying under a goat when I was hungry and sucking till my belly button popped out of its hole. But it wasn’t so nice in the hut with all that smoke. There was a fire in the middle and no chimney, so it was like living with foxes and being smoked out. And ever since then I’ve had these bloodshot eyes. Medicines don’t do no good – I’ve tried them all. I’ve had milk sprayed in my eyes and I’ve washed them in holy water, and I’ve even tried all kinds of charms and spells, but still I look all scratched and sore. Don’t worry about my eyes though, they was nothing. I nearly got myself killed once! Just turned nine, I was, and wearing long breeches for the first time. I was walking along behind the goats, but it wasn’t them I was interested in. I was more interested in my new breeches. In those days the forest wasn’t like it is now – in apple-pie order and so spick-and-span even a hamster’s got no place to hide. It was thick and wild. The sun hadn’t set yet, but in the forest it was like a cellar – dank and cold…. Anyhow, there I was walking along behind the goats and so taken up with my breeches that I got left behind. When I looked up there was this dirty great bear rearing up like a pine tree in front of me. No point in hollering and shouting, I just ran for it! But I tripped and fell. Only a kid, I was, but I had the sense to pretend I was dead and lay there flat on my face not making a sound. The bear jumped on me. He trod on my foot and even licked me, but he didn’t seem interested in eating me. Probably he’d just had his supper or maybe he wanted to save me for his cubs. Anyhow the stupid animal began covering me with twigs and branches. And when he’d covered me up completely he left me alone. As soon as he’d disappeared I jumped to my feet and shinned up the nearest tree. It was a knobbly old fir, but I kept going till I’d got right to the top. Then I got my voice back and started crying, and shouting for help.
The shepherds came to my rescue, chased away the bear and got me down from the tree. It was then I discovered I couldn’t walk. The bear had made a right mess of my foot, and there wasn’t a bone not broken. The shepherds patched me up the best they could, but it was a botched job and my foot stayed crooked. Instead of pointing in, it points out and it’s all stiff in the middle so I walk with a limp. The shepherds were right sorry for me.
‘Born under an unlucky star, you were,’ they used to say. ‘No dancing the horo with a foot like that!’
It wasn’t much fun, I can tell you, having a twisted foot. I couldn’t dance the horo, nor run properly neither, but there was nothing I could do about it. And when my mates started chasing the girls and showing off with their dancing, all I could do was hide behind a wall and watch. It tore me apart not being able to jump about like them and get myself a girl along with the rest. Worst thing that ever happened to me, that standing and watching. And never once did I think it would save my life one day.
Then came the Balkan War. To a man all my mates got called up and to a man they all died of cholera at Sara Shaban. I didn’t get sent to the front, on account of my leg, but spent the whole war at the Olu-Ele bridge. And when they was through with the fighting I returned safe and sound to the village. Since there wasn’t any other young men around, now it was me all the girls wanted, lame leg and all! So I picked the richest – Angelachko’s daughter – and got myself wed.
‘Done well for yourself this time!’ I thought. ‘Out of the wood at last. With Angelachko for a father-in-law, you’re made!’
And things certainly got off to a good start. Angelachko sent me to mind his sheep in the Gyumyurdjinski valley over the border in Greece. ‘You’re my son-in-law,’ he says, ‘and what’s mine is yours. See the sheep get plenty to eat and they’ll give plenty of milk.’ So I got to work minding the sheep. We had sheep from Mougla on the same pasture as ours and there was a fair bit of arguing over who got the best bit of grass. Troubled times, they were, with no one to see to law and order, and us shepherds had to sort things out among ourselves. We quarrelled and threatened one another and one day the others decided to do me in. All the shepherds had gone out early with the sheep and left me on my own in the hut to prepare supper. All of a sudden a horse comes galloping up, and who do I see outside but Sanyu Hadji Bekirov. ‘Forelock Bekirov’ they called him. From Mougla, he was. A wild, unruly fellow with no sheep of his own, who made a living by hiring out his courage to anyone who paid. If there was someone needed beating up or scaring or plain bumping off, Bekirov would do it. Or if a horse or a ram needed stealing, Bekirov was the one who got called in. And now they’d got him to fix me. What he was intending to do, bump me off or just beat me up, I haven’t a clue, but when I saw him outside the hut – not as if I’d asked him to come! – sitting up there on his great horse and glaring down at me like a thunder cloud, I was in real trouble, and I knew it. I hardly came up to his horse’s knee and I hadn’t a thing to defend myself with.
‘Karisina siktigimil You little bugger!’ he yelled and pulled out a bloody great yataghan. ‘I’ll learn you to go chasing sheep that don’t belong to you !’
His yataghan flashed, but before he knew what was happening I bent down, grabbed his horse round the knee and sent both horse and rider flying. Forelock dropped his yataghan, and I caught hold of it in his place. Then I got hold of the bridle and really let the devil have it! I
thumped him and I thrashed him, till he was crawling at my feet and begging me to lay off. So I let him go and never saw him nor heard of him again. Around St Peter’s Day this happened, and the following St Mary’s Day I was going back to the village with a supply of fresh sheep’s cheese, when I met up with some masons from our part of the world. They were going home too, and we could have crossed the mountains together in a group. Only they were on foot and I was wanting to get back quick as I could to my young wife at home, so I decided to ride on ahead. I’d almost got as far as Tashkapiya when I saw three or four gypsies sitting by the side of the road having a bite to eat. They must have spotted my saddle-bags because one of them came over and asked me for some cheese. Just bending over to open one of the bags, I was, when he goes and clouts me over the head. Whether it was a stick or a lump of wood he used, I couldn’t say. Anyhow it knocked me off my horse and I tumbled to the ground like a ripe pear. Then the others laid into me as well. The way they set about me with their sticks, you’d have thought they were threshing beans! All beefy great fellows, they were, and soon I was a mass of cuts and bruises. I could tell by their accent they were shepherds from Zmeitsa. There was one who shouted every time he thumped me: ‘That’s for the pasture! And that! And that!’ And when I tried to cry out they stuffed my mouth full of grass.
They went on hitting me till I could hardly move. Then they beetled off into the beech forest and left me lying by my horse in the middle of the road. That’s where the masons found me. They put me back on my horse and wanted to take me home with them. ‘Oh no!’ I says, ‘I’m not going to the village, not in this state. I’ll go back to Sara Shaban on my own!’
They tied me to my horse so as I wouldn’t fall off, and put the reins in my hand. Then we parted. They went off in the direction of the village, and I went back the way I’d come. Never thought I’d make it as far as Sara Shaban they didn’t, and they crossed themselves as I left. I’m a tough one though, and I managed it. I spent the next week in hospital and then one of the masons from our village came to visit me. ‘You ought to be laughing and singing,’ he says before he’s through the door, ‘not moaning and groaning! And you ought to have the priest hold a service of thanksgiving in your honour. You got off lightly, my lad!’ Then he told me that just up the hill from where the gypsies had attacked me someone else had been lying in wait for me as well. And do you know who it was? Sanyu Bekirov and his mob. They’d sharpened a stake to shove up my backside and were going to roast me over a fire they’d lit. Lying in wait for me up there, they were, and it’d never crossed their minds that another lot were waiting further down and also wanting to square things with me…. So you see, even a drubbing can be a blessing sometimes! If it hadn’t been for those gypsies, I’d have been stuck on a stake and roasted alive!
I may have got a drubbing, but we got back to the village in the end, me and my sheep! Six hundred and sixty, there were, great fat animals with long bushy tails. Three times I got the shepherds to drive them through the village just so everyone could see what real sheep look like. And when I heard all those bells ringing and the dogs barking I was that happy I could have cried! The good life at last! I should have known happiness like that never lasts…. Not long after I asked my father-in-law if we couldn’t sell a hundred sheep and build a bigger house with the money.
‘When you’ve got some sheep of your own to sell, you can sell ‘em!’ he says.
‘What?’ I says. ‘I thought the sheep belonged to both of us.’
‘Where did you get that idea from?’
It didn’t take me long to realize that my dear father-in-law had never intended sharing his sheep. For him I was just a penniless farmhand, and all that talk of sharing and going halves was so much eye-wash to trick me into working for him.
Insults began to fly. I accused him of being a liar and a money-grubber. He called me a drip and an ‘early popper’ and clouted me across the face. Twice. In front of my wife too! I was on the point of chucking him out of the window, but the others held me back. By this time though the old sod was really wild. He’d made up his mind to do for me once and for all so he got the mayor to have me called up. It was around then they was collecting men for the First World War, and this time my bad leg didn’t save me. ‘Only peg-legs are turned away,’ the doctor told me. ‘And if I had my way,’ he went on, ‘I’d take them as well. After all it’s not legs a soldier needs. He’s there to fight, not run away! Peg-legs would be great in the trenches.’
A sergeant-major took us in tow and set to work on us right away:
‘Down on your bellies! On your feet! Left-right! Left-right!’ till he’d more or less got us ready for the war. It was almost time to go off on the train and join in the fighting, but still I hadn’t really got my mind on the war : I was more worried about my father-in-law clouting me in front of my wife. It was his sheep I’d been minding after all, and I’d made mortal enemies of the other shepherds, and all he could do was clout me across the face for my pains! There and then I made up my mind not to go to the war till I’d given him some of his own medicine. So I went to the sergeant-major and I said to him : ‘Sergeant-major, sir,’ I says, ‘I’ve a young wife back home. You couldn’t give me three days’ leave I suppose? It’s worth a gold piece and five okas of honey from the village when I get back.’ ‘I think we could arrange it,’ he says. ‘Off you go!’ I slung my rifle over my shoulder and away I went. As I rode along I kept thinking how best to get even with that father-in-law of mine. Set fire to the sheepfolds? No, I didn’t want to hurt the sheep. Set fire to his house? No, my wife might get killed as well. And his wheat had been threshed, so there wasn’t much point setting fire to that either. In the end I decided to do for his bees.
I arrived in the village at night, killed a couple of goats, sewed up the skins and filled them with water. Then I slung them over the saddle and rode off to where he kept his bees. I doused half a dozen or so hives with the water, collected the honey and then really let rip. By the time I was finished, I’d thrown all twenty-seven hives into the river. Then, without anyone seeing or hearing me, I rode away. I was halfway back to the camp when it suddenly hit me : what’s the point of chucking his hives into the river if he never gets to know who did it? So I went back, and right outside his front door I stood up in my stirrups and shouted: ‘Hey! Angelachko! Come down a moment. I want to tell you how much a couple of clouts cost!’
Two days later I was locked up in the garrison guardroom and my fighting days were over. Out of all our lads in ‘C Company of the 41st Reserves not one came back alive! So if it hadn’t been for those two clouts across the face, I too would have found eternal peace on the field of battle.
After the war my other star – the lucky one – began to rise again. Father had decided to divide up his belongings between me and my brother and I got thirty head of sheep. Since I was an ‘early popper’ I got given the worst ones, barren mostly. I didn’t keep them long though. First I put them out to graze, then I sold them to a livestock dealer from over in Greece, a Turk called Adil. The Aegean coast had been taken from us, but the border wasn’t heavily guarded and you could get across easy as anything. People were dying of hunger over there and Adil used to come across to buy sheep. One gold piece for every animal. I got thirty for my lot and that set me thinking. ‘Milyu,’ I says to myself, ‘why don’t you go up to Petvar or Osikovo where you can get four sheep for one gold piece? You could drive them over the border, sell them to that cattle dealer of yours and turn thirty gold pieces into a hundred and twenty. Why should you always miss out on everything…? A sucking lamb and a barrel of wine for the guards and you’re away!’ As I said, the border wasn’t heavily guarded – not like it is now – and you could get almost anything across.
A hundred and twenty sheep I sold. Adil paid me a hundred gold pieces on the spot and a few days later he himself, in person so to speak, brought the other twenty to my place in Katranitsa. What an honest fellow! He’d crossed the border and taken all k
inds of risks – just so I’d get my money on time. I used the money to buy more sheep, took them over the border, sold them, and went on buying and selling till I’d collected a whole five hundred Turkish liras. You most likely don’t know what it means to have five hundred gold liras – well I’ll tell you! You walk different, you cough different – deep and drawn out – and when you clear your throat everyone listens and waits. You cough big, you walk big, everything you do is big, and you feel you want to go striding over everyone and everything : people, animals, horses, mountains even. That’s what five hundred liras does to you…. And the more you get, the more you want. If you’ve got five hundred, you want a thousand! That’s how it was with me, anyway. I’d agreed to get Adil another thousand sheep and take them across the border in three lots of three hundred and thirty. I sent out my buyers and hired extra shepherds. It cost me a tidy few sucking lambs and special presents – but never mind, the first herd went across bang on time. The following night the second lot went, and the night after -the third. Three different lots – that’s how we’d arranged things, and I was to go over with the third and pick up my money. Adil was waiting. ‘Come on!’ he says. ‘I’ll take you down to Skecha.’ (That’s what Xanthi was called then.) ‘You’ll get your money there. I wasn’t bringing it up here, not with all the riff-raff there is roaming around.’ So we jumped on our horses and rode off. Just going in to Azmak, we were, where the road turns off for Gabrishte, when Adil asked me to hold his horse for him. ‘I won’t be long,’ he says. ‘I must pop into the bushes for a moment.’
I waited and waited, but no Adil, nothing. I shouted -no answer. I searched the bushes, just in case he’d fallen down a hole or something, but no sign of him anywhere. Then I realized what a trick my dear Adil had played on me. I raced back to try and get my sheep at least, but they’d gone, every single one. We’d been smuggling, so there was no point complaining, neither to the Greeks nor to the Bulgarians.
Wild Tales Page 9
