Wild Tales

by Nikolai Haitov

  ‘But Bai Grozdan!’ he said. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses? Can’t you see what’s good for you? You’ll be sorry you didn’t take it.’

  ‘You mind your business and I’ll mind mine!’ I did have my pride, and after all, my party was in power.

  A few days later the village was told to send three mules into town – for the commission as was coming. All the Council members pulled long faces, but there was nothing they could do about it, so they sent the mules, and that evening the local police chief, the forester and a secretary arrived in the village. The villagers had caught all kinds of fish for them and roasted a lamb, but the police chief brushed it all aside and rode straight through the village and out to the forest where the wood was being cut, so he could question any witnesses on the spot.

  Things were hotting up at last!

  I went and had a word with the villagers. ‘Now’s the time! Go and tell him the truth about what’s been going on, and how the village is being robbed!’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ says one. ‘Me too!’ says another. ‘You can count on me,’ says somebody else. But when the investigation started, they all cried off – one because he was scared, and another because a bribe had sealed his lips – so me and the priest were the only ones there.

  ‘How much do you reckon they’ve taken?’ the police chief asked. The secretary was writing everything down.

  ‘Five thousand cubic metres at least!’

  ‘Facts! It’s facts we want!’ said the forester. ‘Airy-fairy guesses aren’t any good!’

  ‘You can check in my notebook,’ I said. ‘In thirty-four days six hundred wagons have gone past.’

  ‘Your notebook’s not a document!’ shouted the forester.

  ‘Then you can count the tree-stumps. That’ll show you how much they’ve taken !’

  ‘That won’t prove anything either,’ the forester came back at me. ‘The stumps could be from somebody else, not just the merchants!’

  ‘Now then, Kavakliev,’ the police chief butted in, ‘no taking sides! I was born and bred in the country and I exchanged a woodsman’s axe for this uniform, so I know what I’m talking about. You can steal a hundred cubic metres, or two hundred even, but a thousand or two thousand – never! Not without a permit from the forestry people.’

  With that the commission left, but a couple of days later I got a summons to appear before the chief investigator in town. ‘You see,’ I said to my wife, ‘they move fast when they want to. Those bandits who’ve been plundering the municipal forests are going to get it in the neck this time!’

  The next morning I set out for town to answer the investigator’s summons. No stopping on the way – I wanted to get there as quick as possible.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Investigator!’

  But I was hardly through the door when he started laying in to me:

  ‘Name? What have you come about?’

  ‘About the municipal forests.’

  He glanced at the summons. ‘So you’re Grozdan Panayotov?’

  ‘That’s me!’

  ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘who gave you permission to sign those telegrams on behalf of the whole village?’

  That wasn’t at all what I expected.

  ‘No one. No one gave me permission.’

  ‘Put that down,’ the investigator said to the typist: ‘ “No one gave him permission!” Now you can sign your statement,’ he said, turning to me, ‘and if you want bail it’ll cost you five thousand levs. Otherwise we’ll have to hold you here.’

  When he said ‘five thousand levs’ I went weak at the knees. That’s what you paid for a first-class mule, and grapes were less than a lev a pound!

  ‘Mr Investigator, there must be some mistake. Five thousand levs is a lot of money. It isn’t as if I’d killed anybody….’

  ‘Impersonation is no different from murder!’ he shouted. ‘Pay up, or I’ll have you arrested!’

  I staggered out of the room like I was drunk. What to do next? In the end I went along to the District Committee of the Democratic Party to see Vassilev the lawyer.

  ‘Mr Vassilev,’ I says, ‘what am I to do? I’m in this terrible mess!’

  ‘If you signed the statement, you’ll have to pay up. But I can try and get you off when your case comes up.’

  ‘But I haven’t a bean!’

  ‘It’ll have to be prison then.’

  ‘Dear me, what a carry on! You couldn’t lend me five thousand levs, could you?’

  ‘Not me, I couldn’t,’ he says. ‘But you could go and see Nichev’ – (Nichev was a chemist and a member of the District Committee of the Democratic Party) – ‘and if you give him this note, he might be able to help.’

  So I went and found Nichev.

  ‘Yes, I’ll lend you five thousand,’ he says, ‘but you’ll have to sign for six.’

  Talk about jumping out of the frying pan into the fire! I decided on prison.

  The investigator made the necessary arrangements, an escort came, and I was marched off straight through the centre of town to the railway station. My escort stayed with me all the way and by midday we arrived at the district prison – me in front, and my escort behind with his rifle. Everyone turned and stared, all trying to imagine what crime I’d committed, and even my hat went as red as a beetroot!

  ‘Couldn’t we walk side by side?’ I asked my escort, but all he did was shove his rifle into my back and say :

  ‘Shut up and keep moving!’

  He did allow me one favour though. He let me write a couple of lines to my brother-in-law the priest to tell him I was in the district prison.

  I’d never been inside a prison before and I thought it would be worse than anything I could possibly imagine, but it wasn’t all that bad after all. There were all kinds of people there – lots of them. The food wasn’t bad and the bread was like the bread you get anywhere else. You sit in your cell and take it easy. I’d never learnt to play cards, so a couple of pickpockets who were sharing my cell taught me. A sharp pair they were, and seeing as they had money with them, they got their food brought in from outside and gave their prison rations to me. They seemed keen to know why I was in prison, so I told them the whole story.

  ‘Vassilev would have helped me,’ I said, ‘but I’d gone and signed already, so there was nothing he could do….’

  The two pickpockets looked at each other and smiled.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ I asked.

  ‘You, you half-wit!’ one of them said. Armenko he was called, a wiry little fellow with a coffee-coloured face, always joking, and when he laughed all his teeth stuck out. ‘Can’t you see,’ he said, ‘Nichev, Vassilev and the investigator are all in the same game together? The investigator gets hold of chumps like you, sends them to Vassilev, Vassilev sends them to Nichev, and all they’re after is your money. They’ll bleed you white. First it’s bail, then the county court, after that the appeal and finally the annulment. By which time you’re stony broke! Me and my friend here, we’re just common thieves – we only take what you’ve got in your pockets, but that load of leeches, they’ll suck you dry! They’re not satisfied with ten levs or a hundred even, they deal in thousands! When we get nabbed we’re marched straight off to court, but with them it’s different. They never get arrested and taken to court. They go on leading people up the garden path, and twits like you take their hats off to them…. You can count yourself lucky you didn’t fall for it,’ Armenko went on, ‘so be on your guard when they come wanting to save you…. You tell them you want to conduct your own defence…. We’ll show you how.’

  Everything happened just as the pickpockets had said. Three days later I was told I had a visitor. It was Vassilev.

  ‘Nichev has sent me to get you off,’ he said. ‘Just sign this letter of attorney and I’ll set things in motion right away. They’re bringing pretty stiff charges against you, so things don’t look too bright…. It’s a good job the judge is a Democrat, though. One way or another, we’ll get you throu
gh. Just sign here.’

  ‘I’m not signing nothing!’ I told him. ‘I’m broke and I’m going to conduct my own defence!’

  Vassilev was already wearing one pair of specs, but he put on another to take a closer look at me.

  ‘Are you out of your mind? What about your wife and kids?’

  ‘That’s a matter for the prosecution’s conscience, Mr Vassilev. Goodbye!’

  I showed him the door, so to speak, and went back to my two pickpockets.

  ‘Right, now you tell me what to do in court.’

  ‘Tell me the whole story, then,’ said Armenko, ‘from start to finish!’

  I started to tell him what had happened and when I got to the telegrams he stopped me.

  ‘Did you sign them with your full name or just your surname?’

  ‘Just my surname : Panayotov.’

  ‘Every single one?’

  ‘Yes! Where do you think I’d get the money from to use my full name?’

  ‘And are there any other Panayotovs in your village?’

  ‘A dozen at least! The local church is dedicated to the Virgin Mary – Panagia in Greek – so Panayotovs are two a penny.’

  ‘When you get back home then,’ said Armenko, ‘you light a candle for Saint Panagia, because she’s the one who’s going to save you…. When you come up in court, ask for a copy of the electoral register and then let them try and find out which of the dozen or so Panayotovs it was sent the telegrams…. Only,’ he went on, ‘what if they check the handwriting?’

  ‘They can if they like. That won’t prove a thing, because it was the priest and not me that wrote the telegrams. He’s got better handwriting. They’ll never think of investigating him. And even if they did, they’d never dare take him to court. And besides, the Bishop would get him off.’

  ‘Fine!’ shouted Armenko. ‘Now let’s try out what it’ll be like in court.’

  His mate played the judge, he pretended to be counsel for the prosecution, they put me in dock by the door, and the trial began. Fifteen times at least we went through it, and either they started assing about and nearly killed themselves laughing, or else I let my elliquince run away with me…. And when I came up in court I didn’t let the prosecution get a word in edgeways, nor the judge neither…. The only trouble was, without even asking, my wife had gone and borrowed the five thousand levs bail money at twenty per cent, and ten days before I was due to be sentenced I was let out.

  ‘Who said you could sign away all that money without getting my permission?’ I asked her.

  ‘The priest,’ she said.

  ‘And you, Father,’ I said, ‘who told you to go meddling in things that are none of your business?’

  ‘It was the District Committee of the Party,’ the priest answered, ‘not just me. It was decided the bail money would have to be paid,’ he said, ‘rather than you give the Party a bad name by being in prison with all those thieves and pickpockets.’

  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him who the real thieves and pickpockets were, but I let it pass. Better let the court case blow over, I thought, and have some peace and quiet at last.

  The trial went off all right, and I was given a clean bill of health, so to speak. But I got only one Sunday of peace and quiet. ‘Peace and brotherly love’ as the Bible says. My wife was thirty-two at the time, I was thirty-nine and we were as happy as two bugs in a rug. The only thing what worried me was our kids running around with bare bottoms, but my wife, she was a happy soul, and she didn’t let little things like that get us down.

  ‘They aren’t worried about their bottoms being bare,’ she used to say. ‘So why should you be?’

  Anyhow, we did get that one Sunday of peace and quiet, and early on the Monday morning the local policeman came knocking at the door. He took off his cap and then handed me a summons.

  ‘Who’s it from?’ I asked.

  ‘You can read and write,’ he said. ‘At any rate you send telegrams and keep a check on the merchants’ wagons. Read it yourself!’

  So that little twister had also come out against me on the side of the treasurer and the mayor!

  I read the summons and I couldn’t believe my eyes! I was wanted by the Public Order Section in room number three. There wasn’t any date, but it did say ‘Urgent!’ ‘Aha!’ I thought, ‘the mayor’s been up to his little tricks again!’ And I went straight off to ask him what he meant by it.

  ‘This any of your doing?’ I said.

  ‘No idea what you’re on about,’ he replied.

  The filthy skunk! Sitting there and lying to my face! Got himself a new fur coat too, he had, the lousy little upstart! He’d never have been mayor without me, but now the money was rolling in he’d stuck a straw hat on top of his bald head and was sitting there wearing it in his office. Just in case someone took him for a peasant! I felt like grabbing him by that fur coat of his, but those bodyguards standing there, rifles at the ready, just waiting for an excuse to beat you up, they were…. What next though? Who could I go to for advice?

  In the end I tried my brother-in-law the priest.

  ‘Well, that’s how things are,’ I said, ‘and I don’t like the look of this summons business one little bit. Prison’s pretty bad, I know,’ I said, ‘but at least you know what to expect…. The things I heard about the public order people when I was inside … it’d put the fear of God into you if I was to tell you. What do you think I ought to do?’

  ‘Go along and find out what it is they want you for, I suppose,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll find that out all right, but it’ll be too late by then. What can I do before I answer the summons?’

  ‘Go and see Nichev.’

  ‘That crook? I’m not seeing him!’

  ‘Vassilev then.’

  ‘He’s no better than Nichev. They’re all rogues on the District Committee!’

  ‘Go and see Popvassilev then. He’s Secretary of the District Council and he’s got some pull in the Party. Besides, he was here last year and knows you. You remember, the one who organized the wild boar hunt.’

  ‘You mean the one I shot that tusker for?’

  ‘That’s him!’ said the priest. ‘And I’ll write a letter for you. But don’t rely just on the letter – best take some local honey along for him as well – you know how our big nobs like a little gift from time to time.’

  ‘Lend me twenty levs then,’ I said, ‘and I’ll buy the honey and be on my way.’

  ‘It’ll have to be from church funds – I don’t have any of my own,’ said the priest. ‘And remember, it’s Jesus Christ and his holy Saints that are lending you the money, so mind you pay it back nice and quick!’

  Off I went then with Jesus Christ’s levs in my pocket to look for some honey. Our local bee-keeper wasn’t in, and I had to trail halfway to Kossovo before I found any of the wretched stuff.

  ‘For your boss, is it?’ the bee-keeper asked. ‘Or for someone who’s ill?’

  ‘For my boss!’

  ‘Better take a piece of honeycomb. It looks more impressive.’

  All right, honeycomb. I paid, put my best foot forward and by the time the bells rang for vespers at the Catholic church I was already outside the District Council offices in Plovdiv.

  ‘I want to see the secretary,’ I told the policeman on duty.

  ‘Out of the question!’ the policeman answered. ‘The secretary isn’t seeing nobody!’

  Clearly I wasn’t going to get in, so I asked him if he couldn’t perhaps deliver the priest’s letter for me.

  ‘Tell the secretary I’m the fellow who shot the wild boar last year,’ I said. ‘When he came on that hunt in our village.’

  The policeman took the letter and a few minutes later appeared on the balcony.

  ‘You can be off,’ he said. ‘The secretary’s seen your letter.’

  ‘But did you tell him I was the fellow who shot the boar last year?’

  ‘I did,’ the policeman shouted down, ‘but the secretary said he wanted not
hing to do with you, so you can go.’

  I just stood there, wondering what to do next. The honeycomb was oozing all over the place, where I’d pressed too hard, and there was a cloud of flies buzzing round me. I’d have to get rid of the honey somewhere! Where, though ? Then I remembered that Doctor Kyoibashiev had his clinic nearby. When the doctor was building his villa in Stoudnitsa I got his stones for him, and we’d known each other since then.

  Thank God I found him in.

  ‘Doctor,’ I said, ‘I’ve got a little surprise for you – a piece of honeycomb.’

  ‘How come?’ he asked.

  So I told him why I was there and what I was doing. He stared at me. You could tell he was a doctor: gold-rimmed spectacles, bald head and a great bushy beard. He stroked his beard and carried on staring at me like he’d never set eyes on me before.

  ‘And you mean to say you refused the bribe?’

  ‘Aye, that’s right!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So I’d have a clear conscience.’

  The doctor left off stroking his beard and started scratching his neck.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘have you ever eaten black caviare?’

  ‘Where do you think I’d get black caviare from? That stuff costs the earth!’

  ‘I know,’ said Kyoibashiev. ‘But that clear conscience of yours cost you fifteen thousand. Plus another thousand for the twenty per cent interest, that makes sixteen. Add to that the time you lost in prison, and with one thing and another you’ll get it up to twenty. You certainly do have expensive tastes! I’m a doctor and I make two hundred Ievs every time I press out a pimple, but I can’t permit myself the luxury of a clear conscience, so a poor little church mouse like you can hardly afford one. A clear conscience is the most costly thing in the world. Couldn’t you have another chat with that Vancho fellow you mentioned ?’

  ‘No. Quite impossible!’

  ‘Well, God help you then!’ said the doctor and crossed himself. ‘You can see if the note I’m going to give you is any help, but if it isn’t, you’ll have to trust in the Lord and hope for the best.’

  He scribbled the note and handed it to me.

  ‘Go round to the Public Order Section,’ he said, ‘and tell the policeman on duty that you want to give a letter from Doctor Kyoibashiev to the chief inspector. Tell him it’s for the chief inspector in room number six. The inspector will see if there’s anything he can do to help you. Off you go now!’