Wild Tales

by Nikolai Haitov

  ‘Stop, stop! You’re off again!’ shouts my wife. ‘Let’s talk about the future for a change!’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Anything that interests you.’

  ‘All right, let’s talk about machines! What will people do when machines start doing their work for them? It’s work as develops a man, but the machines he’s invented are taking over and doing his work for him – mental work as well as physical. In a good many cases it’s like that anyway…. What will people do when there isn’t any work? How will they develop themselves? Will they behave any better towards one another?’

  That’s as far as me and my old woman have got in our discussions. I can’t talk for long, and every so often we have a rest and then start again. She’s real crafty though -she knows what I’m like and always takes the opposite point of view. And because I slip in a quotation from Lunacharsky or Lenin from time to time, she keeps her end up by checking her facts in the library, and reading Rabotnichesko Delo. She’s taken to reading the magazine Science and Technology as well, and with two pairs of specs on the end of her nose she’s been arming herself with her own quotations to keep up the level of our argument. All to keep my mind off the family and my personal worries, and to keep me going for another few months or even a year….

  Dear old Grandma! If there’s one good reason for going on living, it’s because she’s so lovely. It’s a crying shame she belongs to the older generation, otherwise she’d be a marvellous example of the way people are getting better all the time!

  Thanks to her love and care, and the neighbour’s yoghourt, my blood pressure seems like it’s falling. I can still hear the engine whistling, but it’s not as loud as it was: not right outside the window any longer but just over the hill, waiting for me and my old girl to finish our argument, on how man will develop if he cuts himself off from nature.

  On the Scrap-Heap

  Terrible, that’s what it is – when you can’t keep your mouth shut…. Not that I haven’t been told about it, mind. The forestry people were always on about it: ‘Watch that tongue of yours!’ they used to say. And it was the same on the roads too, when the union chairman gave me a word of advice: ‘What you need,’ he says, ‘is Neurolax. Works wonders for jabberers like you.’ And he told me about his mother-in-law and how she’d been cured by Neurolax. A regular chatterbox, he said she was, always nattering on about something. But they put her on Neurolax and by and by she said less and less. And now she don’t say nothing at all! ‘You give it a try!’ he says. ‘Neurolax, it’s called.’

  So off I trots to the doctor. But do you know what he tells me? My mouth’s a factory reject he says, and Neurolax won’t help. Stitches down the middle is the only cure. Stitches down the middle, indeed!

  One day they’d got us roadmen together for a meeting, see, when the foreman gets up and starts laying into us. ‘You roadmen, you’re stuck in the past!’ he says. ‘You’re still living in the times when the saying “sweat from a roadman, tears from the priest” was invented. How long is this going to go on – the asphalt in this state? There’s holes everywhere!’

  And he said all this with the Deputy Minister standing there right beside him, so I reckon he’d had a dressing down about the holes as well. But the roadmen didn’t say a thing. Quiet as mice they were. And so were the mechanics and the engineers. Yet it was clear as daylight what was wrong: the asphalt was too thin, so it buckled and cracked and great holes appeared…. You can’t keep quiet about a thing like that, can you? So I got up and told them.

  ‘It’s the asphalt-spreaders,’ I says. ‘They’re a bunch of fly-by-nights! They slap it down and then clear off – trying to overfulfil their plan. And it’s always us roadmen that catch it, because we can’t get the holes filled.’

  I heard later that the Minister had ordered an investigation, and when they dug up the asphalt and measured how thick it was they found I was right. The foreman got a rocket, and I was given a transfer. Stuck me in the shop they did, and told me it was promotion…. But I’m a soft touch, and this time it was giving things on tick that landed me in the soup. With one till he got an advance, with another till he got paid, and very soon I’d chalked up a couple of hundred levs. So when stock-taking came round, I was out on my neck and back in the village.

  I found a job in a quarry, but it was real tough going and I grew terrible thin. All skin and bone. My breeches wouldn’t stay on my hips, and my wife started treating me like a brother. ‘Poor little brother Stoicho,’ she called me. If I don’t find another job I thought, she’ll be doing something sinful with the fellow next door. So I got on to the Party Secretary – we did our national service together, him and me – and after phoning round he got me a job with the forestry people – ‘forestation supervisor’. I love the woods, grew up in them I did, and the job was just what I was looking for.

  It’s a marvellous feeling, planting trees! A jab with your spade, a stamp with your heel and you’ve planted a pine! Thousands of little pine trees stretching away behind you, pricking up their ears and sprouting tiny buds. Not like being on the roads, where for every hole you fill three more appear. And always that shouting and swearing.

  There’s no two ways about it – it was lovely work, and clean, too. But my loud mouth did for me yet again. Well, my mouth and the reclamation. One day a specialist from the forestry commission turned up to decide on the reclamation zones, and he started telling me what was what.

  ‘Reclamation,’ he says, ‘means felling. All the scruffy trees come down, and in their place we plant high-yield varieties: pine, beech and so on. You’re to fell everything, from there right down to the river, like it says in the plan. Clear the lot! Shave it clean! Then we’ll see about planting up.’

  When I looked up the valley I could see that parts of it were worth felling and planting up – where there was a bit of soil, and bushes were growing. But down by the river it was steep and rocky, no soil at all, only the odd juniper here and there, and that out of solid rock and not out of soil. So I says to the specialist:

  ‘You can’t plant anything there,’ I says. ‘No soil to plant in. So you might as well let the junipers be. They add a bit of green and they hold back the rainwater.’

  ‘That’s quite enough thinking from you!’ he says. ‘Get on with it! We’ll have those few junipers out in no time and that’ll help us fulfil our norms.’

  So he was wanting to straighten up his books by rooting out the junipers….

  ‘That’s something I can’t agree to,’ I says.

  ‘We don’t need your agreement,’ he says. ‘Here, have a look at the plan. It’s been signed by the area inspector, see!’

  But I still refused to touch the junipers.

  So he sent in a report. And a few days later I was transferred to the game reserve, as a supervisor. They were organizing shooting parties for foreign tourists and needed people who knew what they were doing to keep an eye on things.

  It wasn’t difficult work. With West Germans, mostly. I had to make a bed of hay on a cart, load up the Germans and drive them to the hide. At sunset the stags began trumpeting in the forest, getting ready to do battle over their womenfolk, and while they were busy making love, the hunters shot them. I loaded the dead ones onto the cart, and drove them back to the reserve. The heads and antlers were cut off, and the hunters paid up and drove away taking their trophies with them.

  The worst of it was, not one had the faintest idea about hunting. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they’d stretched their legs a little in the forest before starting to shoot. But most of them had brought something to sit on as well as a gun, and there were even two from Frankfurt who took camp-beds to the hide! They sat themselves down and set up their rifles on tripods. And what rifles they had ! All fitted out with the latest gadgets – telescopic sights, photoelectric cells, self-loading, automatic-aiming – the lot! Even if you was blind as a bat, a touch on the trigger and you had a stag in the bag.

  And what fine beasts thos
e stags were – what antlers, too! What a crash they made when they charged one another! And all because of those miserable does! When their antlers clashed it was like the oaks in the forest splitting apart. They tussled and fought till the victor stood alone in the middle of the clearing. He threw back his head and started to trumpet. And when he trumpeted, the bushes rustled, and the does came out, right timid and shy. The stag’s neck went all taut like a bow-string, and he filled the forest with his trumpeting. He waited till his whole harem had gathered before him, so he could choose the one he thought most beautiful.

  It was when they was getting worked up like this most of the stags got killed. A squeeze on the trigger and another proud lover lay on the ground with blood and froth gushing from his mouth…. And he never even had time to touch his beloved, nor give her a kiss neither….

  It fair made my heart weep, it did, but there was nothing I could do about it. Not as if they was breaking the law: they paid good dollars and had every right to kill. So why all the fuss? There was one liberty I did allow myself though. When we was in the forest with the hunters, I opened my mouth and said anything that came into my head. They understood about as much as the trees, so I could say what I liked. And I did too! I really let them have it, those wretched little weekend hunters! But I made sure I kept a smile on my face, so the worthy gents wouldn’t realize all the nice things I was saying about them. And they thought it was a bit of a laugh too. But one day there was this sour one who didn’t say much. Came from Munich or somewhere, he did, and owned a factory or something, a real little viper. Anyhow, he got me the sack, the dirty worm. He’d killed a stag, a magnificent animal, the best on the whole reserve, so I treated him to a little speech, and then we went back to the hunting lodge.

  Next morning, hardly turned seven, it was, the director wanted to see me in his office. Everyone was there – union officials, gamekeepers, departmental heads and even the accounting clerks. The director was very serious, and the others were staring at the floor, all deadly hush…. I was about to sit down, but the director yelled at me to stand up straight. Then he told the accounting clerk to switch on.

  It was only then I noticed the clerk was holding a little box with leather straps like one of them ‘Kiev’ cameras. He pressed some kind of button and a trumpeting filled the room. It was the stag, the one the German had shot the night before. So that little box hadn’t been a camera but a tape recorder! The German had brought it along to catch the stags as they trumpeted and fought, kind of recording the evidence, like. Only he hadn’t just caught the trumpeting and the fighting, he’d caught me as well and the little speech I made after the execution of the stag. He must have understood one or two words of Bulgarian and got my general line of argument, and he not only recorded my speech, but even my coughing too.

  ‘And what have you to say for yourself?’ the director asked. I could tell by his voice I’d had my chips.

  ‘Do you think, Mr Director,’ I said, ‘you could turn up the volume a bit?’

  Someone twiddled the knob and my voice went echoing round the room. Hollering and shouting, it was, as if the wounded stag himself was calling out. It sent shivers right the way down my back.

  ‘Whatever possessed you to bring your telescopes and tripods here, you overgrown idiot! Why not planes and bombs as well, and long-range cannon, so you can give your finger a rest! Get up off your backside, you fat oaf, and try shooting a bit straighter too, so the poor beast doesn’t suffer! … Call yourself a hunter, do you, you overgrown idiot!’

  … And so on, and so on.

  If it hadn’t been for that ‘idiot’, the head gamekeeper told me afterwards, I might have got away with it, but that was the word the German picked up. Although the interpreter did translate it as ‘worthy, respectable sir’, the German knew the word and I was dismissed. For ‘incorrect behaviour towards huntsmen from abroad.’ I should think so too!

  So ended my career on the game reserve. I took my bearskin – a whole skin it was and I used to sleep on it -and set off for the village, carrying the skin on my back.

  And as I walked along I began thinking what the hell to do next. Back to the quarry? Find work on the land? What would be best? That carried away by my thoughts, I was, I clean forgot to roll the bearskin into a bundle, and left it trailing behind me like a cloak. All at once I heard voices and saw a group of holiday-makers taking photographs of each other. One of the men called over to me:

  ‘Hey, you! Lend us your bearskin a moment. It’ll make a fantastic photo.’

  I let him have it. A fine skin it was, all shaggy with huge great claws, and when he put it on he looked just like a real bear. He had his photo taken, then someone else ripped it off of him and had his taken. Then someone else. Almost came to blows they did, all fighting to have their photos taken. Lucky for me the man with the camera ran out of film.

  I set off again, but all the way back to the village the only thing I could think of was how those holiday-makers had nearly torn each other apart to have their photos taken in the bearskin. And it wasn’t as if they’d been at the bottle neither – they just got a kick out of being photographed in the bearskin, and pretending they was a bear with huge great claws. ‘With a bearskin like that,’ I thought, ‘all I need is a camera….’

  Took my breath away, just to think of it. Perhaps the bearskin would be the answer to my prayers? … I stopped, thought for a moment, and licked my lips…. When I set off again, my plan was ready.

  When I got home I told my wife about it. At first she just giggled, but then she got into a temper and let fly at me: ‘A right fool you’ll look too! First you get the sack, then you come running to me with that filthy old bearskin ! Do you know what you are?’ she says. ‘A blockhead, that’s what! You’ve got a lump of wood where your head ought to be! And the wood is twisted and cracked too. It’s no good for anything, just for the scrap-heap. Ripe for the scrap-heap, that’s what you are. And it’s always me what carries the can!’

  In the end though I managed to get my friend the Party Secretary to see the sense in my plan.

  ‘A crackpot, you may be,’ he says, ‘but we can do with plenty more like you! And you’re dead right about the photography. It’s something we’re wanting to develop in our area, so you’re on to a good thing. I’ll see what I can do to help.’

  It wasn’t easy, but we managed it. The State Photography Agency agreed to sign me on, provided I gave them a cut of my takings. I got a camera, and off I went …! I took the bear’s head to one of those taxidermy fellows first though, to get it fixed up with a couple of glass eyes -nice bloodshot ones. And I had the teeth seen to as well. Then I stuffed the whole skin full of foam rubber, and hey presto! the fearsome beast was ready! I borrowed my cousin’s motor-bike, fixed the bear on the back and off to the nearest holiday resort I went. The bike clattered along the road with the bear on the pillion, and very soon a whole procession had formed up behind. First it was just mothers with their kids. For them I’d thought up three basic poses – standing still by bear, pulling bear’s ear, and riding on bear. To begin with it was mainly kids as came, but later it caught on with the grown-ups as well, men mostly, and they had their photos taken. I had several different poses for them too: standing still by bear, bear rearing up with man fighting, and bear on its back with man holding dagger at throat.

  So the men would look more like real warriors, I got hold of a special hood. And sometimes – on account of the smell, I dare say it was – when they started struggling with the bear, they began fighting for real. Right wild they got, heaving and shoving, shouting and yelling, throwing the bear about and ripping out huge lumps of fur. A proper carry-on, that was!

  Once – using pose number three I was – a fellow stuck the knife right into the bear’s throat and the foam came bursting out all over the place. I was in a right pickle till I got it patched up. Then there was that little Turk – the chef at the Balkan tourist hotel. He was dead keen to get married, but his girl wasn’t having an
y, so he decided to have his photo taken. Most likely he thought her heart would melt once she saw he’d laid out a fierce great bear like that. Two weeks later back he came, grinning all over his face.

  ‘You’ve helped me more than Allah himself!’ he said. ‘I’ve done it, I’m married! This shirt is a present for you.’

  Then there was that cross-eyed lorry-driver :

  ‘Pose number two!’ he said.

  Fine, number two it is. I stood the bear up and told him to take hold of it. He’d hardly touched it when he went completely berserk : shouting and hollering, he grabbed it round the neck, tried to throttle it, threw it to the ground and hurled himself on top of it. It was all I could do to hold him back.

  ‘You off your rocker? Round the bend or something? Ruining my foam rubber stuffing like that! What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘My boss, that’s who I’m doing!’ he explained. ‘I feel much better now. Here, have two levs. I don’t need the photo.’

  A real good job she did, my foam-filled Katinka – (that’s what I christened her, ‘Katinka’) – straightening out twists and kinks inside and out. And if there’s one thing she taught me, it’s that people have all manner of twists and kinks, but there’s one in particular we all suffer from. Whether it’s such a bad thing or not, I don’t rightly know, but we all like people to be afraid of us. We like to impress them and give them a fright. And it was this kink as kept my customers rolling in. The state Photography Agency was pleased, I was pleased, my customers were pleased, and I wouldn’t have had a thing to worry about, nor all that fuss in the law-courts neither, if I hadn’t got the urge one Sunday to go off on my motor-cycle with Katinka to see some of my pals on the game reserve. What did I want to do that for? you’ll probably ask. Well, no particular reason really. Sometimes you just get the urge to go visiting your old haunts. It’s only natural. How was I to know being natural would land me in hot water? Anyhow, off I went. I saw my friends, took photos of the wives and kids of the ones as were married, ate braised venison with the gamekeeper, and washed it down with cool beer. Whether we got through one crate or two I can’t rightly remember, but we were pretty well plastered. Then someone, who it was I’m not quite sure, had a bright idea.