Wild Tales

by Nikolai Haitov

  ‘Why don’t we have a bit of fun?’ he said. ‘Goga will be coming back from the feeding pens later in the afternoon – let’s put the bear on the bend by the bridge and see what he does.’

  Always going on about how he’d once met a bear, Goga was, and how the bear had took fright and run away.

  So off we all went. We stood Katinka on the bend and settled down to wait. Before long we heard footsteps – he was coming! Walking along without a care in the world, pulling off a beech leaf here and there, chewing it, spitting it out again, quite taken up with what he was doing and not looking where he was going at all. Suddenly he caught sight of the bear right in front of his nose…. For a moment he stood rooted to the spot, then he spread out his arms like he was trying to fly, and leaped like a scalded cat straight into the river bed below. Such a hollering there was, we couldn’t believe it was him making all that racket on his own. Fair split our sides we did!

  I slung the bear over my shoulder and started out for home. It was then the head gamekeeper took me aside and had a word with me :

  ‘You know what,’ he said, ‘with that bear of yours we could put paid to our poachers for good. They’ve really been getting on top of us lately, coming at night in jeeps and flashy cars, and even in lorries, and picking off the hares and deer in the glare of their headlights. There’s nothing we can do to stop them…. We’ve even tried putting barriers across the road, but they crashed straight through them. Maybe we’ll have better luck with your bear.’

  ‘It’s worth a try,’ I said.

  So when it got dark off we went. We stood the bear on a bend in the road, rearing up and showing her teeth. Then we hid in the bushes and waited…. An hour passed, then two – no one came.

  ‘Come on,’ I says, ‘let’s pack it in. Quite obvious there won’t be any poachers tonight.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ he says. ‘Let’s wait a bit longer.’

  And sure enough, about half ten we caught the sound of an engine. Headlights pierced the beech forest and swung slowly round…. A big black car, it was, no number plates, naturally! Rolled down window and a double barrelled gun sticking out the side. The car slowly turned the corner and the headlights blazed full on. Suddenly it shuddered to a halt. There was a squealing of tyres -’Hold on, let’s get back!’ – a wild turn, almost into the river, engine revving like mad, and they was gone! My friend the gamekeeper was beside himself with delight. All over me, he was, proper gold, frankincense and myrrh, and he finished up wanting to kiss my hand.

  ‘You’re a genius!’ he cried. ‘On behalf of the whole hunting community, I thank you!’

  A week later he turned up at the resort where I was doing a spot of photography. He was as thin as a rake, with great rings under his eyes, like he’d climbed out of an icon.

  ‘Poachers again?’ I asks.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘It’s not them. They’ve gone. Something different this time, a different kind of poacher, and he’s poisoning my life! I’ll tell you the whole story, only you must promise not to breathe a word of it to anyone, or else I’m finished.’

  ‘Fire away, mum’s the word.’

  ‘Have you ever seen my wife?’

  ‘Yes I have – a shy young thing, and attractive too.’

  ‘Well, that “shy young thing”, as you say, has turned into a proper little hussy. She’ll be the death of me, she will. She’s fallen in love with the chief taster at the wine vaults, and every evening, when I’m out, he comes riding up on that motor-cycle of his, and another nail is driven into my coffin. But it’s my job, see. I have to be out nights, and I can’t be sitting around at home all the time. So they can monkey about as much as they like. Only, and if this don’t show how low we can sink, instead of hating the little whore – I find I love her more than ever! That’s why I don’t say nothing to her about it. If I did she might up off and leave me, and I’d never get over it. I’ve even thought of lying in wait for Mr Lover-boy and smashing his head in with a lump of wood, but he’s a nasty piece of work, a real layabout and he always carries a flick-knife. Slice me up as soon as look at me. And there’s not a soul I can tell about it. No one to complain to. So I thought I’d come and ask you to give him a going over with your bear. About nine he turns up on that motor-cycle of his, so we could put the bear by the quarry, where the road turns off to my place. An hour and a half it’ll take, that’s all.’

  ‘My Katinka isn’t a scarecrow, you know,’ I says to him. ‘I earn my living with her…. No, it wouldn’t be right!’

  His eyes filled with tears.

  ‘My life’s at stake,’ he says, ‘and you go on about what you earn ! Well, if that’s how it is – God be with you ! But I want you to know that you’ll find my bones in the river bed, because I’m not going home ever again. I’ll throw myself over the cliff and put an end to myself once and for all!’

  A likely tale, I’m sure…. But what if he did?

  I jumped on my motor-cycle and caught him up.

  ‘All right,’ I says, ‘wait for me by the quarry. I’ll be along as soon as it gets dark.’

  I wrapped the bear in a sheet, sat her on the pillion and set off. My dismal Jimmy was waiting. Already chosen the spot for our ambush he had – by the side of the road under a wild pear tree – and he’d worked out a detailed plan of attack.

  ‘He’s no fool, that dirty scoundrel!’ he said. ‘We’ll have to make the bear move, so she rears up on her hind legs like she was alive. Otherwise he might smell a rat.’ Then he took a bit of string, tied it round the bear’s neck and chucked it over a branch in the pear tree. When he tugged on the string Katinka immediately reared up on her hind legs. We tried it a few more times – perfect! You couldn’t see the string against the branches. All you saw was the pear tree by the side of the road, and underneath – a ferocious beast with bared fangs and bloodshot eyes.

  One good thing about lovers is that they’re always on time…. Just beginning to get dark, it was, when we caught the sound of a motor-cycle. My friend perked up:

  ‘It’s him!’

  Almost before he said it, a motor-cycle came round the corner and caught the bear full in its headlights. At that very moment Katinka reared up on her hind legs. There was a squeal from the motor like a pig having its throat slit, the driver whipped his machine round and pulled back the throttle. His helmet went bouncing about in the darkness, and a couple of minutes later he and his motor-cycle had vanished completely.

  ‘Well,’ I says to my friend, ‘you’d better be getting back to your wife. I’d best be getting along too. There’s a whole load of tourists wants their pictures taken in the morning.’

  I sat Katinka on the pillion and away I went. Real dark, it was. So I says to myself: ‘Little point in putting the sheet round her,’ I says. ‘We won’t be meeting no one this time of night.’ Not half we won’t! Suddenly three bloody great lorries appeared out of nowhere. Right down the middle of the road as usual – but this time they swerved so sharp all three of them ended up in the ditch! Laugh ? – you bet I did! But it wasn’t long before I was laughing on the other side of my face…. What would any normal person do after an adventure like that? Keep quiet about it, that’s what. Keep his big mouth shut. Not me though! As I said before it’s my big mouth that causes all the trouble.

  I was sitting in the pub the following evening, and I told them about the three lorries driving straight into the ditch when they saw me and my bear on the motor-bike. Laughed ourselves silly, we did.

  Next day though, Police Sergeant Marinko called round to see me….

  ‘Very kind of you to tell us all about the lorries,’ he said. ‘Maybe you’d also like to tell us about the motorcyclist who drove into the river. I think you’d better come along to the station, so we can have a litde chat!’

  It was at the station I found out what had happened to the wine-taster. He’d been that keen to turn round and make off into the night, he and his motor-bike had gone arse over head into the ravine. The bike w
as a write-off, but our lover-boy got away with a few bumps and bruises.

  I told the sergeant I’d had a job to do up in the village and on the way back I’d decided to have a rest. So I’d left the bear by the side of the road. It was then the motorcyclist had come along. He took fright, turned round and went back the way he’d come. What happened afterwards was no concern of mine.

  ‘But the bear moved, he told me,’ said the sergeant. ‘How do you explain that?’

  ‘He must have been seeing things!’

  Then they confronted me with the motor-cyclist and we got into a right shindy about whether he had been seeing things or not. And whether the bear had moved or not. Then they wanted to know why I’d gone to the village in the first place, who I’d been seeing and what I’d been doing there. And whether it wasn’t a case of premeditated murder.

  He really got me in a corner did that sergeant, and I very nearly told him the truth. But then I remembered the position my friend was in. No point him having to face the music as well. So they started a court case against me. I did tell the examining magistrate though. A nice old boy he was, with hair going grey, and I felt it wouldn’t be right to lie to him. ‘I’ll tell the truth, Mr Magistrate, sir,’ I said, ‘but I won’t put nothing on paper. Everything by word of mouth, and only if you promise that whatever I tell you won’t go no further.’

  ‘Certainly,’ he says. ‘If it’s only oral, that’s all right. Fire away!’

  I told him everything, from beginning to end.

  Then he had a good think and said :

  ‘This really is a very difficult case. Quite clearly you didn’t intend to bump him off. You just wanted to give him a fright so he wouldn’t commit a misdemeanour. That being so there can be no question of seeking to commit murder, and the whole business becomes a very minor offence. But, and this is the crux of the matter, in order to prove this we’ll need to call your colleague as a witness, and that will mean disclosing the adultery.’

  ‘Impossible!’

  ‘I quite understand your position,’ he says, ‘and I do sympathize with you. But the facts being what they are, much against my will I’ll have to send you for trial. There’s no other solution.’

  ‘I quite see what you mean, Mr Magistrate, sir. Thank you.’

  ‘But you know,’ he says, ‘your case really is most interesting! As a kind of first attempt at solving certain private disputes with the aid of a deterrent…. Take that business with the poachers for example.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ I says. ‘I’ve been thinking about that too and wondering whether you couldn’t make a special bogey-man bear, all automatic with photo-electric cells, like on those German rifles. It could patrol the forest and the game reserve and keep an eye on the asphalt-spreaders, and maybe people in general as well. The only trouble is,’ I says, ‘I’d be a bit scared of a scarecrow like that myself. Well, not scared of the scarecrow exactly, but of the person who manipulated it. But it would be marvellous, wouldn’t it, an automatized scarecrow! You could catch anyone you wanted!’

  ‘That’s right,’ says the magistrate. ‘But you can explain all that to the Public Prosecutor.’

  That’s where I’m off to now – to see where we go from here. If the magistrate is anything to go by, I ought to make out all right with this fellow too. But there again, he is the Public Prosecutor and anything might happen.

  If he listens to the law, I’m in the soup, but if he listens to me, then he’s in the soup. The main thing is I ain’t done nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing sinful like. The sergeant could see that and so could the magistrate. But not my wife – not her! There she was, just as I was setting out for town to see the Public Prosecutor and not knowing whether I’d ever be coming home again, and all she does is pull a long face and go bitching on at me in her usual way:

  ‘Serves you right!’ she says. ‘On the scrap-heap, that’s where you belong. Serves you damn well right!’

  The Seed of the Dervishovs

  To tell you the truth, this knot got into a tangle a good while back. I wasn’t yet fourteen and had neither mother nor father. Father had been gored by Mizhou Selihov’s cow, and the Spanish sickness carried off Mother, so I grew up with my old grandpa and grandma. But Grandma’s right hand went stiff and there wasn’t anyone to do the housework, so Grandpa set about finding me a wife. Didn’t ask me about it though. In those days they weren’t that worried what the young’uns who were getting married thought. Everything was arranged by the old’uns. Just the once I caught him talking about it to Grandma:

  ‘But he’s so young!’ Grandma said.

  ‘He’ll toughen up,’ said Grandpa. ‘But we’ll have to look around for a girl.’

  What he looked for and how, I can’t rightly say, but one day I got home from the pasture and found a great lanky fellow waiting for me with a huge pair of scissors stuck in his sash.

  ‘Ramadan, my lad,’ said Grandpa, ‘we’ve got the tailor in to make you some breeches. How do you want them, dyed or plain?’

  That’s all I got asked. I was promised in marriage, married off, and all I got asked was: ‘How do you want them, dyed or plain?’

  Wednesday, it was, when the tailor came. Thursday my breeches were ready – dyed, with pocket flaps and braiding – and on the Friday the drummers were in the yard, thumping the big drums for the wedding. The drums were beating, the meat was boiling in the coppers, and still I didn’t know who I’d be getting for a wife. I swallowed my shyness and tried asking Grandma.

  ‘She’s from the farmsteads on the hill, not from the village,’ she said.

  ‘But who is she? What’s she like?’ Grandma wasn’t saying. And seeing as I didn’t have the courage to ask Grandpa who she was and what she was like, I had to wait till evening. The hodja had finished wailing for us, the drums had finished their pounding, and the time had come for me to be alone in the room with my bride. But before we went into the room Grandpa called me to one side and said:

  ‘Whatever you do and whatever happens, there’s got to be blood in the morning! If you’re a man already,’ he said, ‘do it like a man! And if you aren’t, use your fingers or your fingernails. There must be blood though, or you’ll be the laughing-stock of the whole village.’ Then he shoved me into the room and locked the door.

  I must have stood there about half an hour like a lump of stone, not daring to open my mouth or to take off her bridal veil. Then at last she took off the veil herself and showed her face. I was afraid my old Grandpa might have served me up with some old hag, but what I saw before me was a real butterfly of a girl, as white as milk, with eyes all misty – you should have seen her! I went on staring at her like some wild animal, and she stared back at me. Then she burst out laughing:

  ‘Are you shy, then?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Why are you shy? Just look what huge breeches you’ve got! And what a sash too! Shall we have a game of spinning the top?’ And before I could say whether I wanted to play or not, she had grabbed me by my sash and was pulling me to and fro, winding me up and unwinding me again, like a top…. We were having such fun we didn’t notice when the first cock crowed. Suddenly I remembered the blood, and my brow creased into furrows. ‘Soon it will be dawn and the others will come asking about the blood. And then what?’ She noticed something was wrong and asked me what was worrying me. So I told her.

  ‘It’s the blood!’

  ‘I’ll get you some,’ she said. And she puffed herself up so her face turned purple and blood came gushing out of her nose. No point in going on about the blood, where we smeared it and how – everything passed off all right and I settled down with Silvina like we was man and wife. She was still a girl maybe, but she was a woman too. With womenfolk, the woman is already there in the child. Perhaps it’s under the eyelashes or under the nails, but she’s there all right! Men are different, though. A man isn’t a man until he’s got enough beard to prickle a woman’s cheek. But when his heart gets set on a woman,
like mine did, the head and the beard don’t matter a bit. While we were winding and unwinding each other, laughing and playing, that heart of mine got itself all wound up too, and when it was given a tug to unwind it again, out it came, roots and all.

  How it happened, I tell you, nobody really noticed. Everything was going along nicely, smooth as water, as they say, and no one had the faintest idea that there was a rock under the water, waiting to hole our boat and smash it to pieces. Silvina used to spend most of her time at home looking after Grandma, and she always had some soup waiting when we got back from the fields. She swept up, did the housework, and our old house shone like the sun. Even the rafters joined in the merriment, decorated by Silvina with all kinds of flowers and herbs. She washed the little window in our room and polished it three times a day, and in the morning she looked at herself in it when she did her hair. What hair she had! From one position it was fair, but shift around a bit and it was kind of reddish, like it was glowing. Move again, and it was alive with yellow and gold! When she began to comb it, I just stood and watched. And I’d go on gazing at her till Grandpa brought me back to earth again :