When he got home, Ivan Shibilev saw a pot on the stove and felt hungry. He took off his fur wrap, served himself a plate of food, and sat down to eat. He was convinced that the others wouldn’t come get him, so after he finished eating, he lay down for a nap. But wouldn’t you know – he heard shouts and whistles from outside, soon followed by knocks on the window. Ivan Shibilev jumped out of bed, opened the door a crack, and saw them standing in his yard with rifles on their shoulders. These people are nuts, he thought to himself, but what could he do? He put on his fur coat and grabbed his rifle off the wall. He hadn’t gone out hunting for a long time; out of habit he looked around for his cartridge belt, and not finding it, he left without bullets.
“Come on, you lead!” somebody called.
“Damn right I’ll lead!” Ivan Shibilev smiled to show that he’d let them play out their prank to the very end.
He suspected and could see that his friends were still in a pleasant mood after the wine tasting and had decided with this joke to get back at him for all the jokes he had played on them. At the same time, he was pleased that they had “taken up” the wolf hunt, which showed that they, too, had anticipated some clash between Salty Kalcho and Zhendo and had left the tavern without a second thought so as to prevent it. Ivan Shibilev was further convinced of their mischievous intentions, since a short while earlier he had said that the wolves’ tracks led to the quarry, and not toward the woods where they were headed now, and besides that, anyone could see that they would never find any tracks in a howler like this. This was why he expected that as soon as they reached the edge of the village, they would burst out laughing and say that was the end of the wolf hunt. It also crossed his mind that they could have planned to drop away one by one and go back home, leaving him to trudge toward the woods by himself. At one point it even seemed like he could only hear his own footsteps, so he stopped ostensibly to tighten his shoelace, and glanced back. They were all behind him single file, and as far as he could tell, no one showed any signs of stopping and turning back. He turned his rifle so the barrel was facing downward, tossed it over his shoulder, and pushed on ahead. It was half an hour’s walk to the woods, and during that time, no one spoke. Ivan Shibilev cleared the path, hearing the crunch of his own footsteps; from time to time he again thought the others were lagging behind, so he always found some excuse to look back.
And so they reached the Dogwoods, the only grove in these parts. Once it had been a big oak forest and only one end of it, nearest to the village, had any dogwoods. But little by little they had cleared the trees to give land to the indigent and to settlers, first the dogwood grove, then half the oak forest as well. Right in the middle of it there is a large, steep ravine, which opens to the south and which is known by the frightening name “the Inferno.” That’s what it had been dubbed by some holy roller from the neighboring village who had come to worship at our church. During one harsh winter, the holy roller fell into the ravine at night, and after he crawled out more dead than alive, he told our folks here: “I’ve come from the Inferno.”
Actually, the Inferno was our local slice of paradise – its slopes, now as then, were grown over with oak foliage and shrubs, while down on its floor, a finger-thin spring spurted forth. In the spring, summer, and fall, it was always warm and sheltered, the first crocuses and snowdrops bloomed there, followed by the first strawberries; May Day, Saint George’s Day, and Easter were celebrated there, it was also pastureland for our livestock in seasons when the crops hadn’t yet been harvested from the fields.
Ivan Shibilev took a hundred or so steps into the woods and stopped beneath an enormous oak.
“Well, I’ll be damned, we ended up right here at our oak!”
“We sure did!” the others said.
After having been silent all the way from the village, everyone now livened up, as if taking the oak as some kind of sign. They started talking anxiously, unclearly, as their lips were blue from the cold, while their moustaches and eyebrows were white with frost. Ivan Shibilev could not recognize their faces but saw in them a crushing and wild ugliness; he glanced toward the forest and tried to smile: “So what now?”
“What do you mean, ‘what now’? Let’s draw lots!”
Ivan Shibilev, obeying somehow mechanically, took out a matchbox and explained which end meant beaters and which meant shooters. Nikolin Miyalkov was standing closest to him and drew the first lot – shooter. Kiro Dzhelebov and Salty Kalcho drew the same, leaving the other three to be beaters.
“I’m going to the blind,” Kiro Dzhelebov said, and stepped first into the forest.
PART ONE:
KALCHO STATEV, AKA SALTY KALCHO OR TROTSKY
I’LL TRY TO INTRODUCE to you the six hunters individually and I’ll start with him, since he was the reason they set off in that miserable weather to track wolves.
Years ago, Salty Kalcho was the syndicated watchman for the village vineyards. He wore a tan military uniform and a peaked cap minus the cockade, pulled down low over his brow year-round, he also had a cartridge pouch on a strap, white gaiters, and a rifle slung over his shoulder. He had gotten the uniform itself from the soldiers at the border post, while the gaiters with their goat-hair laces were his own domestic production. Ivan Shibilev had read somewhere – albeit with considerable delay – that the Russian defense minister after the revolution was some Trotsky or other, and thus had dubbed the uniformed watchman “Trotsky.”
We were related to the Trotsky family along a couple of lines (my grandmother and his wife were the daughters of two sisters), so we did most of our farmwork together. We would hoe or reap one of their fields, then one of ours – this collective work was called medzhiya. Trotsky had about a dozen acres of land, left completely to the womenfolk, as he had a strong aversion to agricultural labor. His wife and three daughters worked the fields and also raised livestock, since the land alone could hardly keep four mouths fed. On rare occasions during hoeing or reaping time, Trotsky would come down to the field to demonstrate his speed and skill at such work. People from the nearby fields would stand up in their rows to watch him, while he, in his peaked cap and uniform jacket buttoned up to the very top, with his cartridge pouches at his waist and his rifle over his shoulder, would take up a swath as wide as half the field and start hoeing or reaping away. He would work so fast that even ten men couldn’t keep up with him, without stopping for a minute from morning until noon, then in the afternoon he would toss down his hoe or scythe and head back to the vineyard.
He had a spacious and comfortable shack there thatched with a thick layer of hay, with a fireplace and a bed, he even built a two-story veranda on the front of it. Our vineyard was right next to his, and when I’d go with my grandfather to pick cherries or grapes, I was always in awe of the watchman, perched like a vulture on the upper level of the veranda, ready to blow his whistle or shout as soon as he spotted some suspicious character pottering around the vineyard, while the veranda itself seemed to rise to the heavens. My grandfather would often stop by to shoot the breeze and then I would have the good fortune to climb up first to the lower level, then to the upper level of his veranda, which offered a bird’s-eye view of the vineyard and the two neighboring villages. Trotsky spent his best years on that veranda. In his hours on duty, he scanned the vineyard from one end to the other like a hawk, ready like Gyuro Mihaylov* to sacrifice himself for our constitutionally sanctified and inviolable property. The only ones who unlawfully encroached on our property were local kids herding flocks nearby and dogs, thus in his years-long employ as watchman, Trotsky did not chalk up a single heroic deed besides the killing of several strays.
In his hours off duty, he would sit on the lower level of the veranda, eating or dozing in the cool shade, bareheaded and in his shirtsleeves. Only here, far from prying eyes, did he remove his uniform and munitions, but as soon as the dog caught scent of a person, he would pull them back on in an instant, even if that person was one of his own daughters. Like a knight stripped of his arm
or, he seemed to lose his self-confidence as a formidable personality, thus he never appeared to anyone without his uniform. Beneath his shirt, unbuttoned to the waist and yellowish-green with sweat, his chicken-like chest could be seen, hairless, white and swollen like dough; his arms, naked to the elbow, were thin as sticks, and he looked somehow yellow, like a turtle without a shell or a hedgehog without quills.
Trotsky didn’t go home to eat, instead his wife brought food to him at the shack every midday and evening. Once his daughters grew up a bit, the eldest took her mother’s place, and when she was married off, she was replaced by the middle girl, Radka. At that time, the local authorities started building a paved road from the neighboring village to ours. For four years, they dug stones out of the quarry, trucked them over, smashed them into gravel, and during all those years, Radka crossed those two trenches at one and the same place every day. By the time the road was finished, she’d grown up, a young woman ripe for the picking, and wouldn’t you know – one day Zhendo “the Bandit” Ivanov sent his matchmakers calling on her father at his shack. Trotsky went down to the yard and met his guests there. He heard them out, reeled off a lengthy fit of smoker’s cough, and sent them away: “I’ve got no daughters to marry off!”
His land had been in wretched shape since time immemorial, and now he figured that if he married off Radka as well, he would find himself face-to-face with complete economic ruin.
Not only was Zhendo not fazed by Trotsky’s categorical response, he even announced that he would go himself to arrange the match. Everyone was surprised by his eagerness to have Radka as a daughter-in-law at any cost, especially since her father enjoyed a reputation as the biggest sluggard in the village, while she herself did not shine with any particular virtues. A few days later, he went to visit Trotsky at his thatched residence by night, when he had lit the fire and was sitting down to dinner.
“I’ll cut right to the chase, my friend!” Zhendo started in after they’d said their hellos and sat down face-to-face across the fire. “It might vex you to hear it, but since you’ve got a daughter, and I’ve got a son, we need to talk. You’re the seller, and I’m the buyer, as it were. That’s how it’s been since the days of yore, and that’s how it’ll be as long as there are youngsters to marry off. If it suits you, you’ll give us your daughter, if not – so be it.” As he said this, Zhendo pulled a bottle of brandy, a hunk of cheese, and a few tomatoes out of a bag and set them on the broad stump that served as a table. “Let’s drink a snort and talk man-to-man. You know very well, my friend, that I’m not here to browbeat you, but rather to hear your final word with my own two ears. Whatever you say – that’s how it’ll be.”
“Well, now, I don’t rightly know what to tell you. It’s all happened so sudden-like…” Trotsky coughed, lit a cigarette from the fire, and fell silent.
He was flattered and flustered by Zhendo’s opening speech; he had been expecting arrogance and reproaches but heard only goodwill and respect, so he truly did not know what to say.
“There’s no law that says you’ve got to give your final word right this minute. Tomorrow’s another day. Don’t you go thinking that if they came asking for my son that I’d tell ’em yes or no right off the bat. I’d think it over, I’d do my reckoning. To be frank, my friend, I could choose me another daughter-in-law. Why the hell not? I’m not feebleminded or poor as a church mouse, now am I?” Zhendo went on, lifting the bottle a third time. “But Koycho has taken a shine to Radka, he won’t hear of any other girl, and that’s that. Well, I could make him change his tune right quick if I put my mind to it, but he’s my only son, now, so I says to myself – why take the wind out of his sails? And besides, Radka’s a hardworking girl, haven’t I seen her out slogging in the fields since she was a kid? But I know what’s eating at you, friend. You’re saying to yourself: Well now, if I give her away, who’ll be left to work at my place? That’s how it is, raising a daughter is like watering your neighbor’s garden. But there’s a cure for that ill, too. We’ll be in-laws, friend, we’ll look after each other. Till now you’ve done medzhiya with other folks, from now on you’ll do it with us. One day our field, the next day yours, like we’re working common land.”
Trotsky was staring into the fire, smoking one cigarette after another and listening carefully. Once Zhendo promised to help him with the fieldwork, which meant that in the future he could continue lounging on his veranda, he himself reached for the bottle, took a swig, and passed it to his guest.
“Well, lemme drink to your health as well! I got nothing against your offer, but it’s just that we ain’t ready yet, Zhendo. We ain’t ready. If this business is gonna happen, it’ll happen next year at the earliest. You can’t send a girl off empty-handed.”
“Are you hinting at a dowry? Forget all that hogwash, for the love of Pete! What, you think I came here to ask for your daughter because of some dowry, mate? If I can’t dress my daughter-in-law, then my name’s not Zhendo! When it comes to the kids, I’m no tightwad and I’m not greedy after land. Fifteen acres, a house, livestock, I won’t take ’em with me to the grave. It’ll all be left to them, let them make dowries to their heart’s content, let them live their lives.”
Trotsky was touched by his future in-law’s generosity and most of all by his frankness. He had been isolated from people throughout his adult years, he hadn’t come into conflict with anyone, so to him everyone was honest and good. Now he had to raise his final objection as well, but purely out of courtesy at this point, as had been the custom since time immemorial in such situations.
“All that’s well and good, Zhendo, but you know…Radka’s still a bit too young. She ain’t even turned eighteen yet.”
“Too young, my eye!” Zhendo cried. “Didn’t our mothers get married at that age? You know what they say: Stick a woman in a kerosene tin and if her head pops out, that means she’s ready for you-know-what. She’s like a rubber band.”
Trotsky could think of no objection to this worldly truism and smirked in affirmation. Only one formality remained – when to hold the wedding.
“On Saint Dimitar’s Day,” Zhendo said. “If you leave it any longer, you get into the Advent fast, so then we’ve got to wait all the way to the new year. Since we’ve started this thing, let’s finish it, and not drag it out like entrails at slaughtering time.”
And so it was. The local folks were rather shocked by the harmony between the in-laws, since they’d gotten used to noisy prenuptial haggling, but what shocked them most was that they had rejected the depraved aristocratic tradition of using their children’s marriage to gain some advantage for themselves. I was back to the village for a few days, so I was at the wedding too. On Sunday morning, Saint Dimitar’s Day itself, the bagpipe squealed at Trotsky’s place and the neighborhood youngsters started up a round dance in the yard. In Radka’s dingy, stuffy room, her girlfriends were dressing her in her wedding clothes, slathering her with various ointments, and singing songs. Ivan Shibilev also showed up to announce that the groom would soon arrive to take the bride to the church. In one hand he was carrying three honey cakes with sprigs of boxwood stuck into them, while in the other hand he was clutching an enormous rooster by the feet. Around the rooster’s neck hung an embroidered bag filled with grain and dried fruit. The rooster symbolized the groom’s menacing masculinity, and the full bag – the future couple’s prosperity. Ivan Shibilev was the “hostage” from the young man’s side. If the latter rejected the bride, the hostage would have to remain in the girl’s home as a slave to make up for the groom’s perfidy. In actuality, the hostage played the role of master of ceremonies at the wedding, directing what should be done when. When the bride was finally dressed, he sent word for the groom to come. At the same time, a messenger came running from Zhendo’s place and whispered in his ear that there was no one to officiate at the wedding. By tradition, the godfather Stoyan Kralev was supposed to arrange for a priest, but Stoyan Kralev was a staunch communist and had refused to enter into any dealings
with men of the cloth. So Zhendo had taken this task upon himself and the previous evening had gone to remind the priest about the wedding. Father Encho had said he knew well enough how to do his job, but now Zhendo had found him lying as stiff as a board. At first Zhendo thought the old man had overdone it with brandy the night before, so he snapped at him from the doorway: “Come on now, Father, the whole wedding is waiting on you, and you’re still in bed!”
“I’m lying here, my son, I’m lying here and I can’t move an inch. I threw out my back and it’s like I’ve been split in two with an axe.”
“You mean you can’t get up at all?”
“Not at all! I can’t move anything but my eyes and my hands. I can’t even heed nature’s call, if you pardon my saying so, my dear wife has to help me wee in a bedpan like a little child.”
Goddamn Buffalo (our folks hadn’t shied from giving the priest a nickname too), who knows what’s gotten into him to pull a stunt like this on me now, Zhendo thought, and his temper flared again: “I don’t care if you’re dead as a doornail, you’ve got to get to that church. Otherwise you’ll spoil this wedding of mine, and who’s going to foot the bill? Since you can’t move, we’ll carry you over there. You’ll sing a few words and that’s that.”
“The Lord is watching from above, my child! It hurts even to breathe, getting up is out of the question – but you go to Vladimirovo and get Father Tanas to perform the wedding. Today we’d agreed that I’d go to their village fair, but you tell him I’m sick, so he has to come stand in for me.”
Wolf Hunt Page 2
