Zhendo leapt into the cart he’d prepared for the bride and whipped his horses all the way to Vladimirovo, making it there in only fifteen minutes. The village was having a fair, so it took him another fifteen minutes to find the priest’s house, and when he found it, they told him that the priest had gone to the neighboring village for a funeral and would be back late in the afternoon. Zhendo was at his wits’ end. He decided to go to that village and grab the priest right out of the graveyard, but when he stopped to think that they were waiting for him back at the wedding not knowing what had happened, he cracked his whip again and headed back toward home. The godparents, Stoyan Kralev and his wife, were waiting in front of his house.
“Well now, my kinsman, you’ve been gone a long time, what’s happening with the priest?”
“May God strike him dead!” Zhendo spit as he jumped out of the cart. “Last night his back started hurting something fierce, now he can’t budge from his bed. I went to Vladimirovo to get Father Tanas, but he was gone to a funeral, they may as well bury him, too, for all I care! This place is crawling with priests when you don’t need ’em, but now there’s not a single cassock to be seen.”
Stoyan Kralev tactlessly laughed out loud. “Well, then, we’ll hold the wedding Soviet-style.”
“What do you mean, ‘Soviet-style’?”
“Well, just like that, without a priest. In Soviet Russia, they have civil weddings without a priest.”
“You communists may get married without a priest, but we can’t!” Zhendo snapped at him, but then realized he was talking to his godfather, so he gave a sour smile. “Go ahead and joke around, Godfather, you haven’t got a care in the world while my ass is on the line here.”
“Since there’s no priest, we’ll have to put off the wedding!”
“Out of the question! They’ll elope if they have to, but I’m not going to wait till the new year, I’m not gonna shell out for this twice.”
Zhendo led the horses into the shed, and Stoyan Kralev started pacing around the yard. He saw weddings – and all folk traditions – as bourgeois prejudice and thus did not feel an ounce of sympathy for Zhendo. He had wanted to refuse the role of godfather as well, but his wife would have none of it. She kicked up a fuss to the rafters and declared that she would sooner serve as godmother without him than become the laughingstock of the village. Their family had been godparents to Zhendo’s family since time immemorial – that made them practically related and to dishonor those ties would be tantamount to a blood feud. After long squabbles, Stoyan Kralev agreed to act as godfather, but on the condition that he would not enter the church, so as not to compromise his ideals. He would feign a sudden attack of kidney stones and only in the evening would he reappear at the wedding as custom required. His wife would have to ask her brother to stand in for him at the church, but as she didn’t dare warn him about her husband’s impending kidney stones, she was on tenterhooks the whole time to make sure her brother didn’t slip away to the fair in Vladimirovo or wander off somewhere. When they found out there was no priest, they both breathed a sigh of relief that they could finally go back home. But then Stoyan Kralev turned around abruptly and called to Zhendo: “Kinsman, c’mere for a second! Something just popped into my head.”
Zhendo left the horses and went over to him.
“I can see, kinsman, that you’ve got your heart set on this wedding, so I’m wondering whether Ivan Shibilev couldn’t do the job in place of the priest?”
“Godfather!” Zhendo cried, his face blazing. “Forgive me for saying so, but now you’re downright mocking me! Fine, I can take a joke as well as the next person, but I would never have expected you to go this far.”
Stoyan Kralev threw a friendly arm around his shoulder and whispered: “I’m dead serious, kinsman. Don’t get angry, but listen carefully to what I’m saying. Why do they call Ivan Shibilev “the Painkiller”? Because he’s got all sorts of tricks up his sleeve. On top of everything, he’s a cantor, the priest’s right-hand man, he knows that church stuff better than the priest himself. He’ll pull on his stole, sing a few words, and that’ll be that. You went to get the priest from Vladimirovo but couldn’t find him, so after that you went to Mogilarovo and found the one there. It’s three villages away, the folks here haven’t so much as caught sight of his beard, let alone heard his voice. Plus, there’s nobody here in the village today, they’re all at the fair. There’ll be all of a dozen people in the church at most, and even if more do show up, they’ll be nothing but a bunch of blue-hairs.”
Zhendo could see that his godfather was looking at the humorous side of things, because he was a communist and didn’t respect the old-fashioned rituals. His tongue was itching to tell him that communists were good-for-nothing idlers as he had told him many times before, but right now he was in a tight spot, so he patiently heard out his advice to the end. And while he was hearing him out, it occurred to him that Ivan Shibilev, as sly and shrewd as he was, really could make short work of the wedding in place of the priest.
“But who’s going to sign the certificate? If Father Encho refuses to sign it, it’s like the marriage never happened.”
“He’ll sign it, what else can he do?” Stoyan Kralev said, clutching at his lower back. “My kidneys are aching something fierce, I think I’m going to follow the priest’s lead and lie down awhile. It hits me every year right at this time. In any case, that priest might be bedridden for a year, who’s going to marry folks then? He’s got to find himself a replacement.”
“That’s all well and good, but Ivan Shibilev might not agree to it, and even if he does, you can’t trust him further than you can throw him. He’ll get up to some stunt faster than you can say Jack Robinson…”
“Ivan Shibilev and the priest are thick as thieves. The one always does what the other says. Plus, if he opens his big mouth, he’s the one who’ll be in hot water.”
Zhendo took off his cap and scratched his head. Steam rose off his hair.
“Hell, I don’t know what to do. It’s either the frying pan or the fire.”
He went into the house, while Stoyan Kralev sat down on the chopping block. He hadn’t even finished his cigarette when what do you know? The “hostage” came into sight, heading toward the yard carrying the rooster, adorned like a peacock with tinseled bouquets, strings of popcorn, and various trinkets. He clearly had been informed as to why he was being called and immediately got into character. He stood in front of Stoyan Kralev, made the sign of the cross, and submissively said: “May God bless you, my child!”
“Huh?”
“By the grace of God, everything will be fine. I’ll be ready in an hour and will be waiting for you in the church.”
As before every new caper, Ivan Shibilev was seized by a rush of inspiration, so he ran home, stuffed the rooster under a tub, grabbed what he needed, and went to see Father Encho.
I had just gotten to Radka’s house when the groom arrived. Zhendo lived only three houses away, but he had decided to come for the bride with a cart. The horses were decked out with braided tails and blue collars, while Koycho, in spite of the heat, was dressed in a black fur coat and an Astrakhan hat. His brother-in-law strutted beside him with a scarlet banner, while the godmother’s brother was sitting beside her instead of Stoyan Kralev. In short, the groom arrived with such pomp and fanfare as if he had come for the bride from the back of beyond – and in the dead of winter, at that. They led Radka out onto the porch so the people could get a look at her. As Stoyan Kralev had suspected, only a few elderly neighbors had stayed around for the wedding, the young people had snuck off to the fair in Vladimirovo. Radka’s girlfriends had started singing, and she was crying, her whole body was shaking with sobs beneath her veil and it was all she could do to keep from bawling out loud. Her mother, Auntie Gruda – a dry woman with a big, flattened nose that was always moist like a slug – was scurrying across the porch from one room to another, looking as if she would step on the hem of her dress at any moment and fall flat
on her nose. The bride’s crying was also part of the wedding scenario. A bride who doesn’t cry when leaving her parents, who doesn’t experience a sense of filial attachment to them, is clearly not a good and grateful daughter, hence the grannies were enraptured by Radka.
“Mashallah, now there’s some pretty crying for you!”
Koycho descended from the cart with his suite – his brother-in-law, the godmother, and the godfather – while Auntie Gruda and Trotsky went out to meet them. Trotsky was in full uniform minus munitions, like a soldier on day leave, and held out his hand for the groom to kiss. As would later become clear, he had invited an important guest and had been sitting with him in the one room the whole time, keeping his spirits high and his cup full. This guest was the former Sergeant Major Chakov, whom we will hear more about shortly.
Koycho stepped up next to his future wife as if stopping next to a tree, without deigning to greet her, puffed himself up under his fur coat, and froze to the spot. The curious grannies barged up right under his nose, trying to chitchat with him, but he just glanced at them with the whites of his eyes and kept silent as a clam. Radka’s girlfriends started shrieking out the traditional song “A Girl Takes Leave of Her Mother,” the bagpipe started squealing as well, while Radka kept shaking with sobs. The grannies started exchanging glances and whispering. Back in the day, they, too, had cried beneath their veils, as was proper, but now they felt that Radka was taking it too far and thus insulting her husband.
“That’s enough now, girl, you’ve cried for your father and mother, that’s enough!”
“Look here, you’re snotting up your veil!”
“You’re getting hitched, not hanged!”
But the more insistently the grannies advised her to quiet down, the sadder Radka became and the harder she cried. She seemed to have fallen into hysterics and could not get ahold of herself. My throat choked up, so I went over to her to give her my wedding present. Every time I came back home for vacation, I would bring her some trifle – a ring, a necklace, or a colorful handkerchief. We were the same age and had gone to school together until fourth grade. She had spent two years in first grade, two years in third grade, and two years in fourth, and so her seven mandatory years of schooling had passed in primary education. During the summers, our families would work the fields together, and Radka and I would hoe or reap next to each other. She was constantly asking me about the city, where she had never been, what it was like to live there, what kinds of people I met, and most of all about the city’s fashionable coquettes. Like every village girl, she felt an innate antagonism toward urban women and believed that they lived in perfect bliss, they didn’t work so as not to soil their delicate white hands, and spent their days strolling daintily around the city streets. Try as I might to dispel her naïve ideas of city life, she simply could not believe that people there also worked, that most were poorer than she was and were barely scraping by. You’re only saying that because you’ve become a city slicker too, she would say. Once you’re done studying, you’ll bring home some fine lady, her face all painted white and rouged, with a gaudy little parasol to shade her from the sun. And as she imagined this city girl clumsily bending down to reap or hoe with her parasol in her hand, Radka would straighten up in her row and laugh wildly and ingenuously with all her heart.
But now she was crying inconsolably under her veil, so I decided to give her the simple brass bracelet I had bought for her in the city. Gifts are usually given to the bride late in the evening at her new house, but I violated this custom so as to snap her out of her hysteria, which I assumed was due to overexcitement. I congratulated her on her marriage, and congratulated Koycho as well. Our houses were right next door to each other, separated only by a wattle fence, we had grown up and gone to school together too. Like Radka, he had only reached fourth grade; he shied away from middle school like barbed wire in wartime, refusing to attack. I told him to comfort his bride, so he turned, without glancing at me, and said: “If she wants to cwy, let her cwy!”
He couldn’t say the letter r and a perfectly natural consequence of this impediment was his nickname, Koycho the Wawa. To hide this defect, he didn’t talk much, and when he did, he tried to avoid the letter r. In any other situation, he would have said “bawl,” but he wasn’t in his right mind at the moment. By the looks of it, he had no clear idea of why he was standing there in front of everyone, decked out in a heavy fur coat and an Astrakhan hat, who this sniveling girl next to him was, or what he was supposed to do next.
I took Radka’s hand and struggled to shove the bracelet over her large palm with its strong, stubby fingers. I told her I was happy that she was marrying Koycho, because from now on, besides being relatives, we would also be neighbors. I promised to bring her an even nicer present during the Christmas holidays and wished her all the best. She quieted down for a moment, just as a child distracted by something stops crying, only her shoulders continued shuddering. Perhaps it was because I was looking at her face in the aureole of the celebration and through the veil, but it seemed beautiful and sweet to me, bathed in tears like the face of a weeping child. I murmured something more to her, she squeezed my hand, leaned over and kissed it, and burst into tears again. Auntie Gruda was forced to console her.
“That’s enough now, my girl!” she said, bursting into tears herself. “Why are you bawling as if for the dead?”
“Mooooommmy!” Radka gave a piercing shriek and collapsed onto her mother’s shoulder. “My dearest mooooooother!”
After this shriek, she seemed to calm down, straightened herself up, and headed toward the cart on her own, with Koycho following after her. They climbed into the cart, the godparents climbed in as well. When they reached the gate, Koycho pulled a pistol out of the pocket of his fur coat, fired it, and the horses galloped off toward the church.
A few minutes later, we, the young people, were already at the church, while the older folks straggled along behind us. The bride and groom had just come inside and were standing in the corner in front of a little table. The doors of the iconostasis were closed, the embroidered curtain was drawn shut, giving the church the look of an office not yet open for business. In the sand-filled candle boxes in front of the sanctuary, two candles were burning, long and thick as shepherd’s flutes, while not a single candle had been lit in the chandelier. The old folks, who were trickling in one by one, were saying that the marriage would be performed by the priest from Mogilarovo, and at every noise they turned toward the door. But suddenly, the curtain split in two, shuddered for a moment, then opened up. The royal doors opened as well, and the Mogilarovo priest stepped over the threshold, glanced at the young couple, and rushed over to them. His gait made it clear that he was a young man and that he had come to perform the wedding as quickly as possible. His hair, unlike that of other priests, was cut short, but his face was so thickly covered by a black beard that only his nose was visible. He held a censer in one hand and two candles in the other; he lit them from the thick candles in the candle boxes and hurried over to the couple. He pulled the rings off their fingers, handed each of them a candle, and waved the censer. Thin blue streams of smoke wafted toward the ceiling, spreading the sweet, sad scent of incense and wax. And then in the empty, echoing church, a sonorous falsetto boomed out, as if some mariachi had broken into song: “O Lord, hallowed be Thy holy name, now and forever, world without end!”
That almost female voice, so incongruous with his orangutan-like beard, sounded pleasantly exotic, yet at the same time somehow blasphemous. The old folks, accustomed for years to Father Encho’s hoarse and feeble mumbling, started exchanging bewildered glances. But the priest won them over as soon as he sang the first prayer as a drawling, melodious rendition of a folk tune.
“O great and eternal God, Who in creating the human race willed that man and wife should be one, just as Thou blessed Isaac and Rebekah and made them the true heirs of Thy covenant, bless these Thy servants, Koycho and Radka, that what they receive in faith they may live
out in deeds.” He took the two rings off the table, made the sign of the cross over the couple with them, declared that with this ring, God’s servant Koycho weds God’s servant Radka, just as Radka weds him, and shoved the rings on their fingers. After that, he led them over to the lectern, put the crowns on their heads, and announced that the two humble servants of God were now man and wife.
He was clearly following the fast-track procedure, because the old folks started grumbling that he hadn’t read a single troparion, not even the parable of the Wedding at Cana in Galilee, where the young Jesus turned water into wine, thus beginning his string of miracles. The priest made the couple drink from the cup and circle the lectern three times, and there was nothing more to be done. But the old folks’ grumbling that in his haste he had given short shrift to the sacrament of holy matrimony seemed to cut him to the quick, so instead of leaving the newlyweds to be congratulated by their nearest and dearest, he instead opened up the missal and read one more prayer. “O Father, Lord of Mercies, Who existed before the ages and surpasses all good, we beseech Thee to accept all those who call upon Thy holy name, through the love of Thy Child, Jesus Christ, the Holy One, and Thine all-powerful Spirit. Cast away from our souls every malady, all disbelief, spare us from the furious attacks of unclean, infernal, subterranean, fiery, putrid, lustful spirits, the love of gold and silver, conceit, fornication, every shameless, unseemly, dark, and profane demon. O God, expel from Thy servants Koycho and Radka every energy of the devil, every poison, all voluptuousness, carnality, lustfulness, adultery, licentiousness, and shamelessness. Yea, O Lord our God, watch over them and us, and guard our hearts; for all things are possible to Thee, O Lord. We give glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.”
Later, when word of this hoax got around the village, Ivan Shibilev told me in great detail how everything had happened, and it was only then that I recalled that he had performed several roles on the local community center stage in that same beard and Asiatic moustache, long and thin as the whiskers of the monarchs from the First Bulgarian Kingdom. He had meant to perform the whole ceremony, but at one point saw that Grandpa Christaki, another cantor, had come into the narthex of the church and stopped there. He had been told the day before that there wouldn’t be a Sunday service due to Father Encho’s illness, but the ringing of the bells had likely surprised him, so he had come to see what was going on in the church. But since he hadn’t been warned about the arrival of the priest from Mogilarovo, whom he knew very well, he would surely throw a wrench in the whole works. As it turned out, the old man was someone else entirely and hadn’t even come into the sanctuary, but Ivan Shibilev was flustered and instead of chanting, say, Saint Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians or a parable from the Gospel of Mark, he instead had sung a prayer for those tormented by unclean spirits.
Wolf Hunt Page 3
