While instructing me as to how to propagandize the locals, Party Secretary Stoyan Kralev had told me that “Salty Kalcho” had “signed on with the opposition” and demanded that we find out by hook or by crook whether he’d done so of his own volition or whether someone else had put that bee in his bonnet, and if so, who. Stoyan Kralev wasn’t just interested in idle gossip, he wanted to find out who had managed to turn this solitary, lily-livered fellow, who wouldn’t know politics if it bit him on the nose, into our political enemy, and how they had done it.
“Uncle Kalcho,” I said, “I hear you’ve cast your lot with the opposition. I didn’t know you knew all that much about politics.”
“What’s there to know about politics!” He laughed ingenuously. “Politics – it’s whatever suits you best. The opposition doesn’t give me nothing, but they don’t want nothing from me either. Whereas the communists don’t give you nothing, but they want everything. Grain and milk and wool and land. The way things are headed, they’re gonna strip off our underpants, too, before long! What kind of government keeps wantin’, wantin’, wantin’, but never givin’ anything?”
That’s what he kept saying every time we met, yet at the constituent meeting to found the co-op, he surprised his ideological brethren from the opposition. Shortly before the meeting, Stoyan Kralev spoke to him one-on-one gently and politely, as he could when he wanted to, and by-the-by promised to appoint him as watchman of the future farm. Salty Kalcho signed the declaration of membership right there and then in front of him and from that moment on became one of the most zealous champions of the cooperative farm. That very same day, he got his old Mannlicher rifle back, which had been confiscated on September 9, the day of the Communist coup; he took it apart, cleaned it down to the last screw, put two bullets in his cartridge pouch, and in the morning appeared before Stoyan Kralev fully accoutered. He wanted to don his military uniform as well, but Stoyan Kralev forbade him.
“No militarism now! From this moment on, the village’s land is in your hands, guard it with your life! The kulaks never sleep and are always on the lookout for a way to sabotage the people’s property. If you catch one of them, arrest him; if he tries to run, shoot him to ribbons!”
“Yes, sir!” Salty Kalcho replied, army-style.
He tossed his rifle over his shoulder, cocked his cap, and took up his beloved post, for which he had nursed a hidden, yet vivid, nostalgia deep in his heart for years. And while the boundary markers on the land were being plowed up and the people were gasping like fish on dry land, he would first make the rounds of the fields with his rifle on his shoulder, then sit under a tree and give himself over to contemplation. There, amidst a natural landscape sunk in sumptuous greenery, ablaze with the bright hues of autumn, or desolate and melancholy with its black fallow fields, Salty Kalcho found refuge from the harsh and cruel ways of men. As always, he felt a constant and inexplicable dread of them, yet he didn’t have the strength to stand up to them and quickly fell under their influence. Despite this, he didn’t harbor hatred or any other hard feelings toward anyone, because in his view all people were good. When he was younger, he had demonstrated a certain shrewdness (albeit solely so as to be able to spend his time in seclusion in the vineyard, leaving all the farmwork to his female offspring) or he might have gotten miffed with someone over something, but in the past few years he had been devoid of even these small passions, such that Auntie Gruda would sometimes chide and rebuke him. She pitied him for his weak character, but when she saw how easily he became putty in others’ hands, she still tried to talk some sense into him and preserve his dignity.
“Don’t get in cahoots with Zhendo, he’s a bad man!” she would tell him.
“What’s so bad about him?”
“He drove your daughter to an early grave and plundered your land, and now you’re gonna go get mixed up in politics with him!”
“He’s not a bad man, it’s just life that’s bad.”
“And who makes it bad? Folks like him, that’s who. You’re not going to say that Chakov is a good man too?!”
“Well, he’s good too. Everybody’s good, it’s just like I told you, life makes them do all sorts o’ things.”
“Good God!” Auntie Gruda looked at him pityingly. “You were born into this world to drudge and toil!”
Indeed, Salty Kalcho was not capable of self-sacrifice, but rather of suffering, all because of his pliant, gullible character. But this suffering, which he had grown accustomed to like a constant and tolerable illness, did not drive him to despair. In his long hours of reflection and contemplation amidst nature, he always arrived at one and the same thought: that people would set themselves right if they would only “make way for the truth.” But he had never thought about just what this truth was, just as he never stopped to think that perhaps every person had his own truth. This was why he trustingly accepted as his own the truth of whoever most persuasively impressed this truth upon him, and thus found himself in the paradoxical position of serving his own truth while at the same time serving many others’ truths as well. And so he lurched between truths and this was precisely the source of his suffering.
At harvesttime, the communist authorities ordered that all sheaves of grain be stored at the edge of the village and threshed there, so that the state delivery quotas could be requisitioned on time. Most people stole sheaves by night and made “underground” threshing floors in secluded spots around the fields, they nicked corn, potatoes, and all kinds of food. Salty Kalcho caught some of the thieves, but he didn’t shoot anybody to ribbons as Stoyan Kralev had ordered, nor did he even arrest them, because they begged him to keep the whole business hushed up. “You can see for yourself that the government takes everything, what’s more, they’re saying they’ll pay us only twenty cents a day, all the way to the end of the year, so we’ll starve to death this winter!” “Well, heck, that’s how it is,” Salty Kalcho would say, filled with sincere sympathy, and would advise them not to do such things again, because it was against the law, and would promise not to give them away. But the very next morning, he would appear before Stoyan Kralev or the chairman to give his report and with a clean conscience would tell them the truth: whom he had caught stealing and where.
The villagers were surprised to discover in him such a treacherous nature, which he had kept cleverly hidden until he had finally gotten his hands on that slothful little post of his, after which, so as to keep it, he would turn “his own people” over to the authorities without batting an eye. Arrests, investigations, and fines soon followed, while one local, whom the authorities had long had it in for as a notorious opponent of the co-op, was sent to a labor camp. Most people turned against the watchman and lost no time in taking their revenge. He was ambushed several times at night and given a sound thrashing, his pig was poisoned, and an attempt was even made to burn down his house. The police asked him if he recognized any of those who had jumped him, and if he’d accused anyone, even mistakenly, the suspect would’ve been punished or at least put under investigation, but Salty Kalcho could never name anyone. He had his suspicions about certain people, “but since I haven’t heard his voice or seen the whites of his eyes, I can’t bring down a load of troubles on a man. The truth is the truth, and that’s that!”
He didn’t forget the former Sergeant Major Chakov, either. No matter how busy he was, he always found time to drop in on him every month or two, if only for a few hours. He went to see him with his rifle on his shoulder and his cartridge pouch strapped to his waist, in which, along with the two bullets, there was always some little treat as well. The sergeant major was as hale and hardy as ever, but senility had sunk its claws deeply into him, and every time he would ask his guest who he was and where he was coming from.
“It’s me, Mista Sarjin Mare, Kalcho Statev, from the second company.”
“Sit! Where’d you get that rifle?”
While Salty Kalcho explained for perhaps the fifteenth time where he had gotten it and why, the sergeant
major would take the rifle in his trembling, feeble hands, slide back the breechblock, take aim at some target, and pull the trigger. Then he would set the rifle between his knees and ask again: “Who gave you permission to carry a weapon?”
“I’m the watchman at the co-op, Mista Sarjin Mare.”
“Well then! Carry out your duties down to the letter, or the birch switch will be dancing on your backside! Do you remember, Private Statev, how I once gave you the drubbing of your life in that barracks storeroom?”
Senility still had not managed to erase those sweet recollections of the past from the sergeant major’s memory; his squashed, wrinkle-ridden face livened up, two weak flames flared up amidst the yellowish crust on his eyelids, while the trembling fingers of his right hand rose toward his mouth and instead of spitting on them, he merely beslobbered them.
“I remember, how could I forget, Mista Sarjin Mare? We were young, servin’ out our army time.”
The sergeant major’s wife had passed away a few years earlier, yet he spoke about her as if she were alive, called to her by name from time to time, telling her to come serve their guest refreshments, or prattled on so incoherently that Salty Kalcho was ashamed to listen and would get up to go. What a man he had been, he would think about the former sergeant major on the way back to the village. He needed only yell, “Coooompany, hup!” and the soldiers’ blood would run cold. But that’s just how it is, some are rich, others poor, some dole out beatings, others take them, and in the end they all go to the grave and are made as pure as the day they were born. And with this humble philosophy, filled with compassion and empathy for the doddering sergeant major, he would make his way home.
After a year and a half, the co-op fell apart and Salty Kalcho once again came under the influence of the opposition. Just as earlier he had believed that the truth lay in the collective farm and equality, now with the same conviction he argued that leaving a man without land of his own was like taking away his soul and his hands. “If it ain’t yours, it ain’t dear to you,” he would say, “and if it ain’t dear to you, just think how much you’ll work it. Well now, they made us form that co-op, and when we did, what came of it? A big fat nothing. The people don’t want no co-op and that’s that, and if they don’t want it, they shouldn’t force ’em. ’Cause when something’s done by force, nothin’ good’ll come of it. Your own land, now that’s another thing entirely, your umbil’cal cord is tossed there,* even if you have to slave away night ’n’ day, you don’t mind.”
However, his “umbil’cal cord” was not tossed on his land, but somewhere else. Like every contemplative person, especially one who was scrawny to boot, for him physical labor was torture, he disliked agricultural work and did not feel any love for his land. Unlike his fellow villagers, for whom ownership over the land was sanctified by a living, age-old, primordial right, he felt the jolt of the revolution for completely different reasons. To him, collectivization was a kind of formal change to people’s landowning status and didn’t affect him, since the sense of ownership had not set down roots in his soul. Yet the turbulence of the revolution had dragged him out of the den of his solitude, thrown him together with people, and imposed their concerns and troubles upon him. Battered roughly from all sides, he was at a loss, and like any person with no social experience, pure and uncorrupted, he could not find balance on his own, and hence looked for it in others and believed that he had found it in them.
A year later, the co-op was reformed, and Salty Kalcho was once again appointed as watchman and stayed at that post until the age of fifty-five. During that time, his youngest daughter, Mitka, got married, while his wife passed away and his son-in-law came to live with them. He turned out to be a very hardworking and handy young man. He was one of the first two tractor drivers in the village and enjoyed widespread respect. He fixed up the old house, built on two more rooms, planted a new vineyard, and then turned his attention to the yard, the garden, and whatever private lands were left to them. Salty Kalcho was proud of him and never missed a chance to brag about his “golden boy” of a son-in-law. The young man understood perhaps better than anyone his father-in-law’s character and left him to live his life as he saw fit. After retiring from his post, Salty Kalcho would go out at any time of the day or night and disappear for hours on end. He would go to the vineyard or stroll around the fields, coming back after dark. His son-in-law could see that his soul felt stifled at home, yearning for the old Mannlicher rifle that he had carried on his shoulder for more or less his whole life, so he brought a double-barreled Izhmash shotgun back for him from the USSR, where he’d gone for some training courses. He got his father-in-law a hunting license as well, and made a hunter out of him, so he could go out into the fields a few days a week. Little by little, Salty Kalcho fell in with the local hunting club, started going to the tavern and drinking a pint with the other men.
And so it was until that day and hour when he found himself standing in that hunting blind in the forest, thinking back over his life from Radka’s wedding until the tasting of new wines at the tavern. His legs were starting to go numb with cold, he stamped his feet and from time to time called out to the beaters to hurry. No reply came from the woods in front of him, nor from Kiro Dzhelebov, who should have been standing a hundred or so feet from him; from the ravine, which was filled with a white, impenetrable slag, he could hear a loud blustering. Down there, where it’s sheltered, the snowdrifts must be over a man’s head, Salty Kalcho thought to himself, the beaters must have sunk into it and can’t get out. To his left he could still see the tracks he’d made coming into the blind, so he decided to go over to Kiro Dzhelebov to see what they could do to help the beaters if they were stuck down in the ravine. And just then he thought he saw the foliage above him shudder, shaking off a cloud of snowy dust. He also thought he caught a glimpse of a human silhouette, so he called out: “Come on now, people, let’s get this over right quick or we’ll come to grief here in this…”
Something slammed into his chest and knocked him onto his back. His head sank into the snow and he felt a warmth on his face that immediately spread over his body. My legs are frozen stiff and can’t hold me, he thought, trying to get up. He rolled over onto one side, dug at the snow, and managed to prop himself up on his elbows. The snow kept warming his face more and more, slipping into his nostrils and mouth and suffocating him. With his last ounce of strength, he rose to his knees, took a deep breath, and recalled that before he had fallen, he had heard a faint crack, like the snapping of a branch. The blizzard must’ve broken it, just like it’s broken me, he thought, struggling to get to his feet before finally standing. But his legs wouldn’t hold him, he fell to his knees again, and it was only then that he saw that the snowy pit where he had been rolling around was completely spattered with red. A sharp, burning spasm tore through his chest, he cried out, thick red blood spewed from his mouth, running down his chin onto the snow. He slumped to the ground slowly, just as he had gotten up – first on his elbows, then on his belly – crawled toward the snowdrift and slipped under it. Only his legs were left in the open, in their rubber boots, and their kicking, ever slower and flagging, showed his heart’s final beat.
PART TWO:
ZHENDO “THE BANDIT” IVANOV
SO YOU WERE ASKING where I got this here revolver. I’ll tell you, but first let’s raise another toast. Stoyan Kralev took a revolver from me back in the day, but he didn’t know I had another one. I got scared they might find it if they came to search my place, so I went and buried it under the barn. It’s been what, fifteen, sixteen years now, just look how the rust has eaten away at it. I found it this fall, when I tore down the barn. It was a nice little revolver. Ivan Pehlivanov gave it to me when I was just eighteen. As you know, I’m from the villages up in the highlands, in the Deliorman. My father was killed in the First Balkan War, I had a brother and sister as well, both younger than me.
One day I’d gone into the forest to gather some wood. I loaded up the cart and was just
about to head back when I see this pair coming toward me. Two men, looked to be around thirtyish, one in a fur cap, the other bareheaded. They stopped next to me, sat down, lit up cigarettes. Where’re you from, boy? Such-and-such village. Well, are you going to be coming back for more wood? Sure I will, I say. Then why don’t you bring us some cigarettes, matches, and a little something to eat? A loaf of bread and this and that. The guy in the cap dug into his pocket and gave me some cash. I took it and set off for the village. It looked like a fair bit of money, so when I got out of the woods, I stopped to count it. Twenty-some leva, which was no mean sum back in those days. While I unloaded the wood, mama went to the shop, bought a dozen packs of cigarettes, a couple of pounds of olives, matches, plus bread, cheese, and a few other things tossed in from us. She also gave me the change so I could give it back to them.
So I brought them what I brought them, they ate their fill, and the one with the cap asked me if I knew where the village of Pisarovo was. I told them I’d heard of it but had never been there. They questioned me a little more about this and that, then said: “Boy, you brought back what was left of the money we gave you, exactly as much as you should have, so that means you’re an honest lad. So we’d like to do you a good deed. Go to the village of Pisarovo and find the mosque. It’s covered in stone slabs. Count the third slab to the right from the door along the wall. Pry it up with your pocketknife and underneath you’ll find a bag of gold.”
They gave me a little silver coin and went on their way. I didn’t believe them for a second about the gold. If they knew where a bag of gold was hidden, they’d go and get it themselves, they wouldn’t go leaving it to me. Decent folks, I said to myself, since they didn’t have anything else, they repaid me with a silver coin and a kind word. That’s all well and good, but in another day or two word got around the village that the police had smashed Karademirev’s gang. Those were dark times after the war, troubled times. Robberies and burglaries galore all through the Deliorman and Dobruja. Lots of men from the villages would go around in twos or threes, thieving in Karademirev’s name. His fame as a bandit and thief spread far and wide throughout these parts.
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