When I heard about that business, I got to thinking that that pair in the woods were from Karademirev’s gang, one of them might’ve even been Karademirev himself. The police at their heels, looking to save their skins, why not do a good turn for a poor boy? So they met me and did me that good turn. One day Ivan Pehlivanov told me they’d found a man murdered in a shack out in the vineyard in Gevrekler, two villages away from ours. The man was Pasko Naumov from Karademirev’s gang. The police didn’t find anything on him, but they later reckoned he’d been killed by his crony Shevket. Once he fell asleep, Shevket killed him, took his gold, and fled to Turkey. He’s still there, alive and well, with two hotels and a big store in Stamboul. Or so wrote our local Turks who settled there.
What Ivan Pehlivanov told me turned out to be true and I realized I’d seen the very same people. But I didn’t tell him, ’cause I was afraid of him. He was bigger than me, already had two children. I chummed around with his little brother, so Ivan counted me as his kid brother too. He was a hot-tempered guy and was mixed up in some shady business. Rumor had it that he would go around to the villages here and there, stealing horses and running them across the border. If I told him about the mosque, he could go there himself and swipe the gold. But I didn’t dare tell anyone else about all that, lest they think I was in cahoots with the bandits. Fine, but how could I go to Pisarovo and get into the mosque by myself! And so the winter passed, spring rolled around, but I just kept thinking about that mosque, kept seeing that bag of gold in front of my eyes. What else could I do? I had no choice but to turn to Ivan Pehlivanov. So by-the-by, I says, I know where some gold is – and I told him what had happened in the woods. It was them, he said, his eyes flashing. The very next day he hitched up his cart and the two of us took off for Pisarovo. It was four villages from ours, so we got there after midday. We stopped in front of the tavern and went inside. Ivan Pehlivanov had an old army buddy in that village and starting asking about him. Delcho was his name. They sent somebody to call for him and a little later he showed up. He and Ivan Pehlivanov drank a few rounds, shot the breeze, and Delcho invited us to stay at his place.
Around midnight we went to the mosque. Before going inside, Ivan Pehlivanov gave me this revolver, just like that, in case. We pried up two slabs – nothing. I dug around under the third one. My hand sank deep down, I felt something, and when we held it up to the candle, it was a gold coin, sure enough. We looked for more – nothing. The rest had been swiped by someone. Either Shevket had come by to get it before fleeing to Turkey, or one of their other henchmen. They gave me the gold coin. “It’s your lucky charm,” they said, “take it.” Ivan Pehlivanov didn’t want his revolver back, either. “You keep it,” he said, “it might come in handy.”
And very soon that revolver did come in handy. One night Ivan Pehlivanov found me and said we had a job to do. We went over to the common pasture near the village of Potok and found Delcho and another guy waiting there. I took a good look at him – Krustyo Marinov from our village. I realized that this was going to be dirty business, but what could I do? I went with them. It was threshing time, during the day folks flailed the grain, then in the evening left their horses to graze the stubble fields. At dawn, when the herdsmen were deepest asleep, Ivan Pehlivanov pulled aside four pairs of horses and slipped off their fetterlocks. We hopped on the horses and galloped for the border, a half an hour’s ride away. There, four men were waiting for us, one spoke Bulgarian, the others spoke Vlach. They took the horses and disappeared across the border, while we headed back to the woods on our side. We sat down, Ivan Pehlivanov took out the money and handed us each a wad.
Word of the horse raid got around the very next day, the villages were swarming with cops and agents, they questioned suspicious characters and held them down at the station. I hid the money in a safe place and went about my business at the stackyard. Ivan Pehlivanov had given the three of us strict orders not to meet, and if we happened to run into each other somewhere, we were not to stop and talk. He also ordered us not to get any wise ideas on our own; if need be, he would decide what we should do. Fine, but Krustyo busted down the door of the general store one night and swiped a thousand leva from the till. He bungled the job, they caught him and sent him down to prison for three years. Ivan Pehlivanov got scared, he couldn’t sit still for a second. He was afraid that Krustyo would squeal on us under interrogation. If he admits he was working with us and they bring us in, you deny everything, he said, otherwise we’re done for. We only breathed easier once they’d finally sentenced Krustyo and tossed him in prison. Only, he didn’t wait to serve out his time but escaped from jail with one other kid. The authorities were on their trail and they roamed around the forests in the Deliorman for a month or two on the run. One time they came near a village and saw a couple of girls hoeing a vegetable garden. They were mountain girls, day laborers. They kidnapped one of the girls, had their fun with her, then killed her and left the body near the woods. After that incident they found themselves in really hot water. The other kid disappeared somewhere, Krustyo was left alone, and for lack of anywhere else to go, he came back to the village. He went to Marko Doynov, who hid him at their place.
Around that time Ivan Pehlivanov had gotten a little gang together. We skittered around Inner Dobruja, robbing the wealthier folks. One night Doynov went to Ivan Pehlivanov and asked him to slip Krustyo across the border. Doynov had been the schoolteacher in the village for many years, he did all kinds of favors for people and everybody held him in high respect. Krustyo was his neighbor and he was very fond of him. On one of our raids across the border, we took Krustyo with us and set him up as a shepherd for a fellow from the village of Punduklii. This fellow promised to get him a passport from the Romanians. We continued on toward Silistra. The last time we’d gone by there, one of our boys had gotten lost. We had stopped to rest by the side of a highway in the middle of the night. After we’d gotten up and walked a mile or so, we saw that we were a man down. There was no way we could go back, so we fired off two shots, waited a bit, and when no one answered, we continued on our way. The kid had fallen asleep, and when he woke up and saw he was alone, he got scared. He thought it was the Romanians shooting, so he stayed by the roadside until dawn. Finally he tossed down his gun and started wandering every which way. The Romanians caught him the next day, arrested him, and after that we lost track of him. A month later we decided to make the rounds of the villages near Silistra and if we found him, we’d try to spring him. We spent a few days in a cave near Silistra. A Romanian spotted us and so as to head off disaster, we left the cave and pulled back toward the border. Along the way, we found out that the Romanians had punished our boy by letting a police dog have at him on the village square in Karapelit. After that they sent him into the interior and he was never seen or heard from again.
Not a week had passed since we were back in the village when one night Krustyo showed up most unexpectedly. The fellow we’d left him with hadn’t been able to get him a passport, so he’d come back. While he’d been sitting in Punduklii, it was all over the papers that there was a ten-thousand-leva reward for anyone who killed or captured him. He even showed the newspaper to Ivan Pehlivanov, who laughed and said we’d missed our lucky chance. What are you saying, I told him, he’s our comrade, after all! Come on, now, I’m just spouting off, he answered. Krustyo was afraid to go home, so he stayed at our place. He wanted us to take him across the border to Serbia. We mulled it over this way and that, and finally Ivan Pehlivanov told him that to clear him a channel all the way to Serbia, we’d need cash, and to get our hands on it, we’d have to rob the hodja in Gevrekler. The hodja was a rich man, we’d go just the three of us, so whatever we got we wouldn’t have to split with too many people. Krustyo agreed. We set out for the border one night and we hadn’t even gotten to the edge of the vineyard when Ivan Pehlivanov shot Krustyo in the back. When he fired, he got so scared that he took off running and screaming. I was barely able to catch up with him and calm him down.
We dragged Krustyo’s corpse toward the road and went back to the village. In the morning, Ivan Pehlivanov turned himself in at the town hall. They took him to the city, gave him the ten thousand leva, and made him a watchman. He didn’t give me a red cent of that money. Later as watchman, he stole a gun from the police storehouse and landed himself in prison.
After him, I became head of the gang and we kept roaming around on this and that side of the border like before. Our gang was five men in all, and so as to find ourselves local backers, we told folks we were working for Karademirev. The police had caught some of his people, but they couldn’t catch the man himself and he’d started running rampant again. The September Uprising* had been stamped out, the times were more troubled than ever, there was lots of unrest. Karademirev strung folks along, saying he was fighting Tsankov’s government, so lots of communists and agrarians became his backers. He had backers in Romanian territory as well, so he was free to go about his business there, too. Alongside him, they hid us as well, told us who the rich folks in each village were and how many guards they had.
One time we decided to hit the mayor of Eni Cheshme. He was an Aromanian and a real son of a bitch. He tortured our Bulgarians, robbed them, and forced them to turn Romanian. There were plenty of types like him all around Dobruja, our backers told us where crimes had been committed and who was behind them. There were folks beaten and killed, others sent to prison. There was also a case like this: A Bulgarian bloke’s horses got into a Romanian’s field and trampled down the edges a bit. So the Romanian raised his rifle and shot both horses on the spot. We found him in that very same field at harvesttime. At dusk his wife had gone back to the village, while he’d stayed to graze his horses. We gagged his mouth with a rag and hung him up on a pear tree by his feet. Finally, we slaughtered his horses and set his wheat on fire. All the colonists’ land was gathered in a single spot – summer and winter crops all in one. It was called kadastra. His wheat burned down to the very last ear, and he was hanging from the pear tree all the while. They cut him down alive, but nice and roasted.
Some time later we found out that the tax collector in a village had raped one of our girls for singing Stefan Karadzha’s song. “Karadzha Told Rusanka,” there’s a song like that. The girl took her own life, drowned herself in a well. And wouldn’t you know, that girl was a cousin of one of our boys. His name was Zhelyo, he’d fled from the Romanians a few years before. So the kid got fired up, we couldn’t hold him back. If you don’t come with me, he said, I’ll go by myself and get even with that dirty Vlach oxherd! So one night we went to Zhelyo’s village. We stopped by his folks’ house, chatted a bit with his mother and father, had a bite to eat and took a rest. They told us that the taxman was guarded at night by the gendarmerie. The original owners of the house had fled to Bulgaria. Zhelyo knew the place like the back of his hand, because as a kid he’d played with the family’s children and had often slept at their place. There was no moon, but it was light – the sky was one star next to another. A window was lit up on the lower floor, that was where the sentries slept. We had to hit them quietly, with no shooting, because it was a big village, a whole squadron of gendarmerie was posted there, twenty men strong. The taxman wasn’t married, an old woman looked after the house and slept there too. It went without saying that the man would be armed, with his door bolted from the inside, and if he found himself in a tight spot, he’d shoot and yell for help. We also took half a can of gas, so if we didn’t manage to get our hands on him we could at least torch his house.
At midnight we crept toward the house and lay down along the fence. The sentry was nowhere to be seen, nor did we catch a glimpse of anybody through the window on the lower floor. We lay there like that for an hour. The sentry stepped out of the shadow of the veranda, quickly made his rounds, and went into the lit-up room. Zhelyo and one other guy jumped up and headed straight for the place they’d first seen the sentry. There was a chair there where the sentry had been sitting. A few minutes later he came back. Whether it was the same sentry or a relief shift, we never did find out. He hit the ground out cold and couldn’t utter a word. Then the three of us ran into the guardroom. There were two men inside, one was asleep on the bed with his back to us, the other was awake. Before he could even open his mouth, I pressed a revolver to his chest. We gagged him and tied his hands and made him lie facedown. The other fellow was still asleep. I don’t know what was with him, whether he was tired or drunk or what, but he was sleeping like the dead, without budging. He only woke up when we rolled him over facedown. Plenty of time had passed, or so it seemed to me, and still there was no sound from up in the house, yet Zhelyo still hadn’t come back. I sent one of our men to see what was going on there and he didn’t come back either. Delcho was keeping watch out in the yard. I was left on my own in the guardroom and started thinking that somebody up there had laid a trap for my men and was catching them one by one. I got scared that maybe the head sentry would come to relieve them. If the head sentry came to oversee the shift change like back on our side, then we’d have to shoot. The two guards were lying facedown with their mouths gagged, and besides, I didn’t know any Romanian to be able to ask them in any case.
At long last they came down and signaled for us to take off. Only when we were already out of the village did we realize that we’d forgotten to take the sentry’s gun, and we were really fuming over that. We spent the day in the woods, and Zhelyo told us how he’d taken his revenge on the taxman. He first tried the door to the middle room, it wasn’t locked from the inside. He switched on his pocket flashlight – a woman was asleep on the ottoman. Knowing that the sentry was on guard outside, she surely didn’t bother to lock her door at night. Zhelyo grabbed her by the throat and asked her which room the taxman slept in. The woman’s eyes bulged, she could hardly breathe. Let go of her throat, you’ll strangle her, one of our boys whispered to him. He let her go and the poor woman pointed to the closet door. Zhelyo had been inside that closet many times and knew that there was a little door in it that led to the big room.
The Romanians took revenge for the tax collector. They killed a dozen folks from Zhelyo’s village and as many again from the nearby villages. Those killings made the newspapers, our government protested to the Romanian government. There were also other gangs that slipped into Dobruja to punish outrages committed against the Bulgarians there. It was a downright mess, nobody knew who was paying the piper or calling the tune. One night, we were just about to cross the border when we got caught in an ambush. We hit the ground and got ready for a firefight. We decided if they were Romanians, we’d shoot our way out, come what may. Because we’d seen cases like that: The gendarmerie would set up an ambush and take Bulgarians with them to fool you. Who are you, I yelled. Bulgarians, who are you? We’re Bulgarians too, one of you come over here where we can get a good look at you. As soon as I said it, one of them got up and came over to us. I recognized him right away – the Doctor. Dimitar “the Doctor” Donchev. They were communists, their leader was Docho Mihaylov. You must’ve heard of Docho, they sang songs about him all throughout Dobruja. He led the DRO – the Dobrujan Revolutionary Organization. There was also the IDRO – the Internal Dobrujan Revolutionary Organization. The two organizations had started out as one, but then they split and started fighting amongst themselves. Docho was struggling against capitalism in league with the Romanian communists, while the others were fighting against the Romanian enslavement.
In any case, we chatted a bit with the Doctor, then he led us over to his band. Docho Mihaylov was there, too. I told him I knew both him and the Doctor. Their headquarters were in Dzhivel, one village over from ours. There was a whole neighborhood from Northern Dobruja there and they were all Docho’s people. I’d heard him speak a couple of times at meetings in the villages. Well, how nice that we’re acquainted, Docho said. He asked me whose side we were on, the IDRO’s or Karademirev’s and what we were after here in Romanian territory. I told him that we’d come to rub out a big landowne
r who’d killed a Bulgarian kid. Docho got really furious. So, did you rub him out? And so with plenty of hemming and hawing, we admitted it. Lay out the money, right here in front of me! What else could we do, we set the money in front of him. There were only five of us and twelve of them, rigged out like regular troops with carbines and grenades. They wanted to take our weapons, too, but Dimitar Donchev protested. They might run across some Vlach patrol, he said, they’ll slaughter them like lambs if we let them go bare-handed. Docho backed down. This time, he said, I’ll let you off easy, but if I catch you here again, we settle things very differently. Because of the likes of you, he said, the Romanians torment the people, for every one of theirs killed, they kill ten of ours. Whichever of you wants to work for national liberation, we’ll welcome him with open arms. But whichever of you wants to kill and plunder, we’ll sweep him out of our path, because the government chalks up all your killing and thieving to our name. We promised to think over what we would do from then on and went our separate ways.
From then on we kept on doing things as we always had. But we made sure to steer clear of Docho’s band, but it turned out we didn’t have to watch our step for very long. Four months later Docho was killed and his band fell apart. The other leader, the Doctor, was killed later. He would’ve fallen then and there as well, if I hadn’t saved his life. A month or two after our run-in with them, we got ambushed again. We thought it was Docho’s men and said to ourselves: “This is it for us, this time they won’t let us off the hook.” But they turned out to be from the IDRO. They told us we were good boys because like them, we were fighting to free Dobruja from Romanian slavery, only they didn’t like our guns much. They gave us five new carbines, bombs, bullets, and as we were leaving, they told us if we ever needed anything to go see so-and-so in such-and-such a village. In early August we ran across them again. They promised not to bother us in the future if we agreed to help liquidate a band of communists. Russian agents, or so they said, they killed rich people and wanted to overthrow the current government. The Romanian government had sent a diplomatic note to ours, demanding that they pull the communist detachments out of Dobruja or they couldn’t be responsible for the consequences.
Wolf Hunt Page 8
