Back in the day, there was this big landowner, Bliznakov, he held more than two thousand acres. One time we were coming back from an excursion, so to speak. We saw a bunch of people in a field, not working, just standing there. We passed by them and stopped to rest. And what do we see – the whole field bristling with leeks. It was springtime, what’s with these leeks here, we ask the workers, and they told us that the boss man had given them a dozen leeks and a hunk of bread apiece. They hadn’t eaten the leeks, but stuck them in the field as a protest, as it were. And by-the-by, the boss man himself showed up in his carriage, saw all those leeks stuck in the ground, and ordered his coachman to pull them all up. Tomorrow, he said, you’re going to eat them, I’m not going to feed you with milk and honey. He went to get in his carriage, but I caught him by the coattails. Chorbadzhi, I said, hungry bellies have no ears. Since you’ve called these folks here to work for you, you’ll feed them just like you feed yourself at home. Just who the hell do you think you are, he says, you good-for-nothing scoundrel, to tell me how to feed my workers! I grabbed him by the collar, pitched him to the ground, and pressed my knife to his throat. I might be a scoundrel, I says, but if you don’t feed these people, I’ll fix you so you won’t know which way is up. I sent two of our boys in the carriage with the coachman to bring food from the farm. I told them, you take everything you find to eat in the pantry and be back here in half an hour. The carriage took off, and the farmer was shouting: I’m going to sue you for pulling a knife on me. There are laws in this country. Who are you to give orders here? I’m nobody, I tell him, and yes, there’s a law, and not just one but thousands. Only now, the law is in my hands. A minute ago it was in your hands, now it’s in mine. Whoever holds it in his hands, to him that law’s fair and just. So we go on talking like that and his workers, around thirty folks in all, are standing there silent, listening. Leaning on their hoes, they just keep quiet and listen, they submit to the law. The carriage comes back loaded with food: cheese, butter, yogurt, sausage, and all sorts of stuff. The workers sat down, and we sat down right along with them to have a bite to eat. The landowner was sitting with his back to us all, smoking and not saying a word. See, chorbadzhi, I tell him, see how my law feeds people, while tonight, when you take the law back in your hands, it’ll leave them hungry?
Back in the day, when I didn’t want to join the cooperative farm, Stoyan Kralev accused me of being a lawbreaker. He called me a murderer, too – meaning I’d murdered Salty Kalcho’s daughter, my own daughter-in-law, as it were. You were at the wedding, you know what happened. I didn’t kill her, but things just got all tangled up like I never expected them to. You remember when they built that highway, right? Then you remember the foreman Kuncho, too. The guy who lived in that little house on wheels at the edge of the village. A caravan, they called it. A month before the highway was done, I passed by the caravan. The door was open, but the foreman wasn’t inside. Every other time I went past there, he was always sitting at the door. His legs hanging down over the edge, leaning on the door frame and playing his harmonica. He didn’t have any work, so what else was he supposed to do? He’d nap a bit, play a bit. I’d given him watermelons and grapes, ’cause the path to the vineyard passed by him, I’d also given him sweet corn to grill. We’d shoot the breeze a bit, then I’d go on my way, and he’d start puffing on his harmonica again. He was from the villages around Shumen, had a wife and two kids. He’d go home to them in the winters, but spent the summers on the roadways.
So, when I didn’t see him that time, I kept going down the path through the cornfields. I must’ve gone a hundred steps when I see him – standing there in the middle of the path, and some woman’s next to him. He must’ve heard me coming from a ways off, ’cause he came striding up to meet me, while the woman ran off ahead and disappeared. We chitchatted a bit, I promised to leave him a watermelon on my way back. I pretended I hadn’t seen the woman, but once I went around the bend, I cut straight through the cornfields. I stopped at the edge of the vineyard, waited a bit, and then Radka came by on the path. She went out to the vineyard every day to bring food to her father. What should I care who’s meeting who and why, but hell, it’s human nature. I was itching to find out whether Radka and the foreman had met up by chance or on purpose. The next day I headed that way again when Radka set out to bring her father his food. I took the long way around, stopped by the path, and hid. I waited a little, Radka passed by, then the foreman right after her. He caught up with her, they talked a bit, then headed straight into the corn. And so every few days I kept catching them in one and the same spot. One time I heard Radka crying, telling him: “You’re just leading me on, then afterward I won’t ever see you again.” From then on, I kept an eye on Radka. We’re in the same neighborhood, wherever she went – out to the fields, to the fountain, out in the yard, I always kept watch on her. The foreman left and she took to looking real crestfallen. I was the only one who noticed it, because I was the only one in the village who knew her secret. The foreman must’ve lied to her that he was a bachelor and that he’d come back to marry her. Maybe he really was a bachelor, who knows? The world is full of those types, shysters. They’re always the smoothest talkers with the women, they can bamboozle them easy as pie. And Radka, as young and foolish as she was, I’m sure it didn’t take much to reel her in. Her mother’s out slogging in the fields by herself, her father doesn’t set foot in the house to see his children, to keep them in line, to harangue them. While a woman on her own is like a horse set loose in a field – it’ll gallop off wherever it wants. So when I saw her floundering like a fish on dry land, I decided to go and arrange a match with her father.
Salty Kalcho had repulsed me as long as I can remember. He’d never done me any harm, but still he struck me as downright repulsive. I don’t know why folks like him make me so sick to my stomach. They don’t walk upright on their own two feet, but slither around, leaving a trail of slime behind them. Makes me want to stomp on him good and hard, and if I can’t squash him flat under my sole, at least I’ll rip his tail off. He’s nothing but entrails, food goes in one end, shit comes out the other. And other people are putting that food in his mouth. His father was a hardworking man and left him a nice bit of land, and he made a hash of it, turned it into a shambles. A dozen acres, that’s a whole farm. We had three fields side by side. I never once saw him set foot in those fields to spread manure, plow, or sow. His wife would be out there digging around like a mole, sometimes on her own, sometimes with her daughters. I’m plowing or sowing on one side of the boundary, she’s there on the other. There were years when even she didn’t go to work those fields, they got grown clean over with thistles and thorns. And those weeds jumped right over onto my land, the wind spread the seeds. I had half a mind to plow right over that boundary, to plow them up and clean those fields, but no can do. It’s not like going and swiping something and carrying it off. For years on end those fields were like a thorn in my side and I tried to buy them off him many times, but he was having none of it. I ain’t got any land for sale, he would say. Just lying there on his veranda, smoking his cigarettes and listening to the birds sing. The man was having himself a real fine spa vacation, while I was out there busting my ass to yank up the weeds that spread from his field to mine like an infectious disease. But I finally found a way to stick it to him. As soon as the foreman had left, the very next day I went to make a match with his daughter. You may not believe it, but if he’d dug in his heels at the wedding, if he’d said: Nope, I ain’t giving a square inch of land, I wouldn’t have asked him for those five acres. Nor would I have sent his daughter packing. I was sure that after the wedding I would work that empty land as if it were my own. Fine, but when I saw how he swallowed his tongue and went dumb, I said to myself, take it, take as much as you want, even if you were to take the life of a slug like him you wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep, ’cause the world’s got no use for him.
During ’46 or ’47, they started talking up the cooperative farm, Sto
yan Kralev and his people started going door to door, canvassing. They went to Salty Kalcho’s, too, and he promised that as soon as they formed the co-op, he’d join up, too. Stoyan Kralev had found his soft spot, he’d promised to make him watchman over the co-op’s vineyard and he was game, just so long as he could strut around in his army uniform and lie around on his veranda like before. I found out about that business and decided to have a little chat with him. We hadn’t spoken a word to each other in five years, I thought he was angry with me and wouldn’t even give me the time of day. I met him once on the road and stopped him. I’m talking away, he’s listening. You voted for the republic in the elections, I told him, but that business is going to come back to haunt you when the Americans and the English roll in here. What, he says, they’re coming? Just like the Russians came. Since one side came, why can’t the other? Russia limped out of the war just skin and bones, while those folks are still strong. And the opposition’s strong too. We got more or less half the votes in the elections, and when they press the people for more deliveries to the state, it’ll get even stronger. All the Americans and Englishmen need to do is show up at the border, and the people’ll welcome them with open arms. So over the course of our chat, I convinced him to come over to the opposition. You’ll just stand aside, I told him, and keep your mouth shut. If they pressure you, you’ll just tell them you’re waiting to see how things are with the co-op, and if all’s well and good, you’ll join.
The cooperative farm was set up in the fall with sixty families. I checked the list of members and lo and behold! Salty Kalcho was there too. By the next fall, the co-op had fallen apart. They’d snatched back all their livestock and equipment, squabbled over the land, since the field boundaries had to be redrawn – in short, all hell had broken loose. Well, well, I said to Salty Kalcho, you all scampered away right quick! You went for wool and came home shorn. Don’t get me started, he said, I got burned bad, now I’ve learned my lesson. The next year, they started talking about setting up a new co-op, and there he was again – all ready to sign up. The campaigners would corner him, he’d promise to join. We’d pull him aside, and he’d swear he wanted nothing to do with the co-op. He kept flip-flopping – going over to their side, then coming back to ours, as if he didn’t have brains enough to decide on his own which side to join. And back then, they fought tooth and nail for every person. The co-op had fallen apart once and it would fall apart again unless more people joined the second time around. I told Salty Kalcho I’d give him back those five acres he’d given me as dowry if he promised not to join the co-op. They were mine by law, but his by honor and conscience since the bride had passed away so soon after the wedding. Besides, giving it back would mean a decrease in the deliveries I owed the state. I’d worked that land for five years as only I know how, and it had become one hell of a plot – sow one seed and two shoots sprout up. Salty Kalcho kept his promise, so I gave him the land on the condition that I would take it back if he failed to keep his word.
The new co-op did have more members, but no livestock to speak of. Anybody who had two cows butchered one of them. Anybody who had two pigs butchered one of them, and so on and so forth with sheep and poultry, so as not to put their animals in the common pot and get their state quotas upped. Hunger raged in the city, people were ready to tear you apart for a pound of meat, lard, or flour. The village turned into one giant slaughterhouse, every yard stank of rotting flesh. The authorities went sniffing around, but for every person they caught, ten others got away. They ordered that all threshing be done in one spot so that they could seize the grain right from the threshing machine. So folks started threshing on the sly. They’d reap during the day, sneak into the fields in the evening to steal sheaves, and thresh them at night. Some made threshing floors in the woods, down in the meadows or around the pastures, and did their threshing there. I never threshed on the sly myself. I knew Stoyan Kralev was watching me like a hawk, so I didn’t dare pluck even a single ear of wheat from the fields. I’d trade meat for flour, cart stuff to town now and then, I somehow managed to get by. Yet they still found something to pin on me. One evening, as they were making the rounds of the village, snooping on the houses, they heard thumping sounds coming from Salty Kalcho’s place. They burst in – and there was Gruda, Kalcho’s wife, flailing wheat on the floor. She’d swiped three sheaves from the field and dragged them home. Just enough to land her in hot water. They pressed Salty Kalcho, even threatened to lock him up, so he – gutless wonder that he is – told them about our agreement and under what conditions I’d given him the five acres back. In short, I’d put him up to it. They forced him into the cooperative farm the following day, and grabbed hold of the five acres to boot. So he not only broke his word, but also left me holding the bag.
That whole business was a welcome turn for Stoyan Kralev, who made lots of hay from it, and it was then that we really locked horns. Before the Ninth, we’d never seen eye to eye on politics, but even after the Ninth we hadn’t gotten into wrangles about anything. When we’d meet somewhere, he’d say: Kinsman, how ’bout me and you join forces in a collective farm? But he’d say it just like that, as a joke, ’cause he knew I was having none of it. But now he came to my place. I was by myself, the wife had gone out somewhere. Give me your revolver, he said. What revolver? The one you shot with at the wedding. I dug around in a little trunk under the bed that was full of all sorts of paraphernalia and gave it to him. I had another revolver, this one here you’re looking at right now. That other one was all rusted out, I hadn’t used it in years, at the wedding I’d fired the other one. What do you want with this old hunk of junk, I asked, can’t you see the barrel’s all plugged up, no bullet’s gonna get through there. A gun’s a gun, he says, it could be cleaned up and put to good use. A man like you can’t be trusted, he says. You’re with the opposition, who knows? You could take up arms against the government. If I wanted to take up arms against the government, I said, I would’ve hidden this here gun. I’m not taking up arms against anyone, I’m just protecting myself. That’s why I’m in the opposition. If you catch me taking up arms against the government, you have the right to put me on trial. Before the Ninth, you were the opposition, going on and on about Russia to anybody who’d listen. Nobody did a thing to you. That’s how you saw things, so that’s what you prattled on about. Hard words break no bones. If they’d caught you with a gun in your hand or helping out those subversives, they would’ve sent you where you belong, and you would’ve dragged me down right along with you…
Those weren’t just empty words. Back in ’43, he’d again come to my house one evening. He had found out that I’d be going to the city the next day, so he gave me a sack of homespun cloth to take there for him. You can sit right on top of it, he said, it’s just wool, you can’t hurt it. He told me the street and the house I needed to deliver it to ten times, I even remember it to this day. Twenty-one Chataldzha Street. As soon as he told me to sit on that sack, I knew what this business was about so I set off. Along the way I opened up the sack – there were clothes inside. Ten sets of homespun woolens, jackets and pants. It was plain as day to me that he was a greenhorn who didn’t know the first thing about conspiracies, so when I got close to the city I pulled off the road and hid the bag in a hole in the stone quarry. I pounded a stick into the ground as a sign and continued down the main road. And good thing that I did what I did. On the edge of the city, three policemen stopped me and searched me. I found the street and the house, I stopped and went into the courtyard. A woman came out to meet me. You were wanting to buy some meat, I said, so I brought it. The woman stared at me as if I weren’t speaking Bulgarian. I sat down on a bench in front of the house, she sat down, too. I told her I had brought a sack of clothes for them, she ran into the house and brought a man out. I told him where he could find me in two hours and he found me. On my way back to the village, I left him by the quarry, told him where I’d hidden the bag, and continued on my way. I hadn’t even unhitched the horses yet when Stoy
an Kralev turned up. Kinsman, did you deliver the bag? Nope, I couldn’t, I said. The police stopped me on my way into town, opened it up, saw what was inside, and took it. They wanted to arrest me, but I told them who’d given it to me, where I was taking it, and they let me go. They ordered me to tell you that I delivered the bag where it was supposed to go, or I’d be in the soup. I trust you won’t give me away for telling you. That godfather of mine turned so yellow I could hardly recognize him. You better thank this old rebel, I told him, if it were up to you, you would’ve sent two houses up in flames. And I told him what had really happened. He calmed down, got ahold of himself. Kinsman, he said, long life to you, you’ve taken a heavy load off my shoulders.
Wolf Hunt Page 10
