Now it was cold in her room, it smelled musty, like mothballs and faded paper, Mela’s world of theater posters and actors’ photos on the walls had been ravaged by flies, it was yellowed and dead. No other traces of her besides that dead world remained in the room, there was not even a button left of her, Nikolin only now noticed this. He opened the window for a bit to let in fresh air and as soon as he got the stove lighted he went into the other room. He dipped the chicken in the boiling water and started plucking it. There wasn’t time for stew or some other dish, but he would at least boil the chicken and make soup from the giblets. Mela must be freezing from her travels, a bit of soup would do her good. He put the giblets in one pot to boil and put the chicken in the other, and the whole time he was thinking how nice it was that she’d come home for the new year’s holidays. Tomorrow or the next day I’ll put the pig under the knife, we’ll make some sausages and black pudding and then Mela will go on her way. Who knows how long it’s been since she’s had that kind of thing, in any case I wonder how often she eats and what she eats? Last year I gave her money when she left. Is that enough? It’s enough. When you need more, just write, I’ll send some. Okay, I’ll write. But she didn’t write. But now look, she came home!
He thought he heard the front gate creak and dashed outside. He had left the light on in the yard, he could see the gate, but it was closed. The branches of the acacia tree were creaking in the gusts of wind. In the darkness of the gardens it was as if there was a huge blacksmith’s bellows, someone was pumping the handle of the bellows ever harder and more often, the stream of air bent the branches of the acacia, rubbing them together, it swept up the dry leaves and whirled them in a funnel, a tin lid fell from the mouth of the funnel with a clatter, and the rooster’s crowing rang out like an echo. There’s a nasty cold front coming, he thought to himself, and went back inside. The two pots were bubbling, the room was warm, the alarm clock showed nine o’ clock. He took the boiled chicken out of the pot and left it to cool, he took the soup off the burner as well and went about setting the table. He put on a new tablecloth, plates, forks, spoons, he also brought out a little flask of new wine, murmuring to himself the whole time: “I’ll put this here, and that there. No, wait, that’s not right, now there it is. Now I’ll wipe down the glasses real nice with a towel. That one’s for Mela, this one’s for me. Mela’s glass should be closer to the stove. She’ll come back freezing cold, she’ll sit by the stove to warm up. I’ll pull the table a little closer to the stove. Just like that, there we go. I’ll pour the wine later, it should only be poured once we start eating…”
He did all of this deliberately slowly, several times over, and was talking to himself so as to scatter his painful thoughts and not to allow them inside himself. He could sense them hovering about him, stalking him from all sides, jostling to burst into his head. And then it was eleven o’clock, midnight passed, and Mela still hadn’t come home. There was nothing more he could do, he sat down on the bed to wait and even as he was sitting down the thoughts that had been crouching around him the whole evening like a pack of predators with bristling fur and bared teeth bloodthirstily pounced on him and started tearing away at him. He had no more strength to drive them away, he lay down on his back and with a sweet sort of agony let them rip the living flesh from his body. Mela won’t come back tonight, they shouted in unison, she’ll stay with Ivan Shibilev, because he…
From his left side a short rifle shot blew in on the blizzard – bang – like those short dry sounds made by a flyswatter. About one hundred feet away from him, Salty Kalcho was standing in the blind; what on earth could he be shooting at in this blizzard? In any other case, he would have been on his guard, waiting for some game to come his way as well, but now the shot only reawakened his memories of another short, dry shot he had heard in 1945 in the backyard of the estate. There had been a little corn left in the fields, they had harvested it and were hauling it back in the cart, they ate lunch in the kitchen, and Devetakov went upstairs to rest while Nikolin went to shuck the corn. He sat in the cart and to save time, he tossed the shucked cobs right into the mouth of the crib. After about an hour he got thirsty, and before going into the kitchen, he saw Devetakov standing on the veranda, washed, combed, and changed, as always after coming back from the fields. Since early spring he had put a little varnished table and chair on the veranda and in his free time he would sit there. There was always an open book on the table, but Nikolin had noticed that Devetakov was never looking at it, instead he stared straight ahead at the fields, as if trying to discover something there, or perhaps he had discovered it and just couldn’t get enough of the sight. Nikolin had stopped many times behind him, trying to figure out what he was looking at in the fields, but he didn’t see anything in particular, in early spring, the fields were like carelessly spread aprons, both small and large in the cheerful reseda hue of sprouting wheat, dark brown with stripes of sunflowers or corn, in the summer bright yellow, dark green, and golden, and now black like a tarry sea, deserted, calm, and sad; a person or cart was rarely spotted on the highway that stretched like a white bridge over that sea, and where the highway ended, village houses, white and small as cubes of sugar, could be seen. But Devetakov, with his elbows propped on the table and his head resting in his palms, was always looking out over it, his eyes squinting against the light. Nikolin drank some water, set out toward the backyard again, and on his way heard a pop like the distant shot of a rifle – bang. He climbed into the cart and before sitting down, he looked out over the field. There were two hunters in the village and at that time they were often wandering about the estate. Later, as he shucked the corn, he realized that the shot had come from the direction of the house, so he climbed out of the cart and went to look in the front yard – sometimes the hunters stopped by to ask for water. There was no one there, Devetakov wasn’t on the veranda either. Nikolin worked up a sweat pulling the empty cart under the awning by hand, so he went to go upstairs to change into a dry shirt.
The varnished table had toppled over with its legs in the air at the far end of the veranda, and Devetakov was sprawled next to it. He was lying on his right side with his head thrown back. With one hand he was grasping the leg of the table, with the other the collar of his shirt, as if trying to rip it open. Later, when he re-created that tragic event in his memory over and over again, with ever new details, Nikolin recalled that the first thing he saw on the veranda was the book, fallen open with the cover up, after that his gaze fell on the fresh scratches on the floor, and following these scratches as if following tracks, he caught sight of the toppled table, and next to it two sock-shod feet, and only then did he see Devetakov himself with his head thrown back and crammed in the corner. Nikolin froze, not from fear, rather from surprise to see him in such a state. He kept staring at him and wondering why he was sprawled out on the floor: Had he tripped or fainted or what? The fingers of his left hand, which had been clutching his collar, relaxed and his hand slid to the floor. Nikolin grabbed him under the arms to lift him up and carry him to his room, but Devetakov’s right hand was clutching the table, dragging it along the floor. “Come on, let go of it!” Nikolin told him, and then he saw the revolver gleaming on the floor, bluish-black and so small that you could hide it in your palm. Only now did he recall the short, dry shot he had heard coming from the house an hour earlier and cried: “Uncle Mihail, what have you done?!” Then he dashed out into the yard. He ran back and forth, shouting in a hoarse voice: “Heeeey, heeey, people, is there anybody here?” But there was no one in the house or yard besides him. And as he was running back and forth and shouting, across the garden he happened to catch sight of Malayi, the threshing machine operator, who was carrying his wife. Nikolin ran over to them and said that Devetakov was lying on the veranda looking more dead than alive, “and plus next to him there’s a little volver.” Malayi set his wife on a bench and headed toward the house, saying: “I just see Devetakov on ze balcony…I just see him.” He felt for his pulse, unbuttoned
his shirt, and asked: “Vere ve put?”
Still pale and shaking, Nikolin opened the bedroom door and the two of them laid Devetakov on his bed.
“He dead,” Malayi said, taking off his cap and standing for a moment next to the dead man with a gloomy, inscrutable expression. “You go veellage, tell priest.”
He went back to his wife, while Nikolin went out to the highway and headed toward the village. He didn’t think to hitch up the carriage or to ride a horse, but set out on foot. The sun was already setting when he entered the yard of the late cook, Auntie Raina. Only her husband, Grandpa Stavri, was home, they talked a bit, then went to tell the priest. He got back to the estate when it was dark, but didn’t dare go into the house where the dead man lay, instead he stayed standing in the yard. Shadows were crawling in from all sides like incorporeal creatures, circling around him and giving off muted, sinister sounds. It’s nothing, I must be seeing things, he told himself to keep up his courage, but he spun around with the shadows so that nothing could jump at him from behind. But now something was pulling at his clothes from behind, it crawled up and stopped on his shoulders. It had no weight, no soul, but he could sense it on the back of his neck, yet he didn’t dare lift his hand to brush it off. He hunched his shoulder up to his ears, hugged himself, and stood there unmoving, but the thing grabbed his throat and started strangling him. He strained to yell for help, but instead of a scream, a muted groan tore from his lungs. The shadows are strangling me, he thought, and tried to free his throat. He couldn’t feel anything, yet his fingers met resistance and he couldn’t tear off whatever was squeezing his throat like pliers. And then he spotted some dim light coming through the dark branches of the trees in the garden. He ran toward the light and saw that it was coming from Malayi’s window. He stopped in front of the window and as soon as he stopped, whatever had been strangling him let go of his throat and a weight lifted from his back. He thought about going inside where Malayi and his wife were, but he had never stepped over the threshold of their house and didn’t dare do it now.
Malayi was Hungarian and no one knew what long and winding roads had led him to this godforsaken region. He was a husky man in his midfifties, with a hooked, beak-like nose and round, platinum eyes. Eyes seemingly devoid of pupils and closed to the warmth of the soul could only belong to someone completely indifferent, or to a despairing loner. If these eyes were windows onto his soul and if one could peek into their pupils, one would surely see an enormous emptiness. But they never stopped on anyone else’s eyes for more than a second and were always looking somewhere aside, as if concentrated on their own emptiness. His eyes, in combination with his beak-like nose and grease-stained work clothes, which resembled bristling plumage, gave him the look of a bird of prey, but an aging one, already resigned and indifferent to everything. His voice, too, was full and hard, but without those modulations that give the sonic impression of feelings. He uttered few words, and even then with an accent that jumped from the first to the last syllable as if going up and down stairs, with hard, closed vowels, but always using the politest of forms: “Boy, COME here if YOU pleases!”
That is what he had said to Nikolin eleven years ago when the latter had just come to the estate and was passing by the garage housing the threshing machine.
“Please be SO kind, geev me HAND here!”
Nikolin understood his gestures more than his words and grabbed the screw that had been pointed out to him. Malayi dug into the tractor’s womb up to his elbow, moved some part, and said: “Thank YOU, boy, free TO go!” Nikolin was seeing a tractor for the first time and his astonishment knew no bounds when the huge machine began to rumble and shake at the mere turn of a key, its parts moved and spun as if alive, the garage filled with a deafening racket and a warmth smelling of burning oil. At one point the machinist took a big silver watch out of the breast pocket of his grease-stained work shirt, glanced at it, and put it back in his pocket. He didn’t look at the boy even once while he worked and left the garage without saying a word to him. Nikolin stared at the tractor a bit longer and then also went out, and at that time the Hungarian was already entering the yard of the lean-to where he lived with his wife. Actually, it wasn’t a lean-to, but a freestanding house with two rooms, a kitchen and a glassed-in veranda on the front of it. Back in the day, Devetakov had left his new threshing machine in the garage year-round, since there was no one in the area to take care of it. And when he had met Malayi by chance on a train, he made him such an offer that the Hungarian immediately took him up on it and came to work at the estate. He had a wife and two children, a little boy, Ferenc, and a little girl, Zsuzsa. After they had finished primary school in the village, they had sent them to study in the city.
When he walked past the fence of the house, Nikolin saw the Hungarian carrying his wife in his arms like a small child. He already knew from Auntie Raina the cook that Ms. Clara was paralyzed, but he was amazed that she was as fragile and delicate as a girl, and that her eyes were so wide and such a clear blue. From then on, whenever he passed by their house, he would always see Malayi carrying her out three times a day, and depending on the time of day, setting her in the gazebo or on the grass in the yard. And every time he would be struck by the gentleness with which the Hungarian, who had managed to change into clean clothes in the span of a minute, carried his wife in his arms, as if carrying a little girl, and how that little girl, like those delicate flowers that draw their living juices from the air, wrapped both her arms around his neck and spoke to him in their language with a gentle and ringing childlike voice. Once or twice a month, Malayi would bring her to the big house to play the piano, and if Devetakov was at home, he and Ms. Clara would speak French together. Malayi would set the sheet music above the keys, sit down at the end of the table with his arms crossed, and gaze at his wife with a smile, and while she turned the round, spinning stool toward the piano and started to play, his harsh and inscrutable face with its nose like a bird of prey’s beak would suddenly light up with some inner light and take on a strange expression, at once cheerful and sad, deeply pensive and smiling, while a soft, luminous radiance would stream from his cold eyes and large clear tears would glitter along his dark eyelids. The sounds flew up from beneath Ms. Clara’s thin white fingers like invisible birds, circling through the air, touching the ceiling with their fluffy wings, diving down to brush against the stove, the walls, everything, they raced, played like a spring flock of birds, filling the room to bursting. Little by little, Nikolin began to see them as living, multicolored spots that flew smoothly and sonorously through the air, chasing one another, singing or crying with sad, moaning voices, whirling like a vortex and seeming to disappear into the distance, but really entering into Nikolin himself, filling his soul, and causing him to shudder with some impatience, to rejoice, or to feel an inexplicable sweet sorrow.
Nikolin could not go into Malayi and Ms. Clara’s house, because he knew that now Ms. Clara was lying on her back in bed or sitting in a chair, talking to her husband in her chirping voice and smiling. She always smiled charmingly and happily like a young girl when she was speaking with Devetakov, when her husband carried her in his arms, and when she sat out in the yard in fine weather or in the garden on the soft grass, and her eyes were such a clear blue and so radiant that to Nikolin it seemed that instead of a face she had a luminous smile. The dim light behind the curtain went out, the darkness around him faded, the sinister shadows once again crept up around him, and he again started bucking, running, and whirling around with them. And while he was spinning and running around the garden, he caught a whiff of a warm scent, steeped in the sour breath of a horse, that enveloped him like a caress. It crossed his mind that he hadn’t fed the horses that evening, so he went into the barn. He filled the manger with hay, lay down between the two horses, and spent the whole night calmed and warmed by the presence of those two creatures. And the whole night Devetakov was right there before his eyes, sometimes as he had been on the veranda, with a yellowed face, his
blue eyelids screwed tightly shut, other times as he had been eleven years ago, bareheaded in a plaid shirt with rolled-up sleeves. The two of them stood before his eyes side by side, and with great effort he tried to rid his imagination of the dead one, and only to see the living one, and when he managed to do this, he felt a hand on his shoulder, a soft, white, warm hand.
Wolf Hunt Page 15
