Wolf Hunt

by Ivailo Pretov

  Back then he had been a sixteen-year-old boy. His uncle had brought him to the estate while on his way to the city one day to sell firewood. In the middle of the village of Orlovo, a Turk had stopped them and paid for the wood without even bargaining for it, and led them to the estate. They unloaded the wood, and before they left, a young man around thirty passed by them, bareheaded and in his shirtsleeves, and asked Nikolin’s uncle whether he could bring him two or three more cartloads of wood. His uncle promised to do so, and as the young man walked away, he realized that this must be the landowner, Mihail Devetakov, so he ran and caught up with him. He took off his hat and while talking to him, he held his hat over his heart so pleadingly and bent double so slavishly that the young man looked back toward the cart. The two men soon came over to Nikolin.

  “Nikolin, my boy, the young master here is looking for a boy to work for him,” his uncle said. “Will you stay?”

  “Sure I’ll stay, why not,” Nikolin said, staring at his uncle’s feet.

  For a year his uncle had been looking to find him work, so Nikolin was not surprised by his decision to leave him at the estate that very minute; besides, he, too, was already eager to leave home. Devetakov could see that the boy was shy, so he tried to win him over. He put his hand on his shoulder, led him toward the house, and told him that he needn’t worry about anything, as he was already a big boy. He also asked him what kind of work he would like to do.

  “Well, until now I’ve herded sheep,” Nikolin said.

  “That’s all well and good, but I’ve already got two shepherds,” Devetakov said. “Wander around the yard for a day or two and take a look here and there, then we’ll see.”

  While they were talking, Devetakov had led the boy into the house. It had two stories and was shaped like a horseshoe, there were five rooms on the upper floor, with the two end rooms jutting forward and all connected by a wooden veranda. The middle room, called the “parlor,” was the largest and best furnished. It had three windows and a carved wood ceiling, while the furnishings were antiques: a large oval-shaped table with twelve chairs made of black wood, a breakfront with thick, protruding glass panes, two leather sofas, a stove made of glazed tiles, and a piano. Two of the lower rooms were taken up by Auntie Raina and the estate steward, while the others were used for the kitchen, bathroom, and pantry. From the outside, the house appeared unsightly, hulking, and even angry, but on the inside, it was cozy and comfortable, cool in the summer, warm in the winter, and impervious to the harsh winds of the steppe. There was a tiled stove that reached to the ceiling in every room, and this was, in fact, what set it apart from village houses. Way back when, Devetakov’s father had built it for a large family, but he ended up having only a daughter and a son. His wife died early of appendicitis, while his daughter ran off with a man when still a schoolgirl and was never seen or heard from again.

  They walked along the wooden veranda and went into the westernmost upper room. When he saw the colorful carpet on the floor, Nikolin stopped on the doorstep and instinctively glanced at his feet, shod in crude leather sandals over thick woolen socks.

  “Come in, come in!” Devetakov said, again putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  His voice was gentle, affectionate, and inviting, yet Nikolin stepped into the center of the room as if on hot coals and stopped there. In the corner by the southern window there was an iron bed with a head- and footboard covered with a colorful blanket, a little table with two chairs, a brown-tiled stove, tall and shiny as a glazed pitcher, and that was the extent of the furnishing.

  “You’ll sleep here, Nikolin,” Devetakov said, and turned toward the woman who was passing by on the veranda. “Auntie Raina, we’ve got a new worker, his name is Nikolin. Prepare his bed for tonight, and draw him a bath now. Once he’s bathed, give him a shirt and shoes and don’t forget to call him for supper. Run along then, Nikolin, go help Auntie Raina heat the water for your bath.”

  Nikolin turned to leave the room and burst into tears. The sobs rose up suddenly from the depths of his soul like a storm, shaking him all over and overcoming him entirely.

  “Are you missing your village?” Devetakov said. “If you don’t want to stay here, I’ll take you back to your village first thing tomorrow.”

  “Oh, no!” Nikolin bawled in a hoarse, breaking voice, hiding his face in his shaking hands. “Nooo!”

  “He’s missing his mom and dad,” Auntie Raina said. “Don’t cry, my boy, you’re a big boy already!”

  Devetakov signaled to her to step out onto the veranda and whispered to her that the boy was an orphan so they shouldn’t mention anything about his parents or ask him anything about his past. Poor thing, it’s all too much for him, she said, her eyes filling with tears. With the instinct of a kind woman, she realized why the boy was shaking with such violent sobs bursting from the bottom of his heart, so she took his hand like a small child and led him to the kitchen. Later Nikolin often thought to himself that if it hadn’t been for that woman, he would have run away from the estate that very day and gone back to his own village. She took him in as her own son from the very first minute, comforted him and gave him new clothes, showed him where everything was, and within a few days introduced him to life on the estate. In the morning she knocked on his door to ask him whether he’d slept well and always found him standing near the window, already dressed. It’s hard to get used to a strange place, my boy, she would tell him, while leading him to the kitchen for breakfast, because she could see the signs of sleeplessness on his face: His voice was hoarse, his eyes were red, his face pale and anguished.

  His life on the estate began so suddenly, it was so new, so fantastically easy and carefree that for months he could not get used to it. He lay awake for whole nights on end, he didn’t dare reach out and savor the cleanliness of the sheets that enveloped him with unwonted cool gentleness, he couldn’t savor the soft bed, the spacious room, and the calm. The estate wasn’t large, consisting of two hundred fifty acres of land, three hundred sheep, six horses, of which two were for riding, again as many oxen, and a few cows. The servants were not too numerous either: Auntie Raina, the two shepherds, the stable man, the oxherd, the threshing machine operator, the steward, and the elderly Grandpa Kunyo, who didn’t seem to have any particular occupation. Several days after Nikolin arrived at the estate, the master left to go abroad, as Auntie Raina told him, and didn’t come back until after the New Year. During that whole time, no one gave him any specific tasks, but he had been used to working from a very young age and sitting idle pained him. He helped Auntie Raina in the kitchen, bringing her wood, water, and supplies, he also helped the herdsmen. At that time he knew the most about herding sheep and so he spent his free time with the sheep. It just so happened that one of the shepherds got sick and stayed at home in the village all winter, so Nikolin took his place. Every morning if the weather was clear, he would drive the sheep out into the garden to stretch their legs a bit, he tossed hay and corn on the snow for them to eat, watered them at the well, and cleaned the manure from the sheep pen. After the New Year, in the worst cold snap, lambing time began. He could tell which ewe would give birth on a given day, during the night, or on the next day, and didn’t let her out of his sight. The ewe would start lying a ways away from the herd for an hour or two at a time, not eating much, and the wool of her belly would be slick with sweat. He would isolate her in the most sheltered part of the sheep pen and wait for hours, because every ewe birthed different – some quickly and easily, others taking longer, with more trouble. The lambs were different too. Some jumped to their feet as soon as they were born, wagging their tails and looking to nurse, while others were born weak as preemies and couldn’t get to their feet. There were also cases when a first-time mother’s milk dried up, or she crushed her little one or couldn’t get it settled at her udder.

  When five or even ten lambs were being born a day, Nikolin didn’t sleep whole nights, but rather lay fully clothed on the couch in the kitchen, getting up
every hour to go to the sheep pen to see if there was a new lamb. He would take it over to the stove to dry it off, and if it had been smothered during the birthing, he would blow into its mouth and rub it as the old shepherds in the village had taught him, thus bringing it back to life. Every morning Auntie Raina found him fast asleep on the couch after a sleepless night, with a lamb next to him on the floor. “Good Lord, this child’s going to catch his death with these lambs,” she would tell Devetakov. “Tell him to sleep up in his room, he hasn’t had a square meal or a good night’s sleep since I don’t know when!” But instead of telling the boy to sleep in his room at night, Devetakov would often come down to the kitchen in the evening to see the newborn lambs. He had just come back from France and as was his wont after just returning from abroad, he still wore the clothes he had worn there – a homemade wool sweater with a high collar, a knitted cap, and gray, checkered pants. Outside, everything was frozen in ice and snow, beyond the window a blizzard was blustering or a fairy-tale-like white wasteland stretched, while in the kitchen hovered the mystery of birth, of something warm and life-giving, incarnate in the deep, moist eyes of the lambs, in their effort to stand on their fragile legs, too spindly for their bodies, to take their first gulp of milk, and that filled him with childlike joy and excitement. Auntie Raina slept in the room next door and could hear them going to the sheep pen and returning, and would come into the kitchen. “Misho, Misho, you’re nothing but an overgrown child!” she would affectionately scold her master. “Run along, get to bed now, it must be the middle of the night! Those lambs will be born with or without your help, God’s watching over them from above…”

  The sheep stayed at the estate only during the winter months. In the first days of spring, they were driven to the summer pastures, nobody gave Nikolin any specific jobs to do, so he once again hovered around Auntie Raina. She was the cook, but she also took care of the house. During the most intense days of the harvest, her husband and two daughters came to help her, the rest of the time she managed on her own. She had a room on the lower floor, but only stayed there to sleep on the coldest winter days or when she had to stay late at the estate. Since there was no housekeeper to track expenses and maintain the house, in time she had taken over that duty as well. She kept track of everything, she knew how much of everything there was and what the house needed, she kept even the empty desk drawers locked, spent the household budget as she saw fit, and answered to Devetakov down to the last cent. She also gave Nikolin his first salary.

  “This here is half a salary, since you came in the middle of the month. From now on you’ll get a full salary of eight hundred leva.”

  Nikolin had never seen, much less possessed, so much money, which for that time was no small sum. For his shepherding work, he’d been paid in kind – with grain, flour, and cheese, which he would bring home. The sheep owners had fed him three times a day, his aunt had mended or replaced his clothes, and he had had no need of anything more. Now he was fed and clothed better than ever, without really having worked, and on top of everything, they were giving him so much money. Auntie Raina held out the money to him, but he turned aside, as if she were forcing him to do something shameful.

  “The poor little darling!” she said. “People will kill for a single lev, and he doesn’t dare reach out and take four hundred leva!” She wasn’t making fun of him, but wondering aloud how a child who had lived until now in such poverty and isolation could be so repressed that he had lost his sense of self-worth. “You’ll go put it up in the desk drawer and lock it. That way month by month, year by year, the money will pile up and someday you, too, will have a house and land like everybody else. You’re a bachelor, right? Just wait a year or two and you’ll have found yourself a bride. And you’ll give half of it to your sisters. The elder one’s fourteen, you say, she may be making a home of her own before long, and the younger one’ll be soon to follow. Your uncle’s as poor as a church mouse, but a girl can’t go to a strange home empty-handed.” While speaking to him gently and admonishingly, Auntie Raina led him up to his room, split the money in half, and set it in the desk drawer. “This pile here is for you, that one there’s for your sisters. Now here’s the key, you hide it well somewhere, paying mind not to lose it. When you need money, you’ll unlock the drawer and take some…”

  That same year and at that same time Ivan Shibilev was living in Varna, hesitating as to whether to start his third year of high school or not. He had passed the first two with flying colors, and without much effort at that, but still, he likely would not have continued his studies if his mother hadn’t arrived from the village on business. She was widowed and had taken a second husband in Orlovo, but Ivan Shibilev had refused to move there with her. He spent one day in the house, then told his mother that he couldn’t spend another minute there and went back home. All his mother’s efforts to integrate him into her new family were in vain. Later she gave birth to a girl from her second marriage, but at that time Ivan was her only child and she had decided to remarry for his sake alone. Her late husband had left more than twenty-five acres of land, a nice two-story house, livestock, and money, but during her four years of widowhood, the estate had started going to pieces. She was young and had no head for business, everyone cheated her and before she knew it, the money had dried up, the land had gone to seed, and of the livestock all that remained were two oxen and a cow. To secure a future for her son, she got married a second time, and as luck would have it, her second husband turned out to be kindly and, like herself, moderately wealthy. He wasn’t offended by the boy’s hardheadedness, even though he saw how his mother was suffering and was ready to go back to her own village with him. They decided to leave the boy alone and to write to him every day or two in the hope that when the cold settled in and he got lonely, he would want to come back to them. But the boy wasn’t lonely in the least, on the contrary, this arrangement suited him very well and he begged his mother not to worry about him. He welcomed her gladly and she saw that he was healthy and happy and that was the most important thing for her. Even the winter did not scare him off. They delivered chopped dry wood to him, put stoves in both rooms, his mother cleaned and cooked for him at least two times a week. And so at the age of twelve Ivan Shibilev started living alone as the master of the house. He was very handy at many things, and even at that early age he started showing the penchants and talents that would later cause his fellow villagers to call him the “Painkiller.” Alongside his homework and housework, he played every musical instrument in the village, he wrote poetry and painted in watercolor, and he often stopped by his neighbor’s woodworking shop to watch him and to try his hand at the lighter tools.

  Ivan Shibilev started his life in the city under the best conditions imaginable. His mother rented him a nice room in the city center with full room and board; that is, he ate with the landlords and had everything he needed to keep himself full, well dressed, and able to concentrate on his studies. His lessons posed no trouble to him at all, he remembered them as soon as he heard them in class, and he finished his homework in less than an hour, so for him the problem wasn’t the time spent in class, but outside of it. His curiosity drew him irresistibly toward the life of the city and by the end of his first term he had more or less tasted of all its delights. Every day after school he would rent a bike and pedal furiously down the asphalt path along the Sea Garden, he would drop in at the shooting range, go to the harbor to watch the foreign ships, he would pass by the market or head down the main street, where in the early evening the whole city would come out for a stroll and could be seen in its full kaleidoscopic glory. He was most drawn to the cinema.

  There were three cinemas in the city center with the imposing names of Splendid, Gloria, and Olympus, and each of them showed films according to the means and mentalities of the various urban classes. At Splendid, the most comfortable and expensive cinema hall, they showed “serious films,” which were watched mostly by the local highlife; respectable housewives, clerks, and trade
smen went to Gloria, while Olympus was overflowing with hoi polloi – gangs of kids, cart drivers, bootblacks, servants, and all manner of folks looking for longer-lasting and less-pricey spectacles. Ivan Shibilev went to all three cinemas, most of all to Olympus, since the films shown there were multiepisode series and were entertaining. You could stay in Olympus from nine in the morning until midnight, you could eat, munch sunflower seeds, and even smoke, thus you could hardly breathe from the dust and tobacco smoke. It was not the Olympic gods parading across the screen, but rather the movie stars of the Wild West. The audience loved best of all Buffalo Bill and his mystical horse, the eternally tobacco-chawing Wallace Beery, Rin Tin Tin the dog and Rex the horse, and many others. Brave and bighearted, they attacked fearlessly and found their way out of the stickiest of situations, were sharpshooters even at a gallop, riding backward and firing two pistols apiece, escaping unscathed from a shower of Indian arrows. Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin, and Krachun and Malcho squandered at least a ton of pies in every film, smashing them in each other’s faces, tripping and falling at every step, breaking dishes, causing fires and floods, getting caught up in all sorts of shenanigans, and always outwitting the police. The smoky theater shook with the audience’s ecstatic exclamations and uncontrollable laughter.

  At Splendid they also showed “forbidden” – in most cases amorous – films, which inflamed the schoolchildren’s imaginations to such an extent that they were constantly talking about them and hatching plans to sneak into the theater to watch them. While these films were being shown, two teachers, one from the boys’ school and one from the girls’, stood at the door like Cerberus and caught the students they recognized; they also took trustworthy students from the upper grades with them to help. Nevertheless, the most creative and daring students managed to get into the theater, and their fame as lucky dogs spread throughout the whole high school. One got in wearing his brother’s officer’s uniform, another bribed the projectionist and watched the film from the projection booth, yet another strolled into the theater as cool as a cucumber dressed in women’s clothing. Feverish teenaged imaginations spun legends about the daredevils who managed to sneak by under the noses of those Cerberuses. No one actually knew who these lucky dogs were, but everyone knew what they had seen in those forbidden films down to the last detail.