Wolf Hunt

by Ivailo Pretov

  “How nice that you came!” she said again, stroking his arm. “Now I really do believe in telepathy. I was thinking to myself what would happen if Vanyo were to find out that I was leaving so suddenly and came to say goodbye! And now look, you’re here! Except that I’m very tired. I need to rest for a bit, and then we’ll talk.”

  She went into the compartment and sat down by the window, where there was a free seat. She leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes, while Ivan Shibilev remained standing in the corridor just like that, so he could watch her through the glass window of the door…

  In Nikolin’s first years there, time seemed to stand still, since no changes came to the estate. The seasons came and went, and with them the sowing and threshing, Devetakov would go abroad for a month or two, the Hungarian would bring Ms. Clara to the parlor from time to time to play the piano, on the major holidays or in summer, guests would come to visit. Even the declaration of the Second World War was a nonevent for him and the other workers, since its echo reached the estate quite faintly and dimly. In ’42 they called up a few of the village men from the reserves and sent them to the newly acquired territories, planes started flying overhead toward Romania quite often, from where, when it was still, one could hear a distant rumble, but even these events did not bring any change to life on the estate. The only significant event was the sudden death of the cook, Auntie Raina. She had gone home hale and hearty one evening, and the next morning her husband came to tell them that she had passed away. Nikolin was very attached to her and later thought to himself that with her death things at the estate started going downhill. In the autumn of that same year Devetakov announced he was selling half his land. This sale came like a bolt from the blue and no one knew the reason. Some of the workers said he had accumulated lots of debts that couldn’t be put off, while others claimed he was getting ready to go abroad and stay there for a good long while. Devetakov asked a fair price and the wealthier folks in the nearby villages bought up the land. After the sale he spent almost two weeks at his city house and came back with the blueprint for a new school in the village. Back when Devetakov was studying abroad, his father had already laid the foundations, but his death had prevented him from finishing it. When he was done with his studies, the younger Devetakov decided to finish building the school, but years passed before he hit his stride as the new master of the estate, and in the meantime the villagers had hauled away the construction materials little by little for their own uses. The old four-room schoolhouse was rickety, which was the only reason the school inspectorate refused to allow a junior high school to be opened in the village. The villagers volunteered to work on the building the whole winter and summer, and by the fall the new school with its seven classrooms and two offices was ready and outfitted with the necessary supplies.

  Nikolin noticed that during the sale of the land and the building of the school, his master had started to drink a bit with the buyers and builders. He had never seen him drink before, even though he loved treating his guests to all manner of drinks imaginable. These beverages had been gathered from all corners of the country and abroad and stood lined up in a cellar beneath one of the barns. The elder Devetakov had had a passion for collecting alcohol of all kinds and to this end had made a special underground storage cellar lined in oak paneling with built-in shelves and ventilation. He himself couldn’t stand alcohol and had hardly drunk a bottle of wine over his lifetime, but he loved having guests and was truly gratified when he could surprise them with drinks heretofore unknown to them. He kept his hobby a secret, as was the underground cellar, in order to play the role of the magician in such cases (“Name a drink and in a minute, it will be in your hand!”). He entrusted this secret hobby to his son, who took it as a paternal bequest and began collecting Bulgarian and foreign liquors and treating his guests. For some time now, however, he had begun treating himself as well. When bringing Devetakov his supper, Nikolin always saw a bottle and a half-drained glass on the table. He would go eat his own supper, finish some work in the kitchen, and when he went back to clear the dishes, he would find his master’s food sitting untouched or barely picked at. Devetakov would take sips from the glass and stare into his book, while Nikolin would scold him: “You haven’t eaten a thing, what’s this nonsense?”

  “I’ve eaten my fill. Clear the dishes!”

  “Eaten your fill, my eye! You’ve pecked at it once or twice – you call that eating your fill? You better worry about eating first, then you can drink yourself silly with that rotgut! A single whiff of it is enough to make your nose fall off.”

  During their long years of living under one roof together, Nikolin had managed to somewhat overcome his shyness and sometimes permitted himself to indulge in that rough-edged protectiveness which simple folks use to express their fond devotion to the ones they love. Even though he was almost half his master’s age, he unwittingly acted the role of an elder man when he felt that Devetakov was doing childish things such as, for example, selling his land and building a school, which cost him many headaches and expenses. He was also worried about the change that had come over his master. After drinking a glass or two, Devetakov would withdraw into himself, and some warm shadow of grief and resignation would settle into his eyes. Already years earlier he had noticed how that shadow would suddenly darken his eyes like a storm cloud even when he was cheerful and chatting with guests and friends, when he was reading a book or working on something in the yard. He had also noticed that in such cases he radiated a sort of silence that muted all noises nearby and at the same time gave off a sense of somber alarm and unease. He caught this with his senses, just as animals sense uneasiness in nature’s silence before a sudden atmospheric change, and since he couldn’t make sense of it or find a word for it, he simply called it “that quiet thing.” There had been times when the two of them had been galloping on the horses from the woods back to the estate, or traveling to the city or having dinner, when suddenly he would sense in some inexplicable way that “that quiet thing” had started emanating from his master, transforming him. Nikolin would wait for him to leave off his usual routine and he was never mistaken – Devetakov would shut himself away for a few days or weeks in the room with books, or he would go to the city or would undertake something unusual. Now, after he’d sold his land and built the school, one morning when it was still dark, without preparing for a long journey as he usually did, he asked to be driven to the train station and left to go abroad with only the coat he was wearing and a single small suitcase.

  After Auntie Raina’s death, Devetakov entrusted to Nikolin the house and all the rights and responsibilities the deceased woman had had. He kept everything under lock and key as she had, he knew how much and which things were in every room and the whole house, he met guests and settled them into their rooms, he delivered and distributed the goods for the kitchen. A new cook was hired, Dobrinka, who had just come back from many years of domestic service in the city, a jaded, lonely, and bitter woman. Like every peasant who has “gone out and seen the world” and learned a bit of her rights, Dobrinka, as soon as she set foot on the estate, imported and kindled amidst the workers that antagonism that, albeit in naïve form, exists in even the smallest social groups. After the death of the former cook, her room remained locked for a long time with all her things inside; the new cook was given a room in one of the annexes and this was grounds to loathe the master, and Nikolin along with him. The young man irritated her with his monk-like meekness, she saw him as the master’s stool pigeon hidden behind a mask of hypocritical kindheartedness. When the old cook’s family came to collect her belongings, the room on the ground floor was once again free, but Nikolin did not dare settle the new cook there without the master’s permission and she hated him for it. Grandpa Kunyo also suspected Nikolin of spying on him and telling the master about his thefts. Back in the day the elder Devetakov had taken him in out of pity to oversee the workers, but he turned out to be a good-for-nothing brawler and drunkard who stole
from and made free with the estate more than any of the others. Despite this, Devetakov didn’t drive him off, but entrusted him to his steward, Halil Efendi. Halil Efendi was fair and strict, but still he couldn’t get the old man to walk the straight and narrow. Grandpa Kunyo, once he saw that the Turk wasn’t going to put up with him, would stand before him like a dog with its tail between its legs, but the minute he was out of his sight, he’d be back up to his old tricks. He swiped everything he could from the estate, sold it to the villagers, and would carouse at the pub for days on end. He soon was in thick with the cook and once he goaded her to bring Nikolin’s dinner up to him in the parlor. That day Nikolin had the flu and was lying on the sofa, he ate a bit and then went to lie down again. The next day the scene repeated itself, and on the third day, when he was recovered and went down to the common dining room, the cantankerous old man leapt to his feet, bowed, and called him “Mr. Miyalkov.” Grandpa Kunyo always came to lunch and dinner tipsy, played the clown, and entertained the others with various stories he’d heard at the pub. For some time now they’d only been talking about war and politics at the pub and he conveyed those conversations to the estate. “The Russians have got those Germans stuffed in a sack at Stalingrad,” he spoke excitedly, taking a swig from the flat flask which had once held soybean butter and which he always kept in the inside pocket of his jacket. “Just like that, like you stuff a dog in a sack. It growls and kicks and whimpers, but it just can’t bite. That’s how Germany is now. Big Brother Russia’s laying into ’im, and he’s just whimpering and baring his teeth till he kicks the bucket. Let that be a lesson to our fascists here” – he pounded on the table, looking at Nikolin and shaking his head menacingly – “Now they’re explooting us and drinkin’ our blood, but soon we’re gonna stuff ’em all in the sack and grab our cudgels! Once we give ’em a nice hard pounding, there won’t be any mine and yours, we’ll all be equals. What god said that one fellow’ll have estates, pile up money, and go trotting off to foreign parts, while others’ll be slogging like slaves for a crust of bread?” “You only seem to slog away at the pub,” the others said and laughed. “Go ahead and laugh, yous,” Grandpa Kunyo said, “ ’cause you’re blind and can’t see what a sorry state you’re in. They strip the skin off your back and you stay silent as oxen. They say I’ve taken to drink. What, you think I drink out of happiness? No, I drink out of misery! This’s gone missing, that’s gone missing, I’m always the one left holding the bag, I’m always the one to blame. They say I’ve stolen from the estate! I haven’t stolen and I’m right furious I haven’t. As if it’d be more than a fleabite to the master if you took a half bushel of grain or a basket of chaff? They oughta take his everything, down to the last crumb, ’cause it’s been plundered from the people, it oughta go back to the people…”

  And so, Grandpa Kunyo, exalted by alcohol, was the first at the estate to talk about war and politics and to proclaim the principles of the future socialist revolution. No one besides the cook Dobrinka, however, took his prophecies seriously. The shepherds and the ox herders were all elderly and practically illiterate men, they took no interest in international events. The pub was the place for talking politics, while they lived cut off from the village for months at a time and took the old man’s haranguing for drunken blather. Even though he was young, Nikolin like them only understood those events that took place right before his eyes. The old man’s constant barbs made him uneasy and he stopped eating lunch and dinner with the other workers – he either waited for them to leave the dining room or took his food up to his room.

  The autumn rains came, making the trees bare and the ground muddy. Fog lay over the empty fields like deep sorrow, and amidst that sorrow the estate stood like a forlorn orphan. The days were short and dreary; instead of sun, for an hour or two some cold pale glow would appear in the dark-blue sky, and then darkness would again settle over the estate, muddy-white and bloated from moisture like a wet hemp rug. The master had told him to turn on the radio or the gramophone whenever he wished, but Nikolin couldn’t make heads or tails of them and was afraid he might break them. During the day he was busy with housework, but he spent his evenings alone. He ate supper at the big table in the parlor and after that would go to light the stove in his master’s room. He lit it every night after Devetakov’s departure, even though he knew that he would return in a month at the earliest; in this way he fed his illusion that his master was there and might walk into the room at any moment. He would sit on the upholstered stool by the stove, sensing with satisfaction how the amber-colored tiles gave off an ever-stronger heat, filling the room with coziness and a sorrowful calm, while outside the wind was whistling and rain spattered against the windowpanes. The big gas lamp threw soft yellow light on the family photo, from which peered the elder Devetakov, his wife, and their two children. The father and mother were sitting in high-backed chairs, he in a soft hat with a starched collar, a tie, and a small chain running from one pocket of his waistcoat to the other, with retouched eyes and a moustache, she with an oblong, gentle face and a thin neck, with puffy sleeves and a thin, weak hand resting on her son’s shoulder, with an aureole of the mysterious and romantic beauty that women from a past and unknown world always emanate. Her son, Mihail, was sitting on a little stool in front of her with close-cropped hair and in a sailor suit, looking slightly aside with his mother’s timid, wide-open eyes; his sister was sitting next to him, a vaguely smiling girl in a schoolgirl’s beret and two long braids hanging over her shoulders. Directly beneath the photo, the brass balls of the bedstead gleamed like two little suns, and beneath them lay the bedspread, its soft flowers spilling out across the bed. In his solitary concentration, Nikolin could see his master lying on that bed with feverish eyes and his gentle, oblong face like his mother’s, as he had seen him in bed sick with a cold. He would bring him warm milk or tea several times a day, and Devetakov would always say: “Thank you, Nikolin! Don’t come any closer so you don’t catch my cold!”

  Then he would go into the other room, where the books were, lined up in bookcases of dark wood. They took up the two opposite walls from floor to ceiling and were so tightly packed next to one another that Nikolin could not fit even a finger between them. He had never opened any of those books, but he could stand amongst them for hours filled with awe and reverence, since it seemed to him that between their covers a different, exalted, and mysterious world lay locked away, which only his master could peer into and grasp. He had seen him sitting in the small leather armchair with an open book, absorbed for hours, he had seen how his face had changed, now cheerful, now sad, he had heard him laughing or breathing a deep sigh.

  In early March Devetakov came back from abroad. Even though he was tired and had grown thin from the long journey, he looked cheerful and inspired, he radiated a sort of softness and calm and Nikolin thought with joy that it wasn’t “that quiet thing,” which made him sad and indifferent, but some other thing, kind and invigorating. As always, he had brought back presents for the servants and the Malayi family. The Hungarian seemed to be waiting for him, he took the present with a letter and in turn gave Devetakov a letter addressed to him. As long as Malayi had been living on the estate, he had passed hundreds of letters from Ms. Clara to Devetakov and from Devetakov to her. Nikolin had seen her letters on Devetakov’s desk, short notes written in French on powder-blue paper and placed in the same, oblong envelops. Every exchange of letters was followed by an exchange of books, or Clara and Malayi came to visit. They came now, too. Nikolin noticed that they were far more excited and cheerful than other times, especially Malayi, who, despite all his efforts to appear sociable, always remained silent and impenetrable; this evening he was not himself at all. His dark face with its hooked nose, which gave him the look of a bird of prey, was lit up by some inner light and joyful impatience, and he started speaking as soon as he stepped through the door, holding his wife in his arms. After dinner, Ms. Clara sat down at the piano and while her exquisite white fingers wrested soft, g
entle sounds from the keys, smiling, she broke into some cheerful song. Then they listened to the news on Radio Sofia, from Moscow and London. The main news reported on the radio stations was the end of the winter campaign on the Eastern Front. The German army had been forced to retreat almost four hundred miles, and the Northern Caucuses, Stalingrad, the Rostov Region, and the Kursk Region, along with many others, had been liberated. The German Army had lost almost half its military might.

  “Germany has lost the war,” Devetakov said after switching off the radio. “It had lost even before it began.”

  “Are you so sure, Monsieur Devetakov?” Ms. Clara asked. “The end of the war is still unclear.”

  “It’s more than clear, madam, above all to the Germans themselves. They are no longer fighting a war but a desperate skirmish to save their own prestige. Shortsighted, narrow-minded, and empty-headed politics finds its satisfaction in prestige alone, it is ready to die, just so as to come out of the defeat with some honor, even if that honor is death itself.”

  Devetakov told them about his stay in France, about the moral and material destitution crushing Europe, about everyone’s despair and hatred of fascism and war, about the death camps where millions of innocent men, women, and children were being murdered. Ms. Clara started to cry. Malayi sat next to her, and no less moved himself, he began stroking her hands and speaking to her in Hungarian.

  “Forgive me!” Ms. Clara said after getting ahold of herself. Unlike her husband, she spoke Bulgarian like a Bulgarian. She had learned the language alongside her children and in her solitude she had read almost all the books in Devetakov’s library. “We’ve been living like one big family for twenty years now, but we have never spoken about politics, not even about this war. The defeat of the Germans at Stalingrad was a true holiday for us, the greatest cause for celebration we have had since coming to Bulgaria.”