Wolf Hunt

by Ivailo Pretov

  Nikolin was not only surprised and disconcerted but also horrified by what had transpired between Ms. Fanny and his master. He had never seen him retire with any of the ladies who had come visiting, nor had he ever heard of him having affairs with women. Devetakov’s sleeping with Ms. Fanny awakened in Nikolin not only subconscious feelings he had never before experienced, but also an aching jealousy, as he had gotten so used to the thought of his master as a pure and uncorrupted person who belonged only to him and who would never share his life with another. He was afraid that the lady would come back again and was very alarmed a dozen days later when he heard Devetakov speaking to a woman on the veranda. He took her for Ms. Fanny and was about to turn around, but the woman looked at him and said, her face a mask of wonder and fright: “Michel, who is this character?”

  “It’s Nikolin, Mishona darling! Have you forgotten him?”

  “Oh, Nicky, my dearest Nicky, is that you?” She laughed with her wide, bright-red mouth that stretched nearly to her ears, rushed toward him, and pinched his cheek with her sharp nails. Nikolin drew back, flustered, but she flung herself at him, threw her arms around his neck, and pressed his face to hers. “How hulking and frightening you’ve become, Nicky!”

  “Mishona, leave the boy alone!” Devetakov said, taking her suitcase to the guest room. “Come on in!”

  “Nicky, you’ve forgotten me, sweetie! Don’t you remember Mishona?”

  “I remember you, how could I not?” Nikolin said.

  Up until a few years ago, she, too, had come visiting, but not alone, always with the Chilevs or the Sarmashikovs. Back then she looked younger and fresher, but she was still every bit as lean and thin-waisted. Once General Sarmashikov had brought a colonel to the estate who got very drunk and wanted to strip Mishona naked in front of everyone. She slapped him across the face, the colonel got angry and began cussing her out. Mishona, not to be outdone, let fly at him such a foul curse that everyone burst out laughing, the colonel burst out laughing too, and the whole row died down. Still not rested from her journey, she, like Ms. Fanny, immediately set about cooking. She herself came looking for him in the yard, asked for wood and went into the kitchen. These women, they’re hungry as bitches, Nikolin thought to himself as he brought the wood, before they didn’t even know where the kitchen was, but now you can’t get them out of there. He gave her the ingredients and was about to leave when she stopped him.

  “You’ll stay here with me while I’m cooking! Sit down right over there, in that chair!”

  Nikolin sat down at the table, took a knife, and started chopping an onion, while she sliced the meat. She worked quickly and skillfully like a seasoned cook.

  “Why so silent, why don’t you talk to me?”

  “What have I got to talk to you about, ma’am!” Nikolin said.

  “Everything. I don’t like quiet people. But you’re so sweet, I could just eat you alive.”

  Nikolin blushed and got up to leave, but she grabbed his hand and pulled him back to his chair.

  “Stay here with me, dearie, otherwise I’ll be mad at you!” And then, suddenly seeming sad, she fell silent, lost in thought, and then asked him: “Do you smoke?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll light up.”

  She pulled a small metal cigarette case out of the pocket of her skirt, took a cigarette, and handed a match to Nikolin.

  “Give me a light, you are a gentleman, right? Come on!”

  Nikolin hesitated, as if it were shameful to give a light to a woman who smoked, then he struck the match and brought it to her mouth. Mishona pulled her chair next to his and crossed her legs.

  “Okay, now tell me all about it!” she said, taking a drag on the cigarette, making a little ring of smoke and watching it rise upward and disperse, then she broke into a grin.

  “Tell you all about what?”

  “About Ms. Fanny.”

  Nikolin turned away.

  “Did she sleep with Devetakov? Come on, tell me!”

  “How should I know?”

  “Come on now, Nicky, look me in the eye, look at me!”

  She grabbed his face in both her hands and turned it toward her. Nikolin pulled away, but she locked her hands behind his head and wouldn’t let go. Sweat rolled down his back from shame and fear that Devetakov might come in and find them like this, her hanging on his neck, breathing in his face with her big smiling mouth and fawning all over him.

  “Tell me now, did Devetakov and Fanny sleep together?”

  “They did…”

  “And did you sleep that night? Not with her, but in general, did you sleep at all that night?”

  “I slept, what else would I be doing?”

  Mishona laughed loudly and bent over double.

  “You’re lying, you’re lying, you didn’t sleep a wink!” she was saying through her laughter, hardly able to catch her breath. “You must’ve been listening through the wall, huh? Tell me, did you listen in on them?”

  Nikolin blushed and again tried to pull away, but she locked her hands even more tightly around his neck.

  “Well, why didn’t you ask to sleep with her too, Nicky? She would’ve said yes. That’s how she is, that’s why she came to see Devetakov. Only yesterday Mrs. Chileva had her nose in the air, and now she’s going around like a whore sleeping with men for a loaf of bread and a pound of lard. No more money for her, no more spas abroad, no more car, no more big business deals with the Germans. It’s all over, and to top it all off, they tossed Mr. Chilev in the clink. But they better be happy with that, because they could’ve sent him into the hereafter. So ask her, Nicky, just ask her! Aren’t you a man, what are you blushing for! Listen, Nicky, listen, sweetheart! One of these days a general’s wife will show up here. You know her – Sarmashikova. You’ve got to get your hands on her no matter what. She’ll do it for a pound of flour. You’ll be doing my heart a whole heap of good, I tell you. She’s been in the city, too, ‘on vacation’ for a week now, because they sent the general to keep Chilev company. She’s pretty, too, that general’s wife – I’d be willing to bet you’ll like her more than Fanny. If you have her once, it’s enough to last you a lifetime. She’ll be happy, too, and she’ll come running to you every day. Don’t pity her, because she’s never pitied anyone. She’s spent her whole life trampling weaker folks.”

  While saying this, Mishona was gently stroking his bristly chin, while he sat there as if paralyzed, wondering why on earth he was letting this woman touch his face and at the same time experiencing a dual feeling of shame and pleasure at her closeness. She pulled her hand away, lit up another cigarette, and fell silent. The pot started boiling, steam was rising, the smell of food filled the room, in the stove the fire was crackling. The setting sun hid behind a cloud, the kitchen grew dim, and darkness lurked in the corners. Smoke from Mishona’s cigarette rose straight up, then curled and crept along the ceiling like thin white fog. Mishona’s face grew long and pale, her lips trembled like a child’s, and she seemed to be trying not to cry, but the tears gushed from her eyes and ran down her cheeks. Nikolin felt uncomfortable, he turned his head aside and started to get up, but she again grasped his hand.

  “Why do you want to get up? Because I’m crying? No, I’m not crying,” she said, smiling through her tears. “The poor little thing, he feels ashamed to see me crying. You’re so good and pure-hearted! You won’t have an easy time of it in this life. But who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky…I just remembered something and it made me sad. I remembered sitting with my grandmother in the kitchen one spring evening. I was holding yarn in both my hands and my grandma was winding it into a ball. Just like now, the kitchen was growing dark, the windowpanes turned bluish, the fire blazed brighter in the mouth of the stove…What I wouldn’t give to go back to the village, to sit with Grandma by her stove!”

  Mishona told him all about her childhood, and then her whole life story. She seemed lost in some sort of reverie, and Nikolin could see that she was not telling it to him,
but to herself – in that way a person confesses with a pure heart and a pure soul. Her story was rambling and confused like a dream, and later, when Nikolin thought about her, he could only remember a few separate incidents from her life. She had graduated from high school in her small hometown, and since she didn’t have the money to study at the university, she started working at a trading firm in the regional capital. The owner of the firm had a son, they fell in love, and she got pregnant. When the elder Goranov (that was the father’s name) found out, he gave her two months to get rid of the child and she did, but she told him she wanted to keep the child and raise it on her own. The old man was frantic and one evening he came to her apartment. While the landlady was opening the door, Mishona managed to wind a sheet around her middle and showed him into her room, pretending to be pregnant. She knew he would never accept her as a daughter-in-law, so she decided to torment him to the extreme. The old man all but fell on his knees in front of her, begging her to go to some other city and have the baby there, he promised to give her money that would allow her to live in the lap of luxury, he promised to will the child money or some property. She refused. Then the old man set a whole pile of money on the table and advised her to think it over one more time. If she did what he asked of her, she could keep the money for herself; if not, she should return it to him. At first, she was tempted by the money and decided to keep it, go to Sofia, and enroll in the university. The next moment, however, fury seized her, such intense fury that she didn’t even know what she was doing. She put the money in a shopping bag and decided to take it to the trader’s home that very minute. Not only to return it, but to throw it in his face on the doorstep and then leave. She put on an old dress, covered her face with a scarf up to her eyes, and went out. She had only gone a block when she saw the elder Goranov turning down the main street. The main street was the city “promenade” and at that time of day it was always teeming with people.

  Right in front of a restaurant two men stopped Goranov and started chatting with him. Mishona stood in front of a shopwindow and recognized the two men, they were traders like Goranov. And then she got the idea of throwing the money in his face right there and then, on the street, in front of his colleagues and the whole city. She ripped the paper bands holding the wads of bills together, stirred them up in the bag and walked over to the three men. Disguising her voice, she said she had something to give to Mr. Goranov, but he didn’t hear her over the noise of the crowd, while the other took her for a beggar and pushed her away. She stepped even closer, pulled a wad of bills out of the bag and threw them in Goranov’s face, but he turned aside. The other two men looked at her, stunned. Then she threw another handful of bills in his face, then another and another, until her fingers reached the bottom of the bag. She slipped into the crowd and hid in an entryway, pulled the scarf from her face, and stood on the opposite sidewalk watching the scene that unfolded. The crowd had formed a ring around the three men and was gathering up the money scattered at their feet. They were trying to get out of the ring, yelling, frightening, but the whole of the promenade came swooping down on them like an avalanche, squeezing between their legs, pushing them, crushing them. Men and women were rolling around, screaming, suffocating, fighting, and if someone managed to grab some bill, the others threw themselves on him to take it or shoved him out of the crowd. A squadron of policemen arrived, but when they saw the scattered money, they, too, hurled themselves into the fray to collect it, making the chaos even more complete. The crowd finally scattered around midnight and then Mishona saw the elder Goranov lying on the sidewalk as if dead. The police picked him up and took him to the hospital.

  When she got home to her apartment, Mishona saw that some money was left in the bag. She counted it – around fifty thousand – and she was amazed that Goranov, who really was filthy rich, would have paid such a high price to hide a bastard grandchild from society. She thought she had thrown all the money, but since there was still fifty thousand left, that meant Goranov must have given her no less than two hundred thousand. She left for Sofia the next day, checked into a hotel, and went to Chilev’s trading bureau. She knew the address of many trading firms with which she had corresponded, but she went to Chilev, since his office was closest to her hotel. Chilev was a wholesale trader, an exporter of grain, leather, and wood, he had business ties to Goranov and had frequently come to his office. She told him she had quit her job a month earlier and come to Sofia to study at the university, but since she didn’t have enough funds, she was looking for a job to help support her studies. Chilev recommended her to a relative of his who hired her, she found an apartment and so started living in Sofia.

  The provincial newspapers, and later those in the capital city as well, wrote for a long time about the bloody brawl on the main street of that regional city with ever greater details, but the name of the woman who had thrown three hundred thousand leva (later it became half a million) in Goranov’s face was never mentioned, since no one had recognized her. Goranov was in the hospital with multiple fractures, fighting for his life, but he remained silent, afraid of bringing scandal upon his family and his firm. Just as earlier, Chilev went on business trips to visit the younger Goranov, who now was heading his father’s firm, and from the local business circles there he learned that Mishona had had intimate relations with the younger Goranov which were cut off suddenly and she had left the firm. Chilev frequently stopped by to see her, treated her very kindly, and one evening invited her to his home for dinner. She accepted his invitation and there at his place she met the Sarmashikovs. From the conversations about the Goranov incident, she guessed that the attention being lavished on a poor secretary like herself was due to their curiosity not so much to find out more details about the scandal, but to understand how that woman could have thrown so much money onto the street and where she had gotten it. They weren’t particularly interested in the woman herself, since they were almost certain it was Mishona. Their suspicions were wholly confirmed when she invited them over in turn and they saw that she lived in a luxurious apartment in the center of town, something a simple secretary could never afford in any case, unless she was rich, and not simply rich, but a millionaire, since, in a fit of rage, bitterness, or vengeance, she had thrown half a million leva into the street. Thus, she started playing the role of the millionaire heiress, and when they asked her how she knew French (she had conducted Goranov’s correspondence with foreign firms in French), she replied that her aunt had graduated from some college in France and had adopted her, and she had started studying the language with her. After her aunt’s death, she had taken private lessons, or so she said. She also said that she was descended from an old but poor family, but had recently received a humble inheritance from her grandfather, which allowed her to rent a slightly more spacious and comfortable apartment.

  The next year, Ms. Fanny and the general’s wife Sarmashikova went to Paris without their husbands and invited her to serve as their translator. By chance they met Mihail Devetakov, who was in his last year of studies there. He showed them the sights of Paris, stopped by the hotel almost every day to see them, and so they grew close. They invited him to visit them in Sofia and he did. Every time he left for or returned from abroad, he would stay for a few days either with one family or the other, he even stayed at Mishona’s place. Later, they, too, started going to visit him once or twice a year, and always together. For Chilev, this friendship with Devetakov was profitable, because he bought grain from him and, through him, from other landowners, while the general took care of one of his army duties with these visits – he was an inspector for the military units in the region.

  The two families’ benevolence toward Mishona was not selfless. For one, they considered her very rich, and what’s more, Chilev and the general began visiting her on their own, unofficially. At first she was flattered by this attention, but when they started bringing her little gifts and courting her, she realized they had made a friendly pact to share her. She acted as if she had not g
uessed their intentions, and this just seemed to inflame them all the more. She nevertheless managed to deflect their lustful exertions, yet her provincial naïveté made her feel indebted to them for their generous adulation. They took advantage of this and as a sort of consolation for their wasted efforts to seduce her, they asked her – first Chilev, then General Sarmashikov – to let them use one of her rooms when needed and she agreed. But their wives had also asked her for the same favor. Ms. Fanny, after swearing to Mishona her truest friendship to the grave, asked her to let her use one of her rooms for a very important confidential conversation with a girlfriend, with whom, for a number of particular reasons, she could not meet elsewhere. Later, the general’s wife, too, had a similar conversation with a girlfriend in the same room. Her apartment had a separate entrance onto the street and turned out to be very well suited for confidential conversations. And so she became a procuress for both families. They introduced her into so-called high society and she was forced to conform to the manners of this society. She lived in grand style, organizing lavish dinners at her home, dressed in the most elegant fashions, went abroad every year, and did not deprive herself of any luxuries. She had lovers, too, as was fitting for a woman in high society, even though she could have married well. Her longest affair was with a young and very talented lawyer. She acted as his patron, as he was still at the very start of a brilliant career. She was ready to marry him, but he, precisely because he was a very talented lawyer, managed to make very good use of her patronage and to dump her after he found out via channels known only to very talented lawyers that she was no millionaire at all, but simply a not particularly chaste provincial girl (“Alas, he was right about that,” Mishona admitted) obsessed by some plebian mania for living like an aristocrat, and thus had lost her moral bearings due to her lack of an intuitive sense for a world from which she had taken only what was superficial and tawdry (“That was true, too!” Mishona confirmed). The young and talented lawyer told her this with cynical frankness not out of moral considerations, but because he knew that she, after refusing to invest her money in any profitable enterprise whatsoever, always hampered by her plebian fear of entering the lupine world of business deals, had only enough funds on hand so as not to fall into abject poverty. The two families found this out and did not hide their contempt for her, yet they could not possibly ostracize her from their circles, as she was their procuress and rival. She was every bit as contemptuous toward them, yet she stuck to them like glue so as to savor their fall and to justify and make her own fall somewhat easier to stomach. Only one person from their numerous acquaintances was worthy of respect – Mihail Devetakov. He was so intelligent, noble, and morally superior that even they, depraved women that they were, fell under the spell of his charm and fought between themselves a secret rivalry to earn his esteem, even though they did not feel worthy of such esteem…