Wolf Hunt

by Ivailo Pretov

  The other villagers were also astonished by Mona’s recklessness. They had gotten used to making sport of her suitors, and as soon as a new one turned up, they would wait to see how she would “send him packing.” But to turn away Rich Kosta’s envoys, and to do so as if turning away a beggar from your door no less, this was more than recklessness. But what the cause of this recklessness might be – whether foolishness, capriciousness, or madness – no one could say. However, this mystery was soon solved. After the incident with Rich Kosta, Ivan Shibilev came back to the village – as always, no one knew where he was coming from and how long he would stay – and it was then that our locals noticed that he and Mona met on the street every day or in the evenings at the community center, from where Ivan Shibilev would see her home. Now it became clear that they were bound by love, a love as great as the sacrifice Mona was making for Ivan Shibilev. Some, of course, felt sorry for her and even gloated over her misfortune, depending on to what extent they had been aggrieved by this rivalry or her disregard, but everyone was bewildered as to how she could be so blinded by her love for Ivan Shibilev, since no one in the village could say what kind of man he was. When Ivan Shibilev did something good, and he could do lots of good things, everyone was struck with admiration for him and even declared him the village’s pride and joy. On the other hand, when he got up to his crazy tricks and mischief, and he could certainly get up to such things as well, they unanimously declared that despite everything, he was nothing but a ne’er-do-well, a scapegrace, a buffoon, a ladies’ man, and even a charlatan. Every day they found him in a different mood, sometimes completely absorbed in some undertaking, polite and courteous, other times neglectful of everything, hardheaded and spiteful, and this hindered them from seeing his true self. Mona knew him better than everyone, his inconstant character caused her the greatest suffering, yet she nevertheless loved him just as he was – restless and exulted, confiding and withdrawn, sad and serious, carefree and cheerful. When he gave her her first role in the community center troupe, she had been ten years old, and he twenty, as patient and affectionate with her as an older brother with a younger sister. Even back then she had become attached to him, just as little girls grow attached to good teachers. Over the years this attachment transformed into awe, and from awe into love, a love that can only spring up in the uncorrupted heart of a village girl, bashful, pure, and utterly devoted. She burned with shame merely at the thought of going up to him and telling him how much she loved him and that he was the only meaning in her life, and that the world began and ended with him and him alone.

  She declared her love to him by catching his meaning from a glance or a single word, by listening to him enraptured for hours on end, she was ready to follow him anywhere at any time, she declared her love for him most fervently onstage, when the two of them were playing a pair of lovers, as always. These roles always involved declarations of love, there were also scenes in which the man abandoned his beloved for various reasons, and Mona would act them out with such feeling that she was bathed in tears, moving the audience to tears as well. Her love for Ivan Shibilev had become legendary and everyone tried to guess how it would end – in marriage or in heartbreak. Mona was already twenty-one years old, making her an old maid by implacable village statistics; she kept turning away her numerous suitors, while Ivan Shibilev neither married her nor cut her loose to try her luck elsewhere. “He’s like a dog on a haystack – he won’t eat it, but he won’t give it up, either” – that’s what the villagers would say, taking Mona’s side. When she spoke to him onstage with tears in her eyes: “Don’t leave me, I shall wither and die for the love of you, I shall take my own life!” the public would jump to its feet, yelling at Ivan Shibilev: “Marry her already, you scoundrel! Why are you toying with the girl, why are you torturing her, may God strike you dead!” While to Mona, they would yell: “You’ve wasted enough tears on him, send that charlatan packing and find yourself a real man!”

  No one suspected that their love was pure and uncorrupted by carnal passions. Ivan Shibilev, despite his unbridled nature, had not laid a finger on Mona, besides in their theatrical performances, and even then only before the audience’s eyes. Even when they were alone in the community center or on the street in the evening, he had not permitted himself anything more than a handshake.

  There could be several possible reasons for his platonic relations with Mona; however, one appeared the most likely – his desire to relish their purity. We shall return to these reasons, but for now we must briefly recall the circumstances that gave rise to them. Where had we left off the story of Ivan Shibilev? Oh, yes, on that late afternoon when he could not find Veva among those getting off the train. From his conversations with her he had gotten the impression that she had grown up and lived in that city, hence it was only natural to look for her there. He asked about her at the theater first of all, and he didn’t ask just anyone, but the two stagehands, because he felt they would know the theater’s artistic troupe better than anyone. They told him they didn’t know any such actress, nor had they ever heard of her. To him, it seemed like his life had suddenly been split into two halves, and if in the first half there were still some memories, both joyful and sad, in the second, the future half, there would be nothing but anguish, meaninglessness, and hopelessness. And this hopelessness was making his heart bleed when someone tapped him lightly, yet insistently, on the shoulder. He raised his head and through his tears saw a woman standing in front of him, with her hand on his shoulder. It was Darina Mileva, or Darya, as they called her, whom he had known from the Varna Theater for a year and with whom he had spent a whole month on tour.

  Darya was twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old, but was already an established actress. Without being brilliant, she was one of those actresses they call a mainstay of the theatrical collective, and whom directors entrust with roles with complete confidence. She was hardworking, calm, and so natural onstage that everywhere she had performed around the country she had become the audience’s favorite. Like most provincial actors at that time, she didn’t stay in any one place for long, but this was not due to external, but rather to personal, reasons. Her husband, whom she had married at the age of nineteen, was also an actor, a typical provincial crank, a drunkard and brawler, whom they took into theater troupes only because of her. Soon after their marriage he slid into complete alcoholism, Darya ran away from him several times, but he refused to grant her a divorce; instead, he staunchly followed her all around the country to disgrace both Darya and himself with his rows in front of their new co-workers. Sometimes he would disappear for months or even a whole year, writing her all the while (without ever telling her his address) that he could live without her, that he would grant her a divorce, and that he would never come looking for her, but then he would do the exact opposite, arriving unexpectedly, barging into her apartment most brutally and sponging off her. Darya pitied him, as one pities a sick and helpless person, but in the end she would not be able to stand his drunken benders and would look for work in a different theater. Despite these forced resettlements and her unhappy married life, she was still fresh faced. She was petite, but hardy like fresh fruit, with dark hair and smooth skin, such that she could play women of all ages equally convincingly.

  “Can I believe my eyes?” she said, seeing him standing there helplessly, leaning against the wall by the entrance to the theater. His face, where traces of dried tears could be seen, and his moist, darkened gaze radiated inconsolable grief, which he could not hide in any way, nor did he try to hide it. His first question for Darya was whether she knew an actress by the name of Genevieve (Veva), and she immediately understood the reason for his grief, which, incidentally, made him so sweet and endearing that she didn’t have the heart to leave him on his own and invited him to her home. After many years of wandering, she had finally come back to the house where she was born. It was old and cozy, with a broad yard sunk in flowers and fruit trees, with three rooms on each of its two floors. After dinner, D
arya took her guest on a walk around the city, they strolled down the main street, sat for a while in a pastry shop, and went back home. During their walk, he told her everything, she heard him out with sympathy and settled him in to one of the rooms to get a good night’s sleep, so in the morning, well rested and calm, he could decide what to do from then on. The next morning her guest asked her where there was a hotel, so he could rent a room for several days, and she told him that under no circumstances would she allow him to go to a hotel, and that as long as he was in the city, he would be staying with her. She assumed that when he looked for and couldn’t find his Veva, he would leave, but he, it seemed, had no intention of leaving so soon. During the day he would go out and about several times, writing poetry, reading books or newspapers, or drawing, while in the evening, if there was a play, he would go to the theater, where Darya had arranged for him to get in free.

  After the performances, he would wait for Darya to remove her makeup, she would take his arm, and the two of them would go home. They always ate dinner alone, because Darya’s parents were asleep by that time. Her father was paralyzed and half blind, but her mother was still healthy, yet constantly busy with her sick husband and the housework, so she could not wait up for them. After dinner the two of them would go up to Darya’s room and stay there until midnight. If she wasn’t learning a new role, for which Ivan Shibilev acted as her partner, they would read poetry, play various games, and their games became more and more erotic until one night Darya ravished him. It really was ravishment, because Ivan Shibilev seemed attached to her, her closeness excited him, yet every time they accidentally touched he would bashfully and timidly pull away, and this indecisiveness was due to a trauma of an erotic nature. His will had been tormented so terribly by the obsessive thought of a single woman that he was in no state to do anything to free himself from that thought. Darya knew from experience and observation that chaste nineteen-year-old young men fell in love platonically “for their whole lives,” yet at the same time were tortured by the mysteries of female flesh, they were ashamed of this feeling, which debased their hearts’ purest impulses, but as soon as they experienced female flesh, they somehow matured all at once and became more reasonable. She freed her young friend from this primordial and agonizing mystery not, of course, out of pedagogical inducements, but under the impetus of a long-suppressed passion, at the same time freeing her own will as well, since she, too, bashful and “wild” to the men who had tried to court her, had been traumatized by the unusual state of her marriage.

  At a more mature age, Ivan Shibilev would realize that when we praise our fiery, pure, and one-and-only love as the supreme gift from the heavens, we are actually praising and deifying our carnal attraction to the opposite sex. At that time, of course, he had no way of knowing this and lived according to the laws of that other, equally ancient and indisputable truth, that youth is the time of the flesh, and he didn’t realize how his love for Veva, extolled in his poems and proclaimed with so much anguish, had turned into some vague dream-like vision and disappeared, only to be reborn in his love for Darya. Becoming a man is a complicated and painful process, as is every passage from one state to another, accompanied not only by the urge to discover the mystery of female flesh, but also by shyness, fear, and doubts, by powerful explosions of boldness as well as slumps, low spirits, and deathly despair. Several months of Ivan Shibilev’s life tumbled into the abyss of an exhausting bacchanalia, and when he finally got ahold of himself and came to his senses, he truly had gained a certain self-confidence in his manhood and became more reasonable, insofar as a person like him could be reasonable at all. In the meantime Darya had introduced him into theatrical circles, and just as everywhere, here, too, Ivan Shibilev quickly won everyone over, including the director of the touring troupe. This director and the director of the Pleven Regional Theater put on five plays in one season with a cast of fourteen members, most of whom were local amateur actors. As can be seen from the memoirs of actors from that time, quickly cobbled-together productions (there were even cases of plays being put together in two or three days) were a common occurrence at some of the provincial theaters, which clearly showed their amateur, and at times unscrupulous, nature. The reasons for this were above all material, since the provincial theaters at that time did not receive or received only very little financial support from state and public institutions. To guarantee a decent income, theatrical troupes staged two hundred or more performances in dozens of towns and villages in a single season. Given these conditions, it was not difficult for the most enthusiastic citizens to join a theatrical troupe, much less for Ivan Shibilev, who could memorize his role on the first read-through, and who had some experience onstage to boot. He performed three roles in three of the plays quite successfully and perhaps would have stayed at that theater for a longer time if Darya’s husband had not returned.

  He was around forty, quite tall and broad shouldered, with the weary face of an alcoholic, and most importantly of all, he was at the height of yet another bender. As soon as he had arrived in town he had had a few rounds with friends and had learned from them that his wife was living with a young actor, and as soon as he set foot in the house he barged into Ivan Shibilev’s room and hurled himself at him. Ivan Shibilev was surprised by his unceremonious entrance, but recognized him immediately (Darya had described him to a tee), and although he was good and scared, he nevertheless was not cautious, since he couldn’t believe the man would dare to rough him up. Her husband was not speaking, but roaring, he asked Ivan Shibilev what he was doing in his house, called him a dirty bastard, knocked him to the floor, and started choking him. Even though he was half his age and in far better shape, Ivan Shibilev barely managed to wrench the man’s hands from his neck and to catch his breath; he wriggled out from beneath him, but the man stuck out his leg and tripped him. Ivan Shibilev fell and while falling, cut his forehead right between his eyebrows on the edge of the stove, blood poured into his eyes and down his face. He jumped to his feet again, and, blinded, felt his way to the door, but then the drunkard pushed him from behind. So as not to fall down the stairs, he clung to the railing, but the other man grasped him by the ankles and started dragging him down. This is how Darya found them. Frightened by this scene, she screamed and darted forward to break them apart, her mother appeared as well and shoved the drunken man into one room, while they bandaged Ivan Shibilev’s wound in another. In the evening of the same day he moved into a hotel and spent around a week there before leaving the city.

  The conclusion of their affair was as sudden and quick as it was invidious and dangerous – if they had been caught red-handed “at the scene of the crime,” it might have cost him his life. But the worst part was that Darya, after taking him to the hotel, did not come to see him again, nor did she try to contact him. Ivan Shibilev didn’t dare go looking for her at the theater, so as not to bring the scandal there as well; he waited five days and on the sixth left the city. And thus began his many odysseys, which differed only in the cities where he would spend some time, and in the professions he practiced there (as an actor in some amateur or professional troupe, as an artist, as a ballad-monger in the circus, as a soldier for two years, a housepainter, a musician in pubs and restaurants), but in their essence they were all the same, because everywhere they accepted him gladly because of his charm, talents, and his “golden hands,” the men were fond of him, the women fell in love with him, and in the end, due to some subconscious recklessness or excessive sensitivity, he would get himself caught up in a situation in which these very same people, especially the women, seemed to unwittingly, yet inevitably, aggrieve him and leave in his soul some impurity, disappointment, or even despair, and then absolutely spontaneously, he would rush back to his Ithaca, his native village. But what would he find there? Ignorance, slovenliness, coarseness, but also spontaneity and calm, and something that seemed like signs of life. Everything would be sunk in a deep layer of dust, mud, or snow, grayish, shabby, and muted, such that it
weighed on his soul with a soft, caressing quiet, in which he could hear the beating of his heart.

  As always after his return, not a week would pass and he would start sensing, hearing, and seeing how in the bosom of this desolation life was sprouting, growing, and finally bursting forth in the woodworking shop, at the tavern, in the little mud-brick community center, in the school, and even in the church with Father Encho. In the woodworking shop he would make frames, or a table or chair, in the tavern he would entertain the locals by playing various instruments, in the little church, sitting with Father Encho in the narthex by the stove, he would paint a Virgin Mary, a Jesus ascending to heaven, or whichever icon the old priest happened to need, at the community center he organized parties or plays, at the blacksmith’s he would build a reaping machine out of scraps of iron, like the ones he had seen wealthier folks in the neighboring villages using, to help lighten the harvest’s heavy workload. The reaping machine would work for a day, a week, or a summer before disintegrating into its constituent parts, because there was no one to fix it.

  Ivan Shibilev would already be flying off to or would have flown off to his next odyssey, toward life in the cities and towns, a life delusive with the magic of the unknown, filled with delights, ostentation, and bitterness, with an insuppressible thirst for fulfillment, enticing and severe, beautiful and freakishly ugly, only to return once again to the village exhausted and disappointed, with oversaturated senses and a tormented mind. Besides his mother, Mona was also waiting for him, and over the years she had grown from a little girl into a young woman. In his constant association with her there was a dose of egoism, albeit subconscious, because he would come running, dogged by the malevolent storms of his worldly exploits, to take shelter beneath the eaves of her moral purity, to drink from her the strength, consolation, and reassurance that would cleanse him. Perhaps this is how we should explain his complex and platonic relations with her, so uncharacteristic of his nature, and perhaps also with his fear of desecrating her honor and life so fatefully: One misstep and his quiet harbor could change into a prison.