Wolf Hunt

by Ivailo Pretov

  While for him, it was too absurd to be true, that which people so diligently took upon themselves to show him. Neither his mind nor his heart could accept the idea of his wife “running around” on the sly with some other man, because he didn’t see the point in that. Mona gave him her wifely caresses with true passion, and before accusing her of being unfaithful, they needed to experience the magic of her smile, to take the child from her arms and hear her say: “Come on now, snuggle up to Daddy!” For Ivan Shibilev, whom everyone named as his wife’s lover, Nikolin felt such respect and admiration that for nothing in the world would he have believed that Ivan Shibilev was giving him cuckold’s horns. It was impossible for a person like Ivan Shibilev – intelligent, with the Midas touch and so many talents – to be sneaking into his marriage bed and stealing his happiness, just as one would steal livestock or property. Not only was he not jealous of Ivan Shibilev on his wife’s account, he was even happy that she, too, was a good actor in the community center plays. The two of them moved the audience to such laughter and tears that when the curtain call came at the end of the play and everyone was yelling “Bravo!” he would flush with pleasure, filled with pride in his wife. He equated skills, talent, and erudition with goodness and honesty, but his “well-wishers,” frustrated by his obstinacy, stupidity, or blindness, grew even crueler, and to bring to light the truth that was owed to the world, they started proving to him that even the child wasn’t his, but Ivan Shibilev’s.

  However, at that time, there was hardly a happier person than Nikolin. He was already a shepherd in the cooperative farm and grazed the flock entrusted to him in the stubble fields where there was plenty of grass; until it became trampled down, the whole village would let their livestock out there to graze. The days were hot and the stubble fields unfolded beneath the bright sun like a golden, white-hot infinity. Around ten o’clock the sheep began to gather in groups and started lying down, and then Nikolin would drive them back to the village. As a child he had herded a few dozen of the neighbors’ lambs and since then he had dreamed of having a large herd, with a donkey and dogs, and now his dream had come true – he had a herd of two hundred sheep, a donkey (Grandpa Kitty Cat’s Drencho), and two dogs. Drencho, who led the herd, carried in his packsaddle a water keg, a sack of food, and a hooded cloak. For Nikolin it was truly a pleasure to see him plodding calmly and steadily with the stateliness of an ancient leader, and to watch the sheep trailing after him single file in a long line, while the two dogs walked on either side like guards, ostensibly indifferent but ready to hurl themselves at anyone who came near the herd. Nikolin himself walked somewhere in the middle of the herd with his crook slung over his shoulders and his arms hanging on it, listening to the melody of the full-throated sheep bells and the delicate tinkling of the copper cow bells. The long, dark-brown line of the herd would creep like a snake with barely perceptible tremors, raising a white stream of dust and entering the village to the even rhythm of the bells. Drencho would reach the old mulberry tree with its hard, dusty leaves first, then the sheep would enter the dairy, a round space fenced off by a low stone wall with two narrow openings across from each other. While unloading the donkey’s pack, Nikolin would yell at the top of his lungs a few times: “Come on, come ooooonnn!” and old women with their copper pails and their grandchildren in tow would come from the families who were part of the co-op. The women would sit on flat stones in two lines, one across from the other in front of the openings to the dairy, while the children would chase the sheep out one by one. Soon the humid air would be filled with the sweetish scent of musty wool, manure, and fresh milk, and amidst the clamor of the women one could hear the gentle, muted ring of streams of milk hitting in the empty pails. Drencho would saunter away from the dairy like a soldier freed from sentry duty and would roll around to his heart’s content in the dunghill next door, stretching out in the sun, the dogs would also lie down nearby, while the sheep that had already been milked would dart with bowed heads to the mulberry tree and huddle up next to one another in the shade. Nikolin would go home to eat lunch, nap for a few hours, and finish some man’s work around the house. The house had been left without a man since Grandpa Kitty Cat had passed away after the founding of the co-op. His only condition upon joining the co-op, as we already know, was that they leave his favorite means of transport at his disposal, and Stoyan Kralev had honored this request. They rounded up the co-op members’ land and livestock, but just as before, Grandpa Kitty Cat continued to parade around the village in the two-wheeled buggy, shoulder to shoulder with Petko Bulgaria, inciting the villagers’ hatred. One night the wheels of the buggy were taken off and stolen away, while the horse was driven to the common barn. Grandpa Kitty Cat spent a whole day and night curled up like a cat in Devetakov’s leather armchair, and in the morning Petko Bulgaria found him dead.

  Late in the afternoon when it cooled down, Nikolin would again drive the herd out to the pasture. He loved standing propped on his crook like the shepherds of yore, watching the sheep fiercely tearing away at the soft grass and the sun, ever larger and flaming, descending toward the blue line of the horizon and slowly sinking into it; its glow would grow pale and everything around would be awash in a soft, translucent light, and in this light the night would come as if on tiptoe into the stubble fields, its footsteps crackling softly and sonorously. On such evenings he often heard one of the shepherds or horse herders nearby saying that his little daughter, Mela, was not his but Ivan Shibilev’s, they pretended not to notice him in the dusk, yet they yelled so loudly that their voices carried through the whole vicinity. Nikolin would smile and pass by with his herd. The cruder and more insulting the rumors about his wife were, the more unbelievable they seemed to him, hence the less they hurt him. Instead of falling into fits of jealousy and despair, as his “well-wishers” assumed he would, their efforts to open his eyes gave him a strange feeling of satisfaction. More or less the entire village had taken it upon itself to destroy his happiness, so that meant his happiness was huge and invincible. He stood alone against the village and won the battle with a single, solitary weapon – his faith in his wife. But people didn’t want to settle for his foolish faith, especially since it undermined the village’s moral principles and encouraged debauchery.

  Ivan Shibilev and Mona had become so brazen that they could not hide their affair in any way. They were being followed day and night, thus no matter how imaginative Ivan Shibilev might have been, his trysts with Mona could not be kept secret. His every new move was followed and exposed, every signal was decoded. Finally it was the authorities’ turn to become involved and to put an end to this “moral corruption” as the party secretary Stoyan Kralev put it. This job turned out to be very difficult, if not downright pointless. On the one hand, Mona was a friend of his family, thus he and his wife, Kichka, found themselves in a delicate situation when the public conscience rose up against Mona’s amorous adventures and demanded that she be censured and reined in somehow by the leaders of the village. On the other hand, Mona had taken part in the theater troupe since she was a child, when no other woman in the village besides Kichka Kraleva had wanted to set foot onstage, she had been the first of the young people to wear the clothes and hairstyles that Kichka had presented to the youth as a weapon in the fight against the old fashions; in short, of all the young women, Mona best and most prominently fulfilled the duties assigned to her by the party in the past and even now. Stoyan Kralev and his wife had tried to hint to her many times that she must put an end to her affair with Ivan Shibilev, but she would just keep silent and such a gentle and innocent smile would appear on her face that they didn’t dare bother her further. The couple’s love affair, however, was constantly on the tip of the village tongues, while the opposition, who used any and all means to denounce the communists, had even made a popular song about it, since Ivan Shibilev and Mona were both party members. More than anyone, Stoyan Kralev felt an organic hatred of and disgust at their dissipation, but due to various reasons, especiall
y those of a public nature, he still had not gotten around to denouncing and punishing them. The two of them had shouldered almost the entire burden of propagandizing both in the past and now, and had done such a good job of it that they had won over at least half the village to the side of the Fatherland Front, to say nothing of the joy and excitement they had brought people with their performances. However, he could no longer remain indifferent to their licentious affair, so he sent his people to call Mona down to the party club and she came with her little girl. The latter was not yet three years old and she knew Stoyan Kralev, since he had come to see her mother many times, and as soon as she saw him she began showing off for him, diving under the table and touching everything in the room.

  “You should’ve come by yourself,” Stoyan Kralev said.

  “Why?”

  “Because this isn’t a conversation for little ears. Come back this afternoon at five, but by yourself!”

  Mona gave her daughter a little rubber ball, led her outside to play by herself, and came back in.

  “Me, you, and Kichka have talked about this business of yours before,” Stoyan Kralev went on, “but now we’ve got to talk about it again.”

  “What business of mine?”

  “That business with…Ivan.”

  “What is there to say about it?”

  “What do you mean, ‘what’? The whole village is outraged…”

  Stoyan Kralev had expected that when he started talking about her extramarital affair, she would become flustered and ashamed, or would try to justify herself in some way, but Mona was sitting quietly with her hands on her knees like a little girl, looking him in the eye with a barely perceptible smile. That smile, whether sarcastic or judgmental, startled him and caused him to fall silent for a minute. In that smile there was beauty and shamelessness and the licentiousness of a woman who has given and received everything from such a long-awaited and secret love, as well as scorn for everything and everyone who might try to take that love away from her. The longer he looked at that smile, the more Stoyan Kralev understood her and the more exasperated he felt. He nevertheless got ahold of himself and calmly advised her “as a friend” to get her personal life in order such that it “wouldn’t be grist for the rumor mill.” Mona heard him out silently and said only “goodbye” as she went to leave.

  “It’s not clear to me whether you agree with what was said here or not?” Stoyan Kralev asked while walking her to the door.

  “I’m outraged by the whole village!” Mona said, a deep flush coming over her face.

  “What? You are outraged by the whole village? Come on back here for a second and sit yourself down!”

  “Why should I come back? To listen to your sermon again? I already heard you out.”

  “I’m speaking to you as your comrade, who wants what’s best for you, while for you it’s in one ear and out the other. Is that how it is?”

  Mona was looking him straight in the eye and again a mocking expression came over her face. She is depraved and insolent, Stoyan Kralev thought to himself, turning away from her.

  “Hasn’t it ever crossed your mind that your affair with your lover is immoral, comrade? Hasn’t that at least once crossed your mind?”

  “Why is it immoral? Is there such a thing as immoral love?”

  “There is! And it’s your love affair with Ivan Shibilev. If a married woman’s perverse relations with her lover can even be called love.”

  “I know what love is, not you!”

  “All you know how to do is hump like dogs in other people’s yards! It’s moral degeneracy, not love!” Stoyan Kralev was standing with his back to the door, as if afraid that Mona would run out, and as always in such situations, gave free reign to his temper. “The village is up in arms over you two, but you don’t have a whit of conscience or shame. You’re communists, come to your senses before it’s too late, get ahold of yourselves!”

  “I live in this world because I love one man. No one has the right to judge me,” Mona said, and went to leave, but Stoyan Kralev blocked her way.

  “Every decent person has that right.”

  “Even the opposition?”

  “In this case, even the opposition. No matter what kind of people the opposition might be, we can’t reproach them for depravity. Which is why they’re rubbing their hands with glee and saying: Look what kind of people are holding power and controlling the people’s property! They made the land common property, now they’ll make the women common property too. Don’t you understand that right now everyone is watching us, following our every move? We are obligated to set a good example in every respect. And why do you bring such shame on your husband, why do you make such a good man unhappy? Doesn’t it weigh on your conscience that as his reward for saving you from Ivan Shibilev’s clutches and giving you a home and family, you repay him with torment?”

  “Let me go!” Mona screamed, stifling her sobs, her face contorted by spasms. “You are cruel and merciless; when it comes to people’s souls, you only know how to give orders. You have no heart or soul!”

  “Because I’m trying to advise you to do what’s right? Does your beloved have a heart and soul? If he did, would he roam the whole world over and only come back to you when the spirit moves him? You abandoned your family for him, had his child, and he…”

  Mona screamed something, yanked on the door handle with all her might, and jumped outside.

  Shortly thereafter, Stoyan Kralev sent for Ivan Shibilev to come to the party club on urgent and important business. While waiting for him, he paced around the room from wall to wall, telling himself to keep completely calm, since he knew Ivan Shibilev better than anyone and suspected that the conversation with him would be tense and difficult. The reader will find out later in our story what great political and educational work the two men had carried out before the communist coup of September 9, when besides their ideological unanimity, they were also bound by friendship. In the “new life,” however, both their work and their paths had turned out to be very different. Stoyan Kralev became party secretary and took over the leadership of the village, while Ivan Shibilev shuttled between the village and the city as always. He had been with the Shumen Theater for barely a year, where he had been appointed under Article 9, and this was exactly what Stoyan Kralev wanted to find out – was he settled down in Shumen for the long haul, and if so, that gave him the chance to have a more specific conversation about his relations with Mona. It was a delicate question, no two ways about it, but Stoyan Kralev was most worried about Ivan Shibilev’s character, a person with a changeable mood, with his own ideas and principles about life, cheerful, gentle, devoted, and accommodating, ready to give up everything he had for others, but sometimes willful, dejected, and headstrong, which, of course (to be perfectly frank), did not prevent him from doing a great deal of party and educational work and thus becoming the darling of the village.

  And so, Stoyan Kralev did not expect anything good from the impending conversation, but he also did not expect that it would turn into a row and bring about a complete rupture between the two of them. As he suspected, Ivan Shibilev acted as if there was nothing blameworthy about his relationship with Mona and that this affair did not make her look bad in the eyes of the village, nor did it destroy her family. Love is freedom of the spirit, the holiest of holies for man, free is he who loves, while he is a slave who is not free to experience love, he said, as if reciting some monologue onstage. His monologue continued for several minutes in that same spirit, abstract and vague, and Stoyan Kralev began to lose patience. No matter how he told himself to remain calm, his nerves became more and more strained and he again began pacing around the room, the right corner of his mouth twitching unwittingly in a nervous tic. He, of course, immediately realized that Ivan Shibilev was trying to bamboozle him with learned palaver in order to gain some time and to turn the conversation in another direction. And he was not mistaken, since Ivan Shibilev really was reciting from memory a monologue about love from s
ome classic play. He, in his turn, knew Stoyan Kralev as well as he knew himself, and as soon as he realized that he had called him down not only in his capacity as confessor, but also in his capacity as aggressor, he wanted to deprive him of the pleasure of ordering him around and at the same time to show him that he had no intention whatsoever of listening to his dogmatic judgments about morality and so forth. Without feeling hatred or any other negative feeling toward Stoyan Kralev, he had long not been able to stand his semiliterateness, which, combined with his self-confidence as the ruler of the village and as a party activist of the broadest scope, was cause for mockery and pity.

  “Let’s leave aside this highfalutin talk,” Stoyan Kralev said. “I know you’re an actor and all that. Let’s speak in simple and clear human terms. So why don’t you tell me, without twisting and turning it all fancy-like, what are your true intentions toward that woman? Are you going to leave her in peace to tend to her family or will you take her with you?”

  “I’ll tell you in simple and clear terms. These things cannot be said either in simple or in complex terms. I cannot explain it, and even if I could, why should I have to confess to you?”