Wolf Hunt

by Ivailo Pretov

  Two months after that incident, Miho Barakov and six other young men were arrested and convicted via the “fast-track” procedure, Miho got ten years in prison, and the others from three to four years. The police didn’t come after my brother or the other two boys who had helped in the operation, nor did they call Petar Pashov as a witness in the case. During the initial investigation, just as at the trial, Miho Barakov tried to take the entire responsibility, declaring that he had stolen the canvas cover by himself and sold it to some stranger for five hundred leva. He needed that money to sew himself a suit, to buy shoes, a shirt, and other things a graduating high school senior, who in a few short months would be a full-fledged citizen, would need. His father categorically refused to give that much money to such a “good-for-nothing” who only jabbered on about communism and was digging his own family’s grave. He had long been in conflict with his father and brothers due to his ideological convictions, but that was his personal business, nobody could tell him what ideas to believe. Even the law couldn’t force beliefs on him, since according to the Bulgarian Constitution citizens are guaranteed freedom of conscience. The law could only punish those who organized armed resistance or threatened national security with other means of violence. He sympathized with the idea of communism as it was just and humane, but did not belong to any political organizations and had never tried to force his ideas on others in any way whatsoever. They showed him a canvas windbreaker found in a forest after a skirmish between the police and the partisans. On the inside of the windbreaker the name of Petar Pashov was written in large, printed letters. Miho answered that he found it only natural that the name of the owner would be printed on the canvas and did not take responsibility for the fact that the canvas had reached the partisans in the form of some windbreakers. At the market, everyone sells his wares to strangers and never knows where they might end up after they are in the buyer’s hands. The examining magistrate agreed that this was exactly how the question of buying and selling stood, yet the question of the canvas stood slightly differently, and then he told him that Petar Pashov had personally told him the name of the thief. Otherwise how could the investigation have led precisely to him, if the thief’s name and the place and date of the theft were unknown?

  In the fall Miho told a comrade who had come to visit him at the prison about Petar Pashov’s treachery and asked him to tell my brother and all the communists from our region to steer clear of him. He also made the conjecture that Petar Pashov had not been called as a witness to the case because the police knew that his son had gone abroad and it wasn’t fitting to compromise both the son and the father. Under interrogation, however, Miho Barakov indignantly rejected the magistrate’s claim as slander against Petar Pashov. Pashov was his relative, he had visited him many times, and for nothing in the world would he have given him over to the authorities, even if he had caught him red-handed with the canvas. At worst, he would have stopped him on the spot or complained to his father later, otherwise why would he have kept silent while watching a relative of his carry things out of his yard? In the same way, he rejected the accusation that he was a member of the communist youth organization. When searching his apartment, the police had found some scrap of paper with a list of names across from which were written various numbers. The names and numbers were not written in his handwriting and he protested that they were trying to frame him with some planted notes. The next day he was confronted face-to-face with the individuals whose names were on the list. There were twelve young men, three of whom were his schoolmates and the rest were manual laborers and clerks. Miho, of course, could not deny that he knew his schoolmates, but he denied having any illegal ties with them, while he claimed not to have ever seen the other nine young men. After a few days one of his schoolmates couldn’t hold out under the beatings and confessed that he had given Miho a dozen leva a month without a receipt. He made regular payments, but he didn’t know what the money being collected was for, while Miho never gave him any explanations. From then on it wasn’t hard for the police to catch most of the communist youth league activists and throw them in prison.

  This was the mystery we agonized over for months – who had put that list with the names of the twelve young men in Miho Barakov’s apartment? Our suspicions fell, of course, on Petar Pashov. We were led to believe this both by Miho Barakov at his own trial, as well as by Lexy’s sudden departure abroad. In the beginning, both my brother and I had certain doubts that Petar Pashov, like any villager, so far from the city and any political struggles, would know the names of those twelve young men whom he had never seen and would go to turn them in to the police. It also seemed unbelievable to us that Lexy, whom we knew as a noble person, even if a provocateur, would hand over such a thing to his father. However, we also didn’t have any facts in Pashov’s favor. Suspicion of him spread among the communists in the nearby villages and grew over time. When I returned from Sofia after graduating from the university, I realized that Stoyan also fully believed in his treachery and nothing could convince him otherwise. That evening after Nusha’s visit, I walked around the fields until late, thinking that my happiness depended on solving the mystery of this betrayal. After finishing his work, Stoyan came over to me under the awning of the barn and wished me good night. I was riled up and told him about Lexy’s letter, which had awakened such hope in me. But instead of intriguing him, this news had the opposite effect on him. The night was very light and I saw a smile appear on his face, and it was the smile of a person filled with malice, hatred, and vengefulness.

  “Aha, the rats realize that their ship is sinking. On the one hand, they bet their daughter, on the other, they try to make their son out as a heroic antifascist. Except that it’s a little late. No letters can help them now.”

  He went into the house, while his final words stayed with me, radiating coldness and hostility: “Go to sleep, tomorrow you’ve got to clear out.” This staggered me, because for the first time in our life together he had not shown sympathy, but almost scorn, for me, and this when I found myself in such a difficult and hopeless situation. I was already a grown man, but I harbored a filial feeling toward him, left over from childhood, I had gotten used to considering him as my father and mother. When our father died, he had been sixteen and had become the head of the family. He had finished middle school and very much wanted to go to high school, but my father’s death prevented this. But even if he hadn’t died, our father would hardly have sent him to the city, since he had only three acres of land, two oxen, and a cow, which in our region of large landholders and estates was true destitution. Besides, at that time the villagers never took their eyes off the land and lived in a closed circle, filled with some wild antagonism toward the city and learned people. Back then, the only village youngster to break that taboo was Ivan Shibilev.

  Stoyan didn’t like agricultural work and even back then had started hatching plans to take up a different trade. He felt he had a calling for some other kind of work, but he himself couldn’t decide what, and this tormented him. In the meantime Ivan Shibilev had “gotten his fill of studying” as the villagers would say, and had returned to the village. He was dressed ultramodern for that time – with a double-breasted striped suit coat and wide-legged pants, while on his head he wore a wide-brimmed black hat. He lived free as a bird, constantly in motion between the village and the city, restless and cheerful, always brimming with ideas and notions, you could say that every social and cultural undertaking was thought up by him. Like any theoretician, however, he left it to others to put his ideas into practice, business dealings were not particularly pleasant for him, which is why, before championing some idea, he always made sure to secure loyal like-minded partners. One of those was my brother, Stoyan. Ivan Shibilev had discovered that he had a lively intellect, and when he decided to found the community center, he assigned the management of the construction to him. Stoyan gathered together a group of young men and as soon as early spring they were making mud bricks at the village swamp. D
uring summer the bricks dried and in the fall, when all the fieldwork was done, the building of the community center began. Building a freestanding structure was out of the question, since there was neither a foundation nor materials for it, so they built it onto the back of the old four-room schoolhouse. The young people dragged away what they could from their homes: beams, roof tiles, old door frames, doors, and by the first snow the building had a roof. From the outside it looked like a shed or a barn, but inside instead of tools or livestock there was a theatrical stage raised half a meter off the ground. The stage needed cloth for a curtain, the windows needed pinewood window frames, and the floor needed bricks, but there was no money and nobody who would donate. No one wanted to bankroll such an unprofitable and above all questionable enterprise. The local authorities even fined Ivan Shibilev and my brother for illegal construction on the condition that if the fine wasn’t paid within a year, the brick building would be torn down.

  Ivan Shibilev responded to this economic oppression very craftily. He gathered up a small sum from the young people and rather than paying off the fine with it at the town hall, he bought a secondhand gramophone. That musical contraption played the same role in the spiritual development of our young people at that time as the role disco music now plays for contemporary teenagers. The community center didn’t have any windows yet, but the young men gathered there every night and listened to the gramophone. The musical repertoire was modest, two tangos and two foxtrots, all told, but they were enough to open up for those young people the path to new music and new dances, and hence to a new life as well. Ivan Shibilev, with his proverbial patience, taught the young men their first steps in the tango and foxtrot, just as nineteenth-century Bulgarian Revival-Era activists had taught the youth military drills, while they repaid him for his efforts with Revival-Era-worthy zeal. Holding hands in pairs, they dragged their rough leather sandals across the dirt floor, bowed and said “merci” after every dance, drenched with sweat and choking on clouds of dust. Just as in every new undertaking, the young men now, too, divided themselves into progressive and conservative factions, and now the progressives, albeit smaller in number, yet dedicated and bold, looked bravely ahead toward the bright future and overcame all manner of difficulties in the name of that future, while the conservative elements sniveled around outside by the windows and smiled skeptically. After a month or two, however, they, too, gave in to the new spirit of the times and one by one stepped inside the mud-brick salon and took on the roles of ladies and gentlemen. While the true ladies were left alone at their working bees, bored without their suitors and waiting in vain for the dogs in the yard to start barking. The new dances and tunes enjoyed unexpected popularity. The girls weren’t allowed to go into the community center on their own, but it was enough for a few of them to peer through the window and hear some melody, and the working bees themselves became dance parties. The girls no longer knitted or spun, but rather danced the tango and the foxtrot until midnight, bounding in their socks upon the corn mats and rag rugs. In the end, the parents could not withstand the girls’ spontaneous rush to break down the wall between the sexes and were forced to apply a moral principle tried and true throughout the ages, namely to give their daughters over to vice and in this way to overcome it. The mothers, of course, did not realize this consciously and imagined that when they were leading their daughters into the bosom of vice, they would protect them from it through strict supervision. They would sit on low three-legged stools and watch like hawks to make sure the girls and young men did not take any liberties while dragging their feet on the floor and kicking up a dust cloud. The dances were strictly regulated. The girls could only visit the community center accompanied by their mothers, they must keep at least an elbow’s distance from their gentlemen, they could grasp only the fingers of their hands, and they weren’t even allowed to look each other in the eye. Many more dance rules were introduced, all with the goal of preventing any sexual displays on the part of the young people, yet nevertheless the first symptoms of the sexual revolution were apparent, even if for now they were expressed only in the squeezing of hands to the point of rawness and the mutually blazing fire in their eyes.

  The village authorities soon capitulated before this universal cult of the community center and not only did they waive the fine for illegal construction, they even released funds to finish the building. Plasterers and woodworkers were found, as were wooden boards for the stage, bricks for the floor, and chairs for the auditorium. The next year, the town hall also gave the community center two and half acres of fields from the village land fund, which the young people worked voluntarily. The profits from these fields went to outfitting the community center. Cloth was bought for the stage curtain, as well as a kerosene lamp, a stove, and most importantly, a brand- new gramophone with many records – in short, the whole community center was completely modernized and reconstructed, and this created auspicious conditions for the perfecting of the old dances and the learning of new ones. The new dances, however, also required modernized clothing. For example, you couldn’t dance a waltz in breeches, puttees, with a fur hat on your head, and after the dance bow to your lady and tell her “merci.” The new clothing imposed itself like a command that could not be abolished and was the cause for the rise of the new fashion.

  First out of all the young men in the village, again following Ivan Shibilev’s example, my brother, Stoyan, ditched the traditional full-bottomed breeches and padded jacket and donned a suit coat and pants, topped off with a cloth cap on his head. He and Ivan Shibilev took a roll of homespun cloth dyed with walnut leaves from our place and took it to a tailor who knew how to sew city clothes. Mother sold a basket of eggs and a few other things, gave the money to my brother, and he brought home his new suit. On Easter Sunday itself, when the whole village gathered on the square to dance the traditional folk dances, Ivan Shibilev and a few other young men came to our place, went into the room, and my brother put on his new suit in solemn silence. Ivan Shibilev looked him over from all sides and gave a short but prophetic speech: “This is not a homespun suit, boys!” he said, putting his hand on my brother’s shoulder. “This is the armor of progress, which will withstand the bullets of spiritual poverty, baseness, and idiocy. The old-fashioned breeches, leggings, clogs, fur caps, and all those signs of stinking retrogradism will hurl themselves at us, foaming at the mouth, but we will withstand their abuse and curses and very soon our struggle for progress and happiness for young people will be crowned with success. Be bold, comrades!”

  The young men didn’t understand any of this melodramatic speech, but listened with the solemn stiffness of those being initiated into some sacred conspiracy. All of them were dressed in the attributes of stinking retrogradism, they felt a century behind my brother and all signs indicated that they would be following his example in the very near future. After this solemn act of getting dressed, which was in fact a baptism into the new fashion, they led my brother out to the dance. I was an eleven-year-old boy then, but I could already appreciate the significance of this crucial moment in the history of the village, and I joined my brother’s cortege. The young men were walking close on either side of him, as if guarding him from an act of aggression. And so they reached the dance.

  Easter was celebrated with particular splendor for three whole days, and to use contemporary terminology, we could say that this holiday was a fashion show of spring-summer collections. The young people, as was to be expected after the long Lenten fast, looked forward to the holiday with particular impatience. Until Easter no weddings or any kind of entertainment were allowed, so in the long winter nights girls had nothing to keep them busy besides their wardrobes. They wove cloth, embroidered blouses, knitted socks and vests, sewed new clothing for the men, and all that had to be put on display over the course of three days. On the first day, the young people went out in their most humble, almost everyday clothing, only some eye-catching head scarf, belt, or ribbon might hint at the next day’s apparel. On the seco
nd day, new elements of that attire appeared, while on the third day, they brought out everything that had been sewn, embroidered, and dyed with imagination, aesthetic taste, and improvisation.

  Early in the afternoon the young brides, unmarried girls, and bachelors came out of their homes, walking as if on eggshells, clean-shaven, pomaded, made up, their petticoats gleaming like glass, from beneath which delicate lace hung down to the ground, in brightly colored aprons with fluffy fringe, head scarves and shawls over braids that hung down to their knees, in bright tunics and striped sleeves, necklaces of beads and gold coins, new breeches with woolen braiding, red sashes, and flat-bottomed fur hats, white puttees with crisscrossed laces of black goat hair, violet padded jackets and vests. A little later the mothers and fathers came out, as well as mothers- and fathers-in-law, and they, too, walked – especially the wealthier among them – with an irresistible dignity, forming a circle around the dance ostensibly to chat about their own business, but really in order to more precisely observe, compare, and judge the young people on their dancing, their attire, and their behavior.

  Tradition, as is always the case with those who are doomed, did not suspect that the homespun suit, which was standing there so solitary and anxious before her eyes, was a Trojan horse, from whose womb very soon would leap forth the fanaticized adherents of the new fashion who would attack her fortress from within. For now Tradition was invulnerable behind the thick walls of her ignorance, and was not even offended by the bold challenge of the homespun suit, she was satisfied to confer upon it a mocking smile and sarcastic slurs. The young people went past it and even though they did not admire it, they also did not make fun of it, but in the curiosity with which they inspected it a more watchful eye could discover the seed of a forthcoming defection from the old fashion. Only the young Gagauz men showed a rough lack of restraint, they looked at Stoyan’s homespun suit point-blank as if he were a scarecrow, tried to tear off the buttons, giggled and talked amongst themselves in Turkish. They were a group of around twenty young men from a neighboring village, a bastion of old-fashioned prejudices and ignorance, which our folks derisively called Gagauzland. During the holidays, they had a tradition of touring around the neighboring villages like a troupe of folk dancers, who in passing just might kidnap one of the local girls. They arrived in carts or on horseback, stayed with acquaintances or in the fields, and went to the dance. They brought two of their own flute players with huge, loud flutes that sounded like the horns of Jericho. They were all handsome, husky young men with pointy Astrakhan hats, purple jackets, and black breeches decorated with woolen braid, above his right ear each of them had stuck a bouquet or a drake’s tail feather bent like a comma. Unlike our men, they were shod in knee-high boots, from the top of which spilled triangular bits of lace knitted from brightly colored thread, beneath each of their sashes the handle of a pistol peeked out, while out of every boot glinted a knife hilt made of white bone. They talked to the local villagers in broken Bulgarian and our folks made fun of them using their own phrases: “nice horse go fast,” “field very big,” “I want eat,” and so on. The phrase “up cut, down split” had attained particular popularity, spoken by a Gagauz who had wanted to praise his watermelons, which were so crisp and juicy that you only had to press your knife to the top and they would split down to the bottom on their own.