Wolf Hunt

by Ivailo Pretov

  From the brief conversation I had had with Petar Pashov, what had made the strongest impression was his question in regards to his son’s letter: “What if he wrote it looking down the barrel of some gun?” Of course, even if he did know, he wouldn’t tell me why and how his son had left to go abroad, but why did he assume that Lexy had been forced to write that letter, and in German no less? Could he have been hinting that Lexy, as a very important party functionary, had somehow been kidnapped and his captors had forced him to write that letter in order to compromise him and at the same time to warn his family (perhaps similar letters had been sent to his comrades-in-arms as well)? But his departure abroad could also have been organized by the party, so that he could take up some important job there. The question was why had he left and whom was he serving? He could be either an agent provocateur, or he could be working for Soviet intelligence. This was known only to the ones he was serving, while we were left but with doubts, which could destroy his family. As far as Lexy’s father was concerned, the case seemed more clear-cut. As a wealthy villager, he hated the communists with good reason, and for the same reasons he fought against them. But had he betrayed them and if he had, would he dare use his daughter as a pawn, as my brother claimed, to save himself when the time came? Why not? Feminine charm had always played a leading role in the history of espionage, it had been used to fool men everywhere, and few were able to resist it. Perhaps I am one such fool too? I loved Nusha, but did she love me so selflessly and devotedly? I needed to make an unbiased judgment about her, I told myself, to suppress my feelings and see her true face. She treated me like a healthy man; not in a single word, glance, or gesture of hers had I caught any pity or fear of my illness. She also wasn’t curious as to why I had left my home, how my life was at the noseless man’s place, and how I felt. I didn’t want to remind her of my illness in any way whatsoever, and if I tried to do it, she changed the subject and distracted me with another topic. That might be due to her love for me, but it could also be deliberate. Rumor certainly reproached her for taking up with a sick man, and she justified this by not believing it. Her parents were not opposed to our relationship and even encouraged her – at our every meeting she relayed their invitation to come visit. How could they allow her to come visit me on her own? She was “educated” and likely enjoyed a certain independence, but still, for villagers like them it was difficult to ignore the biases of the times. Many of the villagers had remarked to me that “Miss Nusha was coming at my beck and call.” Perhaps that was precisely her parents’ goal – to get word of our relations around and to tie me down with public opinion.

  Whatever it was, I had to break things off with Nusha or at least curtail my relations with her for some time, until her father’s situation was cleared up. Otherwise I risked sullying not only my brother’s name and all his deeds, but I also risked trampling my own convictions. The poet had said “the world is watching us now”* and I could say of my brother and myself that now not only the village, but the whole region, was “watching us.” We had taught people communist morals, we had preached that the communist was obliged to deprive himself of everything personal and to devote his strength and feelings to the revolution. And the revolution was imminent.

  On the third day I came out of my room, passed through the garden gate, and set out for Zhitnitsa. I went to do what my brother most feared. I was going to Petar Pashov to let him in on one of our secrets, namely that the communists considered him a traitor, and thus to try to find out the truth about the man from himself. My heart rebelled with a terrible force against every logical argument concerning his guilt and powerfully led me onward. I realized that perhaps I was committing a crime, that I shouldn’t trust my heart, since it was a blind, unknown force, it could crown a man with supreme happiness, but it could also lead him into the depths of hell. But I didn’t turn back. I was risking everything, but I had to find out who Peter Pashov and his son, Alexander Pashov, were.

  I had just stepped out of the gate when Nusha appeared in front of me on her bike. She was so pleasantly surprised at our meeting that she didn’t notice the state I was in, and as soon as she got off her bike, she started telling me a dream she had had. She had dreamed of me in black clothes, coming down a hill and disappearing into some red abyss. Black and red meant something good, so some kind of happiness was in store for me and she had been coming to tell me. My heart quivered with joy at seeing her, but at the same time I wondered how she could have decided to come see me, after we had parted a few days ago without saying goodbye and without agreeing on a new meeting. Had she heard what my brother was saying and in spite of that had come, or did she think he had had something confidential to tell me connected to our party business? In any case, she had slunk off as if thrown out and any young lady in her place would have shown a certain pride. Or perhaps she “didn’t have time” for such considerations?

  Perhaps it was because I had to break it off with her for good, or at least temporarily, but to me it seemed that she had never before looked so lovely. She was dressed in a navy-blue blouse with white spots and a light skirt, her short hair was tousled like a mischievous boy’s, her face, which was tanned, was radiant with some inner light. While she was telling me her dream, I wondered how to send her away and realized that I did not have the strength to do so. Yes, I thought to myself, she truly did foresee my state in her dream, I really have fallen into the “red” abyss of love, where I was overcome by pangs of conscience over my lost honor. If it turned out that she was being put up to it and, as my brother claimed, that she was trying to save her father and brother from the people’s punishment through amorous games, then I deserved an even more severe punishment. Thus even if she was playing some unconscious role and even if she did sincerely love me, I had to break off our relations until her father’s situation was clarified. The previous night Radio Moscow had reported that the Third Ukrainian Front had surrounded German units in the Iasi-Chisinau region. No matter how the war developed, the Soviet Army would be here in Bulgaria within a month at the latest, and in that time Nusha’s father’s fate would be decided. I had thought of secretly contacting him and telling him he was being accused of betrayal. If he really was a traitor, he would take preventative measures and that would be proof of his guilt.

  The sun was already setting and that dusky toil- and heat-exhausted August silence, with its restful scent of ripe fruit, threshed hay, and near and distant noises, had settled over the village. A threshing machine rumbled mutedly from the upper part of the village, a light-golden cloud of hay dust wafted over the yards and gardens, smoke slowly and solemnly rose from the chimneys, at first thick and white, then ethereally blue as if from a pipe, from the fields came the jangling of carts, sparrows twittered in the thick, heat-scorched foliage of the orchard trees. All of that, both the noises and the scents, fused into a single tired sigh from the workday, which in an hour would be sitting at the table, and after that would give itself over to a short-lived, deep, and sweet summer sleep. Would I, too, close my eyes in sleep, or would I sit in bed with a book in my hand, or would I wander through the garden and the fields until morning, as I had been doing for weeks now? For whole nights I had pondered what to do about Nusha and her father, the time had come to act, yet I had neither the strength nor the desire for it. Would I not be committing a sacrilege against my heart, against Nusha’s innocence, and even against nature itself, so still in this wonderful moment of contemplation, if I insisted upon a separation, against which my whole being rebelled?

  Perhaps everything between us would have finished by the garden gate or somewhere along the road if my landlord Anani had not appeared, coming from the fields. He was still disconcerted by me, and when he saw Nusha, he stopped his cart for a moment, then turned down another road in order to enter his yard through the other gate. I asked Nusha to come inside, so as to give him the opportunity to finish his work in peace. Our previous meetings had always been outside, in the yard or the field, now Nusha came into
my room for the first time. My furnishings – insofar as there were any furnishings to speak of – were extremely modest: a rag rug on the dirt floor, a table, a few chairs, a bed, and two large shelves of books, which Anani had quickly fixed up after I had moved in.

  “You have so many books! My brother has books too, but not this many,” Nusha said, looking at the books with her head cocked to one side so as to be able to read the titles. “Ah, there’s Anna Karenina! I wanted to read it a few years ago even, but Lexy said I was too young and hid the book. Please give it to me to read. I’ll give it back in a few days. Can I look at it?”

  “Of course, why don’t you sit down?”

  Nusha took the book, sat down at the table, and started looking through it.

  Now I had to tell her about our impending separation.

  “Nusha, the day before yesterday I went to a doctor in the city and he insisted that I go to a sanatorium in the mountains. Otherwise there’s a risk that my sickness will get worse and other cavities will open up. If I can’t get into any sanatorium, I need to isolate myself completely and not meet up with anyone. You know that the local people, when they’re sick with tuberculosis, they build huts in the woods and live there alone. I may be forced to isolate myself in the woods too.”

  As if to confirm what I had said, a spasm rose up in my lungs, I barely managed to take the little metal box out of my pocket, I turned my back to Nusha and spit into it. When I recovered from my coughing fit and turned toward her again, she had stood up from her chair and was looking at me with shining, unmoving eyes. Her suntanned face had turned a brownish pale, her hand had frozen on top of the book on the table. The evening burst in through the window in cold waves along with the dying, gentle glow of the sunset, out in the yard a bluish sphere of twilight settled along the fence, objects lost their outlines and colors and fused into dark blotches.

  “When will you go?” Nusha asked.

  “Perhaps tomorrow or the next day.”

  “Have you gotten ready?”

  “I don’t have all that much to get ready.”

  Nusha walked around the table and stepped over to me, and I could see that she was shaking as if with fever, while her eyes were shining ever more strongly and drily.

  “I’ll come with you!” she said. “I’ll get a room next to yours and…”

  “But how, Nusha? That’s impossible.”

  “What, don’t you want me to go with you? Tell me, please just tell me.” But she didn’t give me a chance to tell her in any case, but went on talking as if delirious. “I’ll tell Mom and Dad this very night that I’m going with you to the sanatorium to help you. They’ll let me go, they’ll definitely let me go, they won’t try to stop me. And they’ll give me money. They are good people, they love you and know you need to go get treatment. But I have to be there with you, don’t I, to help you get better as soon as possible. I know you’re going to recover, but I want to be closer to you. I won’t bother you. If you don’t want to see me, you’ll leave notes by the door telling me what you need and I’ll leave it for you in the same way.”

  While telling me this, she kept pressing against me ever more closely, while I backed away. I could see she was not in her right mind and did not realize what she was doing, I stepped back and put out my hands as a barrier between us. As always, I was afraid of infecting her, but she took my hands in hers and squeezed them so tightly that I could feel the strength in her fingers, warm and as hard as pincers.

  “If you don’t get better…If you don’t get better, I won’t go on living! Do you know that, do you?”

  We sat down on my bed and spent almost an hour holding hands like that, then I took her back to her village. I rode the bike, while she sat in my arms. We kept silent the whole way, as if we knew that even the most beautiful words could not express what had happened between us. I left her by the garden gate and went back to my village on foot. Even when we parted we didn’t say anything about my impending departure or about our next meeting, as if we had become one mind and one body and there was no need to share our thoughts and desires aloud.

  The next day I hardly waited for evening to fall before starting out for Nusha’s village. I had decided to go to their place, even though she had not invited me, but she had also set out toward mine, so we met halfway. How I looked in the people’s eyes, at that intense time at the end of the harvest and the beginning of threshing, on the eve of political events such as the entrance of the Soviet Army into Bulgaria, I found out later from friends – and of course, from my brother. In his eyes, I naturally looked like the most pathetic individual ever, for whose sake he was “burning with shame” in front of other people and especially the communists. I realized that precisely at that tense time when the political fate of not only the party and the people, but perhaps of the whole world as well, was being decided, I should not give myself over to my personal feelings to such an extent, to say nothing of having a love affair with the daughter of our eventual enemy. Sometimes I thought that the people among whom I lived found something selfish and indecent in my love, so devoted and beautiful, but still, at the end of the day, I ignored all considerations and set out for Nusha’s village or waited for her at home. No more was said about my going to a sanatorium, even though another cavity opened up in my lungs at that time.

  Only when Bagryanov’s government resigned and the advance units of the Third Ukrainian Front reached the Bulgarian border at Silistra did I remember the danger threatening Nusha’s father. I had read fiction and political literature about the revolution in Russia and I knew what it meant to be a person accused of treachery by the revolution. At the height of the chaos, the first days were lawless, there was no investigation or trials for the guilty and suspected. Not only those who had been, but those who would be, enemies of the revolution were condemned to death. If it turned out that Nusha’s brother had worked against us too, the same doom would loom over their family as well.

  The first thing that occurred to me was to go to Varna, where the trial against the twelve youth communist league members had been held, and to acquaint myself with the case. I didn’t want to alarm Nusha and her family, but still I had managed to learn from my conversations with her that her father had not even been called as a claimant in the case, that he didn’t know who had stolen his canvas threshing machine cover, he hadn’t reported anything about it to anyone, nor had he known that the canvas had fallen into the hands of the partisans. It was most likely that Lexy had arranged for it to be “stolen,” but it was more believable that someone had stolen it for money. Speaking of money, I had asked Nusha how much money Lexy’s stay in Switzerland had cost and she replied that her father had not sent money because he didn’t know his address, and that his stay abroad was a painful mystery for their family, even though they were sure that Lexy had been sent there by the party. That and several other facts gave me grounds to believe that Lexy was “hiding” abroad and was working for our intelligence, and that his father was not and could not be a traitor, even if he didn’t share his son’s convictions. The most indisputable fact concerning Petar Pashov’s innocence was that his daughter was in intimate relations with me, which could cost her her life, or at least a bout of tuberculosis. According to people in the village, our relationship was based on my despair and her sheer lunacy, and Nusha never talked about how her parents explained and allowed this relationship.

  I left for Varna to look at the case of the twelve young men and to convince myself fully that Nusha’s father had been slandered or was the victim of a misunderstanding. The only person who could help me get my hands on the court archives was my fellow student and friend, Metodi Savov, with whom I had graduated from law school a year earlier. Metko’s father, Georgi Savov, was one of the most prominent lawyers in our region and had a large clientele. From Metko I knew that his father was a Social Democrat who, as far as I could recall, had later gone over to the Communist Party. Georgi Savov had defended almost all the defendants accused under the
Law for the Defense of the Nation, but inexplicably he hadn’t taken part in the trial against the twelve young men. It turned out that Petar Pashov had been his client for many years. He also knew Lexy, who had come to his practice on some errands for his father. When I briefly told him the story about the stolen canvas cover, the lawyer was astonished that Pashov hadn’t been called into court as a claimant or witness, since he had seen and recognized the thief and, what was more inexplicable, especially after he had told the investigating institutions the name of the thief.

  The three of us long mulled over what to do and the lawyer suggested, before we looked over the case, that we meet and talk to Miho Barakov and find out from him why, despite his testimony in court, he had told his comrades that Petar Pashov was a traitor. Was it true, or had other interested parties spread that rumor? We asked the prosecution for permission to visit Miho Barakov in prison, they put us off for two days and in the end refused our request. The reasons for this refusal were likely the events that were developing with mind-boggling speed and the general confusion. Muraviev’s government had taken power and had published a declaration of full neutrality. Moshanov was authorized to hold negotiations for a truce with representatives of England and the United States. Rumors ran through town that partisan detachments were nearing the city. It was said that ships and planes from the Soviet maritime front were sinking German ships, which were fleeing toward the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles.