Wolf Hunt

by Ivailo Pretov

  The next day Marchinkov gave me a copy of the twelve’s sentence, we said goodbye and I immediately went to Miho’s former landlords, from whom I found out the name and address of their former servant. Her name was Marga. I found her at her home in the Levski neighborhood. She was sitting with her husband in the little garden in front of their tiny house, lighting a fire in the hearth. Both her face and her body were somehow deformed. Her husband was blind, but he was very skillfully peeling potatoes, cutting them, and putting them in a pot. The reason for my visit was the greetings I was bringing from Miho Barakov. I told them that Miho’s brother had opened a cloth store and needed a servant. The pay was good, the work was only until noon, but the servant needed to know how to write well enough to write down the clients’ names. I was lying through my teeth, as they say, because I was afraid that if I told her the truth she would get scared and send me away. I have no idea what I would have told her if, taking into consideration the impending events, she had thought to ask me how Miho’s brother was opening a store when all the other shopkeepers were closing up their shutters and wondering where to hide. But I didn’t know how else to wrench a line or two of handwriting out of her.

  The blind man sat there silently peeling potatoes, while she got up and went into the house. Wouldn’t you know, I thought to myself while waiting for her to come back, until now the fate of Pashov and his family depended on two big ears, now it depends on one freakish woman.

  “Well sure I know how to write,” she said when she came back with a bottle of cooking oil and sat down by the fire. “I finished the second grade, plus Miho taught me to read and write, didn’t he. Our poor old Miho was a good boy, but he went and landed himself in jail with that crazy business of his. He lived all by his lonesome in that shed, and I cleaned for him, washed and ironed his clothes for him. Now and then he’d tell me: “Auntie Marga, why don’t I teach you to write a little prettier, so when I become a big-time communist, I’ll make you a boss somewhere.” I told her that she really could become a boss somewhere, only that now I needed to see whether she really could write neatly. I gave her my notebook, she set it on a stool and started writing the names I dictated to her. They were the names of the twelve young men. When she got to the fifth name, she stopped to think. I was scared that she would remember the names Miho had dictated to her, so I took my notebook and told her that I liked her handwriting and that Miho’s brother would come looking for her in a week or so. She wanted to treat me to some rosehip jam, but I refused. I said goodbye and went out onto the street.

  I took the bus that same afternoon and by the evening I was in Nusha’s village. Nusha had been waiting for me for three days, she was waiting for me now. She had thought something bad had happened to me, and had been ready to come looking for me the next day. Sometimes life is so generous with its grief and joys that it makes your heart want to burst. On the bus I read in the paper that the Soviet Union had declared war on Bulgaria, which meant that Soviet troops would be crossing our border any minute now. I also brought the copy of the sentence which showed that Nusha’s father had been slandered and that now he was not in any danger. While I recounted all my trials and tribulations trying to fight that slanderous accusation, he listened to me so calmly that I even felt to some extent unjustified in the efforts I had made to save his life. Nusha and her mother listened to my story with great agitation, they were stunned by Miho’s act.

  “Well, I saw that the rag, the canvas, I mean, was missing only at harvesttime when the machine operator said we ought to get it ready for threshing,” Pashov said. “It never even crossed my mind to go looking for it or to go all the way to the city to report it to the police. My brother-in-law wanted to serve me up as a sacrifice to the communists, so hopefully they’d forgive his sins from back in ’23.”

  And he told us of the fate of the village teacher from that time. He had been close with Pashov’s father, since they had been in the army together and later were even sent to war together. Around the events of 1923 the teacher disappeared for a while and when he came back, he wanted Pashov’s father to hide him at his home. The teacher was from central Bulgaria, he had led a band at the time of the uprising and now the police were looking for him all over the country. His father took him in, but a week later a man came to the teacher with a letter. When he read the letter, the teacher asked to be moved to some other place right away, or if they didn’t have anyone they trusted, to take him to the Romanian border one night. His father fixed up the cellar under the barn and promised to hide him from the police as long as was necessary, but the teacher insisted on moving.

  Petar Pashov had suggested to his father that he take the teacher to Stoyu Barakov in our village. They were brothers-in-law, relatives, he could trust him. He agreed from the very start and swore on his honor to keep the secret. Pashov would stop by to see the teacher and to leave him fresh clothes and something to eat. Once the teacher asked him to take a letter to someone. He went to Varna, delivered the letter to the address indicated, and brought back the answer. The teacher read the letter and asked the elder Pashov to come and see him. When he came back home, the elder Pashov said that the teacher had to leave for Varna the following Wednesday, and from there he would go to the Soviet Union. When Pashov went on Wednesday evening to pick him up and take him by cart to Varna, Stoyu Barakov began wailing and beating himself around the head. The teacher had disappeared. He had gone out the previous evening as always to stroll around the garden and hadn’t come back. Pashov believed him, he didn’t know his brother-in-law was a member of the Democratic Union Party, which was in power at the time. A month passed after the incident and he was elected mayor. Shortly thereafter he bought fifty acres of municipal land for a song and got another fifty for free on top of that and became the richest man in the village.

  Years later the senior municipal policeman told Pashov, when they started talking about those times, that Stoyu Barakov had betrayed the teacher to the authorities. He had come to the town hall and told the police superintendent, who happened to be there, how and when to catch him. That very night Bay Doncho received orders to arrest the teacher and bring him to the city. When he found out about this business, the elder Pashov was sick with grief. “A fine job the two of us did, we threw the man to the wolves and now we don’t know if he’s alive or dead!” He spoke this way until the end of his life, because his conscience was gnawing at him, and he swore never to set foot in Barakov’s house and never to admit any of his family into his home.

  “I don’t know what the investigator’s aim was, but he explained Barakov’s politics to you very well,” Petar Pashov added. “Back in the day he threatened that if we raised a stink about the teacher, he would tell the authorities who had hidden him in their home. He also used to say that communists like my son belonged behind bars, but when he saw which way the wind was blowing, he made his own son a communist. Both to wash away his own shame from back then, but also to put a black mark on my son’s name by means of my treachery. You did well to uncover his machinations, but in the end, everything will depend on Lexy. But where he is, whether he’s alive, and when he’ll come back, the Lord only knows…”

  A wave of worry and sorrow spread over his face, while his wife crossed herself and her eyes filled with tears. I wanted to console them so I said that according to investigator Marchinkov, who could be trusted, the police consider Lexy a very important communist who is “hidden” or planted somewhere abroad, and since the police have confirmed it, that meant Lexy would be coming back right after the Soviet troops entered Bulgaria. We talked for a long time after that and in the evening I got up to leave, but Nusha and her parents would not let me go for anything in the world and suggested that I sleep at their house. I refused to stay, but I dozed off during dinner. I only remember Nusha and her mother grabbing me under the arms and leading me somewhere, I heard a soft voice telling me “here, here.”

  At noon I looked for my brother in the community center, where he went eve
ry day to listen to the news. We hadn’t seen each other in more than a month. I didn’t dare go to their home, as Kichka was afraid I would infect their daughter, nor had they come looking for me. For some time after I had left the house, Kichka had kept making food for me and leaving it under the awning of the barn, where I ate lunch and dinner alone. When my relations with my brother deteriorated, I stopped eating at their place. Kichka sent me food via a neighbor, but I sent it back. I also sent back the money my brother sent me via other people. I gave them to understand that I was not taking any charity from them. My brother also sent me a letter, in which he begged me to take his money and go to a sanatorium. I knew that he was suffering both because of my illness and because of my love for Nusha, who, in his opinion, had driven me to ruin both as a man and as a communist, “right now, when all our hopes have almost come true.” That’s what he wrote me in his letter. But “right now” I was the happiest person in the world. Perhaps I had only a short time left to live, but I was happy. My love for Nusha, threatened by the impending events, had been saved once and for all. My brotherly love had been saved as well, without which both my and Stoyan’s lives would be miserable. Now I was bringing him that salvation in a green folder with hard covers, upon which was written Copy of the Sentence in Criminal Case such-and-such. This document would clear up the misunderstandings between us and once again open our hearts to each other.

  The radio announced the government’s decision to break all diplomatic ties to Germany and to declare war on Bulgaria’s former ally. They also announced that the government had issued a decree giving amnesty to political prisoners. After the news, I asked my brother to step outside as I had something exceptionally important to tell him. He was so surprised that he stopped and fell silent for a full minute, then something like a smile flashed across his face.

  “Did somebody whisper it to you in the city or there?”

  He nodded toward the west, where Nusha’s village lay. I told him that “there” had no part in this matter and that nevertheless they had been slandered. Now his smile expressed disappointment. So that’s what it is, this exceptionally important thing that I had to tell him – a new and useless attempt to clear the Pashovs’ name. But when he read the copy of the sentence, he was stunned. We were sitting in Anani’s yard, in the shade of the walnut tree. He had gone very pale and large beads of sweat formed on his brow. I took the folder from him and then he said: “It’s terrible, what’s written there…if it’s true.”

  “Do you doubt it?”

  “Could that investigator have falsified the copy of the sentence? At this point they’re capable of anything and everything to save their own skins.”

  I told him that he could go to the city tomorrow himself to compare the copy of the sentence with the original, since the investigator was at our disposal. I also told him about Stoyu Barakov’s treachery in 1923, which could be confirmed by the senior municipal police officer from that time, Bay Doncho. This earlier betrayal was the cause of the present one. Barakov had been warned by the police that the younger Pashov was an important communist agent, and likely following the police’s instructions, he had taken advantage of the case of the stolen canvas to compromise the father in the communists’ eyes. Barakov joined the Agrarian Party, while his youngest son got in with the youth communist league. The party’s political program was long since common knowledge – after the victory, it would rule together with the agrarians and other parties. If Alexander Pashov returned alive and well, he could seek revenge for the betrayal of the teacher in 1923, but his father would also have turned Miho Barakov over to the fascist police. In the worst case scenario, the two families would now be quits – the fathers both committed political crimes, while the sons are active communists. Let bygones be bygones…

  We sat there talking until late in the afternoon. No matter how indisputable my evidence of Pashov’s innocence and of the Barakovs’ guilt was, my brother somehow couldn’t quite accept it wholeheartedly. It seemed unbelievable to him that “on my own initiative,” and as sick as I was, I had managed to wrench this evidence from some fascist investigator. My efforts in and of themselves led him to believe that I hadn’t conducted this investigation from a desire to uncover the truth, but rather because I was biased toward the Pashovs. Even if that was the case, there was no reason to doubt this truth, yet he doubted it. He had to act quickly, but he still couldn’t decide on any definite action. I had read and told him about the complicated and contradictory paths the Russian socialist revolution had taken, about the dramatic interweaving of many, many human destinies, yet it was hard for him to accept that in our struggle, too, not everything was going smoothly and in a single direction. His notion of complex political battles, of people, and of the world as a whole were quite limited. Besides that, he was mistrustful and suspicious. He understood the conspiratorial system the party had taught him only in terms of cautiousness, and this prevented him from acting independently in a given set of circumstances.

  “The investigator was right in explaining to you that more-or-less cautious people do everything they can to adapt themselves to circumstances,” he said. “Since the Barakovs have done it, why shouldn’t the Pashovs do it too? No one knows for certain who the younger Pashov is serving. If Miho Barakov has committed treachery right under our noses and we didn’t realize it, how are we supposed to know what your friend is up to in some foreign country?”

  What could I do in these circumstances? I was drained from exhaustion and stress, I was spitting up more blood than usual, but my brother would not even put me in touch with the party’s regional committee. He was afraid that the committee would order Miho to be isolated from his comrades in prison and he would realize he’d been unmasked (if he really was a traitor), and the police would try to erase all traces of him. Either they would liquidate him, so he wouldn’t fall into our hands after getting out of prison, or they would liquidate those of us who they suspected of unmasking him. That could be the two of us, for example, since the investigator had revealed Miho’s treachery to us. Thus we could turn the copy of the sentence over to the committee only if we were absolutely sure that Soviet troops would be coming across the border the next day. But whether they would cross the border tomorrow or in a month, that was something nobody could guarantee. Just two days would be enough for the police to carry out a pogrom on all the communists in our region…

  They had already announced on the radio that German troops had retreated to Yugoslavia, thus the Soviet Army had no reason to wait at our border twiddling their thumbs since they knew that in Bulgaria they would not face any resistance. But even that fact seemed unconvincing to my brother. To prove to him that his caution was unnecessary, that very night I seized power myself. It was the sixth of September. I went to the mayor, Bay Yanko, explained the political situation to him and asked him to give me the key to the town hall. He was a shrewd man and immediately agreed.

  “But afterward you’ll say you came at me with a weapon in hand. Because it’s shameful to turn over power just like that. I’ll be a laughingstock…”

  He gave me two old rifles, a revolver, and the village seal, and after that we acted out a small comedic skit. I put him “under arrest” in the neighboring room and wrote the new government’s first proclamation in the name of the people:

  We beseech the village inhabitants, upon hearing the signal of the schoolhouse bell, to come out onto the square in front of the town hall to meet the Soviet soldiers with bread and salt! Chairman of the Fatherland Front.

  I scrawled out an illegible signature, stamped the village mayor’s seal on it, and went to put the proclamation up on the community center door. The young people I met there finished off the rest of the job themselves. They started ringing the schoolhouse bell and spread the news throughout the village. In half an hour, the people started gathering in front of the town hall. Stoyan arrived as well, surprised and excited, but when I told him what was going on, he called me off to the side and starte
d scolding me, accusing me of playing games that could end up being very costly for us, and that on the eve of the great event itself, no less. I turned over the village seal and the weapons to him as a symbol of power, he outfitted three men with the rifles and the revolver and told the rest of the young men to arm themselves with whatever they could and to spend the night guarding the village. He, of course, did not fail to inform them that Soviet troops had not yet crossed the border and that I had taken it upon myself to announce their arrival, for which the police could slaughter us like lambs, being as defenseless as we were.

  The young men were not the least bit fazed and went to carry out their military mission. The celebration marking the establishment of the new village government could not be put off. The square in front of the town hall slowly filled up with people, the youngsters brought out the gramophone from the community center and started dancing. People from the nearest houses brought out wine and brandy, bagpipes and flutes started squealing, and the older folks joined in a traditional round dance. Stoyan went to set up guards around the village and came back only when people were already going home. We locked up the town hall and went our separate ways in silence. The establishment of the Fatherland Front government, which we had so long been awaiting, had not been celebrated with speeches and solemn ceremonies, but like an average, ordinary party.