Wolf Hunt

by Ivailo Pretov

  The big celebration happened on September 9, and even then it was not so much due to the arrival of the Soviet troops as to the return of Miho Barakov. Unfortunately, the Soviet Army units did not pass through our village on the Ninth. They announced on the radio that they would pass through Dobrich, and the most impatient among us, led by Stoyan, of course, set out for the city by cart and horse at the crack of dawn. I, too, was burning with desire to go with them, but I didn’t have the strength even to get into the cart, I was suffocating from a coughing fit and almost collapsed on the ground. I hadn’t slept during the night in anticipation of the Soviet troops and had spent the whole week under great strain. Not a drop of rain had fallen the whole summer, a drought had gripped the plains, the dusty, scorched air was searing my rotted lungs.

  In the evening, I got out of bed and went to the demonstration that had been called in front of the town hall. It was a full moon. The square was awash in white light and from afar you could see how people were arriving from all corners of the village, but despite this, two kerosene lamps had been hung over the town hall’s door. Those who had gone to Dobrich to meet the Soviet troops excitedly described what they had seen and heard, shots rang out somewhere in the village, lots of people had been drinking and now they were already singing and had started up a round dance. And now Stoyan climbed up the stairs to the landing under the light of the lamps. I think that was the happiest day of his life. He was so ecstatic and filled with inspiration that he was shaking like a leaf, tears glittered in his eyes. This is a historic day for our people, he was saying, raising up his arm, fascism has finally been smashed and killed and communism has brought its great justice to us!…

  After he finished his speech, he went down into the crowd and came over to me. He congratulated me on the new government and hugged me, pressing me to his chest. He held me in his embrace for a whole minute, without saying a word. I felt his flaming face next to mine, I could hear him breathing deeply and sobbing. I was happy at that moment, as I had been in my childhood when, coming back from the field in the late evening, he would pick me up in his arms and carry me home. But I could not say anything either. I was sobbing too.

  In the morning I didn’t feel well, but around noon I went out to get some fresh air. On the way home from my stroll, I passed by the tavern and sat down to rest on its veranda and that’s when I saw a dozen cauldrons of mutton soup boiling in front of the Barakovs’ house. Tables and chairs were set up by the cauldrons, along with several barrels of wine and brandy. At that time people hadn’t seen such abundance in one place and the most tempted among them were already hovering around the cauldrons. Prisoners had been freed on September 8, but Miho Barakov had stayed in the city for two days to be on hand at the formation of the new People’s Militia. The elder Barakov had made sure that his son’s return would be celebrated as triumphantly and noisily as if he were rising from the dead. As we found out later, he had invited some influential people from Dobrich, he had also brought in musicians from there. Let the people eat, they’re the ones my son risked his life for, he told everyone he met on the street and invited them to the feast. The previous day he had been appointed chairman of the village soviet, and now, with a vest on over a shirt with rolled-up sleeves, with a straw boater hat on his head and a thin bamboo cane in his hand, he was shuttling with inimitable dignity between his home and the town hall to see whether his son hadn’t called on the telephone to give more information about his arrival. He stopped every minute, took a silver watch from his vest pocket, and held it far from his eyes in order to read it.

  I went back to my room and lay down. I slept, read, ate a bit, then picked up my book again. At two o’clock I heard a car horn honking. A car crossed the part of the square visible from my window, kicking up a huge trail of dust. I soon heard shots ring out and cheers of “hooray.” Miho Barakov’s triumphant welcome back home had begun. The sound of the brass band hung over the village until late in the evening, along with speeches and drunken shouts.

  Before going out to the field, Anani had made me chicken soup, and Auntie Tanka Dzhelebova visited me as well. Her sons had been having trouble in high school, so during vacations I would tutor them in certain subjects. Every time I went to their house, which was clean and cozy, I felt a sort of solemnity on account of my visit; everyone in the family who did not have work to do listened to my lesson with careful attention. Bay Kiro Dzhelebov treated me with great respect, he loved asking me about all sorts of things, he often wanted to borrow books as well. Because of this, we grew close, and when I got sick, Auntie Tanka came once or twice a week to check up on me. In her opinion, the best cure for any disease was hearty food, so every time she came she brought me butter, eggs, honey, a boiled chicken, or banitsa.

  My brother came the next day in the afternoon. He was revolted by Anani and was afraid of being infected by my illness, so he had never before come into my room. This unexpected visit meant he had been watching me. I hadn’t shown my face in the village for a whole day, so he had assumed that I had gone to the city to turn over the evidence of the Barakovs’ treachery, and now he was coming to see whether I was at home. My suspicions were confirmed when he asked for the file as soon as he stepped through the door.

  “Give me the copy of the sentence for safekeeping! Your nerves are shot from your sickness, I’m afraid you’ll get us all into trouble if you show it to somebody now.”

  “Somebody? That would be the party’s regional committee.”

  “So you’ve decided to cut all ties, all the ties that have bound us as brothers until now!” Stoyan said, and began pacing back and forth across the room. His hands were clasped behind his back and I could see his palms were pressed together so hard they were almost bleeding. “Our lives are in danger! Yes, it’s true!…And you want to turn some documents over to some committee. Listen to me, and listen well, so maybe you’ll finally get your head screwed on straight again.” He stopped in front of me and went on more quietly: “Last night two men came to our place well past midnight. One was around forty, the other couldn’t have been more than twenty. They made me take part in the liquidation of an enemy of the people. Those scum have to be slaughtered down to the last man, they said. With no trial, no nothing. The revolution demands blood so it can reach deeply into the people’s consciousness. The revolution demands revenge for every crime against the people, they said. Every tear the people have shed must be paid for with a human life. Did you hear that? With a human life! So that the people understand that the revolution has come in the name of their happiness. I told them that I couldn’t lay a finger on another man. I couldn’t kill a man for anything in the world, no matter who he was. You’ll only be there as a lookout, they said, you won’t have to shoot. But I still refused. They spent two long hours trying to convince me, but I kept refusing. In no uncertain terms. Since that’s how it is, that’s how it is, they said. You’re a party secretary, you want everything handed to you on a silver platter. We’ll draw our own conclusions from this. And not a word about this to anyone, or else this guy’s gonna get involved – and the older one showed me his pistol. If Miho is a traitor, he surely has gotten wind that we have something that could unmask him, and so he sent those people to test me. Otherwise why would they try to force me to kill somebody? The first thing he did on getting out of jail was to cover up his tracks by destroying the court records of his sentencing and liquidating the people involved in the case. That’s why he came back yesterday, and not on the eighth when the prisoners were released. Perhaps he found out from the magistrate Marchinkov that you have a copy of his sentencing? If that’s the case, we need to be careful…”

  My brother left deeply upset. As I was seeing him off, my landlord Anani appeared, coming from the fields. I asked him to drive me to Zhitnitsa and he turned the cart around. I quickly got dressed, took the folder with the copy of the sentence, and got in the cart. The bus passed through Zhitnitsa at five o’clock, so I would reach the city when it was still ligh
t and be able to give the sentence to the committee. As soon as I reached Zhitnitsa, a villager I knew told me that Petar Pashov had been killed that morning.

  I found Nusha and her mother prostrate with grief. They were dressed in black, with black kerchiefs on their heads, beneath which their faces looked translucently yellow, as if carved from wax. Nusha first saw me on the veranda, she ran toward me and pressed her head to my chest, without a moan or a word. She stood in my embrace, quiet and mute, while I had no idea what to say to her or how to comfort her. The women bustling around the house or coming in from outside were looking at us curiously and whispering, from the room where the dead man lay, the monotonous and oppressive wailing of the lamenters could be heard. Nusha’s mother came up from the kitchen, where the rattling of dishes could be heard, and stood before us, with one hand pressed to her lips, and the other on my shoulder.

  “We were waiting for one to come back alive, my son, but instead the other came back dead!” she said, stifling her sobs and glancing at Nusha. “Tell her not to let this ruin her, tell her not to let it gnaw at her. Whatever happened, happened, it was God’s will.”

  She was called down to the kitchen, while Nusha and I went into the room where the dead man lay. Elderly women were sitting around the coffin, speaking in whispers. When they saw Nusha and me, they fell silent, even the lamenters fell silent, and then one of the women whispered: “Her fiancé, got consumption.” The coffin made of rough pine boards had been laid on a long table and was so piled with flowers that only Petar Pashov’s face could be seen, clear, expressionless, and as calm as eternity. Nusha stood on the other side of the coffin, as thin and delicate as the very incarnation of gentle, inconsolable grief.

  After the funeral I stayed at Nusha’s place. Both she and her mother begged me not to leave them alone so soon. I spent the night at their house and in the morning hopped over to the city to give a copy of the sentence to the party’s regional committee. I asked for an urgent meeting with the first secretary, telling the young man who was meeting visitors that I had to tell him about a murder that had been committed that morning. I whispered it in the young man’s ear to intrigue him so he would let me in to the secretary more quickly. People were constantly going in and out of the reception room, always looking for the first secretary. Georgiev, that was the first secretary’s name, called me in about half an hour later. I introduced myself and it turned out we were indirectly acquainted. Some years ago he had come to our house to see my brother on party business. Pashov’s murder didn’t seem to faze him particularly, or at least that’s how it seemed to me. He thought for a moment and asked whether he wasn’t the traitor involved in the smashing of the youth communist organization or his relative. I confirmed that he was the very “traitor” in question, and Georgiev got up and held out his hand: “He should have been sent before the People’s Court.”

  I told him everything from beginning to end. The previous day, early in the morning, Petar Pashov had been called to the telephone to talk to Atanas Mirov from the neighboring village of Senovo. Atanas was a fellow student of Pashov’s son, Alexander, and had graduated from medical school this year as an internist. He had a letter from Alexander, but hadn’t been able to deliver it, since he had twisted his ankle, but he didn’t want to send it via anyone else, so when Pashov found some free time, he should come and pick it up. The elder Pashov asked where he had seen his son, and he answered he had seen him in Sofia, but Alexander could not come to the village at the moment because he was extremely busy. The father set out for Senovo immediately and on the way was shot in the back twice. Accidental passersby found him about an hour later. Georgiev was so intrigued that he asked his assistant not to let anyone in until he called for him. For more than an hour, I told him the whole story, also reading passages from the sentence. In the end, Georgiev said our meeting needed to remain a complete secret, he advised me to go back to the village right away, to say hello to my brother from him, and under no circumstances were we to change our behavior toward Miho Barakov and his family. I left for the village that very day, but before departing I couldn’t resist the temptation of checking whether the magistrate Marchinkov was alive and well. The old woman who had met me a week earlier recognized me immediately. She was very concerned and anxious and said that he had not come home for three days. She was his aunt and didn’t know anything more about his whereabouts.

  That evening I again stayed at Nusha’s. It was sowing time and there was no one to take up the work. I hired a man to look after the livestock, I also found people to sow at least half the land designated for the autumn sowing, which had been left unsown. I took charge of their taxes and expenses and little by little I became something like the head of the household. The two women were in need of protection against both certain local communists as well as riffraff who thought that class equality – which they had had no inkling of yesterday – should come about the first day after the revolution. In these interregnum days of lawlessness, lots of old grudges were being dredged up along with the excitement, many gave free reign to their wildest urges and took revenge on their personal enemies in the name of the party and the people. They splattered the walls of the house with slogans and threats, stole from the yard and fields, at night they banged on the doors and condemned Nusha for her moral dissipation and called her a bourgeois whore. They meant our “illegal” relationship – but it was platonic.

  Love came to me without youthful passion, when I was twenty-six years old and perhaps incurably ill. It came with the force and inevitability of a supernatural phenomenon and no one could extinguish it in my heart in any way. Nusha knew I was doomed, since all those sick with tuberculosis from the village had died, but still she wouldn’t hear a word about us parting. Even if she did believe that I would recover, there is no way she could not have known that associating with me could cost her her life. She was so unaware of the risk she was putting herself at that I fell into despair over her lack of caution and felt like a calloused egoist. My love could become a crime if I did not keep my distance from her. I always told her this when we met, but she would cry and say that she was ready to take whatever strict hygienic measures were necessary, but she wanted to see me at least twice a week. To protect our love from rumors and people’s disgust, we needed to get married, but in my state that was impossible. We could only announce our engagement, and that is what we did. Being engaged did not require us to live under a single roof, I visited them once or twice a week, and even then only with great caution…

  Toward the end of ’46 the campaign to found a collective farm began. We were so inspired that we didn’t stop to think about the difficulties awaiting us from then on. We believed that since we wanted to build a more just life for the people, they would unanimously and voluntarily follow our lead. I had read about the difficulties in founding the Soviet kolkhozes, I had also told Stoyan what I had read, but to the both of us these difficulties seemed completely simple to overcome given the state of things here – in Bulgaria, we were moving toward collectivization almost a quarter-century later, thus our Bulgarian village had to be ripe for a revolutionary reform. Stoyan gave himself over completely to this campaign as the revivalists had dedicated themselves to freeing Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire. He had lost weight from lack of sleep and sustenance, but I had never before seen him so energetic and sure of the future.

  In the meantime a miracle had occurred. Toward the end of that same year I was already healthy. The strange thing was that I started feeling better and better after Nusha and I had gotten engaged. I wasn’t spitting up blood, I wasn’t feverish, I wasn’t sweating, and little by little I was regaining my strength. I went to the city for an X-ray and the doctor was surprised. My lungs, as he put it, had patched themselves up – something that happened only rarely in those sick with tuberculosis. With what impatience and joy did I get off the bus and go to Nusha’s house! As soon as I was through the door I called out that I was completely cured, and Nusha threw herself into
my arms.

  My relationship with Stoyan improved, but not to the point where we could live together again. He was very nervous when I told him I had given the copy of the sentence to the first secretary of the party’s regional committee, but Pashov’s murder had startled him as well. After Pashov, the former municipal police officer was killed, the magistrate Marchinkov also disappeared, along with the original sentence. As was found out later, these two or three murders (the third was that of Marchinkov, about whose fate nothing yet was known) had been committed in a single twenty-four-hour period, hence, if we had informed the committee on time, they could have put Miho Barakov under surveillance. At first my brother felt guilty for not putting me in touch with the party’s underground regional committee, but then he began to wonder whether someone else had taken action on Miho Barakov’s account, after he had somehow found out that the new government suspected him. Marchinkov, since it was not known whether he had been liquidated or arrested, could have been that someone.

  Despite these events, Stoyan gave me to understand that a full restoration of our brotherly relations in the end depended on the situation of the younger Pashov, Alexander. If he had really worked for the communists abroad, why hadn’t he come back right after September 9? If the opposite turned out to be the case, then the Barakovs were absolutely within their rights to take revenge on his father. And what would I do in that case? Would I marry his sister, as I had already promised her, or would I break off the engagement? And if I didn’t break it off, I would have to go live with a family in which both the father and the son were traitors. No, there was no way they were traitors. With my own eyes I had read the case files of the trial against the twelve young communists and was convinced that the elder Pashov had been slandered. Lexy couldn’t be a traitor either, but why hadn’t he come back or at least contacted his family? I never doubted him for a minute, yet nevertheless, I remembered Devetakov’s notes that I’d found amidst his books. Devetakov wrote that he had seen Lexy in a Zurich hotel, but Lexy had pretended not to recognize him and had passed him by. Lexy would never have passed by a person for whom he felt such great respect unless some exceptional circumstances required it of him. Devetakov with good reason had presumed just as we had that Lexy was working in espionage, but did that really give him the right to doubt his political convictions? “You have to be ready to expect anything from a person.”