Wolf Hunt

by Ivailo Pretov

  He didn’t finish his thought, because blood spurted from his nose, wetting his moustache and dripping down onto the floor. I made him sit down in the chair, tilt his head back, and plug his nose with a handkerchief. He bled for a long time, he felt so weak that I had to walk him home. For the first time in four years I was to enter my childhood home and I was excited, but Kichka didn’t even invite me inside. She was worried and wanted to take my brother to a doctor in the city, but he refused and went to lie down. In the morning I stopped by to see him. Kichka met me in the yard and wouldn’t allow me to talk to him, so as not to upset him. He had been raving in his sleep all night, saying that Iliya Dragiev had been crying like a baby because he wasn’t able to kill some dog. What dog? What were we fighting about again, what had I been picking an argument with him about? Are his troubles with other people not enough that I had to go poisoning him with mine as well? Glaring at me with hostility, Kichka told me quite a few home truths and I realized that Stoyan had shared all our arguments with her, which she called “rows,” and that these rows weighed on his conscience and caused him to doubt his work. Why don’t you just go your separate ways, since you can’t seem to see eye to eye, she told me in the end. You’re healthy already, you’re a bachelor, find yourself a job in the city, either as a lawyer or a judge, get married and settle down. The way things are going with you and your brother, you’ll be at each other’s throats before long and will be the laughingstock of the village.

  Kichka couldn’t hide her feelings and for me it wasn’t hard to guess that Stoyan had shared with her his desire to send me far away from the village, but he hadn’t dared to tell me so she saved him that bit of unpleasantness. I had also thought of starting work in the city, but because of my illness, and later also because of events in the village, I hadn’t made up my mind to leave. I had been the bookkeeper for the collective farm, I had been a teacher for one year, I also acted as a legal consultant for some time to the newly founded Machine and Tractor Station. It seemed to me that I could be useful at this moment when everyone was suffering, when a new era was being born with so much pain and torment. And perhaps I would’ve stayed for a long time in the village if it hadn’t been for that paradoxical story of Ivan Shibilev being sent to a labor camp. Indeed, what bigger paradox than that – my brother expelling from the party organization the person who had founded it before the Ninth. Another paradox came as a result of the first – the political criminal and murderer Miho Barakov, in his capacity as the regional chief of police, taking advantage of how my brother had depicted Ivan Shibilev to the party’s regional committee, sent Ivan Shibilev to a labor camp. The person who had wasted his talents in service to the party at a time when, instead of high art, the party needed propaganda and posters; a person who, through all the ups and downs of his outlandish and wild life, had never stopped serving the party, not even for a second. And yet another paradox – my brother denounced or threatened to denounce as kulaks villagers who had nothing to do with kulaks, while the only real kulak in the village, the political criminal Stoyu Barakov, was not only living in freedom, but he was also chairman of the village soviet, representing and exercising the people’s power. Four years had passed since the crimes of the younger and elder Barakov had been discovered, but the party’s regional committee still had not undertaken any action to unmask them. I had gone there several times to ask how long we would tolerate these wolves in sheep’s clothing and they always answered me, with a finger to the lips, that I must keep what we knew about them an absolute secret. They didn’t give any other explanations, but it was clear that the Barakovs’ fate depended on Alexander Pashov’s return, which in and of itself would be the best proof that he had worked for us while abroad and that his father had been sacrificed in vain. But unfortunately, Pashov still had not returned, while his mother had no news of him at all.

  None of this would have happened if my brother hadn’t taken party discipline as dogma and if he had showed a certain independence in his decisions. I very often thought of the question that the late Mihail Devetakov had asked, thinking about revolutions: Is it possible to achieve a humane end through inhumane means? At the time, when we had been talking with Devetakov, as he himself noted, this question did not exist for Lexy Pashov and me. For us back then, the impending revolution was the most long-awaited, historically magnificent, and humane event, and we had never thought of how it would be put into practice. But when it came, the question of what means to use to “impose” it here in Bulgaria became for me the most confounded question. The people were suffering, caught between two epochs. Few believed that the capitalist countries would declare war on us and bring the old times back. Most people realized that the revolution wasn’t going to pass them by, but still they couldn’t part with their property. Some elderly people had burst into tears in front of me. They pounded their heads with their fists, asking: “What can we do? There’s no way forward, no way back!” Two died of heart attacks, while another hung himself. He voluntarily signed the co-op membership declaration and when he got back home, he went straight into the barn and hung himself.

  During this hard time, I was often overcome with doubt and despair, it seemed to me that my one-time ideals had been exploited in practice, and it was then precisely that I would try to answer Devetakov’s terrible question. I remembered visiting Devetakov’s estate, first with Lexy Pashov, then in the following years on my own, and under the influence of the memory of that noble man, I mentally agreed with him, that a humane end cannot be reached through inhumane means. And what’s more, man changes very slowly, if he does not stay constant, and only little by little – one millimeter per century or perhaps not even that much. Devetakov spoke of these things only rarely, perhaps so as not to bore me with his philosophizing or, as is more likely, to break down the age barrier between us. And indeed, the greater my reverence for his person was, the more free I felt before him. He expressed his thoughts in a soft, unusually pleasant voice, without imposing them, as if they had just occurred to him that minute and as if there was nothing of value in them. It always seemed to me as I listened to him that he was suppressing a thought: “Feel free to ignore what I just said.” I always left the estate filled with spiritual bliss, my heart caressed by a gentle melancholic longing for another, different, unattainable world.

  But no matter how enchanted I may have been by Devetakov’s charm, deep down I felt resistance to some of his philosophical beliefs. This resistance, cowardly and fragile, was fed by my age and the environment I had been born into and grown up in. I was twenty-some years old, my lust for life was so insatiable that I didn’t give in to despair even when I got sick and knew that I was doomed to death. Only once did I believe that death made life meaningless, and then only for a short time, when Nusha passed away and I felt endlessly alone. The energy of youth, which filled my whole being, rebelled against the despair of Devetakov, who was exhausted by knowledge and who had discovered the meaninglessness of being. Now, as I am approaching fifty, I understand the disconsolate cries of that despairing wise man, while back then it seemed to me that he was reciting aphorisms out of a surplus of reason, while I chalked up his suicide to incurable melancholy.

  I sensed that Devetakov had fallen victim to a tragic lack of belief, and this strengthened my spirit, it gave me the strength to analyze impartially my brother’s actions. Despite our tense arguments, which estranged us for years at a time, deep in my heart I nursed forgiveness for him, because he possessed more virtues than vices. If in our youth we experienced some happiness, that was our readiness to sacrifice ourselves for everyone suffering around the world, and they were the poor and underprivileged classes. At that time my brother had been for me a model of the ideal young man and not only for me, but for all the young people in our region. Empathetic, honest, and hardworking, he hated every kind of despotic behavior and lived with the illusion that all people in the world had equal rights. The difficulties he faced in his work were many and only a person like hi
m, with inexhaustible energy, devotion, and faith in the work of socialism, could overcome them. He worked under orders from “up above” and the mistakes and distortions he committed were not his, or not his alone, but due to the “party line,” to working methods at the time of collectivization. The instructions from the party’s regional committee demanded he act with a “firm hand,” and my brother understood these instructions just as all responsible party workers did. As they say, power had a finger in this business as well. It is complicated and difficult to trace and explain the influence of power on people, but it is indisputable that no one in this world has resisted its temptations, especially if this power is absolute. Those who exercise absolute power are obligated to work for the good of society, while society for its part is obligated to submit. And perhaps in the submission of the many to the single individual, power reveals its feminine seduction and turns into vanity and becomes second nature.

  My brother, too, was going down that inevitable path. As I found out later from Ivan Shibilev himself, he had denounced my brother for his displays of despotism and with his inherent frankness had not spared him a single truth, without any intention of belittling him, but “just like that, as to one of my own.” Ivan Shibilev hadn’t picked the right moment, since at that time my brother had already become a powerful figure. The co-op had stabilized a bit and daily wages had risen from a few cents to a lev and a half. The time of sleepless nights, doubts, and hostile conflicts was over and my brother had gained some assurance and self-confidence. Little by little he had taken the village business into his own hands and without him nothing could be decided and no initiative whatsoever could be undertaken, both in the public as well as in the personal life of the people. Party propaganda glorified Stalin to the rank of a deity, placing him above everyone and everything, he was proclaimed omnipresent and omnipotent, artists competed to praise and immortalize him. To imitate him in our work, to temper our will like steel in the struggle against our ideological enemies, was for us a sacred party duty and a source of joy. But my brother started imitating him outwardly as well. A portrait of Stalin in his cap, his jacket buttoned up to the top and with the fingers of his hand tucked between the buttons, was hanging in the party club. My brother, it seems, had discovered in his own face a similarity to the face of Stalin, and as soon as he grew the same moustache, he looked strikingly like him. We frequently went to the cinema in the city and in both the newsreels and in the feature films themselves you could always see and hear the weighty stateliness with which this strong character moved around his office, how he spoke slowly and deliberately, without the gestures or emotions of mere mortals, how he expressed his great thoughts with the fewest words possible, and sometimes only with “yes” or “no.”

  My brother’s imitation of Stalin was, of course, foolish and ridiculous, but the leaders of the party’s regional committee looked upon his resemblance to Stalin as a personal service to socialism or even as a type of predestination and over time also began to respect him as a figure. They praised his organizational abilities, were more lenient with him than with the other village party secretaries, and promised in time to promote him to a more important position in the city. This could not have failed to inspire his self-confidence as a powerful figure, as mentioned above, and which became the cause for his conflict with Ivan Shibilev. Incidentally, this conflict shows that a strong character is magnanimous, he does not abuse the power he holds, he can handle the opinion, taste, and thoughts of others, while a weak character is not sure of his own cause and for this reason defends and imposes it with suspicion, pettiness, and brutality.

  My brother didn’t think twice about slandering one of his comrades before the party’s regional committee only because he had “insulted” him, and thus helped throw an innocent man into a labor camp. First of all, he meddled in my intimate relations with Nusha, tried to nip my feelings for her in the bud, and as a result of this meddling her father, the former municipal police officer, investigator Marchinkov, and who knows how many others lost their lives. My situation was really quite complicated because of the unclear political standing of Alexander Pashov and because of the Barakovs’ intrigues, thus my brother’s hesitation and caution against acting quickly and decisively is to some extent justified. But the case of Ivan Shibilev, as well as with many others before him, showed that he had begun to play lord and master of others’ fates, not on any public grounds, but due to personal considerations, and that he was no longer merely overstepping his rights, but had given himself over to despotism. Since I knew that many other party officials like him were trying to infringe upon people’s innermost feelings, to dig into their hearts with their dirty hands and to manipulate them to their liking, I kept wondering how, with these people, deprived of their individuality and their rights, we would create the most democratic society in the world, in which man could be the true master of his labor, of the state, and of his own freedom. My brother was indirectly guilty for Mona’s death as well, and I told him so. I also told him that he was blinded by his plebeian lust for power and was making himself into a tyrant, while he had long since stopped giving a rip about the people, in whose name he was speaking and acting. He was enraged and ordered me to leave the village immediately, so as not to hinder him with my rotten highbrow liberalism. If I didn’t do it, then something unpleasant might happen to me as well…

  Several days later I went to say goodbye to Nusha’s mother. Every week I stopped by to see her and to ask whether she had any news of Lexy. She had adopted one of her sister’s daughters and lived with her family. She was shrunken by the years, but wiry and intelligent, while her eyes, dark and moist, gave off a youthful glint. With those eyes, Lexy’s eyes, she, too, asked me from afar whether I had news from him and from the expression on my face she could guess that I didn’t. In good weather I would find her in the yard or in the garden, but now I didn’t see her anywhere. Before I could knock on the kitchen door, it opened and Lexy was standing in front of me. As happens in such cases, the two of us stared at each other in surprise for a moment, then embraced. Later, when we were sitting upstairs in his room, where I had spent so many nights and experienced so much happiness and anguish, he told me about the highly secret work he had been doing abroad over the past eight years…

  PART FIVE:

  KIRO “UP YOURS” DZHELEBOV

  KIRO DZHELEBOV RECEIVED this unseemly nickname when he was still young and had started to live apart from his brothers. His house was built of hewn stone, had two stories, and like all the new houses at that time, it had an orange-colored façade with white molding around the windows and a wooden veranda with stone steps. It differed from the other houses only in that instead of being a barn for cattle, the lower floor was outfitted for living. At the time this domestic reform was met with mockery and even reproach from the older homeowners, but subsequently it turned out to be sensible and useful. A barn on the lower floor had a certain advantage during the winter, when the farmer could go down to feed and tend his cattle in his underwear, but the stench of manure and piss, as well as the various vermin, turned the whole house into a barn. Kiro Dzhelebov built his barns and outbuildings in the upper end of the garden, walled them off with a high adobe fence, and while in the neighboring yards dung piles towered like ancient Thracian burial mounds in which the pigs and chickens wallowed, his yard was as grassy and clean as a clearing in the woods.

  Soon his home was recognized in the village as a model home. There was no sign to this effect on the front door, as can now be found on many of the doors in Bulgarian cities, indicating that our folks keep their homes neat and tidy only if they are awarded some distinction for it, and that in homes lacking such a sign live cavemen in impenetrable stinking squalor. It was at that time that I first visited Kiro Dzhelebov’s home. I was in second grade and sat next to his son Marko at school. The schoolteacher lived with them and one day she brought us to look at their house, yard, and garden, and in the afternoon assigned us an essay on the t
opic: “What did we see in Kiro Dzhelebov’s yard?” It seems that I did not have the aesthetic gifts for seeing something worthy of admiration in that model home, I got an F on my essay, thus my first visit to the Dzhelebovs’ was tied to my first literary failure. It turned out that Marko and I were in the same class in high school, too, we lived together, and during vacations I often went to their place and only then did I discover and appreciate his father’s homeownerly virtues, as well as those of the whole family. The orchard with its whitewashed trees (the only ones in the village), the rows in the vegetable garden as straight as arrows, the fence with its wooden planks, the fresh and clean grass in the yard, the flower bed in front of the house, the well near the outbuildings with its ring of hewn stone, the outer gate with its roof of bright-red tiles, and everything you could see showed that the owner was not only hardworking, but also exacting to the point of precision. And there was another thing that could not be seen anywhere else in the village, if not in the whole region, and perhaps not in the whole country. At that time there was a wild pear tree in almost every field. In the shade of this tree, people would eat and rest during the summer heat, they would hang their babies’ cradles from it, keep their water and tie their livestock there in its cool shadow – in short, the wild pear was the farmer’s invaluable assistant, and in our region without forests it was revered as a sacred tree. It grew on its own and no one took care of it. In good times, it would bear fruit, people would gather it and make pear soup for the winter; in bad times, caterpillars would ravage it, leaving not a single leaf on its branches. Only Kiro Dzhelebov took care of the wild pears in his fields, just as he cared for the fruit trees in his yard – he pruned them in spring, whitewashed their trunks, trenched around them so they could absorb moisture, sprayed them with bluestone, and harvested fruit from them every year. By the way, it was by the pear trees that everyone in the village, as well as from the surrounding villages, knew which field was his or her own.