Every family lives by its own laws and habits, has its own secrets, plans, and contradictions. In the village, however, these soon come to light; naïveté and curiosity are so closely entwined that people can’t manage to hide their personal lives behind impenetrable walls, there even the dogs “talk,” and the villagers understand their language very well. Everything was known about the Dzhelebov family, just as everything was known about every family, but, in fact, nothing was known. I mean about the internal life of their family, where the outside eye and the outside ear cannot penetrate. No one had heard them “raising their voices” to one another or admonishing one another, or seen them exchanging meaningful glances, and it was difficult for people to imagine that like every family, they, too, had hours when they would gather together to discuss important family issues and to make plans for the future. Both their working and personal relations were so smooth, calm, and harmonious that it seemed like all of them, young and old alike, were equally wise, they understood one another as if by telepathy and didn’t need to advise one another. They were also not secretive, as they had nothing to hide from outsiders, but rather were reserved and concentrated on their work. Their reaction to the tempestuous political events during the war and especially during the revolution was every bit as reserved, they didn’t take sides, so you couldn’t figure out how they saw these events. Everyone in the family managed to maintain their self-control, holding to a strict neutrality when it came to the outside world and not giving in to political passions.
I ran into Kiro Dzhelebov on the day the cooperative farm fell apart. This was the saddest day in the new history of the village. At first everything went relatively smoothly, people recognized their own livestock, untied them from the mangers, and drove them to their homes, but when it came to the sheep and the equipment, arguments and rows broke out. Every farmer had put a mark on his sheep’s ears by which he could pick them out from the common neighborhood herd. Each of these herds was made up of a dozen or so households and each of the marks was different. The cooperative farm had gathered sheep from eighty households, many of the marks coincided, and the owners argued over which sheep belonged to whom, each of them wanting to take the better ones. Many sheep had died, but there were also many lambs from the spring and this was cause for even greater disorder when the property was being divvied up. The same thing happened with the equipment. One man’s cart was damaged so he took someone else’s, while another had his plowshare switched on his plow, while yet another took someone else’s horse collars, and before we knew it the taking back of property turned into looting. Many were at each other’s throats and even came to blows, the women were screaming and cursing frantically, the dogs were barking. It had been raining since morning and the dust had turned to mud, on top of everything the church bell started tolling to announce a death and its protracted sounds floated over the village like an omen. The situation came to a head right before our eyes, several collective farms in the vicinity had fallen apart, half of our members had long since submitted requests to leave the co-op. And yet we were surprised, it seemed to us that something unexpected had happened, as disasters that are no one’s fault tend to happen. Nothing could head it off and those of us who had made such efforts to establish the co-op now watched crestfallen as the people, muddy and wet, tore into the co-op’s corpse like vultures and scampered back to their dens with chunks of its flesh.
So on that black day in the late afternoon, as I was going home, Kiro Dzhelebov caught up with me on the street, greeted me, and started walking alongside me. I returned his greeting without looking at him, so as not to see on his face the gloating malice that was written on all the private farmers’ faces. I felt awkward even about those unspoken conversations with which I had intended to win him over to our side. I was in such despair about this defeat that I could not disguise the state I was in, and this made me touchy. For example, I thought that he could have gone home by another street or have waited for me to go on ahead and not shown me his face on this day of all days. We walked for several minutes without talking, but I could sense what he wanted to tell me with his silence: “We all knew that your co-op would fall apart, only you, it seems, didn’t know this, and now you’re upset.” This infuriated me all the more and for the first time my heart quivered with hatred toward him. We reached the street where we had to part ways and he said: “The cooperative farm will work out, don’t worry. Even as soon as next year, at that.”
I stopped unwittingly and looked at him. His face showed no malice, but it didn’t show sympathy or pity either. As always, this event, too, had passed by him without touching him and without even disturbing his everyday working habits. He was dressed in a short denim jacket and rubber sandals with his pant legs rolled up, he was carrying a hoe over his shoulder. While a hurricane had been raging in the village, he had gone to his fields or vineyard to tend to his work.
“There’s no way it won’t happen,” he repeated. “Otherwise, what kind of revolution would it be! Only you should have waited a bit, let the people come round a bit. Now they’re startled as if jerked out of a dream. They’re watching with their eyes wide open, but they can’t see what’s going on around them. So chin up and take care of yourself!”
He turned right and walked off down the street.
“If you and other farmers like you had joined the co-op, it wouldn’t have fallen apart!” I shouted after him.
He seemed to have been waiting for me to say those words, he took a few steps back and stopped. It was no longer drizzling, the clouds had broken up and the sunset was glimmering bluish-green. From the lower neighborhood protracted wailing for the dead could be heard, while on the muddy square behind us a man and a woman were pushing a shaftless cart and arguing about something.
“It’s still early for me,” Kiro Dzhelebov said.
“And will it still be too early for you next year?”
“I don’t know. I’ve got two sons to put through school, in a year or two, it may be three. How can I support them on a salary of a few cents a day?”
And he continued back down the road. This was the conversation that I wasn’t able to decide to have with him for more than a year. I had been worried for nothing that at his house I would be knocking on an open door. Just as I had assumed, he knew no less than we did that the collectivization of land was inevitable, thus over the course of a year, as he himself foresaw it, he would have to decide what to do. The year passed, the cooperative farm was established for a second time, and he still stayed out of it. They started consolidating blocks of land. Three-quarters of the farmers had joined, so the private farmers were pushed out to the edges of the village fields.
Kiro Dzhelebov began working someone else’s land, and that land had been tended so poorly that he hardly managed to make his state quotas, which were calculated by acres of land and heads of livestock, and not based on what you had produced. Marko was in his sophomore year at the university, Anyo had just been discharged from the army and that same fall had enrolled at the University of Economics in Varna, while Dimcho started his army service. The two students spent most of their vacation on youth brigades and were only in the village for a few weeks. Kiro Dzhelebov was having an ever-harder time finishing the fieldwork and soon was forced to give half his land to the co-op. And if with his pride he managed to hide his mental state, his clothes clearly gave away that he was headed for financial ruin. I had long since noticed that he wore his sons’ old shirts, and there were little patches here and there all over his clothing. Auntie Tanka, too, wore clothes faded from so much washing. I saw her more often. No matter how often I passed by their place, I always saw her in the garden or the yard, working on something, I would greet her and she would always invite me to stop in. She would treat me to a piece of fruit or something sweet, and while I was eating, she would sit on the edge of her chair, just enough to “rest her legs,” and since even with her pride she couldn’t manage to hide the family’s impoverished circumstances, from
her I found out how hard it was for them to make ends meet. “I’ve even become a merchant.” She smiled and with simple-hearted frankness she told me how she and her husband had gone to the city to sell “this and that.” Kiro had wrapped up the hubcaps of the cart in rags so they wouldn’t rattle, they had snuck out the garden gate and had gone to the city on side roads. They had arrived there before dawn, Kiro stayed on the outskirts with the cart, while she had slipped through the vineyards and gone to her aunt’s daughter, who worked at the post office and had sold cheese, butter, honey, and eggs to her acquaintances. They tucked away the money from such sales and every month they sent some of it to their sons.
“As long as we’re alive and well, everything else will fall into place,” she would say, while seeing me off to the front gate. “Marko will finish up next year, Anyo will graduate the following, and as for Dimcho, if he decides to go on with his studies, he’ll be the only one left and we’ll put him through school somehow too.”
But not one of their sons managed to finish his education.
One day at the end of the summer of 1950, Stoyan Kralev ordered me to make a list of the families who would receive rations – sugar, women’s head scarves, leather sandals, and a few more bare necessities. He often assigned me such written duties, I sat at the end of the table scratching things out with my pen, while he would do his other work or go out and about in the village. I had just finished the list when Ilko, Stoyan Kralev’s brother, came into the club. He was the chairman of the Fatherland Front committee, he looked at the list and started reading a newspaper. Stoyan Kralev also looked over the list and gave me some instructions for the brigadiers. Then Kiro Dzhelebov came into the club. The door was open, he knocked on the door frame, took off his straw hat, and greeted us.
“Come on in, sit down,” Stoyan Kralev invited him.
There were several chairs against the wall, Kiro Dzhelebov sat down obediently and put his straw hat on his knees. Stoyan Kralev leaned on his elbows, looked at him, and asked: “Well, how’s the private sector going?”
“We’re having a hard time.”
“We’re having a hard time, indeed, but we still won’t give up on it,” Stoyan Kralev said with a malicious smile.
Kiro Dzhelebov ran his hands over his head where the hat had flattened down his hair and kept silent. A few seconds passed and he turned to Ilko: “I came to get the notes for my sons.”
“Just a moment, Bay Kiro.”
Ilko got up and went over to the table. It had two drawers. One held the party’s documents and stamp, while the other held the Fatherland Front’s. Ilko reached toward his drawer, but Stoyan Kralev put his hand on the handle.
“First of all Comrade Dzhelebov and I are going to have a little chat, then we’ll see about notes. We haven’t spoken in years, we haven’t looked each other in the eye, as if we didn’t live in one and the same village.”
Indeed, he would be speaking to Kiro Dzhelebov for the first time in several years. He got up, went around the table, and began pacing back and forth across the room. He walked slowly and his footsteps cut through the silence with a creaking circumspection. His brother, Ilko, had described him in detail and quite accurately, and I will allow myself to repeat from his description only the fact that in this case, as had already become his habit, Stoyan Kralev was imitating Stalin – as he had seen him in films. At the time we saw nothing funny about this, on the contrary, we felt a certain envy that he was able to transform himself into a personage that was so dear to us. We all lived, thought, and acted under the spell of that steely figure, we were in awe of his firmness and self-denial, while one episode from his life made a staggering impression on us – when the tsarist police flailed him with their whips, he sat calmly, reading a newspaper. In films, too, he was sparing with his words and gestures, the only thing he permitted himself was an ironic smile “under his moustache,” thus his magnificence was adorned with an unusual cold-bloodedness in all circumstances. Stoyan Kralev, alas, did not possess this unconquerable strength of will. In cases such as the present one, he would start by speaking calmly and would even smile, but after only a few minutes he would turn into an affected and wildly gesticulating copy of his idol.
“Comrade Dzhelebov,” he said, while smoothing down his moustache with his thumb and pacing back and forth with his hand stuffed between the buttons of his jacket, “there’s a celebration on our street too. Our efforts have been crowned with success. The cooperative farm now exists. Without you and another thirty or so folks like you, who have each sunk their teeth into a bone and are gnawing on it like dogs in a backyard. But from now on there won’t be any more bones. There won’t be any black market, no petty trade in this and that, and no cold, hard cash in your purse. This fall – everyone must join the co-op! We can’t have some building a house now, only to have others move into it tomorrow and make themselves at home. We can’t have some plowing and sowing, only to have others gobble up the bread tomorrow. Private farming has come to an end! Our patience has come to an end! In such cases, the people have a saying: I’m talking to you, my daughter, so think hard, dear daughter-in-law. That means if the daughter-in-law is clever and honest, they don’t need to tell her flat out what they want from her, she’ll realize it herself. But our ‘daughters-in-law’ here are deaf and stupid toadies to kulaks. They don’t understand hints, you’ve got to slap them in the face with it.”
His gestures were growing larger and jerkier, his words harsher and more infuriated. Three brigadiers came into the club most likely to take the instructions I had written out for them, and when they saw what mood Stoyan Kralev was in, they silently stood in a line against the wall. Kiro Dzhelebov looked as if he had been caught in a sudden ambush in which they’d thrown mud in his face, so unexpected were the party secretary’s words to him. We all knew his proud character, we knew that Stoyan Kralev’s “raised voice” would offend his dignity, to say nothing of Kralev’s comparing him to a dog, and they were clearly anxious on his account. But perhaps it was precisely his offended dignity that was fanning Stoyan Kralev’s fury all the more.
“Hey, buddy, where do you think you are, hm? Blood is gushing from people’s hearts, while not a single hair on your head has been touched. We all tiptoe around you, God forbid we disturb ‘the good farmer’s’ peace and quiet. While he, that good fellow, is looking after his own personal interest, he’s supporting two sons in college, and next year he’ll send the third. Us co-op members, how do we support our sons and daughters?”
“Just one more year, at least till my oldest graduates!” Kiro Dzhelebov said.
“Not a year, I’m not even giving you a week!” Stoyan Kralev shouted. “If you don’t submit your membership declaration to the co-op by tomorrow, you won’t be getting any notes for your sons!”
Ilko conspiratorially winked at Kiro Dzhelebov: “When he gets over this, everything will be fine. Best go ahead and leave.” Kiro Dzhelebov got up and left without saying a word. Stoyan Kralev interpreted this as an act of blind Dzhelebov pride and became even more enraged. No one had dared turn his back on him with such clear scorn and he could not control himself: “Up yours!” As he shouted this curse, Stoyan Kralev quickly turned to his brother and pointed at him: “You’re the reason that wretch still hasn’t joined the co-op and is muddying the waters. I would’ve long since put him in his place, but you? No! You protect him, you wouldn’t let even a speck of dust settle on him. He’s a good farmer, he’s an honest man, you say. If he’s such an honest man, why doesn’t he come join all the other honest folks instead of staying with the enemies of the co-op? And you support him…”
“I’m not supporting him, but I don’t have the right to force him, to say nothing of cursing at him. We’ve waited a few years for him, why don’t we wait until spring? It’ll be hard for him to support two students in the city as a co-op member. Our daily wage is still low, we’ve got no reason to hide that fact. And we can’t help him, either. In a few years we’ll give scholarship
s to students, but now we can’t. Besides, Dzhelebov’s son is studying agronomy, when he graduates he’ll come work on our farm.”
“You’ve always got your nose stuck in a book, but look what good it’s done for your mind!”
Stoyan Kralev was staring at his brother without blinking, as if trying to hypnotize him, while at the same time out from under his moustache a rancorous smile appeared, like a weasel coming out from under a fence. For some time now they had constantly been at odds over various questions and word in the village was that they didn’t even act like brothers anymore, and saw each other only on business. Until now, however, they hadn’t quarreled so openly in front of outsiders, and this presaged a clash that would inevitably end with a rupture between them. The brigadiers and the other men who had come into the club felt awkward and wanted to leave, but Stoyan Kralev ordered them to stay because he had business to take care of with them. He clearly wished to make his argument with his brother public and said: “We’re not divvying up our family inheritance, but talking about questions of principle, and there’s no reason we should hide from the people. So now I’m asking, do you justify Kiro Dzhelebov’s remaining outside the co-op on principled grounds? No! You’re going to bat for him purely for personal reasons. When you were sick, his wife brought you a few bowls of honey and butter and now you can’t thank them enough. And you misled me, too. You tied my hands for so many years with that charity of yours: ‘Don’t bother him, leave him alone to decide what to do on his own.’ We saw what he does. His sons’ higher education cost him just a few bowls of honey and butter, while for us – it’s costing millions in losses. Our co-op fell apart because of him and others like him.”
Wolf Hunt Page 53
