Wolf Hunt

by Ivailo Pretov

  At the beginning of July they also started going to the beach several times a week. Slava would bring a piece of white cloth from home, Anyo would drive four stakes into the sand, stretch out the cloth, and thus make a shade. Exam period was beginning at that time, the two of them would lie in the shade and go over what they had studied the previous night. After an hour or an hour and a half, they would take a break, go running over the sand, and dive into the water. Then they would duck their heads under the makeshift “beach umbrella” again and take up their notes, quizzing each other, clarifying questions, and before they knew it, the exam period had ended successfully, they both had passed all their exams. The next day Anyo had to leave for the village. He had full room and board at his landlord’s, thus he didn’t have much baggage. He gathered up his things in a pasteboard suitcase, said goodbye to his landlords, and set out for the train station. On the corner, Slava was waiting for him with a bouquet of flowers, dressed festively and smiling. They walked slowly, discussing their recent exams, summer vacation, and the fall when they would once again go to lectures together. Anyo bought ice cream, they sat in the garden in front of the station and started licking at their cones like children.

  “Will you write to me?” Anyo had been thinking about this since the morning and finally decided to ask her.

  “Of course! Will you write to me?” Slava asked, and laughed at her naïve question.

  “Of course I’ll write to you. Only you’ll be going to the beach and you won’t have time to read my letters,” Anyo said, drawing out the word “you” suggestively.

  “I don’t think I’ll be going” (Slava even more distinctly uttered this phrase), “because Mom is going to the mineral baths for a whole month and everything at home is left in my hands.” She looked at the station clock and got up. “You’ll be late, you’ve only got ten minutes left.”

  Anyo brought his suitcase onto the train car and went down to the platform to her. She handed him the bouquet with her left hand while extending her right to him, such that the bouquet was between them. They stood there, holding hands, until the second bell. Anyo climbed into the train car and stuck his head out the window.

  “Have a good trip and write me, please!” Slava said, giving him her hand and starting to cry. Her tears gushed out suddenly, running down her face. “Oof, how ridiculous I am!” she said, her face twisting foolishly from spasms of sobs.

  “Don’t cry!” To Anyo, this seemed to be the most tender thing he had ever said to her since they had met. “I’ll write you tomorrow.”

  The train started off. Slava ran alongside the train, clutching his hand.

  “Let go!” the conductor said from the steps of the train car.

  Why did she burst out crying then? Anyo would ask himself, and would answer: Out of capriciousness, or no, from pangs of conscience. She knew in advance that she would have to break things off with me, so here’s a few crocodile tears for you, here’s a few comforting words so you don’t think me some flighty and ungrateful young lady! Because her letters, too, were written solely to console me: How are you, when are you coming back, aren’t you bored in the village? Yes, the little gentlemen friends have to be given their lollipops so they won’t get mad that the big girls already have their true gentlemen. And he’s with her now, he’s come back from somewhere for the summer and perhaps he will stay with her forever. It was all a sham, a way to kill time, and I believed that I was the only one in her life. At least it’s good that I didn’t fall to my knees in front of her and beg for her love. How she would have mocked me inwardly, how treacherously she would have played the hypocrite! But still, it’s a good thing she stopped writing to me, it was nevertheless honorable from her side to stop leading me on!

  Anyo felt satisfaction in nursing this bitterness toward the girl and most of all toward himself for having fallen for her deception. In the loneliness of the night his pride suffered more than ever and he felt hatred for the girl and swore that if he ever met up with her again somehow and she tried to speak to him, he would turn his back on her with all the scorn he could muster, and perhaps he would even insult her. But when he was swinging the hoe, more or less the only man among dozens of women (this, too, seemed demeaning to him), memories pressed in on him and committed outrages against his consciousness with the clearest of details that he had not noticed at the time. At noon the heat became unbearable, no breeze blew, and the air quivered as if white-hot. After lunch the women lay down next to one another under the pear tree, they chattered for some time, then fell into a deep sleep with their kerchiefs pulled down, smelling of sweat, with dirty feet and cracked heels. Anyo lay on his belly far away from them, on the dried clods of earth, drenched in sweat, his bones aching and his head blazing. He would put his hands under his cheek and try to doze off, but the earth was burning beneath him like embers, big green flies swooped down on him as on carrion and stung him through his shirt, ants, with their slender bodies pinched in the middle and with enormous heads, crawled over his arms and legs, all manner of insects crawled only inches from his eyes. And perhaps because of the unbearable heat, Anyo could not entirely resist the memories, they transported him to the beach in front of the casino, under the white makeshift shade, where exactly a year ago at this time he and Slava had been studying for their exams. Neither of them could swim and she was always asking Anyo to hold her up with his arms as she floated on her back. She splashed around like a child and as soon as she swallowed water or her face got dunked in, she instinctively clutched at him like a drowning man, crying: “You’re going to drown me!” Her body clung closely to his and with his skin he felt the slippery cold caress of her skin, her blue irises seemed to him to be growing wider not so much from panic as from a desire to play, to feel him even closer to her, which she could only permit herself to do in the water. He could only dive in the shallower water with his eyes open and would do so when she was looking away, to grab her by the leg and surprise her. These dives lasted only seconds, as long as he could hold his breath, but he would dive with pleasure, because he found himself in a different, wondrous world. The rays of sunlight were fractured into gentle fantastical hues in the water and made little golden circles on the sand, where thin reseda-colored seaweed swayed, adorned with multicolored microscopic shells; tiny frightened crabs would dart away and finally her body would appear, bathed in a translucent pink, unreal and yet so real and so long dreamed of that Anyo would cry out with all the air he had in his lungs: “I love you!”

  This underwater confession was the first and most cherished of his life, but Slava could not hear it. Feeling something squeezing her ankle, she would let out a fake shriek and as soon as he appeared above the water, she would start splashing water in his face. When they returned to the shade and sat down to dry off, Slava would gather her long blond hair in her hands, turn to the side, and wring it out. The water would trickle through her fingers in thin rivulets onto the tawny skin of her shoulder, one stream would drip along her arm to the tip of her elbow and pour into the sand, while the other would run along her shoulder blade and slip beneath the strap of her bathing suit. And then Anyo, with deeply suppressed passion, would stare from very close up now at the downy golden hairs on the back of her neck, now at the mole on her left shoulder blade that would shift up and down with the movement of her arm. He would touch it cautiously with the tip of his finger and she would always say: “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?”

  “I thought it was an oyster shell.”

  Before lying down in the shade and getting to work on their lecture notes, she would shake out her hair so as to arrange it over her shoulders, and then invisible sprays emanating a sweet fragrance would envelop his face like an ephemeral caress, the only caress she could give him. At the memory of it, Anyo would be filled with magnanimity and tenderness and all his doubts and reproaches toward her would seem to him unfair and even cruel. She could not be other than what she was, uncorrupted and inexperienced – he thought with gentle fondne
ss. If I hadn’t stayed in the village, in the future she would have been only with me. I broke it off with her, not she with me, and I didn’t even dare explain to her why I was breaking it off. I was afraid that when she found out the reason, she would leave me. How could she marry a man denounced by the authorities and who wasn’t even allowed to study at the university? I hemmed and hawed in my letters, I lied to her that I was sick, but I couldn’t think up what I could be so sick from that I couldn’t go to Varna at least once to see her. But I should have gone, to tell her the truth, and she would have decided whether she would stay with me given all the circumstances or not. But I was afraid that she wouldn’t stay with a man with no future. I could sense it and that’s how it turned out. From now on, I will never set foot in the university again. I will be either a hoer or a plowman at the co-op, or a worker in some factory. They wouldn’t even let me become a village schoolteacher. Then why was I angry with the girl? Could she tie herself down to a worker or a villager? My future would be full of uncertainties. Actually, I have no future. It was taken away by my own dear brother!…

  One evening at the end of June, Anyo was sitting with his father under the awning of the summer kitchen, and his mother was getting supper. It had been a long time since they had eaten supper together, because they were working on different brigades and came home at different times. They would each eat whatever they found on the kitchen table and go to bed.

  “Why don’t you hop over to the post office in the city tomorrow, hm?” Kiro Dzhelebov said. “Marko must be back in Sofia by now.”

  Anyo had just washed up at the well and was combing his still-damp hair.

  “He didn’t come back and he’s not coming back!” he said.

  “What do you mean, ‘he’s not coming back’?”

  “Just that, he’s not coming back.”

  “Do you hear what you’re saying?” Kiro Dzhelebov said.

  “I hear very well and I’ll say it again: Marko won’t be coming back anymore, Marko is an emigrant. A Political emigrant, with a capital P! There’s no girl, there’s no engagement. Can you really not understand that he thought up that engagement to temporarily throw the authorities off the scent and to prepare us for the worst? He assumed that once we read his letter more carefully, we would guess what was what and little by little we’d swallow the bitter pill. Look what a considerate son and brother, how he cares about us! I’m not going to inform you of my defection up front and suddenly so you don’t swallow your tongues or have a stroke. But I could immediately tell something was fishy. I mean, it’s as plain as day. Who’s going to send a person abroad, and to a capitalist country at that, when he doesn’t even have a certificate of reliability and they won’t even let him study at the university? I wrote to his landlady, too, I wanted to check nonetheless. And she wrote me that he hadn’t been going to lectures, but had been working on some construction site. He’d been planning his defection even last year in the fall and until now he’s been fooling us with these office jobs and business trips. Our clever and good firstborn son and brother is no longer with us to…”

  “That’s enough!” Kiro Dzhelebov cut him off.

  As soon as Anyo started talking, Kiro Dzhelebov had pulled back against the backrest of his chair as if something had hit him in the chest, he was listening and didn’t take his eyes off him. Auntie Tanka, as she was bending over the fire and stirring the sizzling frying pan, cried out, “Good Lord!” and also fixed her eyes on her son, without moving the whole time. What am I doing, Anyo thought, up until this minute wasn’t I wanting to spare them, to let them in on this whole business gradually, to prepare them for the worst. I was supposed to stretch Marko’s story to unbelievable lengths, even when it was challenged by indisputable facts, I needed to swear that this wasn’t and couldn’t be the truth, that there must have been some misunderstanding, our brother and son would never have run away abroad, he would never stain the family name, bring shame upon his loved ones and hurl them into disgrace. But what am I saying now and why am I saying it? Just look, they’re petrified from shock, there’s not a drop of blood left in their faces, they are almost slain and I am twisting the knife to finish them off. But at the same time, Anyo felt a wild urge to tell them the whole truth as he saw it, to deprive them of their final hope, to spit on all filial virtues. And that’s what he did, clearly realizing all the while that he shouldn’t be doing it.

  “Just two more words and I’ll stop,” he said. “The girl Marko is engaged to is not a girl, but a foreign country he has ‘taken to wife.’ That’s how we need to interpret it. (And why am I making up these metaphors, why don’t I just stop and say that I’m speaking this way out of nerves, out of exhaustion, out of boredom!) Soon he’ll marry the girl and have a family. He’s trying to say that he’ll be staying in Germany forever. I got a second letter from him which said that he would soon be getting married and would be ‘staying there awhile.’ I didn’t read you the letter so as not to worry you. It’s upstairs in the room, in the drawer of the table. But there’s something else, too. What if our dear Marko has been recruited as an agent for some foreign intelligence service? (Now I really shouldn’t have said that, because it’s a pure fabrication that just came to me now.) Otherwise there’s no way he could have crossed the border legally. He must have gone with a foreign passport, and later he’ll have to pay dearly for that. And then he’ll ruin every last one of us. I’m finished!”

  Anyo got up from the table and headed out into the yard. When he reached the middle of it, he stopped and looked back at the kitchen. The butter had boiled over, spattering into the fire, the flames had set alight the pile of kindling next to the hearth and were licking at the dried bunches of savory hanging above it, the smell of burned grease filled the yard. His mother and father were still frozen to the spot, not seeing or sensing anything. Anyo went back, set the frying pan on the ground, and used the tongs to extinguish the kindling. Suddenly his bitterness was replaced by empathy for his parents, lately he had very often swung sharply from one state to another, thus going to extremes. Now his heart was breaking with pain and tenderness for his parents, especially his mother, who was still standing up, but looking as if she would slump to the ground at any moment. He put his arm around her shoulders, picked her up like a child, and gently sat her down.

  “Mom, sit down! Whatever Marko has done, we’ll face it and live through it. The important thing is that he’s alive and well. Maybe things will be better for him there. If not, then no one will stop him from coming back. Some woman has turned his head, but as soon as he gets ahold of himself, he’ll come back. I’m sure of it.”

  “And are you sure he’s defected?” Kiro Dzhelebov said finally.

  “Not entirely, but that’s what I suppose…”

  “Man supposes, God disposes, as the old folks say. Since you don’t have any certain proof, you have no reason to slander your brother. And even if he did defect, he didn’t do it to ruin all of us. He wasn’t in his right mind, he had lost his will and reason. Otherwise he wouldn’t have put his own head in the noose. None of us could betray his own, therefore your brother, too, would never run away from us.”

  They went to their rooms, but no one slept until the morning. Anyo was tormented by pangs of conscience for having accused his brother so harshly. His father’s blind faith in Marko’s innocence seemed to undermine his certainty that Marko had emigrated and burned all his bridges once and for all. Perhaps some influential person (say, the father or brother of one of his fellow students) had decided to trust him and had included him in some group business trip because he knew German well, thus Marko might really have gone abroad legally and really have gotten involved with some girl. If he were to marry the girl and start living with her either here or there, that would no longer be emigration, but marriage to a foreigner, and there were those kind of marriages all over the world, they existed here in Bulgaria as well. In any case, it was getting toward the end of June, and the local authorities still hadn
’t been informed of Marko’s defection. Was it possible that in Sofia they didn’t know about his stay abroad, or perhaps that they had sent him from there?

  Kiro Dzhelebov and Auntie Tanka also weren’t sleeping. She had long since had a premonition that Marko had defected, but she hadn’t dared to share it directly with her husband, so as not to upset him like before and make him “pull some stunt again.” If Anyo had foreseen his brother’s defection out of fear for his own future, she had foreseen it out of fear of losing her son. Her instinct for preserving her family gave her the strength to stand firmly on both feet and to defend it to the bitter end against all ensuing misfortunes. She agreed with her husband that Marko “was not capable of such a thing,” but at the same time she hinted to him to take it as their fate, which they would have to accept.