Wild Tales

by Nikolai Haitov

  ‘Well, isn’t that marvellous! Here we are, Kiro and I, doing our best to build a home with things gathered together from the four corners of the globe, and you go messing it up with your garlic. Even the wardrobe stinks of it. I’ll have to get a man in to give it a new coat of varnish. You can’t ask people in with the place stinking like this. Out of the question!’

  It was as much as I could do to stop her wrecking the wardrobe completely.

  ‘I am sorry, I really am. Please try and forget it. It won’t happen again – no more garlic. Peace and quiet is all I want.’

  All very well, peace and quiet, but what’s the point? Fought in two wars, I have – up front in number one and a supply division in number two. They didn’t do for me, and I wasn’t afraid neither, but all this peace and quiet, that’ll do the job very nicely.

  And I’ll tell you how. Put a man in a flat with nothing to do, feed him on mayonnaise, talk to him once in a blue moon and sure as fate he’s a goner.

  I said to Kiro : ‘When you’re off round those reservoirs of yours, plugging and unplugging the dams, why don’t you bring me some willow rods, so I can make a basket or two?’

  ‘Your basket-making days are over,’ he said. ‘You put your feet up and enjoy the good life.’

  Takes after his mother, he does, God rest her soul. Once he’s said something, that’s that. There’s no getting him to change his mind. And it makes little difference whether it was last year or the year before he said it, there’s no shifting him. Just like an engineer – give him figures and he’s fine, a two is a two and noughts are noughts, but anything else is airy-fairy. ‘Good-night, sleep tight!’ they say. All very well ‘sleep tight’, but what if you can’t sleep and if that little gimlet starts boring away the moment your head hits the pillow? ‘Here we are, all together, them calling me Dad, eating off the same table and living under the same roof. And still we’re strangers. Why?’

  Such strangers, we are, when their lad came up for christening they didn’t want him called Ignat like me. They thought the other kids would call him Gatyu, so instead of calling him Ignat, they went all fancy and christened him Krasyumir…. My grandfather was Gatyu, and his grandfather before him was a Gatyu and they got along all right – they joined the haidouts, fought in the wars, helped liberate their country, two Gatyus together, and then my grandson gets called Krasyumir! But let the kiddie be! Now his father has started calling himself Ignatiev instead of Ignatov. He’s even had it put in the phone book: ‘Engineer Kiril Ignatiev….’ The phone rings, I pick up the receiver:

  ‘Who is it you want?’

  ‘Comrade Engineer Ignatiev….’

  When he got in I told him straight:

  ‘Ignatov is my name and that’s how I was registered before Liberation Day in ‘44. You got into the university with that name, and you studied your engineering with it and you got yourself a car with it. What do you think you’re playing at? Either you do things properly and change your name by deed poll or you give up mucking it around. It’s my name as well as yours.’

  Most times he’d growl and snarl, but this time there wasn’t even a bark. I didn’t have the courage to go on about the grandson though, so he’s stuck with his Krasyumir.

  That’s just the little gimlet, but there’s a big one too and when that gives a twist it tears great holes in your heart. Usually about two in the morning it gets going, when I starts asking myself why I gave up my house in the village and got caught up in this golden cage. Why did I do it, why? And when I tell my son about it, all he can say is : ‘What would you do all alone in the village?’ How can I tell him that in the village I was as happy as a king in his castle? Cherries in the garden, onions, pumpkins. Everything I wanted. A babbling here, a rustling there and a bleating over there – them’s the two little goats I had before I left, with little white tassels, right devils they were! When I got in from work, all tired and sweaty, they’d come and lick off all me sweat. Working away with their little tongues : behind me ears, round me neck, everywhere. It were salty, see…. Away they went, licking and blowing, like polishing me up for Communion. We slaughtered them for one of my son’s visits. Never forgive myself, I won’t…. They’d hear the gate open and that was enough to set them off: ‘Me-e-e! Me-e-e!’ they bleated.

  And now that I’ve mentioned it, let me tell you about the gate. The hinges was made by gypsies, but it was a fine heavy gate, oak, and it played this tune when it opened and closed. Sometimes like a blackbird and sometimes, in the damp, when it got a sore throat, like a lamb bleating. And in the hot weather, when it dried out, it would play away like a hurdy-gurdy. I could always tell if it was going to be wet or fine by the way it squeaked. ‘Mr Agronomist,’ I once said, ‘you can turn off your sprinklers. It’s going to rain tomorrow.’

  ‘Radio doesn’t say so,’ he said.

  ‘You listen to your radio and I’ll listen to mine. We’ll see who’s right.’

  ‘Course it rained, just like I told him, and from that day on the brigade-leader called in every morning and asked what weather we’d be having for the next couple of days.

  The gate’s going rusty now. There isn’t anyone to open it and listen to the merry tune it plays. I even wrote to my brother-in-law. Asked him to go and have a look-see, find out if the house and gate are still in one piece.

  ‘Hello there, Brother-in-law!’ he wrote back, ‘I’ve checked the gate and I want to tell you that it’s still there and all in one piece, only it don’t sing or play no tune, just grinds its teeth and squeaks and squeals like a dog that’s been whipped. The brigade-leader has been asking after you. And so have the others. So don’t forget!’

  I gave the note to my son, so he could read it and see I’m not some old piece of junk ready for the scrap-heap, and there’s still someone wants me. And do you know what he said:

  ‘Just like kids, you old ones are. Never satisfied, always finding something to grouse about.’

  I like that! As if mayonnaise and garlic could ever go together!

  And if I can’t talk to him, who am I to talk to? I’m that jumpy, I can’t sit still – I must have someone to talk to, but there isn’t anyone. The park’s full of young people, playing cards or holding hands and kissing. And a bit further on it’s mothers with their embroidery, minding their kids. No old-timers like myself. For all I know they’re standing in queues or keeping inside out of the sun. None of them out here, and that’s a fact. Once in a while you do come across the odd one, but it’s usually a bank clerk or an office worker and they never have much to talk about…. There was that lieutenant-colonel in the reserve I bumped into a few days back. I was telling him they’d have a tough time watering the vineyards and using the new fertilizer this year, and he carried on about a laser or something. They’ve invented some kind of laser, he said, and it’s supposed to cut through anything.

  ‘Sooner or later it’ll do away with artillery, the laser will,’ he said. ‘No more artillery!’ And he went on about how his artillery in 1918 had smashed up some Anglo-French division or other. Told me how the shells had burst and banged and what a shame it was the laser would kill people quietly – as if it would be that much better to blow them to pieces with flashes and bangs.

  At least he told me about the war. The others don’t even do that. They just carry on about their aches and pains and their quack cures: what hurts where, who rubbed his back with what, and what kind of poultices Professor Kinkov said he ought to use. And there was even one old fellow from the Krasnosclo part of town – Yogi or Yorgi, he called himself – told me how he used to stand on his head every morning to get more blood flowing through his brains. And the mug he’d got, all pale and white, looked like he’d never had a drop of blood in his head since the day he was born! His neck was all crooked too, and his left eyebrow kept bouncing about all over the shop. That’s what they’re like, the lot of them. I’d sort them out, those Yorgis. I’d put them to work with a spade, I would. That would get the blood flowing, you see
if it wouldn’t! Like when me poor old knee bones started playing up a couple of years back. Ouch! did they ache! ‘Be the death of me, they will,’ I thought. So I had needles stuck into me till I was like a pin cushion. And a fat lot of good they did, too!

  Then my brother-in-law went by with a spade over his shoulder.

  ‘Where are you off to?’ I asks.

  ‘Off for a spot of digging,’ he says. ‘The Co-operative has given me a plot of land, and I’m going to level it up -get some hay for the sheep. Why don’t you come along?’

  So up I gets and off we goes. We straightened things up, cut down the bushes, and when evening came, all my aches had packed up and gone. Like someone had took hold of the pain and buried it in the ground. So I asked the chairman to give me a plot too, ‘cause I’ve a good few bones besides me knees, and most likely they’ll need seeing to as well.

  ‘You put your feet up and enjoy the good life,’ he tells me. ‘What do you need a plot for?’

  ‘You give me a bit of land,’ I says, ‘and I’ll show you what the good life is.’

  Treats me with respect, does the chairman, because it was me got the Co-operative on its feet. He gave me a plot all right, but do you know where? Up the back end of a donkey, that’s where. A right wilderness! Dare say it was a meadow once, but it had been left to take care of itself, and the brambles and bushes had come dancing in, a-choking and a-strangulerating everything. A regular jungle, hadn’t been touched for years. To be truthful, I’m more for growing grapes, but I wasn’t giving in that easy. First I got rid of the bushes. The little fellows didn’t cause no trouble – chopped them off and chucked them out, I did, all nice and clean. But there was one – a cornelian cherry, with great roots shoved right down deep into the earth, and that really had me jiggered. Nothing, I could do would budge it. I rocked it to and fro, but it wouldn’t come up. I dug all round it, but the old basket was as tough as they come, and had no mind to make a move. I hacked right through the roots till only one was left, and still it held. A whole Sunday I fought with it, like it was some savage. Hacking and digging, grunting and foaming I was, till at last I managed to up-end the old devil, and the whole field gave a sigh of relief. Then I got a rake and raked the soil level, and put up a little wooden fence, and planted a proper cherry in place of the cornelian. And I also shoved in a pear and a plum, and I got some clover seed too from the haybarn and I put that in, and then I watered everything and left it to grow.

  And when St Constantine’s came round, off we went scything, me and my brother-in-law. What a sight greeted us! All that clover flowering away sprinkled with red poppies, my cherries colouring up nicely, and every single winged creature from the wood come buzzing over to have a drink of honey and a sniff of those sweet smells.

  ‘Let’s get started, then,’ my brother-in-law says.

  ‘Put that scythe away,’ says I. ‘This field’s going to stop like it is – no scything! Let the bumblebees drink and sing their praises to Gatyu!’

  The same evening I said to the chairman:

  ‘If you want to see what having fun really is, come out to the meadow tomorrow.’

  He agreed, so off we went.

  ‘There you are, Mr Chairman, there’s the good life!’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, ‘but where’s your flagon of Gumza wine cooling in the fountain, and your meat roasting over a blazing fire, so we can toss baby lamb bones in the air? That’s my idea of fun! Bit of luck I’ve got some bacon fat with me!’

  Then he got out the bacon fat, took a bite of it and went off home – not so much as a glance at the cherry nor a sniff at the smells.

  Tossing bones into the air, fiddlesticks!

  That’s when I started having my doubts about the good life, and one day I thought I’d ask Kiro about it.

  ‘I say, Mr Engineer,’ I says. ‘You’re always telling me to have fun and enjoy the good life. What is fun?’

  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? Having a good kip, a night out at the pictures, a nice game of belote if there’s anyone to play with. That’s my idea of fun. No one to bother you about a thing.’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense, your fun,’ I told him. ‘Do you know what it reminds me of, you goggling at those pictures of yours every night? Gawping at olive oil through a shop window, that’s what! The only pictures I’m interested in are the ones I make myself…. And as for not bothering nobody, that’s a fate worse than death!’

  ‘But it’s only natural you should retire and have no one to bother you,’ Kiro replied. ‘It’s time you took a rest.’

  ‘It’s not at all natural for someone who’s still alive not to be bothered by nothing. Nature doesn’t have retired foxes, and it never will, neither. Ever heard of retired eagles, perched on the edge of their nests waiting for their youngsters to pop mice into their mouths? Eagles die on the wing, and then they fall straight to the ground.’

  And I told Kiro what had happened to me once up at White Springs. I was taking a midday rest with the sheep under a pine tree, and whittling a piece of wood. All of a sudden there was this whoosh through the air. I looked up – an eagle! Flying down from Mount Persenk. Down, down, over my head and then, thump] Into the ground behind the pine. I jumped up to see what was wrong and found him in the clearing, his huge great wings spread right out – not a scratch, not a hole – quite dead though. Died on the wing, he had. ‘That’s the way to go son,’ I says, ‘on the wing!’ And you go and lock me away in this cage…. That’s what I wanted to tell him, but I shut my mouth and held my tongue.

  All Kircho could do was stare at me like it was the first time he’d seen me :

  ‘You’d better see a doctor,’ he said. ‘Must be your nerves.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said, ‘shove me off on the doctors. Then you can gawp at your pictures in peace.’

  I thought he might take some notice of what I said, but no! Words are no different from figures for him: a two is a two and noughts are noughts. I’m going to Shiroka Luka and he’s off to Baghdad – how do you expect us to come together?

  That’s the big gimlet which gets going at night. Twist, twist, twist it goes, till I come over all feverish and sweaty. And if I open the window for a breath of fresh air, there’s always those wretched motor-cycles clattering and rattling and exploding all over the place.

  So I close the window and stick my head under the tap. It’s the only thing that saves me from going round the bend completely. Actually there is just one other thing I might do: cut my losses and scram! I want to smell the earth – warm, crumbly earth, earth that’s alive! The trouble is, talking to Kiro is like talking to a fridge. Not that he’s a bad lad, mind – he’s healthy, he’s honest and he works hard, but the way he carries on, you’d think he’d been hatched from a barrel and not carried in his mother’s belly. There’s no smell of mother’s milk about him, only petrol! So we don’t have a great deal to talk about, him and me. But I will write him a note, though:

  ‘Kircho, I’m going back to the village. Trees, my son, can be moved and transplanted only when they are young. You brought me to the town and transplanted me, so to speak, when I was already old, but I have no roots, son. My roots are in the village and I’m going off to find them – or else I’ll shrivel up and wither away and they’ll put me in my coffin with my eyes still open.

  Farewell, Kircho my boy, don’t bother to come looking for me!

  I’m going back to Shiroka Luka, and you … you go off to your Baghdad!

  Your father: GATYO

  A Forest Spirit

  I ask you, what is a forest warden these days? No gun, no proper hat. He wears a white shirt and gets driven into the hills every morning in a lorry. All day he walks around up there – stretching his legs – and when evening comes, he’s back home again. He goes up and comes down, goes up and comes down, but the forest gets taken away and doesn’t come back again…. Now Metyu Delikadirov, he was a real warden! ‘Metyu’s Glade’ up by Green Cutting was named after him, because that’s where h
e hid. If you’ve got a spare moment, I’ll tell you about him. For a good two years Metyu was boss around these parts – tsar, police chief and Allah as well!

  There weren’t no roads round here then. Just the one twisty track winding its way out of the village up one hill and down the next. Up and down, up and down it went, and it was four days’ journey to town for the market. If a townie wanted to visit us, he had to be real tough. I remember there was this tax-collector once, set out our way wanting to count the sheep, but he took a tumble by Eagle Rock and ended up at the bottom of the ravine, horse and all.

  Of course word went round that it was some fellows from the village gave him a push, but no one really knew what happened. Us kids, we went looking for him in the ravine, but the eagles had already got to work on him, so we didn’t find a thing. Oh, aye, there was plenty of eagles in those days…. To tell the truth there was plenty of everything : sheep and goats and trees…. All the trees you wanted! No cuttings and clearings and fire-breaks and rides – just trees! When you walked in amongst them, all you could hear was twigs cracking and branches breaking, but what was making the noise, you never saw that. That’s how forests were in your grandfather’s day, aye and before that too, and they wouldn’t have known a forester even if they’d seen one.

  The foresters, they came later…. The first one arrived on St Peter’s. I can remember it now like it were only yesterday. The Agas wanted to roast a lamb over the fire, but by St Peter’s Day the lambs are too big, and too tough, ‘specially for a forester, so I was sent up to Borovo to get a nice young one from the shepherds on the hills. We roasted the lamb – or rather Metyu did – in ‘Metyu’s Glade’, as we call it now…. He was a dab hand at roasting lambs our Metyu was, best in the village. The forester was a tiny little fellow, kind of shrivelled, and he had a green hat with a peacock’s feather in the side. He didn’t eat a great deal -no more than a kid’s portion – but he did what he could, and then he went into a huddle with the Agas to see who to choose as warden. They mentioned this person and that, and then Metyu caught the forester’s eye.