Wild Tales

by Nikolai Haitov

  ‘Why don’t we take him?’ the forester asked. ‘He certainly knows how to roast a lamb!’

  ‘Why not, indeed!’ said the Agas. ‘With that gammy leg, he’s no good for ploughing and digging. He’s just the man we’re looking for.’

  Then the forester turned to Metyu :

  ‘From now on,’ he said, ‘you’re master of this here forest. Guard it with your life and see that nothing gets taken.’

  Then he took out a hat with a green band and stuck it on Metyu’s head. It was much too small for him, but the Agas heaved and shoved a bit and in the end they got it on. What a fine hat it was too, with a black peak, a green band and a lovely yellow cockade woven on the front. More than just a cockade – it was real magic. We couldn’t keep our eyes off it, and it certainly worked wonders for Metyu! If you’ve ever seen a grass-snake shed its skin, then you’ll know what I mean. Metyu threw out his old jerkin, togged himself up in a fine new embroidered jacket and white leggings, put an ancient musket over his shoulder, and, hey presto! even his limp vanished and he lost his stoop! There’s some people, when they puts on a uniform, their eyes go cruel and bloodshot, but not Metyu. His eyes stayed clear and sparkly, and they only went bloodshot now and then with people who needed something like that to bring them into line.

  “Ello! ‘ello!’ he’d say to Senyu for example. ‘Where did you get that wood from?’

  ‘From the copse, Uncle Metyu, from the copse down the side of my field,’ Senyu would say, trying to play innocent.

  ‘Come, come, my friend, since when have you had trees that colour down the side of your field? They’re from yon side of the valley, my friend, that’s where they’re from. Do you think I don’t know my trees, eh? Here, give me that axe! I’ll keep it till you get some sense into that pumpkin head of yours!’

  He knew his trees all right – just like he’d planted and looked after them himself. He wouldn’t let you cut live wood, but if you was doing some repairs to your house or building a new one, he didn’t wait for you to ask. He’d come along himself and offer to help.

  ‘Hey, Soulyu!’ he might say. ‘Isn’t it about time you replaced those rotten beams?’

  ‘Aye, you’re right. I’ll have to think about doing something,’ Soulyu would reply.

  ‘No use just thinking,’ Metyu would answer, ‘you get yourself off to such and such a place in the forest and you’ll find a pine blown over in the storm. You can save it any more suffering and patch up your house at the same time.’

  It was a different matter with the shepherds, though, especially the Karakachanis. Since way back they had been burning off patches of forest for pasture, but Metyu got the better of them and made them mend their ways. He even got them to throw their fag-ends into hollowed-out pumpkins. And if they didn’t do what he said, the butt-end of his musket soon knocked sense into their heads! Once he even pushed a Karakachani who’d set fire to the forest into the embers. The man’s feet were burnt and blistered, but Metyu made him walk barefoot from one side of the smouldering clearing to the other.

  And since then not a soul has dared set fire to the forest….

  And if you think he spent a lot of time patrolling the forest, you’re wrong. He had this little system worked out instead. The early part of the morning he walked round the village. Then he shouldered his musket and set out for Chil Tepe. He’d got a baby cannon hidden up there -’Shawmy-cannon’ we used to call it; once upon a time our fathers had used it to protect themselves from Eminaa’s brigands. Metyu fixed up the cannon, loaded it with a handful of dry gunpowder, stuffed the muzzle with bits of old iron and rags, and fired it with a piece of touchwood…. One hell of a racket it made, I can tell you! Boom! it went, and the pines all bent their heads. The explosion echoed from hill to hill and rolled round the valleys, till it disappeared down one of the ravines. Then Metyu got up and shouted at the top of his voice:

  ‘Hey, you there! What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  When they heard him shouting, the shepherds started to collect their fag-ends, the goatherds kept their animals away from the clearings, and the cowmen drove their cattle into the bushes, and didn’t let them out till evening. And if anyone was stealing wood, they’d leave the live tree they was chopping and they’d look for a dead one.

  Everything was fine. Metyu banged away with his cannon, and people kept to the straight and narrow. The water splashed gently in the mountain streams, and the forest echoed and grew. And then blow me down if they didn’t come and build a bloody great road just down the hill! At first we didn’t mind. ‘It’ll be easier getting into town,’ we thought…. But then we realized it would be easier for the townies to get up to us as well. And you should have seen them! Tax-collectors, police, excise men – all wanting to count our sheep and goats and chicken, and even the pines and firs as well. You’ll never believe it, they even counted the trees! They came and marked the trunks with special paint and then cleared off back to town. Later another lot came. This time it was the wood merchants. At first there was just the one, but even he was one too many. He brought a whole army of woodcutters and lumberjacks with him, split them into a couple of gangs, got one lot to fix up a sawmill down by the stream and the others to fell the biggest trees for planks. They was only supposed to fell the marked ones, but the merchant told them to clear the lot, and that’s just what they did, cleared the lot! So while Metyu was banging away up top with his cannon, they attacked the forest down below with their axes and saws and stripped the hillside bare.

  Metyu did come down, but too late to save his trees. Those three-hundred-year-old pines shook the whole mountain when they fell. Now they lay there in piles, stacked one on top of another.

  Metyu saw all this and told the merchant where to get off. ‘Out!’ he said. ‘And if you’re not gone by sunset, there’ll be all hell to pay!’

  That raised the dust, I can tell you! The merchant threatened him with his boss and the police, but our Metyu wasn’t scared. Work stopped, and the merchant disappeared for a couple of days. Then he turned up again with a police sergeant in riding boots and gold braid on his sleeves. On a horse, the sergeant was, and so bloody keen to do his duty, if he’d stepped on a dry cowpat it would have burst into flames.

  Metyu was called into the office at the village hall. The sergeant took out a piece of paper and waved it in his face.

  ‘You’re fired!’ he said. ‘We can’t employ illiterates!’

  Metyu took a step forward and asked :

  ‘And who might you be?’

  ‘Me? I’m a police sergeant.’

  ‘Then it’s no concern of yours what I do,’ said Metyu. ‘It was the forester put this cockade on my hat and he’s the only one who can take it off again!’

  The village hall officials wanted to sort things out, but no one took any notice of them. A new forest warden came to take Metyu’s place. So now there was two wardens instead of one. The new fellow spent his time down at the sawmill in a huddle with the merchant, while Metyu hung around to see what would happen next. And there was nothing the officials up at the village hall could do about it. The merchant had friends in high places, so they didn’t dare touch him. But our Metyu, he still had that old musket of his….

  For a couple of days things were quiet. Then early one morning about three days later the merchant’s axes went to work again in the valley. Down crashed those age-old pines – trees, branches, birds, birds’ nests and all – one hell of a mess there was! And while the firs and pines were crashing down, Metyu was watching, hidden in the bushes on yon side of the valley, groaning to himself and gnashing his teeth. That’s what people said anyway. And that night, when it was dark and the wood-cutters had gone to bed, there was this voice started bellowing down from the caves:

  ‘Hey! You there! Hands off the forest! You’ll pay hell for your sins!’

  Three or four times they heard it. Some said there was somebody up there, but others said it was a spirit. The night after, they heard it ag
ain :

  ‘Hands off the forest! You’ll pay hell for your sins!’

  Right scared, some of them were. ‘Come on!’ they said, ‘let’s get out of here!’ But the merchant gave them what for. ‘Scared of a crazy Pomak, are you? Back to work, I say! If there’s trouble, the law’s on our side and we’ll use our guns!’

  Just mentioned guns, he had, when a shot rang out in the forest, and a bullet ploughed into the sergeant’s horse. The sergeant got the jitters, and by evening he’d scarpered. A second bullet cut clean through the strings on the hammock the merchant had got tied between two beeches, and our big bug came down with a bump. Off to the village hall he ran, his white hat in his hand, and kicked up such a rumpus the keepers were sent out there and then to search the forest. A lot of good that was too – worse than looking for a needle in a haystack!

  The merchant slept in the office that night. And during the night there was that voice from the cave again:

  ‘Let the forest be! You’ll have hell to pay!’

  And the evening after, the sawmill went up in flames. Lit up the whole sky, it did. The big drum was sounded to call people to help, but no one went. Only the woodcutters, and they didn’t exactly strain themselves. So the whole bloody mill was burnt to a cinder.

  The merchant scrambled on a mule and left. Then the wood-cutters beat it as well. Work came to a standstill. The trees were left lying where they’d fallen. We didn’t have no telephones in those days, so Metyu went back to banging away with his cannon. And the streams flowed on down the hill and the forest echoed as before. But not for long….

  One night there was these two policemen came. They knocked up the mayor and took him along to Metyu’s place. Lived with his mother, Metyu did. He’d been married at one time, but his wife had died and since then he’d stayed single. The mayor called out Metyu’s name, Metyu came to the door, and the two policemen carted him off to the village hall just as he was – in his shirt sleeves and with his hat on his head. They chucked him in the cellar and gave him the works. They thumped him and they kicked him, they poured boiling water over him and they roasted him in burning straw. All so he’d say who it was had set light to the mill. But Metyu’s lips were sealed. The next morning they tied his hands with a piece of rope and led him off down the path to town: Metyu out in front with his hands roped together, then a policeman with a rifle and behind him another policeman – all three in a row. The path had branches hanging down on both sides, so the two dicks didn’t see Metyu bite through the rope and untie himself. Suddenly he picked up a dead branch, and swiped one of the policemen across the face. He overpowered both of them, took away their ammunition, debagged them and turned them loose in their underpants. And he himself went back to the village hall with a rifle on each shoulder. He found his hat in the cellar, put it on his head and yelled out so the Agas could hear:

  ‘From now on you’ll do what / say, or I’ll burn the whole village to the ground ! There’s one boss in this forest, and that boss is me!’

  All very well, but there was another boss and he sent out the mounted police. Whether it was just a platoon he sent, or a whole squadron, I don’t remember, but Metyu got wind they was coming. He set up his cannon above the ravine, loaded it with bits of old iron and aimed it at the road below. When the cavalry appeared, he yelled down at them:

  ‘Back, you bloody dragoons! Or I’ll blow you to kingdom come!’

  They stopped for a moment, but the captain in charge started cursing and swearing and drove them forward. Metyu let fly with his cannon, and the next moment the horses were all on top of each other and the police were going hell for leather back the way they’d come! The whole of that summer we didn’t get no visitors – no police nor excise men neither. Metyu kept guard in the forest, the shepherds threw their fag-ends into hollowed-out pumpkins, the water flowed, the forest echoed and the wind carried away the ashes from the burnt-out mill so you couldn’t tell anymore where it had been. But Metyu had given up sleeping at home, and his musket never left his side. Even when eating or drinking he kept one hand on the trigger. He stayed away from the houses and no longer went to the village hall. He steered clear of people and kept to the hills like an old wolf.

  Then one day he heard from Sabri Imamov, who’d been down to the market in Pashmakli, that they wanted him to go and collect his wages. There’d been a meeting, Sabri said, to discuss the rights and wrongs of his case, and they’d decided Metyu had been in the right all along. They even thought he should get promotion.

  Whether Metyu believed it or not, I wouldn’t know, but he kept a firm grip on his gun. He even took it with him to the mosque. Every Friday the whole village used to get together at the mosque for prayers. A kind of tradition, it was. The hodja sang, everyone bowed down to Allah, and afterwards we all gathered for a gossip under the old willow. There was hot coffee and sweetmeats and roasted chick-peas, just like at the market. Once in a while someone would kill a lamb or a calf, and a right roasting and toasting there’d be! We didn’t have no cinemas or goggle-boxes, not in those days, so we measured our luck in cups of coffee: one coffee and you were doing well, with two you were getting cocky and with three you were over the moon! But to get three cups of coffee you either had to be the hodja or a hadji or Metyu himself. Us kids though, we just counted the coffees the grown-ups drank, and if Father gave us a penny we’d buy ourselves roasted chick-peas.

  It was at one of these Friday get-togethers that disaster finally struck. In the autumn it was, I remember, round grape-picking time. Sabri Imamov had got a basket of grapes from somewhere or other, so it must have been autumn. Metyu was there too. He’d slaughtered his barren cow and he’d hung the carcass on the old willow. A fine animal, plenty of fat! And Metyu was hacking off pieces of meat and selling them. Quite a crowd had gathered round him – women, girls and young lads – all watching what he was doing. There he was, his jacket over his shoulders, hat at an angle, working away with his knife in one hand and gripping his musket between his knees…. It was the first time I’d seen him up close: fair-haired, not very tall, but plenty of muscle. It was his eyes struck me most though. Bored right into you, they did, lifted you up and carried you away. They put the shits up the men, but not the women! One single look and they was ready for anything! Especially Sabri’s wife. She was proper crazy about him. I know I shouldn’t say things like this, not at my age, but I still asks myself whether Metyu would have got into such a fix if he hadn’t been carrying on with Sabri’s wife…. Anyhow Metyu was about to cut off a piece of meat when he stopped. He looked down the road and saw two horsemen in peaked caps and brass buttons on their uniforms. They was coming towards him and they was armed. Metyu forgot the meat, grabbed his musket and raced off to a farmyard wall ten or fifteen paces up the road. He sat down, leant back against the wall, laid the musket across his knees and began rolling himself a fag. He was still watching those two peaked caps, though. And they were watching him. They stopped their horses, got off, and still with their rifles over their shoulders, came a bit nearer. One of them smiled and shouted :

  ‘Which one of you is Delikadirov?’

  ‘Me!’ said Metyu, getting up.

  When Sabri saw them he rushed forward to greet them : ‘Welcome, welcome! Hof geldin, ho§ buldukV Then he turned to the Agas. ‘Well, don’t you recognize them? They’re the Chaprashov brothers, friends of ours from Chepelare. They’re customs officers,’ he said. ‘And what brings you to these parts?’ he asked the two brothers.

  ‘We’ve good news for you,’ one of them answered. ‘Delikadirov’s been made a sergeant and promoted to head warden.’

  While he was speaking he pulled out a piece of paper with some sort of writing on it and went over to Metyu. The other one stayed where he was.

  ‘Congratulations on your appointment, sir!’ he said and saluted. ‘From now on you’re in charge of the whole forest right over to Rozhen. Congratulations!’

  Metyu took the piece of paper, and keeping a corner of an eye
on the customs officer, examined it. He looked at it this way and looked at it that, and then he called out to the hodja.

  ‘I say, Hodja! Come here a minute. What are these seals?’

  ‘They’re official all right,’ the hodja said, and bent down to get a closer look.

  Just then the other customs man went over to a willow tree to tie up his horse. He tied the animal up, took his gun off his shoulder, and at that very moment a woman’s voice cries out:

  ‘Metyu, watch out! They’ll kill you !’ And the man who was tying up his horse let fly with his rifle. Metyu gave a yell, leaped up, and in a flash was over the wall and in the yard next door. The customs men threw themselves flat and began blasting away with their rifles. The women and children scattered like frightened chickens and the Agas took cover in the mosque. Suddenly there wasn’t a soul left. For a good while the customs men went on shooting and then they stopped and started shouting:

  ‘You filthy bandit!’ they shouted. ‘Come on out and give yourself up!’

  No answer. Not a sound…. An hour went by, then two. And then the customs men got up and called the villagers out into the open.

  ‘You go first,’ they told them, ‘and we’ll follow on behind. We’ll corner him in the yard.’

  Not exactly falling over themselves to help, the villagers weren’t, but when you’ve got a gun in your ribs you don’t stop to argue. They opened the gate, but there was no one there…. No one in the yard neither. Then they turned the whole place inside out. They looked under every single scrap of straw in the barn, but they didn’t find a thing. Only a pool of blood where Metyu had hopped over the wall. And the way the house was built, not even a hamster could’ve got away without being spotted. How Metyu managed it, no one knew. And they never found out neither. It was as if the earth had split open and swallowed him up!