Wild Tales

by Nikolai Haitov

  He’d been a bandit, I know, but I don’t mind telling you I felt right sore about it. So I went and tied the bell with the silver in it to my biggest ram. I rubbed his belly with stinging nettles and turned him loose. Off he went and the bell rang out: ‘ding-ding-ding! ding-ding!’ from one peak, then ‘ding-ding!’ from another opposite, over meadows and mountain pastures, through forests, up steep ravines, now higher now lower, all day long ringing like a church bell, till the whole mountain and the whole forest knew that Ibryam-Ali was lost and gone for ever. (Ibryam was his bandit name, but sometimes he was called by both.)

  Then my troubles really began. First came the coup in ‘23, when they came after us with bared sabres and I was thrashed good and proper. After that the slump, when a lambskin cost more than a lamb. I got rid of my sheep, bought a couple of mules and set up as a carrier. A load of planks for the trip down and back up with salt and paraffin.

  One Saturday I had to go down to the station at Stanimaki to fetch a load of Sunlight soap. ‘Just right,’ I says to myself, ‘I’ll wait for the train so I can tell the kids what a train looks like.’ The train came in, and a whole crowd of fine ladies in fancy hats got off. All kinds, there were, and I got quite carried away looking at them. Just then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned round and saw a character with moustaches, gravelly eyes, and an astrakhan hood with a red lining.

  ‘Not a word!’ he said. ‘What are you doing down here at the station?’

  ‘Fetching Sunlight.’

  ‘Good! Get your mules and we’ll be off!’

  I touched his breeches: no getting away from it, they was real all right! I looked into his face. It was him: Ibryam-Ali!

  When we got to the edge of the town I asked him:

  ‘How did you do it?’ I says. ‘Coming back from the dead like that?’

  ‘Shut up and keep going!’ he says. ‘I’ll tell you further up.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To Chepelli.’

  So that was it, back to our village … I felt a stab in my heart.

  ‘Won’t you be recognized?’

  ‘Just a moment,’ he says, ‘wait here and don’t look.’

  He got off the mule. After a while I turned round to find out what had been happening, and d’you know what I saw? A big sturdy fellow with a black beard and a knitted cap. Sitting just a couple of paces away. ‘Well, I’ll be jiggered!’ I says to myself. ‘Wonders never cease! Where did he spring from?’

  ‘And who might you be?’ I asks.

  ‘Ibryam!’

  When he said ‘Ibryam’ he laughed, and I could see it really was Ali. And when he took off the beard I was quite certain of it. How was I to know they’d started selling false beards in the shops!

  ‘In that outfit,’ I says, ‘you’d get by in Chepelli all right. And in Pashmakli too! You could call at the police station and take coffee with the commandant, and there’s not a soul as would know it’s you!’

  He stuffed the beard into one of the saddle bags and only put it on again when we were getting near Chepelli. In the meantime he told me that he’d come up from Odrin on the train. He’d been in Greece before that and then in Turkey. All the way he kept saying what a stroke of luck it was, meeting me at the station. Going by what he said, what he’d needed most just then was someone he could trust.

  ‘Hold on,’ I says to him, ‘no blood now, mind!’

  ‘There’s only the one thing I want doing,’ he says. ‘Give me a lift into the village, and if anyone asks who I am, say I’m the head shepherd at Stoichoolou’s farm in Shoumnatitsa. I’ve got a bad leg and that’s why I’ve hired your mule. It shouldn’t take long, and there won’t be no blood.’

  ‘Will you come back to my place?’

  ‘No! That’s only for friends and relatives. Drop me off at the inn.’

  When we passed some trees he pulled off a few beech leaves and started chewing them.

  ‘Around here,’ he said, ‘leaves taste better than a roast sucking lamb! In Anatolia there isn’t a leaf to be seen, and the water, it’s worse than pig-swill!’

  Whenever he saw a drinking fountain he stopped.

  ‘Let’s have a drink,’ he’d say.

  He’d get off the mule, have a drink, put his head under the spout, cup both hands in the trough and splash away at his face with the water….

  When we rode into a pine wood he stopped by one of the trees, touched it with his hand like he was stroking it, and hugged it tight.

  ‘My pine, my tree! You on the mountain-top,

  And me by the sea!’

  We reached the village and made for the inn. He with his beard and knitted cap walking down the street as cool as a cucumber, and not a soul as stopped to take a second look at him. There was any amount of beards in those days and half the village was wearing knitted caps, so we arrived at Gugritsa’s inn without any trouble, just like we’d planned.

  ‘You go off home and settle your mules,’ Ali said. ‘Come back this evening for a meal at the inn and keep me company for supper.’

  So I went home, settled the animals, told my wife to have supper and go to bed without me, and went back to the inn. The windows were lit, plenty of noise, shouting, and lots of people….

  ‘Ibryam!’ I says to Ali. ‘Best not go in! I’ll bring you some bread and cheese from home. It’ll be a good sight more tasty than in there.’

  I might as well have been talking to the wall. In he went and I followed after. It was hot inside. Full of smoke too. Meat was being roasted, bagpipes were playing and people were singing. You’d never have thought that at such a busy time – threshing time, it was – so many people could get together to enjoy themselves…. What was all the excitement about? Well, the men had shot a wild boar and were grilling great hunks of meat over the fire. They were eating and singing, Droulyu from Levochevo was playing the bagpipes for them, and a whole crowd of people were standing round looking on.

  We sat down at a table in a corner. Ali ordered beans and salted meat and started his supper. And all the while the songs rolled on…. Every possible song you could imagine. Meanwhile Ali went on with his supper and every now and then looked over towards the men. They sang and they sang until someone – I can’t rightly remember who – called out to Droulyu :

  ‘Hey! Droulyu!’ he shouted. ‘Let’s have “Roufinka”!’

  Droulyu started playing ‘Roufinka’, and as he played he sang. Bouroushtila took up the melody, and then three or four others joined in as well. The ceiling shook. The window panes crashed and rang like cymbals. Gugritsa was filling a bottle with wine and the bottle ran over, but he didn’t notice and went on pouring. The meat in the fire got burnt to nothing, and the wood-cutters stood rooted to the spot, not daring to move for fear of spoiling the song.

  Ali pushed away his plate. He took up his glass to drink, but neither drank nor put it down. His fingers squeezed tighter and tighter and turned blue. His face was like stone. Just one blue vein beating behind his ear. The longer they sang, the faster it beat, and his eyes, his far-strewn eyes, looked at everything, but saw nobody.

  I sensed that something was about to happen, but before I could discover what it was Ali suddenly stood up. He stood up like a man lifted by a whirlwind, went over to the singers, and before anyone knew what was happening he shouted out and began singing at the top of his voice :

  ‘Roufinka lying sick and fading

  On the peak, on the high mountain …’

  Everyone froze and fell silent. Only Droulyu went on playing.

  ‘Wine!’ Ali roared. ‘A bottle for everyone!’

  The inn-keeper rushed off, bottles clinked and rang, corks popped and Ali sang. He sang and Droulyu played, and everyone listened, staring at Ali, exchanging glances among themselves from time to time.

  I could see that things were getting out of hand, so I stood up and went off home. When I got in my wife already knew Ibryam-Ali was in the village. I went to bed, but something inside me kept scratch
ing away: ‘Go and tell him he’s been recognized !’ it said. ‘Go and save him !’

  I got up and went back to the inn. My wife didn’t want me to go so I had to stuff her mouth and stop her screaming. I pushed my way through to Ali and whispered in his ear:

  ‘You’ve been recognized!’

  ‘I feel like singing and no one’s going to stop me!’ he said. ‘If they want to arrest me, here I am!’ And he shoved a bottle into my mouth. ‘Drink!’ he said, and he shouted to the inn-keeper:

  ‘Bring us a barrel of wine! It’s on me. And lock the door!’

  What happened after is kind of hazy. There was a great deal of drinking and singing and we all ended up flat on our backs, completely sozzled. It was already getting light when Ali stood up and paid the bill.

  ‘Bring the mules! It’s time we were off!’ he said.

  I was still pretty pickled, but the way Gugritsa looked at me I knew what he meant. If I went with Ali, he’d report me to the police and I’d never dare show my face in any village again. It was then I blackened my soul and said to Ali:

  ‘I don’t know who you are. I refuse to take you!’

  Ali looked me straight in the eye and drew his pistol.

  ‘Move!’ he said. ‘Or I’ll blow your brains out!’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’m not arguing!’

  We mounted the mules and rode off. Me in front and him behind. Going through the village neither of us said a word. When we were clear of the houses Ali whipped his mule on, drew level and said:

  ‘Did you mean what you said back there about not wanting to take me, or was it just an excuse?’

  I was ashamed to tell him the truth and I lied.

  ‘It wasn’t an excuse. I meant it!’

  ‘Come on now, look me in the eye!’

  It was light already and you could see everything, so how could I look him in the eye?

  ‘So-o-o-o !’ he said. ‘You’d lie to me, would you? !’

  Then I told him the truth :

  ‘Yes, I was lying,’ I said. ‘Because I told myself you’d vanish again and I’d be left in a bloody awful mess. That’s the truth, I swear! Anyhow, whose fault was it you started singing?’

  T see,’ he said. ‘But why not say that in the first place? A fat lot of good you are as a carrier! And I was thinking,’ he says, ‘of us sharing the gold liras I’ve got hidden away. Still, if you’ve got cold feet, you’d better leave while there’s still time. I don’t need you to show me the way to the border. So, about turn and off with you! Don’t worry, I never shoot people in the back!’

  I cursed myself for what I’d done, but too late! Not because of the gold, mind. Not because of his rotten liras. But because I’d blackened my soul and lied.

  ‘Ali,’ I said, ‘I will come with you if you need me. Honest, I mean it.’

  ‘The liras, eh?’

  That shut me up. Nearly choked me. I grabbed one of the mules by the halter and turned to go. I left the other mule with Ali. Before we parted I said to him:

  ‘Just a couple of things before I go,’ I says. ‘Hear me out and believe me when I say it comes from the heart. The whole village knows you’re here, and death by hanging was your sentence. Gugritsa is a police informer, and at the inn I saw Fevzi, the eldest son of Fandukli, that field-keeper who tried to break your leg. Ride through the forest, Ali, keep away from the road!’

  ‘Scram!’ was all he said.

  I rode off and didn’t turn round again. When I got to the meadows at the edge of the village I heard gunfire from somewhere. ‘Well,’ I says to myself, ‘that’s that, then.’

  I was right scared and didn’t go home, but went along to the inn.

  ‘Where’s the bandit?’ Gugritsa asked.

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I got the push!’

  ‘So you wanted to go with him, did you?’

  ‘Yes, I did, damn you!’ I said. ‘I did want to, you little bastard, but he wouldn’t take me! Bandits have to be full of spunk, not miserable bed-wetters like you and me, you wretch! Do you understand?’ And seeing as I was still holding the halter I lashed him across the face with it, so hard it wound itself five or six times round his neck.

  We grabbed each other by the throat and they had to use force to get us apart. Just then a filthy row started up outside. Before I realized what it was I caught sight of my other mule. It was pulling a wooden drag, and tied to the drag was Ibryam-Ali in a white shirt stained with bloody blotches. (After his death that was what got him his third name: ‘Blotchy Ali’.) Behind the drag, guns at the ready, came a policeman and Fandukli’s offspring, Fevzi. They stopped in the yard and I rushed over to Ali.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ I asked. ‘Is it bad?’

  Ali’s eyes were already misting over. ‘Bad or not, it’s all finished! But it’s good to know I’ll be buried in our native soil….’

  Bloody foam bubbled from his mouth and he was cut short with this word on his lips.

  ‘Ali, Ali! Come back!’ But he slumped into my arms, his head fell forward and he was gone.

  ‘I suppose you couldn’t bandage him up!’ I yelled at Fevzi.

  ‘Makes no difference to the price on his head. Dead or alive, it’s all the same,’ he answered.

  Then came militia-men, the police, doctors…. Questionings, interrogations…. They even had him opened up to see whether he’d got two hearts. No one could understand how two bullets could go clean through his shoulder-blade and he could still be alive one and a half hours after, when he’d been dragged all the way back to the inn.

  Afterwards they gave him to me and I buried him in our native soil. And I put a stone on his grave, and flowers…. All these years and I’ve still the same pain aching away inside : if I’d gone with him in the first place, would the same fate have overtaken him? Would it? And when the pain gets really bad I go along to the school-teacher.

  ‘Teacher,’ I says to him, ‘is there such a thing as fate in a man’s life?’

  ‘How many times must I tell you? Of course there is!’ he says. ‘Only, fate isn’t something outside a man, it’s inside him. Take your Ali. If he hadn’t started fooling around with his song no one would have recognized him or laid a finger on him…. He was tough and he was terrible, but that song was stronger still….’

  The Little Black Bird

  I’ve seen a good few funerals in my time : with music and without, with soldiers and policemen too, with speeches and without, with one priest, with twelve priests and with no priest at all, but there’s one funeral that bring tears to my eyes whenever I think of it: the funeral of the little black bird. The bird itself was nothing special: it was black and had an orange beak. Just an ordinary common-or-garden blackbird. It wasn’t one of your songbirds neither, like as usually get put in cages. He was a wild blackbird and he had a hen to keep him company. A fellow from Bachkovo had brought them for Gogosha’s grandma so she could rub her warts with ‘fat from a black bird’, but Gogosha took pity on the birds and didn’t give them to her. He put them in a cage instead and he hung the cage just inside his shop.

  There was a fair number of shops round the square and some had cages with birds in them – only they were all songbirds.

  No one had ever seen blackbirds in a cage before, and Gogosha soon had half the market coming round to his cobbler’s shop for a look: koundouri-makers with their hammers, butchers with horsetails, barbers with scissors and fcoza-sellers with their copper pitchers – everyone you could possibly think of.

  ‘What have you got them for?’ they all asked.

  ‘To pick my lice,’ Gogosha told them.

  Everyone laughed, but not Gogosha. He was like that. He’d tell a joke with a dead straight face, but if he said something serious he’d split his sides. So everyone thought he was joking. There was chuckling and laughter all round, but afterwards it turned out Gogosha hadn’t been joking at all. Next morning we saw he’d had his head shaved. ‘All off!’ he’d told S
tati the barber. ‘Bald as a coot!’

  His shop was just a couple of doors away from mine and a week or so later he called in to see me.

  ‘Kosta,’ he said, ‘come and see the birds at work.’

  I went off with him and he pressed his head against the cage. The birds stretched out their necks, shoved their little heads through the wire and started hammering away at his bald pate with their beaks. There was nothing there, but they went hammering away just like they was pecking up lice.

  ‘How did you teach them a trick like that?’ I asked.

  ‘For a whole week I had them pecking crumbs off my head,’ he said. ‘And when they got going it seemed like they was pecking up the worms that were gnawing at my innards and I felt so good inside, so nice and light, I forgot about the wickedness of the world and the poverty at home….’

  For the next three or four days there was always a crowd hanging round Gogosha’s shop trying to get a look. The slump had us in its grip. Craftsmen had no work and nothing to occupy their time. The peasants were out of cash and were hardly buying a thing. The butchers had only tripe and bones. And then to top it all, phylloxera attacked the vineyards and a deathly hush fell over everything. Aye, times were hard! Folk were worried and heavy-hearted and seeing as they didn’t like sitting by themselves, they gathered outside Ali the koundouri-maker’s or Gogosha the cobbler’s to talk about bankruptcies and the phylloxera beetle and whether the railway would be built that far, and about some new law as would close down the factories and put the craftsmen back on their feet, and about heaven knows what besides. So Gogosha’s birds came along just right. They kept the people laughing and made them forget their empty workshops and the drop in trade.

  Stupid really – just a couple of blackbirds pecking at Gogosha’s bald pate, but people found it interesting, and now and then Gogosha cracked a few jokes as well and that got everyone laughing more.

  One day Ali said to him :

  ‘I say, Gogosha, what do they find to peck at on that bald head of yours?’