That evening, most folks stopped by the wedding on their way home from the fair, and Zhendo’s house more or less filled up with people. Some had stopped by to “pay their respects” to the wedding party, while others merely wanted a bite to eat and a pint after the fair. Zhendo, who seemed to have foreseen this onslaught, had put two lambs and a pig under the knife right after the church service. He had set a thirty-gallon keg in the middle of the yard, as well as another one next to the porch stairs, and the guests, especially the boozers among them, were gathered around them, filling their bowls and toasting the newlyweds. Zhendo had thrown a wedding in grand style and he wanted everyone to see that. From time to time, he’d come out to the guests in the yard, pour them a round, and invite them to sit down at the table, shouting: “Come on, people, eat and drink up! I’ll only marry off a son once!”
Inside one of the rooms, the inner circle had gathered: the godparents, the new in-laws, relatives, and, of course, former Sergeant Major Chakov. A bagpiper was sitting at the end of the table, his face red as molten steel from all the blowing; next to him, some woman was singing in a creaking, goat-like voice, some tried to join in with her, others tried to outshout her or got up to dance. The sweating windowpanes rattled from the dancers’ stomps, the two lamps flickered and sputtered from the smoke and dust. Radka also appeared several times, with her veil thrown back over her shoulders, to refill the dishes or cups. Her mother-in-law, Auntie Kita, affectionately advised her as to what to put where, and Radka did so with smooth, unconscious movements. If someone said something to her, she would look at him somehow astonished, smile with her lips alone, and leave the room. Zhendo, by now heated up and with his shirt hanging open, frequently raised his glass and shouted at the top of his voice to Trotsky: “Here’s to you, kinsman!”
“Long life to you, kinsman!” Trotsky would reply, as he sat at former Sergeant Major Chakov’s right knee, seeming to fear that the latter would be offended if he spoke to anyone else.
At one point, Zhendo pulled a small-barrel revolver out of his pocket, aimed it at the ceiling, and fired three shots. The women screamed, the bagpipe hiccupped and fell silent, and chunks of plaster fell onto the table from the ceiling, where three holes had appeared. Outside, faces pressed up against the windowpane and a hush fell over the whole house. Smiling, Zhendo pulled the spent shells out of the barrel and tucked them back in his pocket, along with the revolver. An awkward silence overtook the room. The women began to trade knowing glances, while guilty expressions crept over their faces, as if somewhere nearby a deed was being done that was mysterious and shameful, yet as inevitable as a ritual sacrifice, which could be shared with a glance alone.
“What, cat got your tongue, people? Come on, Veliko, puff up that goatskin of yours again, ’cause this time me and my kinsman are gonna rattle the floorboards!” Zhendo said, pouring wine into the glasses.
The bagpiper had gone outside, as had Ivan Shibilev, who always found a way to keep everyone entertained. So Trotsky decided that his hour had finally come. The whole evening, he had been utterly devoted to his honored guest, seeming to have forgotten that he was at his daughter’s wedding. The silence that had fallen suddenly snapped him out of the sergeant major’s spell, or rather, precisely under the influence of that spell, he enthusiastically began telling his soldierly Iliad. They were all long since familiar with this Iliad, but now they gratefully turned their eyes toward him and readied themselves to listen. This solitary soul, who spent his life clamped in the rigid mold of his military uniform and in the company of a near-feral dog, had only a single social ace up his sleeve – his years-long and lasting friendship with Sergeant Major Chakov, which raised him to dizzying heights in his own eyes, and – as he believed – in the eyes of the whole village as well.
After retiring to the reserves, the former sergeant major had been living in a nearby hamlet, where his wife had inherited a bit of land. It was abundantly clear that some unpleasant circumstances had forced him to hole up in that distant and godforsaken little spot, because even the sergeant major himself liked to say that life had given him the orders: “About-face!” Trotsky was the only one of his former soldiers in the vicinity, so they had met and gotten to know each other, and since then the sergeant major had been a regular guest on all major holidays. He was past seventy, with a face squashed flat like a wine flask, healthy as a horse, and energetic for his years. He walked with an even, heavy step, as if marking out the rhythm to some regimental march, except that his soldierly charm was somehow absurdly marred by a nervous tic – he would bring together the three middle fingers on his right hand and spit on them several times. This spitting on his fingers could also have been a habit, of course, acquired after long years of maternal care for his soldiers. He wore a dark jacket of dyed military cloth, tan jodhpurs, and tall boots, whose waxy scent profaned the cozy aroma of home cooking and joyous celebration. He had kept his military habits not only where his clothes and behavior were concerned, but in his speech as well. When he started to eat, he would call out as if in the company canteen: “Hup!” When he got up: “At attention!” And when leaving: “Forward, march!” There could never be a higher-ranking guest in the village. He was worth more than all the illustrious personages in the region put together, thus all major holidays came and went graced by his imperial visitations. Radka had told me that her father had made the whole family rehearse for the sergeant major’s visits, that he had taught them how to sit obediently before him, how to answer him, how to “sashay” gracefully, and how not to affront his dignity with so much as a gaze, how no one was to sit down until he sat down, what culinary delicacies they should lavish upon him, and what gifts they should send him away with.
Trotsky writhed in the throes of a criminal generosity, tearing away at his humble prosperity as if tearing living flesh from the bone, just so he could prepare for his idol a feast that would assuage even the insatiable Lucullus’s hunger. However, these holidays were never a close family affair – Trotsky always invited the neighbors, because he wanted witnesses to his triumph. The standard guests from our side included my grandmother, my grandfather, and me. If Trotsky’s social “ace up his sleeve” was the former sergeant major, then I was my grandfather’s ace. I could recite several poems from the school primers, and my grandfather was so proud of my talent that he took me with him everywhere.
Everyone would be sitting on the floor, only the eminent guest would loom over us on a three-legged stool in front of a trunk specially prepared for him, which rose like a pulpit over the common table. His flattened visage hung over this pulpit like a moon over the heads of the people, illuminating them with its cold benevolence. No one dared to snicker – not even inwardly – when he spit on his fingers as if possessed, because everyone considered these apish gestures not a flaw, but a sign of nobility. They waited for him to reach for the food first, and only then would they break the bread. The sergeant major was not a gourmand and despite his hosts’ insistence that he try everything, he would carefully mind his mouthfuls, sparingly sip his brandy, and very soon say “enough.” Then he would wipe his mouth with a napkin and remain at his pulpit, as immobile and impenetrable as the Dalai Lama. Then my grandfather would gently nudge my shoulder and I would stand up in front of the table. It was not hard to guess the sergeant major’s literary predilections and already at our second meeting I had started reciting for him an excerpt of Vazov’s “The Defenders of Shipka Pass.” The generals’ commands, the volunteer fighters’ “hooray,” the din of the desperate battle, all inflamed his hollow imagination, his nostrils caught a whiff of gunpowder, his squashed face swelled with heroic emotions, and when I would recite how every one of our men was
…in his own way
Striving to be in the front of the fray
Each, like a hero, death bravely defying
Determined to leave one more enemy dying
a cry of approval would burst from the sergeant major’s lips loudly and ecstatically like a bul
let from the barrel of a rifle: “Bravo, young hero!” The scales of his imperial benevolence would tip in my direction, he would pull a lev from the breast pocket of his jacket and hand it to me – after making me stand at attention, salute, and shout, “Thank you, sir!” He noted with satisfaction that each time I showed an ever greater mastery of military protocol, while I noted to myself that I showed an ever greater interest in the lev he gave me, and hence all the more doggedly worked at perfecting my rhetorical talent.
Trotsky was sitting cross-legged at his fetish’s booted feet, tortured by jealousy and slavish devotion, looking him over from head to toe and waiting for the moment to turn the great man’s attention toward himself.
“Well, I, for one, remember the nummer of my carbine,” he would say at the first convenient moment. “Two thousan’ eight hundert an’ niney-five.”
The sergeant major would turn to him, gratified by the lasting results of his educational activities, which had taken such deep root in the consciousness of his former soldiers and had stood the tests of time. Trotsky would gaze at him, his eyes blazing with devotion, and that was the sign that the moment had come for him to once again repay his former commander with kind words for the attention he had deigned to honor him with during his army days. Indeed, he subjected himself and his offspring to the sergeant major’s tyranny solely so that he would have the chance to retell how this flat-faced person had “thrashed” him in the army every time he caught sight of him, so that no one would be left with any doubts that his patron was anything less than an exceptional individual. The patron himself would sit imperturbable behind his flattened mask and from time to time, clearly under the strain of his most delectable memories, would spit on the fingers of his right hand, as if with this sinister pantomime wanting to visually confirm his indisputable contribution to the shaping of Bulgarian spirituality.
Trotsky would begin by telling how, on the very first day, their solicitous “battalion mother” inspected the greenhorns’ clothes, found lice on several men, and served them up such a “welcome-to-the-army” thrashing that their faces were black and blue. They were given vats to boil their clothes in, but wouldn’t you know – the next day the battalion mother again found lice on two men, one of whom was Trotsky. The sergeant major took off his belt and laid into them in front of the whole company. They boiled their clothes again, but you know how it is with lice – where there’s one, there’s a thousand. Our local lice – raised for “breeding,” as they say – they could pass through fire and be none the worse for it. “Well now, since a good thrashing didn’t shake you up, the sergeant major declared, stand still and open your mouth! So I stand there with my mouth open, and he takes the little critters from the open collar of my shirt one by one an’ shoves ’em in my mouth. Riiiight here, on my eyetooth. Chew! So I chewed. I must’ve scarfed down a dozen of ’em…”
Trotsky remembered the number of his carbine and that number had been deeply etched into his memory for all time like the Ten Commandments carved in stone, thanks to his punishments, which far exceeded that actual number. With the greatest relish and masochistic voluptuousness, he recounted one epic beating, which the sergeant major had doled out to him during his second year of service: “I was on barracks duty that day. The company’d gone outside o’ town for shootin’ drills. At some point the platoon commander came back and headed straight for mista sarjin mare’s office. Turns out they didn’t have no bullets for the drill. That morning mista sarjin mare’d been busy with somethin ’r other, so he’d given me the keys to the storeroom and tol’ me to hand out blanks to the whole company, but I’d done gone and forgotten. Mista sarjin mare gave the commander the bullets and came over to me all bluish green, glarin’ at me and shakin’ from head to toe. Private Statev, did I order you to hand out bullets to the company? Yes, sir, I say, but it just slipped my mind. Well, now, he says, I’m going to jog your memory. When he wasn’t mad, he’d affectionately call his soldiers turdbag, lowlife, or twerp. But when he called you Private So-and-so, you knew nothin’ good was in store for you. He lashed out with his left hand, I ducked left, an’ he caught me with a right hook. And bam! again, with the right, then pow! again with the left. My head starts squealing like a bagpipe, I can hardly stay on my feet. I cover my face with my hands and spin around like a top, and all the while he’s like: Attention! I said, attention, don’t move! At one point I’m thinkin’ to run out of the room and onto the parade grounds, reckonin’ he might just leave me alone. That’s all well and good, but he beats me to it and shuts the door. Since there’s no other escape, I take off runnin’ down the aisle between the beds, he’s at my heels shoutin’: Halt! If only I’d had the good sense to stop, I would’ve gotten off easier, ’cause the man was shoutin’ that if I didn’t stop I’d earn myself another punishment for failin’ to obey an order. But the scareder I got, the more his temper flared. So dunderhead that I am, I start jumping from bed to bed. He’s waiting for me at the end, so I leap over to the other row. We kicked up quite a dust cloud in them barracks, and there was me and mista sarjin mare playin’ tag in that dust cloud. I finally got my chance and darted out into the corridor. I’m just about to run down the stairs when gotcha! He grabs me by the neck. He sticks his arm through my belt and starts draggin’ me down that corridor like a bundle of wheat. I grab on to the trunk where we stored wood for the stove. So he’s lugging me, and I’m lugging the trunk, with all the wood to boot. He drags me over to the storeroom and tries to shove me in, but the trunk’s too wide, it won’t go in. Let go of the trunk! I don’t let go. He stomps my fingers with his boot, I let go of the trunk. He hauls me into the storeroom, locks the door, and starts workin’ me over. Inside there’s nothing but junk, it’s all dim and dank, the whole base is empty, even if I yelled for help, no one’d hear me. I says to myself, this man don’t just want to hurt me, he wants to kill me. I get so scared that I dive under a shelf like a dog under a barn when it knows it’s up shit creek. Mista sarjin mare is pullin’ on my legs. I hang on to the shelf till it crashes down on me, buryin’ me in blankets, sheets and boots, cartridge boxes and what-have-you. I’m suffocatin’, I can’t scream or worm my way out. At long last, mista sarjin mare pulls me out. Get up! Yes, sir! He’ll take pity on me, I’m thinkin’ to myself, and let me go, since I almost suffocated. I somehow scramble to my feet and I’m waitin’ for him to dismiss me, but instead, ‘You’ve just made more work for me,’ he says. He pushes me to the ground, presses his knee into my back so I can’t budge, and starts layin’ into me again. He’s wailin’ on me with his belt, and it’s like he’s cuttin’ me with a knife, I’m screamin’ myself hoarse, while he’s like: Shut up! One more peep outta you and I’ll rip your tongue out! If you’d obeyed my order to stand still, this beating would already be history. But you go and play hide-and-seek on me. Screw you and your goddamn shelves, even if you crawled up your mother’s ass, I’d yank you out and tan your hide again! And you can imagine what happened then…”
Trotsky didn’t reach the culmination of his inspired tale and had to break it off at “mista sarjin mare’s” obstetrical fantasy. The door opened and two women came into the room. The one was carrying a white chemise or cloth in her outstretched arms, and the other a plastic soda bottle with a red bow tied around the neck. The two of them stepped up to Trotsky with guilty, frightened expressions, and the one holding the bottle handed it to him: “Cheers, kinsman!”
Trotsky lifted the bottle to take a deep swig, but the bottle whistled, leaving his mouth empty. He shook it, sucked on it again, and the bottle again whistled emptily. He turned it upside down, saw that the bottom was punctured, and laughed, thinking this was some kind of joke. His wife let out a frantic shriek, pounded herself on the forehead with both hands, and froze.
“What are you screamin’ about, woman?” Trotsky chided her, and was about to say something more when the woman who had handed him the bottle swallowed hard, closed her eyes, and said:
“If she wants to scream, let
her scream. Because there’s no sweet brandy!”
A sinister silence reigned over the table.
“You lie!” Auntie Gruda shrieked again. “You want to besmirch my daughter’s honor. To cover my house in shame!”
They showed her the unstained chemise once again, she pushed it away, wriggled through the crowd that had pressed into the room, and ran out. Zhendo’s wife jumped up after her. Then they brought the chemise over to the godparents so they, too, could confirm the bride’s disgrace. The godmother glanced at it and lowered her eyes, while Stoyan Kralev waved it away and turned his face toward the wall in disgust. He had arrived shortly before Trotsky had begun the tale of his army days and was glaring at the former sergeant major with undisguised contempt, not missing the chance to snipe at him: “It’s the tsarist army, what do you expect? Any idiot with epaulettes can torture his soldiers to his heart’s content!”
Wolf Hunt Page 4