Wolf Hunt

by Ivailo Pretov

  Ivan Shibilev barely waited until mid-August, then left for the city and that very same evening he stopped by the theater. At that time the only people hanging around were Uncle Zhorko and a few workmen finishing up renovations on the dressing rooms. There was a bench in front of the doorman’s booth and on the bench was sitting a young woman with dark hair tumbling down around her shoulders. She was sitting with her back to the street, talking to Uncle Zhorko. As soon as he saw Ivan Shibilev, Uncle Zhorko left the woman and came to meet him, his face one big rabbit-like grin.

  “Now there’s our little actor!” he said, giving his shoulders a friendly shake. “And you’ve grown a moustache! It looks good on you, it really looks good!”

  After they chatted for a minute or two, Uncle Zhorko invited him to sit down on the bench. As he sat down, Ivan Shibilev unwittingly glanced at the girl and through his heart ran that shiver of ecstasy and despair he felt in the presence of a beautiful and unknown woman. How can such beauty possibly exist in the world and how can I live in that same world without seeing it for more than a moment? he thought to himself, dazzled by that beauty, and not hearing what Uncle Zhorko was telling him. That is a flagrant injustice and inconsolable grief for the human heart. Isn’t it pointless to live, since this beauty will part from me? Merciful God, please make it such that…But even before he said it, God had fulfilled his prayer. The workers called Uncle Zhorko into the building and the girl turned to Ivan Shibilev and asked him how long he had been an actor.

  “I’m not an actor,” he said. He felt as if he were dreaming, and just as it is in dreams, he wanted to look her in the face once more, but some force would not allow him to turn his head toward her and this force was secretly persuading him that if he looked her in the face once more, he would see a gorgon and would immediately be turned to stone. Why, why am I afraid to look at her, he kept asking himself as he went on telling her how he’d by chance filled a role for a whole month and how the director had promised him yet another role in the new season.

  “You’re so lucky!” the girl said with ingenuous frankness.

  “Lucky? On the contrary!” Ivan Shibilev said, shaking his head sadly.

  He was speaking honestly, because his happy days, of which there had been many until now, disappeared into a dark abyss the moment he had seen the girl, he felt hopelessly forlorn and filled with inexplicable grief only at the fleeting thought that she would leave and the world would be desolate without her. That very evening, racked by insomnia and loneliness, he would write:

  The world will be a white desert without you

  and in this desert, my days will wither away…

  “The director Malovski promised me a role this season,” she said. “Maybe we’ll be partners in some play. I’m Genevieve, but they call me Veva. And your name?”

  “Ivan.”

  “Well, I’ve got to go now!” Veva shook her magnificent hair, ran her fingers through it, and got up. Ivan Shibilev jumped up as if shot off a spring and started walking along with her. “Are you leaving too?”

  “Yes!” Ivan Shibilev got up the courage to glance at her in profile and saw that her lips were curled into a slight smile. That divine smile is for me, because I got up to see her off, he thought, and sensed how the Weltschmerz disappeared from his soul as instantaneously as it had appeared, making room for wild and daring hope. “Will you allow me to walk you home?”

  “Oh, that won’t be necessary!” Veva said. “I’m going to meet a girlfriend.”

  “What a pity! If you were alone, I would have offered to keep you company this evening.”

  “How very kind of you, but you can accompany me just to the church on the main street. My girlfriend will be waiting for me there.”

  “I shall be happy to spend a few more minutes with you!”

  Ivan Shibilev could not shake off his excitement, he had trouble catching his breath, and since he believed that Veva was a professional actress, he kept speaking to her in that grandiloquent tone he had heard at the theater. The “divine” smiles that lit up her face were indeed for him, but more as ironic smirks at his efforts to prove himself a worthy gentleman for her. She was only two years older than he was and from the outside this difference didn’t show. Dressed as he was in fashionable trousers of white shantung and a light-blue shirt, with his moustache and his hair slicked back, a head taller than she was, with broad shoulders and a fine figure, Ivan Shibilev even looked a few years older than she was. However, in terms of life experience he was still a child compared to her, since she could long since faultlessly read men’s glances, facial expressions, and desires as easily as reading a simple book. She had needed not minutes but only a few seconds to realize that the young man was still a virgin and had fallen in love with her “at first sight” and was ready to declare his eternal love for her. She also knew from experience that youngsters like him needed to be sent packing in the very first minute and she always did so for completely understandable reasons, but her girlfriend was not waiting for her at the appointed place by the church, the young man invited her to dinner at a restaurant, and she accepted. He radiated a certain charm which caused her to reward him for his clumsy efforts to court her, plus she was not used to spending her evenings alone. She had already noticed that he was not brave enough to look her in the eye and that he spoke in a style unusual for his age, so as to make himself seem like a man who’d been around the block, and that made her feel kindly toward him.

  At the restaurant, Ivan Shibilev calmed down and got back into his own role. He had a whole evening ahead of him with Veva, who filled him with high hopes, plus the waiter treated him like a true gentleman (“What would the gentleman like? As the gentleman wishes…”) and that only further inflated his self-confidence. Just a few tables at the restaurant were occupied, the two of them were sitting secluded in a small niche, where it was quiet and cozy. Captivated to the point of ecstasy by the girl’s beauty, he fell into deep, delicious self-revelation and told her everything, or almost everything, about himself, as only a young man who has just left his boyhood behind him can: with the purest and gentlest excitement, with the most beautiful words in the world and the strongest feelings, because, in telling her about himself, he was declaring his love for her. To restrain his hot gushing effusions, which were beginning to grate on her, as well as to satisfy his curiosity to a certain extent, Veva briefly told him about herself. She had been an actress at the Pleven Theater for two years, but due to jealousy, rumors, and discontent among the troupe, she had been forced to quit. Other theaters had made her offers, but she had decided to stay with the one here, since she had a spinster aunt with a large house where she could live in true luxury. At the end of the last season she had gone to Malovski and he had promised her a role in Wife for Rent by some Burali or other, in which she had played the lead role at the Pleven Theater.

  That was hardly entirely believable, but the truth was that Veva knew the value of her beauty and had long transformed it into a means of making a living. Not at the end of the last season, but almost a year earlier she had started hanging around the theater and fell first, of course, into the director Malovski’s hands. He didn’t try to hang on to her for more than a month before passing her off to some of the actors, while they for their part, since they couldn’t afford the luxury of long-term romances with such a beauty, passed her on to their friends and fans. Ivan Shibilev found this out from several of the actors, who had seen him with her in the restaurant or on the street, he also heard this from Uncle Zhorko. The latter told him that such girls were always circling around the theater like moths around a lamp in hopes of making it onstage not thanks to their talent and skills, but at the price of their womanly charms. The director Yanakiev, who had decided to take Ivan Shibilev on in his next play, troubled by his lack of experience with women and especially women like Veva, also advised him not to see her and even called her a “spittoon.”

  After their first dinner in the restaurant, Ivan Shibilev solemnly
vowed that he would follow Veva anywhere, at any time, and under any circumstances. She didn’t ask this sacrifice of him, on the contrary, over the course of two months she went out with him only five times, while the rest of the time he was stalking her on the streets. When she found this out, she got angry and threatened that if he kept following at her heels, she would never speak to him again. Ivan Shibilev made sure she did not catch sight of him unwanted again, but when he could he kept track of where she went and whom she saw. In the evenings most often she would go to a two-story house near the covered market and after about an hour would come out with another young woman. The two of them would set off down the main street to the Eye of the Sea Restaurant, then they would turn right and go down to the Sea Garden. There the crowds split into various directions, thinning out, and it was easier to follow the two women. As soon as they turned into one of the alleys, two men would be standing before them ostensibly “by chance,” they would start chatting with them and walking along with them, at first all together, but soon splitting into couples. As could be seen from their clothes and manners, these were men of solid means, naval officers in white uniforms with dirks on gleaming chains or infantry officers, who when meeting the ladies would press their long swords to their thighs, bow gallantly, and noisily click their spurs together. After a few turns around the garden, the two couples would head for the casino. There an orchestra was already playing and the choppy beats of a rumba or foxtrot carried through the cool evening air, under the generous light of the electric lamps, the dance floor roiled like a living, colorful avalanche. Hidden in the shadow of nearby trees, Ivan Shibilev waited there until Veva and her girlfriend with their two beaus came out of the casino and headed down the street. They walked in pairs a dozen yards apart, holding hands, and when passing through darker spots the gentlemen would embrace their ladies and kiss them. Soon they would arrive at the house by the covered market and go inside. Some nights Ivan Shibilev would take up his post on the nearby corner and stand there pointlessly until dawn, when the two men left the house.

  There were days and nights of even crueler suffering, and those were the days and nights when Veva didn’t have anyone to go out with and deigned to take pity on him. He was lurking near her apartment at all hours, Veva could see him through the window, and when she had no other date, she would go out through the main entrance, as she was sure that he would glom on to her. They would take a few turns along the main street then go into one of the restaurants. Veva preferred the Eye of the Sea or Bulgaria, because these restaurants were patronized by the choicest society. Amidst that choice society, just as everywhere else, incidentally, she gave him to understand in every possible way that he should not nurse any hopes of greater intimacy and if she went out with him from time to time, it was only because she could not withstand his stubborn insistence. She behaved such that men unambiguously expressed their admiration for her exquisite beauty, and she not only did not hide her satisfaction as every respectable young lady should, but even provoked such attention with glances and smiles. Men frequently stopped her on the street, and to speak with them, she would turn her back on her escort or would order him to wait for her at a distance; in restaurants men sat down uninvited at their table, there were those who chided her in lieu of a greeting: “Oh, Vevie, looks like the bill’s on you tonight!” They were implying that her companion was a mere child and she would have to pay for his dinner. This caused Ivan Shibilev to try to hide his youthfulness. He had gotten two suits made by the most fashionable tailor in town, he wore white pants and white shoes, in the evening he would put on a tie, since his moustache made him look like a young man from a wealthy family. In the village eighteen-year-old boys were seen as marriageable men, and his mother as well as his stepfather saw him as an eligible bachelor and sent him money over and above his monthly allowance. Since he had saved money from the tour as well, he had the means to allow himself to eat and dress well and take his lady friend to the most expensive restaurants. Despite this, she preferred the company of other men, who not only were not in awe of her beauty, but who treated her indecently and even cynically: They looked at her with lustful eyes, invited her on dates in his presence, and smiled knowingly behind her back.

  Ivan Shibilev suffered from the fact that he could not see her every day and every hour, but never for a moment did he doubt her moral purity, nor did he ever judge her behavior. She was a true angel, who stood so high above them in the aureole of her beauty that no one was capable of sullying her in any way, just as no one could appreciate her beauty and talent as an actress. He felt an insatiable yearning for her, and to that feeling, so agonizing and sweet, he subordinated and dedicated everything: his poems, which he had written in moments of loneliness in an ecstatic outburst of love, and his hopes, and his dreams, and his work in the theater. The actor he had replaced on the tour was still recuperating, so the director gave him the same role. After a few rehearsals, just enough to get him used to the roominess of the large stage, the play was performed at the end of September, immediately following the season opening. Ivan Shibilev played the role of the young village lad far better than had been expected of him, he was so wildly naïve and so ecstatically gentle toward his beloved Boryana that the audience rewarded him with applause and cries of “Bravo!” The director had entrusted him with the role despite the protests of a few of the actors and now he was glad that this experiment had turned out successfully and promisingly. He was flattered by the hope that he had discovered and paved the way to the stage for a new, fresh talent, and after the performance he sought out Ivan Shibilev to congratulate him and talk about the next role he planned to give him. Ivan Shibilev had dashed out of the dressing room and was feverishly circling around the theater. Veva had promised to come watch him and wait for him after the performance by the entrance to the theater, but it looked as if something unforeseen had come up for her. Two days later he ran into her “by chance” as always near her apartment and she told him that the next day she would be going back to her hometown. Her mother wasn’t well and had asked her to come stay with her for a week or two, after which she would return to take up the role Malovski had offered her. Seeing his face go pale and twist from inner anguish, Veva gently kissed him on the cheek, pressed her face to his, and stayed like that for a whole minute. Then she took his hand and led him toward the local park. The city was already quiet, its even breathing could be heard coming from the sea.

  “Don’t try to comfort me, I’m not a child!” Ivan Shibilev said. “I know that when you leave, I won’t ever see you again. Ever! But I won’t ever forget you! As long as I live, I will live only with the thought of you!”

  “Don’t talk that way, Vanyo! You’re so young and you’re already an actor, your future is ahead of you. I don’t deserve you, I’m a frivolous nobody…You’ll find another woman who suits you.”

  “No, no, no!” he cried, taking both her hands and kissing them in tears. “You’re an angel, you’re the purest, most beautiful woman in the world! You are a saint! You have a good heart and a kind soul…”

  He spoke as if in a trance, intoxicated by the agonizing sweetness of confessing his innermost feelings and vowing that she was the first and last and only love of his life. She was looking somewhere at his forehead with mocking attention, as if waiting to see how far he would go in his gushing effusions. Finally, to spare him the banal confession that after they parted he could not live without her and would kill himself, she took him gently by the hand and led him back to his apartment. She had done all she could to put him off her, but instead of being driven to bitterness and despair, he had grown all the more hopelessly attached to her. Now she realized that she had been flattered by the purity of his feelings and due to her own vanity she had given him certain hopes by nevertheless going out with him from time to time. She had let this game go on and now she had to break it off without tiresome consequences for herself – he might spend the night in front of her apartment, waiting to see when she would g
o to the station.

  They parted in front of his apartment, having agreed that she would put off her departure for a few days and that the next night they would meet in front of the Eye of the Sea. Ivan Shibilev fell asleep in his clothes long after midnight and awoke before dawn. She’s leaving today, he thought, and realized that this painful and bitter thought had pierced his entire being, during the night he had felt it as a foreign body within himself. He folded up his two suits and put them in the suitcase, placed a scroll of poems on top of them, and went out. His landlords were at the vineyard, as always during the grape-harvesting season, and he left them a note saying he would be back in about a week. He locked the front door and ran to the square by the men’s high school, where he caught a phaeton to the train station. When he arrived there, Veva and her girlfriend were standing in front of the second wagon after the locomotive. Veva got into the train and stuck her head out the window. At the ticket window they told him the train was leaving in five minutes for Sofia via Pleven, he bought a ticket and through the eastern entrance went out onto the platform and climbed into the last wagon. By the time he reached her wagon, the train had already left the station, and Veva was preparing to enter her compartment. When she saw him, she looked scared, she stared at him and didn’t know what to say.

  “Good God! So you’re…traveling too?”

  “I’ll go with you a ways,” Ivan Shibilev said, as if it were a matter of walking her to the next street over. “I wanted to wish you a safe trip!”

  Veva immediately changed her expression, smiling sadly and saying that she was touched by his attention. She had been at her girlfriend’s until late the previous night, and when she had returned to her apartment, she had found a telegram from her sister. It said that their mother was on her deathbed. She hadn’t slept a wink the whole night, at dawn she had packed her bags and gone to her girlfriend’s to tell her of her sudden departure.