Wolf Hunt

by Ivailo Pretov

  Ivan Shibilev was listening, horrified yet moved that during one of the most difficult moments in her life, Mela had come to bare her soul to him, her real father. They stayed up late talking, and right as they were going to bed, there was an insistent knocking on the window. Ivan Shibilev turned out the light, opened the window a crack, and saw Nikolin standing down in the flower garden.

  “My apologies,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I came to ask about Mela. She told me tonight that she was going to see you, and she hasn’t come back the whole night.”

  “She’s not here, what would she be doing here at my place!” Ivan Shibilev fell silent before adding: “She stopped by for a bit at dusk to borrow a book and went on her way. She was here with a colleague who drove her by car. Their theater is visiting the nearby villages, so she stopped by to borrow the book.”

  Nikolin stood there for a few seconds, staring at the dark window, sighed deeply, and left. Ivan Shibilev lay down, but after a short while he got up out of bed and went into the other room where Mela was. They had decided that she would stay a few days to rest and calm down, but now they would have to come up with another plan. All signs indicated that Nikolin could sense her presence, he would come back looking for her again or would lurk around the house, he might even complain to the village leaders. That would stir up a scandal, the authorities would return Mela to him as her lawful father, and that was exactly what he couldn’t allow to happen. They decided that Mela would go to Plovdiv to stay with his mother, that is, her real grandmother, who had long since moved there with her husband to take care of his half sister’s children. Once the children had grown up, the brother-in-law had bought a new apartment and left the old one to the elderly couple, and Mela could live with them for the time being. Ivan Shibilev wrote a letter to his mother telling her to take care of her granddaughter Mela, and the next morning when it was still dark, he took her to the bus in the neighboring village, from where she would go first to Tolbuhin and from there catch a train to Plovdiv. As for the next step, Ivan Shibilev was hatching plans to find work in Plovdiv or some city even farther away, to move there with Mela or even to follow her from city to city, if need be. Even if he somehow found out where she was, Nikolin was hardly likely to follow her. He didn’t know any trade besides sheepherding and living in a city was unthinkable for him, so even if Mela was still formally his daughter, in actuality she would be living with her real father.

  Nikolin, for his part, went back home and only then saw that in his anguish he had torn up the whole blanket, turning it into a heap of rags and scraps of wool. The pile resembled some shabby creature lying dead on the bed, and while he was looking at it, gripped by horror, his thoughts swooped down on him even more viciously like vipers and called out one after the other: “Mela is Ivan Shibilev’s daughter. Even the dogs have known it since way back when, you knew it, too, you just didn’t have the courage to admit it!” “No, I didn’t know,” Nikolin would answer them. “I heard it, they all told me, but it was like I didn’t know it because I didn’t believe it. People talk all kinds of nonsense, you can’t put a padlock on their lips. Mona was my wife, so how could our child have a different father? How, tell me! Mela is my daughter, I brought her into the world, I raised her since she was nothing but a slab of meat…”

  Nikolin again recalled how, when he saw her for the first time after she was born, she did look like a dark-red slab of meat, with her yellowish face and little eyes tightly shut. He remembered, as if they were happening right there before his eyes, all the most important events and moments from her life: her first smile with toothless gums, her first coos and babbling, the first step she took on her own, the first time she called him “Daddy”; he remembered washing her little bottom, how he had been intoxicated by the sweet scent of her delicate flesh, how she had written her first letter and sung her first song. Was all of that a dream, or was it real, Nikolin wondered. It was real, but why would Mela go to Ivan Shibilev after she hadn’t come back to the village for nearly a year, why would she go straight to him and stay there all night? The vicious thoughts asked and answered their own question: So as never to come back to you again! – What do you mean, she won’t come back, where would she go? I mean, she may really have stopped by for some book and left right away again. Those two have been close for a long time, didn’t he teach her theater as a child, of course she’d turn to him for advice about her business, who else would she ask?

  While he was thinking this, Nikolin remembered that earlier that evening, when Mela had been standing in front of him in the street, her resemblance to Ivan Shibilev had suddenly struck him, such an obvious and strong resemblance that pain had pierced his heart. Only for an instant, but precisely in that instant when she told him she was going to Ivan Shibilev’s and her face looked more elongated than usual and her eyes were squinted. He had seen that expression many times on Ivan Shibilev’s face, when he was excited or flustered, when out in the fields hunting, in conversation with others, or most of all when he was performing some part: the expression of an anxious or angry person. He couldn’t remember having looked for a resemblance between Mela and Ivan Shibilev in the past, even though many had hinted that she was the other man’s daughter, nor had he ever doubted his wife’s honor. That night, however, as if he had been suddenly cured from amnesia or awakened from deep oblivion, he remembered moments in which, albeit against his will, he had discovered an obvious resemblance between the child and Ivan Shibilev. He had been especially struck by this resemblance when he noticed it for the first time. Mela had been seven then and was going to school. In bad weather, if there was snow or mud, he would carry her in his arms from school to home. One rainy day he was a bit late and she had started out toward home on her own. The little wooden bridge over the gorge had been washed away by a flood and Ivan Shibilev, who just happened to be there, was carrying Mela through the water, her face pressed to his. Then Nikolin saw from up close how much the child resembled him.

  Over the following years, until puberty, the girl was changing constantly and quickly, the features of her face would sometimes resemble her mother’s or her aunt’s, sometimes Nikolin himself, or even one of his sisters. After puberty her resemblance to Ivan Shibilev became all the more obvious, especially to someone determined to find it at any cost. But by that time Mela was studying in the city, he saw her only rarely and forgot about the resemblance, and whenever she came home, he was so overjoyed and excited that he couldn’t think of anything besides how to coddle her and keep her with him as long as possible. He recalled that many times he had sensed or noticed some intimacy between Mona and Ivan Shibilev. Several times he had seen them talking in some side street, he would be holding the little girl in his arms, giving her sweets, and stroking her. He had also happened upon them in the community center, where they rehearsed, and from Mona’s face he could tell that she was not pleased to see him, and on the way home she always found a reason to get angry with him. He had also seen the two of them returning from the neighboring village. They had gone there to put on a children’s play and at sundown they were returning along the road by foot. They were walking about a hundred steps behind the children and they passed him by without noticing him. He had let the herd graze by the road and was sitting in the stubble field when the two of them walked right past him. They were walking into the sunset and their faces were happy, she was saying something and laughing vivaciously, as he had never heard her laugh at home…

  When dawn had finally broken and he had to go to the sheep pen, Nikolin happened to notice his leather gloves under a chair in the corner and felt the heavy weight on his heart suddenly being replaced by a sweet lightness, some life-giving stream rushed through his whole being, filling him with calm and hope. He had been looking for those gloves since the weather had turned cold, and the fact that he had found them for him was a joyful omen. The local men wore knitted mittens; of everyone in the village, only he had leather gloves with five separate fingers. He usually wore them
on holidays or when he went to the city to bring something to Mela, but since they had gotten worn, he had started wearing them every day. “Here, Daddy, something to keep you warm!” Mela had told him several years earlier, when she had given them to him during one Christmas break. She made him try them on immediately to see whether they fit, then smiled and said that they looked good on him and since they were lined on the inside with cotton wool, they would keep him warm in the winter. Now Nikolin saw her smile, so happy-go-lucky, heartfelt, and daughterly, he heard her voice (“Here, Daddy, something to keep you warm!”) and thought to himself that Mela had always been sweet and kind with him, because she was his biological daughter and his alone, she could be no one else’s.

  A few photos of her and her mother, every object the two of them had touched, a good memory of them was enough to restore his belief that Mona had been a faithful wife, and that Mela was their birth daughter. Besides, when have you ever heard of a young woman suddenly leaving her father and taking some other man as her true father? And if Ivan Shibilev truly was her real father, why hadn’t she gone to him earlier? he asked himself, answering that he had let himself be swayed by gossip, it had led him into a great delusion, thus all his doubts were ungrounded and futile. That’s what he thought during the day when he went to work and was distracted by other people, but at night loneliness weighed on him like a huge stone and those bloodthirsty thoughts again pounced on him, mercilessly tearing up his heart.

  He had spent many years in solitude and this had pained him, but the pain wasn’t so unbearable, since he had lived in the hope of Mela coming back during vacations. He was also not particularly worried about her future. As a young girl with an education, she would surely get married and live in the city, as most educated young people did. But wherever she might live, she would be his daughter. From time to time he would go to see her, she would come visit him, and he might even live out his old age with her. Why not? Of course she would have children and if there was no other elderly person in the household to look after them, he would take on that task. But if he knew that she would never again set foot in his home, that he would never again hear her voice, never see her eyes…

  Tormented from being torn in two directions, he knew the whole time that the truth about Mela was in Ivan Shibilev’s hands. What his life would be like from then on depended on this man – would it be calm and happy or filled with bitter, unbearable suffering? Seized by a blind urge for revenge, for seven days he had killed him seven by seven times over for being his wife’s lover, and for the fact that Mela was his daughter, he had fallen to his knees before him in gratitude, after hearing from his lips that it was all nothing but gossip and lies, and that he had never had an affair with Mona, and that Mela was his, Nikolin’s, daughter.

  Now he was no longer afraid of the fateful truth, because he no longer had the strength to bear the uncertainty and was tormented by impatience to find out the truth from Ivan Shibilev as soon as possible. Whatever this truth was, whether good or bad, in both cases it would be like a salve for his tortured soul. However, he didn’t know which of the blinds Ivan Shibilev would come toward or if he would come toward them at all. He himself had suggested the wolf hunt as a joke or Lord knows why, but as soon as they set out he had tried to wheedle his way out of it, and if the other hunters hadn’t pressed him, he would now be nice and warm at home. Perhaps even now he was already at home. This thought upset Nikolin, so he left his blind and went down into the Inferno.

  In the meantime the blizzard had quieted down, the forest, sunk in snow, was awash in a milky light, and the black trunks of the old oak trees started to appear dimly like ghosts. Nikolin walked around the high drifts in the sheltered places, then waded down the slope, knee-deep in snow. It was growing ever quieter and lighter, such that a few minutes later he noticed a person barely crawling toward the south side of the Inferno. He’s going back around the other side of the forest, he feels guilty, he doesn’t want to run into me, Nikolin thought, and hurried to catch up with him. Ivan Shibilev was not running from him, he was running from death itself. When Ivan had gone down into the Inferno with Stoyan Kralev and Zhendo the Bandit, he had let them go ahead, and as Nikolin had suspected, he had decided to go back to the village and then later to lie to the other hunters that he had gotten lost in the blizzard and had been unable to find them. He wasn’t forced to lie, however, since he really did get lost. The blizzard was blustering so terribly that he couldn’t see even a step ahead of himself, so he trudged on every which way. He had thought to reach the southern end of the valley, where it widened out like a funnel and fused with the plain, and from there to turn toward the village, but instead of coming out on the plain, his path kept getting steeper, and the snow ever deeper. He sank up to his waist in the drifts, he doubled back, wandered to the left and the right, while his strength was being sapped by the minute. He also was not dressed for hunting, he hadn’t even taken any bullets, so now he could not even fire off a few shots so the others could come to his aid. But they surely had left and were now drinking wine at the tavern. In good weather the hunts here lasted around twenty minutes, while now it had been more than an hour. Why would those fellows sit freezing in this blizzard for so long since they knew the wolf hunt had been a joke?

  The thought that he was left alone and helpless in this hell horrified him. He had no strength left to wade through the deep snow, but he knew that if he stood in one place for more than a minute, he would freeze to death. He dropped his rifle in the snow and started off again. One minute of wading, one minute of rest, without taking his eyes off his watch. He felt the snow piercing the skin of his stomach and chest, how his lips, cheeks, and nose were freezing and he could no longer feel them. After an hour and a half, the blizzard began dying down, the snowflakes thinned, and a grayish-white spot appeared in the sky. That’s south, that’s the way I need to go. And again, one minute of rest, one minute of walking with his final ounces of strength. There was only one thing he must not let happen – he must not fall. But Nikolin found him fallen, his lips cracked from cold and his face bluish, rolling around in the snow in rubber shoes over thin socks and a thin, short fur jacket. Nikolin grabbed him under the arms and helped him stand up. A minute later Ivan Shibilev tried to talk and blood trickled from his mouth.

  “Good thing you showed up. Or I would’ve stayed here,” he said with such a slur that Nikolin could hardly understand him.

  He grabbed him under the arms again and led him up to the gnarled pear tree where the path to the village should be. When they stopped to rest Nikolin pounded his back with his open palms to warm him, rubbed his hands in his own, and made him stomp in place. Thanks to these breaks and massages they reached the pear tree, Ivan Shibilev pulled himself together and started telling him how he had gotten lost down there, in the Inferno. Nikolin stood in front of him and asked: “A week ago I came to your place one night to ask you if Mela was there, and you said she wasn’t. Did you lie to me then?”

  “I lied,” Ivan Shibilev admitted. “I didn’t dare tell you the truth. I was afraid you’d start yelling and that you’d take her back home.”

  “Well, what did you have to be afraid of? It’s not like she’s your daughter or some relative, so she could spend the night at your house?”

  “She is my daughter. Everyone knows it, I thought you knew it too.”

  “You’re saying that back then you had something with her late mother?”

  “That’s how it was. The whole village knows that too, and so do you…”

  How simple it is to talk with him, and here this whole week I couldn’t make up my mind to do it, Nikolin thought to himself, astonished at his own calmness as he heard that his late wife had been Ivan Shibilev’s mistress and that Mela was the other man’s daughter. Now there’s the truth that I was racking my brains over all this time! The truth, the truth, the truth!…He was walking back toward the village, this word on his mind the whole time, filling his entire being, he felt it as a for
eign object in both his heart and his soul, and in his thoughts. The word gradually weighted down his heart so much that he could not carry it any longer, he stopped breathlessly, and so as to free himself of it, cried out several times: “Oooh! The pain! The pain! Ooooh!”

  His cries, resembling a wolf’s howl, were answered by a dog’s barking, and only then did he see that he had reached the first houses of the village. He imagined how he would go to his house and find it cold and empty, and not just temporarily, but for all time, until the end of his life, and a heavy feeling of hopelessness once again gripped his heart. How is it that my whole past has been a lie, and that my future is nothing? he thought. It can’t be! Let Ivan Shibilev say what he will. The truth is not in another man’s words, but in my heart. The truth is in me alone and no one else can prove it with any evidence whatsoever. Ivan Shibilev wasn’t in his right mind, his brain was frozen and he didn’t know what he was saying. Plus, Mela hasn’t told me that she’s not my daughter. She’s of legal age, what would have stopped her from telling me until now?

  Nikolin set out toward his home, but some force kept pulling him back, and this force was doubt, which had once more seized him and which he could not overcome. He doubled back in his tracks to return to Ivan Shibilev, once more, for the last time, to hear the truth about his daughter. Now more than ever he was afraid that Ivan Shibilev would reconfirm what he had told him, but his hope was also alive and awakened. It screamed in his soul and railed against his faintheartedness so loudly that he grasped it as a drowning man clutches at a straw. “Ivan Shibilev really might not have been in his right mind,” he kept telling himself. “He had been snatched from the jaws of death, he could hardly stand on his feet, so he might not have heard what I was asking him or might not have been talking to me, but just babbling. Just tell me that what you told me an hour ago was not true!” Nikolin cried. “Say it with just one word, one glance, one nod, with silence. Don’t say anything when I ask you! Even that would be enough. I’m not asking anything more from you.”