STOJAN VALEV

My name is Stoyan Valev, a writer from Bulgaria (Europe, the Balkan Peninsula). I am the author of four books – ‘When God was on Leave’, a novel (1999) about the drama of the Bulgarian village in the time of socialism and after 1989, ‘The Bulgarian Dekameron’, (2002 and 2003), a book of love stories with unknown end ‘Time to be Unfaithful’ (2003).
Some of my stories have been published in many issues in USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, Italy, Poland, Switzerland, Nepal, Ireland and some are going to be published soon.

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THE WONDROUS WOLF

Translated from Bulgarian by: Nevena Pascaleva

One February evening, when the pub was full of men and outside the wind was fiercely hauling, the door slowly opened.
      It opened, but nobody came in.
      They fell silent and waited.
      For, when a door is being opened, somebody should have opened it.
      And since it is opened by someone, that someone would like to come in.
      The tip of his snout showed first.
      Next all of his body sneaked in.
      A wolf came into the pub.
      'Lord!' the bartender exclaimed.
      He had never had such a customer, though he had been doing this business for thirty years.
      Ivan slowly rose from a table and stepped towards the wolf.
      So far, so good: the wolf, however, snarled and bared his teeth.
      'Where, Ivan?' old Stoimen cried while Ivan was looking right into the wolf's eyes.
      'I'm going to fix him!' Ivan rolled up his sleeves and again made a step towards the animal.
      Old Stoimen reached out to stop him, but it was too late.
      A human being and a wolf grappled into a deadly combat.
      Ivan was trying to grip the wolf's neck but kept failing.
      The wolf was growling and his teeth were clattering but it was obvious he only defended himself; he did not attack, he only protected himself, pushing his adversary away.
      When Ivan at last managed to nab the wolf's neck with both hands and his fingers started tightening, the animal gave such a growl that everyone's hair stood on end.
      Unexpectedly, Ivan loosened his fingers and got up from the floor.
      The wolf also got up on his four feet, shook himself and made for the bar.
      'My, that bloody cur!' the bartender whimpered and deftly leaped onto the bar, despite his hundred kilograms.
      The wolf stopped in front of the bar and stared at him with his wide-opened, wondrous, sad eyes.
      Nobody dared move.
      A couple of minutes lasted the wolf's survey and an eternity it seemed to the people. Then slowly he rose on his hind legs, pointed his snout at the ceiling and started howling.
      It was not a howl, but a cry devilish and ominous. The same way the women would howl on funerals.
      Dumbfounded, a score of men in the village pub were listening.
      So the wolf kept howling and they kept standing silent.
      It was understood, then, that a grief was upon that wolf; a grief heavy and dark as the night outside, if it was a wolf at all.
      And as unexpectedly as it had began, the howling ceased.
      The wolf lay on the floor, placed his head between his front legs and moved no more.
      He was lying.
      And the men were standing still, watching the wolf.
      Then old Stoimen got up and went to him.
      Someone bit their lips, but not a voice was heard to prevent him doing that.
      The wolf would probably jump on him and bite his throat! It would be easy, how much was the old man's strength . . .
      But the wolf kept lying still.
      Old Stoimen squatted, with a low moan, rested one knee on the floor and bowed over the wolf. He reached out both hands, took the wolf's head, stared at his eyes.
      It was as if the wolf was confiding something to him, but old Stoimen did not wanted to admit it.
      After a long moment he laid the animal's head between its paws again and took off his greasy hat.
      So stood the old man, on his knees as if before a dead man dear to his heart.
      The men perceived the wolf had given away his spirit - to God, to the Devil, or to some Deity of his own kind? . . .
      They drew closer, watching him with scrutinizing eyes - they saw a most wonderful wolf!
      Then old Stoimen stood up slowly and said:
      'Now, get the hoes and shovels and let's bury him!'
      'But you . . . have you lost your mind?' the bartender snapped at him, getting down from the bar.
      'Shut up!' the old man ordered and at the authority of his voice everyone felt he was right.
      The men quickly fetched hoes and shovels.
      'Where?' they asked old Stoimen.
      'What do you mean where?' the old man snapped 'in front of the pub!'
      They filed out of the pub.
      It was a bitter cold. A blizzard, quite a blizzard. The earth: ice-bound. But the men set off digging.
      They were warming up with one gulp of rakia at a time and at last they dug up the grave.
      Old Stoimen laid the wolf into the grave and bowed to the ground.
      'Take a bow, you!' the old man ordered and score of men bowed to a dead wolf.
      But what kind of wolf? . . . A wondrous wolf! . . .
      They filled up the grave and got back to the pub.
      It was then when the mayor burst in.
      'Eh, what have you been doing again?' he was mad, it was obvious.
      'You shut up!' old Stoimen said reprovingly and poured out a drop of his glass on the floor.
      'Bury a wolf! In the center of the village! Tell me, aren't you savage?' raged the mayor, sipping at his glass of rakia and already starting to relax with each sip.
      He poured out a drop on the floor, too.
      'Let the powers that watch over us, condone the sins of that wolf!'
      So goes the world.
      If a door is being opened, someone is surely to come in. Wolf or a man.
      And was it a wolf?
      They kept asking old Stoimen, who was renowned for his wisdom, but he only smiled and waved his hand at them:
      'What, a wolf? Are you out of your mind? If it was a wolf, would I have you buried it in the centre of the village, you fools!'
      'Well, then! What was it?'
      Did it matter, after all?
      It came, it was gone, it was buried, and the rest is for everyone to decide.
      Isn't that right?!

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THE HOWL OF THE YEARS

Translated from Bulgarian by: Ivailo Dagnev

"And what happened in the end?"
      No reply.
      The silence froze again over their heads like a crystal chandelier, threatening to fall down on them any second.
      He had noticed that on evenings like this one questions, like sharks, surfaced quite unexpectedly. There is something mystic in the hours before the New Year. It is as if we listen for the first time to the whispers of time. We even realize that it robs us, if we perceive it as sand in an hourglass, trickling down incessantly. Time does not move, it has been frozen for quite a while; we are the ones who keep changing, but we don't want to admit it… We are crucified on its frozen face.
      Evenings like this one are lustfully predisposed to foul silence. You just sit and watch how questions take you by surprise.

In order to answer them you have to turn your pockets inside out, to look into every corner of every moment again. Actually, are answers possible at all? Spiridon sighed. Aren't they just the other side of the questions?
      Pine logs were crackling in the fireplace. Their lilac flares resembled last illusions in one's life, behind which the snapping deep meaning of nothingness is visible. Or, could it be that nothingness is the essence of absolute meaning?
      Peter, the tomcat, stretched out in front of the fireplace and was staring at them both - ferociously, but at the same time with a deep inborn understanding. He was purring monotonously, his head between his paws, as if he were counting something, in a Sisyphean stubborn manner, hopelessly cheerful, with resigned persistence. Well, he too is hiding in his eyes an abyss full of questions, but where are the answers? Spiridon sighed.
      Bella, the German shepherd, was crisscrossing the spacious sitting room, raising her elegant muzzle and sniffing the air anxiously. She was torn between her two masters, extending her paw now to Gloria's lap, now to Spiridon's hands. Was she trying to join together the severed threads between them?
      Gloria and Spiridon were sitting opposite each other, as they had been in the habit for years. She was in white, her head slightly turned to one side. Half of her face was lit by the pale flicker of the lamp, an imitation of a candle, which gave her face the look of one worried, one almost in tears. He was in his usual black coat, but his tie was gentle blue, as if it were a frozen flame.
      "What happened in the end?"
      This time the question sounded abrupt; it stirred the air and shuddered the light on Gloria's face. A gripping moment. One that turns our lives upside down. We live in this way, aspire to go up, to touch God, and yet we keep going down in order to reach the truths about us.
      "When?" Spiridon answered the question with a question, as he liked to do. He knew she was disgusted at this habit of his and tried to avoid it, but this time something spurred him to challenge her.
      "Until now!" She snapped, but then smiled in a way that made him sigh and forgive her. He knew only too well that behind this smile of hers the face of Hell was hiding. Because Hell bore her name in his life.
      "I am eighty-five, you are five years behind …Is that too little?" he gave a laugh.
      "What haven't we been through, Oh Lord! Monarchists, fascists, communists and now?..." she lapsed into silence, squeamishly pursing her lips.
      "Now what? What are we being through now? Retribution? Or might we be in the antechamber of the next circle of Hell?" Spiridon's irony was transparent, but there was also fear in him.
      "I'm interested in how they will define the experiences we are being through today, at this very moment!" she smiled ironically.
      "The corpse, Gloria, is still not submitted for an autopsy. The nation's current illness has not been diagnosed. After fascism and communism, something new was born, something we are living through and it is more dreadful than the previous two!"
      "Some mixture of those two, isn't it?" she asked.
      "Might be, who knows…" the old man said and stared at the fire.
      "We are still alive", she sighed dreamily, and cupped her hand to her ear. "Can you hear the years, Spiridon?"
      "They are just like wolves," he muttered through clenched teeth and drank from the glass, which he held on the floor, next to his rocking chair: "They are howling and howling…" and it seemed as if he were listening to their howl.
      He pictured them running towards him - snapping, predatory, ravenous and insidious. The years were full of hatred and lies, betrayals and concealments of the truth for him. It so happened that he was a journalist at various times through various social orders, now those times were identified in pseudo-scholarly ways; actually that was his lifetime. There was no difference in any of these periods of time - the truth had always been plucked out, isolated, guarded, cunningly manipulated, concealed, erased, effaced. Even those truths that could not be concealed had been turned into banalities; there were thousands of ways to do it.
      The years started coming toward him like packs of wolves. Ready to bite again.
      "Why?" she stretched and caressed the armchair with her fingers: "Why are the years like wolves, darling? They are like lovers…They make love even before the woman's husband…"
      "Possibly, yes, but who knows what is true, or false, who knows the past, or what is simply the future?" he sighed.
      "No one knows. The soul might know, mightn't it?" she looked at him with curiosity.
      "It's possible, but I don't believe it!" Spiridon smiled with contempt.
      "Then it should be the body. It stores all our memories, doesn't it?" she said playfully.
      "I doubt it…" he reached for the drink, took a sip, started to swing back and forth and as if were growing sleepy.
      With his eyes half-open, he looked like a corpse to her…
      "Who knows?" she asked angrily.
      "It may be me, or you, or no one…" Spiridon shook his head and took another sip. He always drank in small sips, just licked the glass. This habit of his had always infuriated her.
      Her fingers were still caressing the armchair passionately and she seemed to be writhing with pleasure…Or perhaps writhing from confusion before the secret? Who knows, who…
      "We have been all sorts of things, haven't we?" she exclaimed and started laughing.
      "Possibly, yes…" he kept swinging his head.
      "Do it yourself. Answer the question yourself!" she laughed again. Her laughter sounded rude, somehow unnatural, sardonic, cynical… offensive. She shuddered with a surge of revulsion, but he did not notice it.
      "Something nice can happen on the first day of the New year, can't it?" she was laughing aloud now. Her laughter poured out in a gracious way, as if it were the sound of a seductive violin, as it had been once, when she used to fall into his arms and drag him down into the abyss.
      "You? What?" There was no alarm in his voice. The rhythm of anxiety started twitching on his left cheek.
      "I want…" she started eagerly then stopped. She stopped and waited cunningly.
      He kept silent; he knew her tricks too well. He fell into her traps only when he wanted to.
      She looked at him disappointed. He showed no signs of waiting for something to happen; only his left cheek was having a slight twitch. A sign it was, though.
      "I want to confess something to you…" she said and stopped. She was challenging him, playing with him like the old days.
      "You want to confess, eh?" he smiled and patted Bella, who now stood guard next to him. Peter gave a mew in his sleep.
      "Would you like it?" Gloria was looking at him with dreamy eyes.
      "Alright", he agreed reluctantly. Bella gently pressed herself into his leg, and licked his hand. "I want to say everything about Vladimir…, yes about Vladimir! Now that he's dead, I think I can… I must."
      Silence fell, and the crackling of the logs was deafening. Peter turned the yellow streams of his eyes to the fire, wagged his tail and tapped the floor with it without moving the rest of his body a bit. It was as if he were expecting something to happen, but what?
      Spiridon sighed and put his hand into the pocket of his jacket.
      Gloria flinched - he kept his gun in that pocket. Would he shoot me? she asked herself horrified. But if he does, it means he still loves me. She froze in expectation.
      He took out his glass case from his pocket, and put on his glasses slowly, then turned towards her.
      "I know."
      "You are lying to me!" her response was so violent that the German shepherd got startled and snarled at her.
      "I know and I can prove it." with his glasses on he looked like a university professor, but in fact, he was just another looser and a blockhead, Gloria gritted her teeth.
      "Prove it!" her body was as taut as a pulled string.
      "Alright! Alright!" he nodded kindly, though his eyes dappled with jocular flames. "You used to meet in Lily's apartment, didn't you? Shall I go on?"
      "Go on!"
      "I don't think it's necessary…"
      "So, you don't think it is time for us to be honest with each other, am I right?"
      There was malice in her words. Or, perhaps, it was a sign of helplessness? Horror for what might be in store? Or, the surprise made her cantankerous, just As it sometimes had made her irresistible…
      "Why?" he raised his eyebrows in surprise. That was the indisputable sign that he was piqued. His next phase was always anger, swallowed with great effort. He did not carry on. He chose to have another sip.
      So…you!" she pointed an accusatory finger at him. Then she rose from the chair and froze, resemblinga marble statue. So beautiful, no matter how old she was. Magnificent in her anger, because it is the only emotion that makes people real, isn't it? He talked to her in this way only to tease her, so that she should get angry, because she was so beautiful when she was angry. A little secret, he was not going to share it with her ever, or, who knows, someday perhaps.
      "Me?" he replied calmly.
      Did he show indifference? Or forgiveness? Or…? Still, he carried on talking quite unexpectedly. "You. Vladimir. The child. So what?"
      She sank helplessly in the armchair. She was falling. She managed to utter, though:
      "Why have you kept silent?" and without waiting for his reply, shot out more questions: "How did you find out? When? Who told you?"
      "A man always finds out when another man invades his wife's life," he said tiredly, with undisguised boredom.
      "You spied on us, admit it!" she was shivering with anger.
      "Yes and no. I've known it all along. It takes no more than a mere observation for a man to know everything about you. Spying is not necessary. Though, observation is a kind of spying, too. To observe a person, when he does not suspect it is a deeply immoral and blameworthy act. The face, darling, is the worst traitor. The smile, too. The eyes. The lips. The kiss. The skin. The body." he spread his arms and said ironically: "And others, too… is there any reason to continue? The secrets are open for those who have ears to hear them, eyes to see them."
      "Why didn't you tell me that you knew?" she asked. It was not until now that she began to understand…He shriveled up, shrank and laughed quietly,"What should I have told you? Should I have asked you if you loved him? Should I have asked you that?"Hhe saw that she nodded and smiled contemptuously. "Well, it would have been foolish of me! All in all, it was your own business!"
      "What about the child? How did you accept it?" "With love. I accepted it with love. And what does the child have to do with it all, anyway?" he shot a glance at her through his glasses and then looked down.
      Bella was standing between them. She snarled now at the one, now at the other. It was as if she noticed some swelling, an incoming evil and announced that she opposed it with all her mighty body.
      "And you didn't give off a clue about it - neither to Vladimir, nor to me, nor our son…What sort of man are you? Made of stone?"
      She ran her trembling fingers along her hair, then along her knees.
      "What should I have done, in your opinion?"
      She gave a sob. Through tears, she whispered, "I don't know. But you are a monster!"
      "Perhaps you are right. You can never say that you know yourself. But I wouldn't be so categorical in my opinion about you."
      "Oh!" she cried out: "Leave it to you to be so calculating, just as you have been all your life!" That was a hint about his job, about the inevitable deals he had to make with his conscience. But he had always admitted it .
      "The heaviest sentences are the ones that are not pronounced," he said cruelly and continued with an even voice. "I've had my share of suffering."
      "So what? Look at him - the hero! The hero of the century! The hero who is suffering, look at him! I am the whore, who brazenly cheats on him, is that it? Tell me!" She was sobbing heavily. There was something more, but what was it? Perhaps, yes, it was some voice whispering to her, a voice all too familiar. His voice! How's that?
      "You said it - I have always preferred to remain silent." He stood up. Bella, faltered, but then followed him, her muzzle turned towards Gloria. The tomcat suddenly jumped at the dog and hit her. She did not respond. The tomcat mewed.
      "There are five minutes to go and the New Year will be in," he said and poured champagne into both their glasses.
      All of a sudden, she realized that it was him that she had loved over the years. Everything else had been a lie, a substitution…
      In the dying minutes of the old year she got to the bottom of the ever escaping meaning of life: we keep running after lies, we love them, we give birth to their children while the truth has always been very near.
      She stretched both hands to him - hands, thinned out from old age - then sank into his embrace and started laughing.
      Or started crying, perhaps?
      While he was embracing her, Spiridon was thinking that he had every reason not to tell her the whole truth. He could have told her that Vladimir had reported against them to the authorities, and now, after the political changes, Spiridon had read in the archives all this and almost got irate with surprise. Most of all, because it showed how wrong she was about that man, who was the genetic father of Spiridon's son. Should his son learn the truth? He would no doubt feel disgusted and repulsed, because he would compare them - his true father with his false father and he would pass the judgment. He could have told her all this, but he chose to remain silent, to keep the suffering within, to press it closely to himself.
      Perhaps, there will come a time when he will give his hand to the man who bears his name and then he will tell him.
      Now, he only smiled and had a drink of champagne. Outside, the years kept howling like raging wolves, like betraying lovers…