The Sick Horse
Zdravka Evtimova
At the time about which I am going to tell
you, Ilaryon had not yet become the head of the veterinarian clinic
in the town of Pernik. I saw him many times going for leisurely
strolls, a twenty-three year old strapping fellow with a thin
moustache and black smiling eyes. Whenever he took our street and
stopped by our house, he told me about things happening in the world,
and along the Bulgarian Black Sea coast and in the big Bulgarian
cities like Sofia. He was tall and slim and ran like a blizzard
- so strong were his legs, but above all he was very good at curing
sick animals.
Well, I had a daughter Sia. I gave birth to
three sons before her - one after the other like beads of a
rosary. They grew up sturdy guys, but a son is a son and I was
telling you about how I wanted a daughter. When Sia was born, my
husband’s eyes brimmed with tears of joy - he had his heart so
much on having a daughter.
“I wanted a female little thing at
home, a girl shining like a sun in my house, woman,” he used to
tell me every time I gave birth to a son and he gave me a kiss
instead of a thank you.
My husband, who was my lord and my best
friend, was a shoemaker and he had golden hands, you could take my
word for it. Day in day out, he cobbled old shoes, boots,
sandals or pairs of brogues for our neighbors while I took care of
the children, the cows, the hens, and calves. Well, thank God,
we had always had enough flour in the kneading trough and enough
bread for everybody from the kitchen cupboard. It turned out
the years I had waited for Sia were worth my while. She grew up
very pretty, I say this not only because she is my daughter, but
because I, like you yourself, and like everybody else, have eyes in
my head. Her eyebrows are thin like a tendril of a vine, her
eyes are light brown, merry, and warm.
Well, our house was not a rich place, just a
roof above our heads and some windows for the light to creep into the
rooms. But Sia gleamed in it like the modest moon and shone
like the proud sun just as her father, my husband, my lord and my
best friend, had wanted all his life.
Ilaryon, the young vet, crossed our street
seven or eight times a day, but he neither courted Sia nor spoke to
her. So, I was calm, I said to myself, “That boy looks all
right to me and he wouldn’t do my family any harm.” Sia was
too young, her father wouldn’t let anybody utter a word about
her getting married and I thought, “He’s perfectly
right.” She was the joy of our days. That’s
what she was.
Well, the richest man in Pernik, whose
estate covered the tract of land between two rivers and touched the
Greek border to the South, was called Kosta. He had a daughter,
to. Her name was Adela. I wouldn’t say Adela was a
bad thing to look at: she was tallish, pretty, she had been bred in a
wealthy man’s home, and her hands looked clean and soft like the
silk petticoats you could buy from the fashion store in the very
center of town. Ilaryon was at a marriageable age and was
said to be looking for a bride, so it was very easy to calculate that
he’d choose Kosta’s daughter.
No one doubted the match would be a
success. Ilaryon could cure sick cattle and could talk very
scientifically about nasty diseases, made good money and that was the
greatest plus of all. Kosta, the biggest shot in town,
wouldn’t say no if the young vet volunteered to become his
son-in-law. On the contrary, the old grouch would let every man drink
a free bottle of brandy in his restaurant if that happened. It
was evident, however, that Ilaryon had no inkling that he was
supposed to choose a girl from Kosta’s estate, and never
mentioned Adela’s name in public.
It was in the beginning of June that Kosta
started hinting, “My stallion Thunderbolt is simply no good any
more. I don’t know what’s the matter with him.
He refuses to gallop when I ride him. If you don’t believe
me, ask my wife: I love Thunderbolt more than her. The
only living thing I love more than my horse is my daughter Adela.”
So far so good. The whole
district knew well enough Thunderbolt’s whims and vagaries.
But the big land owner said something else as well that made young
and old click their tongues, unbelieving. My neighbor, the
baker’s wife, told me that Kosta had stressed that,
“If that greenhorn Ilaryon cures my Thunderbolt, I’ll let
him marry Adela and I’ll be as good as my word, damn it!”
I was a simple shoemaker’s wife so how
could I know what was happening in the big shot’s
homestead? Numerous rumors had it that Kosta, the big bug, bit
off more than he could chew . . . perhaps I shouldn’t
repeat what I’d heard because Kosta was a very vindictive fellow
but in fact I started respecting Ilaryon on account of what my
neighbors said about him, although he was a guy only as old as my
youngest son.
The baker’s wife told me that Ilaryon
went to Kosta’s stables, examined the stallion carefully,
slapped his back several times, nodded his head and said, “Mr.
Kosta, Your Thunderbolt is safe and sound. He is in exuberant
health and you can see this with your own eyes. Why did you
call me out?”
“He’s not safe and sound at
all,” the big bug seethed. “Don’t you see the
way his head’s hanging low as if the blacksmith has clobbered
him on the skull with the heaviest hammer?”
“Don’t say that,” Ilaryon
objected. “You know better than me what your servants have done
to your horse.”
"What?” Kosta exploded and spat on
the ground several times.
“Your hostlers have been plucking wild
poppies for a week now, Mr. Kosta. They must’ve made a
concoction of poppies and rum and forced Thunderbolt to drink
it. That’s why the poor horse reels and staggers, and
I’m positive that the blacksmith hasn’t clobbered him on
the head with the heaviest hammer.”
“Shut up!” Kosta shouted. “Who
put that nonsense into your head?”
“One of your servants bragged to
me the other day that you paid him ten levs for a basket full of wild poppies.”
The landowner gaped; his eye looked
bloodshot as if somebody had attached leeches on his neck. He
kept silent huffing and puffing, and snorting, and finally he said,
“Therefore you don’t like Adela, eh?”
“I came here to cure your horse, Mr.
Kosta,” Ilaryon said and made a formal bow. “Your
daughter is blessed with beauty and wisdom, I grant you that.
But I cannot cure a healthy horse, Sir."
From that day on, whenever Kosta heard
someone utter Ilaryon’s name in public, he took to mumbling
under his breath his face black like a bull’s horn, as if the
guy heard somebody speak to him about his grave. The young vet
couldn’t care less. He went on taking long walks along our
street. When occasionally I met him, I treated him to a piece
of Turkish delight, and we talked, and he didn’t even glance at
my daughter Sia. So I was calm. It was quite clear: he
ignored the wealthy man’s daughter. How could I expect
he’d be interested in my small swallow of a girl? My husband
wouldn’t let anybody touch our daughter.
“She’s too young,” he’d
always grumble making me wonder how we’d separate from her one
day when she’d get married.
Ilaryon often came to my backyard to have a
look at the calves, and we chatted away like old friends. I was
a middle-aged woman and my neighbors said I had the gift of gab, but
I felt, in this respect Ilaryon was much more gifted than me.
The harvest began. We collected, and
drove home a big truck full of wheat. Life went on like a heavily
loaded caravan, a happy day now and then, followed by many hungry
weeks, but we all survived, my daughter doing the housework, making
the whole house merry and cheerful.
One day I noticed she stole out of the
house into the corn field, all alone, padding like a weasel.
“Oh, come off it, girl!” I said to myself. “What can
you be looking for in the wilderness?” But I was to lazy
to dig deeply into the matter. On the following day, however, Sia
again slipped out of our backyard into the same cornfield. I
smelled a rat right away.
I shadowed her, and lo and behold! I
saw her pluck wild poppies clutching the half empty sack with one
hand and thrusting like mad the red flowers into it with the
other. I said to myself, “Let’s see what she’ll
do next.” I was a shrewd woman: how could I hold a
shoemaker of a husband in my house for twenty-four years while all
the other ladies in town, most of them younger and prettier than me,
visited his shop and he measured how long and wide their feet were to
make new shoes for them? It was not easy; you could count on that.
It was May 6th the following day, the
holiday of courage. My three sons went out and my husband said
he’d drop in the pub for a drink, only Sia, my daughter, hung
about the sink in the kitchen washing the dishes so diligently that I
again smelled a rat.
“Hey mom, won’t you visit your
friend, the baker’s wife? She said she baked cookies for you.”
“I sure will,” I answered but
instead of going out I slipped into the wine cellar.
“Let me see what’s eating
her,” I thought. Why should she be so keen on staying at
home all alone on the very Day of Courage? Soon it was no
mystery to me any more. The little minx took out the wild
poppies from the cupboard; put them into the biggest cauldron we had
at home, poured all my husband’s rum into it then kindled a big
fire. The wild poppies boiled, hissed and bubbled while I
sweated in the cellar the heat driving me crazy. I
thought I would scream, so hot and pungent the air was. Anyway,
I managed to keep my mouth shut all the while. After an hour,
my pretty daughter mixed the foul smelling concoction with water then
brought Marko, our loyal donkey, and - may I be coursed if one word
of this is a lie - she made the poor animal drink the nasty
thing. Marko didn’t want to dip its mouth in the poison;
he kicked and jumped, and spat, but I knew something for sure: could
the poor animal outdo my Sia in mulishness? No, not by a long shot!
She pressed Marko’s head, scratched his
back and gave him half a bag of sugar till she wheedled the wretched
beast into slurping the smelly slops. In the very beginning,
Marko tried to turn a somersault then he threw his head back and
started braying most powerfully. After a couple of
minutes, however, the beast prostrated himself in the middle of the
backyard, kicked feebly twice and became quiet. I was afraid
our only donkey was about to meet his maker. Sia, my only
daughter, the child I loved more than everything in the world,
abandoned the sick animal and went out accompanied by three or four
other girls as flighty as she was, while the donkey was on his deathbed!
My husband, my lord and best friend, came
home from the pub. He had chanced on his brother there, and
they had crooked the little finger, so he was tipsy and merry, but
when the sight of the dying Marko met his eye, his hands flew to his
heart in despair. What could we do? We had no other choice and
called Ilaryon, the vet, out.
He came and entered my backyard - a
real hunk, his moustache shining, his eyes agleam, and my Sia
dilly-dallied by the hen-coop feeding the hens. In fact,
the vet didn’t even notice her, if you asked me. He bent
over the donkey, pushed his flaks, slapped his back, and pulled on
his tail. Finally he said, “It is very serious, Sir. Your beast
of burden will die.”
“How come he dies?” I
asked seething for I knew very well what was wrong with
Marko. “Yesterday the animal was as strong as the
cliffs on the hill behind our house.”
“Well, yes, he might have been
perfectly healthy an hour ago, but there is a very dangerous
disease the donkey in our area suffer from, you know,” Ilaryon
said. “I will try to cure him, but . . .” He left the
words hanging in grim silence.
“Why do you say, ‘but’?”
my husband asked. Ilaryon didn’t answer him.
My friends knew I liked to take
occasional naps in the afternoon; I was a mother of four so I hoped
I’d be forgiven and nobody would call me a lazy woman.
What was more, I had noticed that in the afternoon the flies were not
so arrogant and didn’t bite me so often. One day I was
just about to doze off when I caught a glimpse of something that
struck me as very peculiar: Ilaryon, the vet, gave my youngest son a
bulging sack and the boy took an armful of wild poppies out of
it. It was evident poor Marko was going to suffer from the
donkey disease much longer than I have guessed. It turned out I
was right: the following day the wretched beast could neither eat nor
bray anymore. We gave up all hope. Our donkey was going
to die so we sent for Ilaryon.
The young vet came and said to my husband,
“Well, Sir, I’ll make Marko alive and kicking, but perhaps
you remember what Mr. Kosta offered to give me if I cured his Thunderbolt.”
“I do,” my husband
answered. “He offered you Adela.”
“You have a daughter as
well,” Ilaryon ventured.
My husband hiccupped stuttered,
“N-n-no!” then shouted, “Give me a knife to cut this
crook’s throat!” and after that cussed a lot using lousy words.
After two weeks, our donkey recovered his
health. It was at that time that Sia got engaged to Ilaryon,
although she was our only daughter and was too young, and too
quiet. On that day, my husband, my lord and my best
friend, was stricken with grief and drank himself stone drunk.
I thought it was the happiest day in my life and drank myself drunk
with joy by his side.
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