The Commissionner's Christmas

== THE COMMISSIONER'S CHRISTMAS ==
=== By Dimitri Ivanov ===
Published in Bulgarian Stories 1904 
ELIN-PELIN, whose real name is Dimitr Ivanov (born in
1878 near ),
is one of the common people. As a village teacher he spread enlightenment among
his fellow-countrymen. Wishing to win their confidence, he "lived among
the peasants and in the repression of self he found the power to create."
In his stories the spiritual life of the Bulgarian countryman is depicted as in
a mirror. The motives of his first collection of stories are as simple as folksongs
and, like them, were born of the emotions of life. The first collection of his
tales was published in 1904, The author, who since that date has been an
official of the School Museum in Sofia, has recently published a second
collection of stories in which not only Bulgarian peasants and villagers but
many Mohammedan types appear in refreshing variety. The Commissioner's
Christmas presents a characteristic sketch of the peasants of 's
hinterland. This story, here translated for the first time into English, by
Sarka B. Hrbkova, is reprinted by permission of the translator. ''
We will get there in plenty of time, sir.
Yes, we'll get there yet before daylight's gone. See there's the village over
yonder at the foot of the hill! Do you see it? As soon as we cross that low
ridge we can say we're there." And the young driver, swinging his whip
above the backs of his lean horses, shouted lustily to spur them on: "Vyee
hey! Vyee! Sirs!" 
The four wheels of the light coach
splattered worse than ever through the soft mud of the country road. The
rickety skeleton of the coach rattled dismally through the cheerless, dreary
plain soaked by the late December rains. 
The country lad shouted once more to his
horses, settled himself more comfortably on the box, slapped his wet cap on his
thick cape and, in a carefree voice, started up a gay tune. 
"What's your name, boy?" inquired
a fat man bundled up in a wolfskin coat, who sat inside the coach. 
The lad continued his song. 
"Ho, boy!" cried the man in a
loud, harsh voice. 
"What?" The boy turned around. 
"Name! Your name? What's your
name?" 
"Ondra." 
"Ah, ah, Ondra. Clever lad, you are!
All of you have become clever. Sly, you country bumpkins. You only know how to
lie and deceive. And how you do put on! I watch 'em at court. Sheep little
lamblcins of innocence but really regular wolves! They play with the
judges!" ^ 
"We're just simple folk, sir, and they
only slander us. You just think so, but we're really not bad like that. Our
peasant people deceive only out of ignorance. Ignorance and poverty." ^ 
"Ah! So that's it! Because of poverty!
Cursed clods! They complain of ignorance and poverty, and guzzle like
fish!" 
"You think it's prosperity they're
suffering from, sir? From being overprosperous? No! Not from prosperity. Drink
guzzle? Yes, they all drink. To feel a bit happier, not because they're well
off. That's something a man like you can set down in his note-book." 
"Ah! It looks to me as if you, too,
had had a drink, friend! You're still too young for that; your whiskers haven't
spfouted yet. Those peasants of yours just write it down arc a lost lot lost,
that's what!" 
"You write it down, sir! We don't know
how to write," said the boy and turning to his skinny horses, he called
"Vyee, vyee, sirs!" and lapsed into deep thought. 
The horses hesitated for a moment, as if
they, too, were thinking. 
The man put up the big collar of his wolf
cloak, disappeared inside it and he, too, lost himself in meditation. 
A crow with ruffled wings settled on a
solitary tree beside the road and swinging on a dry twig croaked mournfully,
while it, too, ruminated. Even the somber wintry weather seemed in a gray
reflective mood, portending a gloomy Christmas on the morrow. Across the
heavens thick scraggly storm-clouds crept and broke heavily beneath a cold blue
sky. The earth was submerged in mud and moisture. The vistas of villages,
streams, distant forests and mountains darkened, lifeless and distorted, before
them. On the plains here and there glistened great pools, all cloudy, cold and
glassy like the eyes of a corpse. 
The small coach slowly wallowed through the
deep soft mud, wading in, wading out, twisting and turning. A loose board on
the side of it constantly, monotonously, dismally and senselessly rattled and
banged mercilessly on the nerves of the corpulent gentleman in the fur coat.
Finally, losing all patience, he opened his collar, thrust out his fat face,
and shouted: "What is that horrible rattle? Devil take it!" 
"It's only a loose clapboard, sir. It
bangs away like a learned man: no sense to its rattle at all!" 
"You're clever, Ondra, very clever!
You know how to fool the young girls, I'll bet. You fellows marry young and
have pretty wives." 
The gentleman thrust back the tall collar
of his fur coat in his attempt it jocularity. 
"Say what you will, the married women
are better! I know it! And you, sir, have an errand in our village, I take
it?" 
"I'm the court commissioner." 
Ondra turned round and inspected his fare
with a penetrating look. 
"On official service, I suppose?"
"Service, of course. One of your fine
fellows played a trick on me, but this time I'll fix him properly. I've got one
official paper in my hands that'll catch him right. I got wind of the fact that
this fellow was deceiving us and I'll search him out in the evening. Believe
me, he'll have cause to remember me and this Christmas! I'll confiscate all his
rye every grain of it! Not only to teach him what's what, but to set an example
to all the rest of you not to try to fool the authorities. You cheat the
merchants, you cheat the townspeople; you sell them spoiled eggs and rancid
butter. But just wait, you peasant brood> you can't cheat; the courts! We
know how to punish you! What you need is the lash a stout Russian knout that's
the only way to teach you! You've all become drunkards, low-down trash. You're
failing to meet your taxes you're destroyers of the State! Our patriotic
interests are suffering! I wish I could be Czar for at least two days, and I'd
fix you all my way! I'd make angels of all of you; yes, sir, angels! Pity I'm
not the Czar!" 
The court commissioner unbuttoned his fur
coat, inside of which he squirmed like a chick breaking out of its shell. 
"Oh, but Mr. Commissioner, God created
the world and calculated that women don't need beards, so he didn't give them
beards. He figured that an ass needs long ears, so he gave a pair to every
donkey," answered Ondra with feigned simplicity. 
"Stop your silly chatter and get
along. It's getting dark, and I've got to get back to celebrate Christmas with
my family. You charge too much, you imp! Three leu for twenty kilometers! You
surely know how to skin us. Hurry up, will you: drive faster or those jades of
yours will go to sleep!" 
"Vyee, there! Vyee, sirs!"
shouted Ondra, swinging his whip in the air. 
"Sirs, you call them? Sirs! Better
call them 'brothers,' " commented the commissioner in a rage. 
"They'd resent that, Mr. Commissioner!
I'd insult 'cm if I didn't call 'em sirs. Why, they're regular gentlemen! Their
service is official: they run on a regular schedule. In the morning they get
up; at a certain hour we water them and give them their feed. Then we harness
them up, they go, you might say, to their offices: they pull till evening. Have
supper at a regular hour, drink water, 'read the news,' so to speak, and sleep.
Regular official life!" 
"Where did you get your drinks,
friend? Stop your jabbering and get on, or I'll be late. You've got a sly look,
fellow, sly!" 
"There're no wolves about, Mr.
Commissioner, don't fear/' the driver said in such a tone that the honorable
court official looked round with apprehensive eyes. 
"I'm not afraid of wolves, friend, but
of the cold weather. I haven't time to nurse a -cold." 
They jogged on silently for a while. 
"So you're on an official mission?
Who's going to get scorched this time?" Ondra turned a serious face toward
his passenger. 
The commissioner waited for a while before
answering. "Why shouldn't you know? Stanoycho they call him, little man
with a thick neck." 
"I know him. So you're going to take
his rye, are you? He's a poor fellow, Mr. Commissioner j let him off this time.
It's Christmas, you know, and all that!" 
"Poor fellow, yes, but a regular
devil!" The commissioner lapsed into silence. Darkness was falling. The
horses could barely crawl to the top of the hill beyond which lay the village.
Ondra no longer urged them on, nor swung his long whip above them. He stopped
his talk, he no longer sang, and was lost in meditation. 
When they reached the summit and started
down on the other side, night had come, but there was still no sign of the
village. A cold penetrating wind blew over the land buried under the mire.
Scattered clouds moved up toward the mountains. The blue vault of the frosty
sky cleared up, widened and lifted itself to greater heights. Soon stars, cold
and glistening, appeared on its surface. The air was perceptibly chillier. The
horses plodded on slowly, sluggishly. 
"Whip 'em up! Hurry up! You lazybones!
We'll freeze to death!" shrieked the furious commissioner. 
Ondra indifferently shouted to the horses
and drowsily swung his whip over their heads, but as before they wearily,
inertly dragged on the coach as if they had heard nothing at all. 
Ondra was thinking of the miserable
Stanoycho whose rye the commissioner was going to confiscate early next
morning. 
"It was you brought me this
misfortune, Ondra/' Stanoycho would say to him, and when he'd be through
blaming him, he'd ask Ondra to join his family in their meal, and then he'd
weep. Yes, he would surely weep. Stanoycho's heart was soft. Ondra knew that. 
He must help the poor fellow, contrive to
tell him to hide his rye overnight and sweep the granary clean, or else all the
coming year he'd be stretching his lean ears in hunger. Yes, he must do
something! 
Nothing was distinguishable but mud deep,
thick mud. The road lost itself in the mire, and led nowhere except into more
mud. 9 Ondra pulled up the lines and stopped the horses 
"I'm afraid we're in danger of losing
our way, Mr. Commissioner!" And the lad peered intently into the darkness.
The commissioner looked gravely at the
driver's face on which not a trace of his former mischief was visible. 
"Boy, open your eyes, or I'll not
answer for the consequences. You'll get a thrashing.** 
Ondra jerked the reins, swished his whip and
cried, "Hold on tight, Mr. Commissioner!" Far off in the distance
before them the lights of the village glimmered. The distant echoes of dogs'
barking was carried to them. A few feet to the right of them glistened the
pearly surface of a great pool of motionless water. The coach turned its course
in that direction. 
"What's that?" asked the
commissioner. 
"A swamp, Mr. Commissioner. The road
leads right through it. It's shallow, don't be afraid. Only a few holes here
and there. I usually miss 'em, whether I go by wagon or on foot. Vyee, there,
sirs! Hold tight, Mr. Commissioner!" 
The horses plunged into the cold water,
which mirrored the starry sky. They proceeded more and more cautiously as they
began to sink deeper and deeper into the mire. The dead surface of the
pearl-green water broke into lively motion. 
"Stop, you cattle!" cried the
commissioner in terror, drawing his coat tightly round him. "You'll drown
me, you fool! Can't you see the coach is filling with water! Stop! Stop!" 
Ondra stopped. The coach sank in to the
bottom, standing in the middle of a swamp whose margin was lost in the
impenetrable blackness. 
"Ho! Go ahead!" bawled Ondra to
his horses. His powerful young voice reechoed through the night. Near by some
wild ducks fluttered excitedly and vanished in the dark. 
"Guess we, too, have to turn into
moor-hens and wade out," said Ondra thoughtfully, "or else " 
"Oh, you idiot! Just wait till we get
but of this! I'll break every bone in your body! We'll drown here like rats!
You ass!" 
"No, we won't drown, Mr. Commissioner,
we won't drown, don't be afraid. In this darkness anyone would miss the way.
Just be calm," said Ondra, and began to examine the harness. Then he
proceeded to buckle and unbuckle various straps, swearing loudly, tying, untying,
cursing incessantly. Finally he resumed his place on the driver's seat, swung
his whip and shouted, "Vyee, there! Go on!" 
The horses pulled and went forward.
Suddenly one of them slipped loose from the shaft and staggered ahead in the
mire, free of the harness. The other horse stood still with the coach. 
"Ho, you! What's happened now?"
shrieked the commissioner. 
"Stop, you! Dorcha, Dorcha!"
called Ondra to the liberated horse,, and began to coax it to come back. 
But the animal, frightened by the water,
turned round and warily made its way back in die direction of the shore, where
it gradually lose itself to view, wholly oblivious of the pleadings of his
master. 
The commissioner stood up excitedly in the
coach, terror written on every feature. * 
At that instant Ondra quickly leaped onto
the other horse and, following in Dorcha's path, continued to call loudly,
"Dorcha, Dorcha, wait! Come back Dorcha, Dorcha!" 
"Where are you going? Stop! What are
you doing, you cattle? You crazy fool! Oh, you lousy peasant! I'll fix
you!" 
In the darkness only merry laughter was his
response. 
"Oh, you cattle, so you're leaving me
here! To perish! For the beasts to devour me! Boy, don't do it, please, I beg
you!" implored the commissioner in a trembling voice. 
"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, Mr.
Commissioner” sounded Ondra's voice. "No wild beasts here in the swamp.
Just wrap up, so you don't take cold. To-morrow morning early, bright and early
Til come. There's hay in the coach, make yourself a bed. I'll not charge you
for the night's lodging!" 
"Boy, don't joke," pleaded the
commissioner. "Don't leave me! Come back! Pull me out of here!" 
"It's dark, sir, very dark. I can't
see a thing! And my horse has run away! How can I help you? I can't do
it!" 
The commissioner heard the mocking voice
wafted back out of the darkness. Terrified at the prospect, alone there in the
middle of the dismal swamp, he burst into tearful entreaty. 
"Ondra, come back! Please please! I'll
pay you well pay you anything! Help me out of this! I'll die here! I have
children! They're waiting for me! It's Christmas! Have you no heart?" His
voice broke in desperation. He listened, but no answer came. Then, as if bereft
of his senses, he howled out into the unanswering darkness: "Ho, fellow!
Cattle! You ox! You beast! Come back! Take me out of this! Have pity! My
children! Christmas! You peasant cur! You dog!" 
And sinking back into the coach, he drew
his fur coat about him and burst out crying like a child. 
But the black night gave no answer.
Category:Ivanov
Category:Bulgarian Stories