Novels, Tales, Journeys

Kirdjali was Bulgarian by birth. Kirdjali in Turkish means “warrior,” “daredevil.” I do not know his real name.

Kirdjali, with his banditry, brought terror to the whole of Moldavia. To give some idea of him, I will recount one of his exploits. One night he and the Arnaut^*1 Mikhailaki raided a Bulgarian village together. They set fire to it from both ends and started going from hut to hut. Kirdjali wielded the knife and Mikhailaki carried the booty. They both shouted “Kirdjali! Kirdjali!” The whole village took to its heels.

When Alexander Ypsilanti proclaimed the insurrection1 and began to recruit his army, Kirdjali brought him several of his old comrades. The real goal of the Hetairists was scarcely known to them, but the war provided an occasion for getting rich at the expense of the Turks, and maybe also of the Moldavians—and that they found clear enough.

Alexander Ypsilanti was personally courageous, but he did not possess the qualities necessary for the role he had assumed so ardently and so imprudently. He was unable to get along with the men he had to lead. They neither respected nor trusted him. After the unfortunate battle in which the flower of Greek youth perished, Iordaki Olymbioti advised him to retire and took his place himself. Ypsilanti galloped off to the Austrian border and from there sent his curses upon the men, whom he called rebels, cowards, and blackguards. Most of these cowards and blackguards perished within the walls of the Seku monastery or on the banks of the Prut, desperately defending themselves against a ten times stronger adversary.

Kirdjali was in the detachment of Georgi Kantakuzin,2 of whom the same thing might be repeated as was said of Ypsilanti. On the eve of the battle of Skulyani, Kantakuzin asked the Russian authorities for permission to join our border post. The detachment remained without a leader; but Kirdjali, Saphianos, Kantagoni, and the others found no need for a leader.

It seems that no one has described the battle of Skulyani in all its touching truth. Picture to yourself seven hundred men—Arnauts, Albanians, Greeks, Bulgarians, and all sorts of riffraff—with no notion of the art of war, retreating in the face of fifteen thousand Turkish cavalry. This detachment huddled against the bank of the Prut and set up two small cannon found in the gospodar’s^*2 courtyard in Jassy, used for firing salutes during birthday parties. The Turks would have been glad to use grapeshot, but did not dare to without permission from the Russian authorities: the shot was bound to fly over to our bank. The commander of the border post (by now deceased), who had been in military service for forty years, had never in his life heard the whistle of bullets, but this time God granted him the chance. A few whizzed past his ears. The dear old fellow got very angry and sharply scolded the major of the Okhotsky infantry regiment attached to the post. The major, not knowing what to do, went running to the river and shook his finger at the delibash,^*3 who were prancing on the opposite bank. The delibash, seeing that, turned and galloped off, and the whole Turkish detachment followed them. The major who shook his finger was called Khorchevsky. I do not know what became of him.

The next day, however, the Turks attacked the Hetairists. Not daring to use either grapeshot or cannonballs, they ventured, contrary to their custom, to use cold steel. It was a stiff battle. They wielded yatagans.^*4 Lances were noticed for the first time on the Turkish side; these lances were Russian: Nekrasovists3 were fighting in their ranks. The Hetairists were permitted by our sovereign to cross the Prut and take refuge in our border post. They began to cross. Kantagoni and Saphianos were the last ones left on the Turkish side. Kirdjali, wounded the day before, already lay in the border post. Saphianos was killed. Kantagoni, a very fat man, was wounded in the belly by a lance. He raised his saber with one hand, took hold of the enemy’s lance with the other, drove it deeper into himself, and was thus able to reach his killer with the saber and fall together with him.

It was all over. The Turks came out victorious. Moldavia was cleared. Some six hundred Arnauts scattered over Bessarabia; they had no idea how to feed themselves, but were still grateful to Russia for her protection. The life they led was idle, but not dissipated. They were always to be seen in the coffeehouses of half-Turkish Bessarabia, with long chibouks in their mouths, sipping coffee grounds from little cups. Their embroidered jackets and pointed red slippers had already begun to wear out, but they still wore their tasseled caps cocked, and yatagans and pistols still stuck from behind their wide belts. No one complained of them. It was impossible to imagine that these poor, peaceable fellows were the notorious Klephtes4 of Moldavia, comrades of the terrible Kirdjali, and that he himself was among them.

The pasha in command of Jassy learned of it and, on the basis of peace treaties, demanded that the Russian authorities turn the bandit over.

The police began to investigate. They found out that Kirdjali was indeed in Kishinev. He was caught in the house of a fugitive monk, in the evening, when he was having supper, sitting in the dark with seven comrades.

Kirdjali was put under guard. He did not try to conceal the truth and admitted that he was Kirdjali.

“But,” he added, “since I crossed the Prut, I haven’t touched even a hair of anyone’s property, I haven’t harmed the least Gypsy. For the Turks, the Moldavians, the Wallachians, I am, of course, a bandit, but for the Russians I am a guest. When Saphianos, having spent all his grapeshot, came to us in the border post, to take buttons, nails, chains, and yatagan handles from the wounded men for his last shots, I gave him twenty beshliks^*5 and was left without money. As God is my witness, I, Kirdjali, lived by begging! Why do the Russians now turn me over to my enemies?”

After that, Kirdjali fell silent and calmly began to wait for the deciding of his fate.

He did not wait long. The authorities, not being obliged to look at bandits from their romantic side, and convinced of the justice of the demand, ordered Kirdjali sent to Jassy.

A man of intelligence and heart, then an unknown young official, now occupying an important post,5 gave me a vivid description of his departure:

At the gates of the jail stood a postal karutsa…(Perhaps you do not know what a karutsa is. It is a low wicker cart, to which until recently six or eight little nags would be hitched. A Moldavian in moustaches and a lambskin hat rode on one of them, constantly shouting and cracking his whip, and his nags went at a rather swift trot. If one of them began to falter, he would unhitch it with terrible curses and abandon it by the roadside, unconcerned for its fate. On his way back he was sure to find it in the same place, calmly grazing on the green steppe. It was not infrequent that a traveler, leaving one station with eight horses, would arrive at the next with a pair. That was fifteen years ago. Nowadays, in Russified Bessarabia, they have adopted the Russian way of harnessing and the Russian cart.)

Such a karutsa stood by the gates of the jail in 1821, on one of the last days of September. Jewesses, their sleeves hanging and their slippers dragging, Arnauts in their ragged and picturesque attire, slender Moldavian women with black-eyed children in their arms, surrounded the karutsa. The men kept silent, the women excitedly awaited something.

The gates opened and several police officers came out; after them two soldiers led out the fettered Kirdjali.

He seemed to be about thirty years old. The features of his swarthy face were regular and stern. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and gave a general impression of extraordinary physical strength. A multicolored turban covered his head at an angle, a broad belt girded his slender waist; a dolman of thick blue broadcloth, the wide folds of a shirt falling to his knees, and beautiful shoes completed his attire. His look was proud and calm.

One of the officers, a red-faced little old man in a faded uniform with three buttons dangling from it, pinched a pair of tin-rimmed spectacles to the purple bump that served him as a nose, unfolded a document, and, with a nasal twang, began to read in Moldavian. From time to time he glanced haughtily at the fettered Kirdjali, to whom the document apparently referred. Kirdjali listened to him attentively. The official finished his reading, folded the document, shouted menacingly at the people, commanded them to make way, and ordered the karutsa brought. Then Kirdjali turned to him and spoke a few words in Moldavian; his voice trembled, his face changed; he wept and fell at the feet of the police officer, clanking his chains. The police officer, frightened, jumped back; the soldiers were about to pick Kirdjali up, but he got up by himself, gathered his shackles, stepped into the karutsa, and shouted “Haida!”^*6 A gendarme sat beside him, the Moldavian cracked his whip, and the karutsa rolled off.

“What did Kirdjali say to you?” the young official asked the policeman.

“You see, sir,” the policeman replied, laughing, “he begged me to take care of his wife and child, who live in a Bulgarian village not far from Kilia. He’s afraid they may suffer on account of him. Stupid folk, sir.”

The young official’s account moved me deeply. I felt sorry for poor Kirdjali. For a long time I knew nothing of his fate. It was several years later that I ran into that young official. We got to talking of past times.

“And what about your friend Kirdjali?” I asked. “Do you know what’s become of him?”

“That I do,” he replied, and told me the following:

Kirdjali, having been brought to Jassy, was presented to the pasha, who condemned him to be impaled. The execution was put off until some holiday or other. Meanwhile he was locked up in prison.

The prisoner was guarded by seven Turks (simple people and at heart just as much bandits as Kirdjali); they respected him and listened to his wondrous tales with an eagerness common to the whole of the East.

Close relations developed between the guards and the prisoner. One day Kirdjali said to them: “Brothers, my hour is near! No one can escape his fate. Soon I shall part with you. I would like to leave you something to remember me by.”

The Turks were all ears.

“Brothers,” Kirdjali went on, “three years ago, when the late Mikhailaki and I were bandits, we buried a pot of galbeni^*7 on the steppe not far from Jassy. It looks like neither of us is going to have that pot. So be it: take it yourselves and divide it up amicably.”

The Turks nearly lost their minds. A discussion went on about how to find the secret spot. They thought and thought, and decided that Kirdjali himself should take them there.

Night came. The Turks removed the fetters from the captive’s feet, tied his hands with a rope, and set off with him from town to the steppe.

Kirdjali led them, keeping to the same direction, from one burial mound to another. They walked for a long time. Finally, Kirdjali stopped by a wide stone, counted off twenty paces to the south, stamped his foot, and said: “Here.”

The Turks arranged themselves. Four drew their yatagans and began to dig. Three remained on guard. Kirdjali sat down on a stone and watched them work.

“Well, so? Soon now?” he asked. “Have you found it?”

“Not yet,” replied the Turks, working so hard that the sweat poured off them.

Kirdjali began to show impatience.

“What people,” he said. “You don’t even know how to dig. I’d have done it in two minutes. Untie my hands, boys, give me a yatagan.”

The Turks pondered and started talking it over.

“Why not?” they decided. “Let’s untie his hands and give him a yatagan. Where’s the harm? There’s one of him and seven of us.”

And the Turks untied his hands and gave him a yatagan.

At last Kirdjali was free and armed. What he must have felt!…He promptly started digging, the guards were helping him…Suddenly he stabbed one of them with his yatagan and, leaving the steel in his chest, snatched two pistols from behind his belt.

The remaining six, seeing Kirdjali armed with two pistols, took to their heels.

Nowadays Kirdjali does his banditry around Jassy. He recently wrote to the gospodar, demanding five thousand levi^*8 from him and threatening, in case of failure to pay, to set fire to Jassy and get as far as the gospodar himself. The five thousand levi were conveyed to him.

That’s Kirdjali!

*1 Albanian (Turkish)

*2 governor’s

*3 cavalrymen of the Turkish army

*4 long, curved Turkish sabers

*5 Turkish silver coins

*6 “Let’s go!” (Tatar)

*7 Romanian gold coins

*8 Bulgarian currency, from the word for lion (lev)