Kalina Baluta slammed the door and left. He, a good-hearted fatso, was tired of his wife’s complaints that he was always in the forest, that he was just a guest in his own home, a stranger.
But how else could it be—Kalina was a forest ranger. When your work never ends, when your responsibilities are so wide-ranging, you’re hardly going to lounge at home in front of the fireplace. But this was no excuse, as far as his wife went. She wanted him to clean the well, then she wanted kids, then the roof of the house was leaking, then the chimney was collapsing; you never knew what she would want next. All Kalina ever heard from her lips was a constant string of complaints—it was hell, no kind of life. Anyone else would have gotten fed up long ago, would have done himself in. But Kalina Baluta wasn’t like that—he was calm, gentle, and humble. Not a man, as people say, but a doormat. The lowest of the low. All he had it in himself to do was leave. Slam the door and leave. Like just now, heading out to the forest, to his beloved Belovezh Forest.
Kalina felt rejuvenated in the forest. He chugged along. He calmed down. It was here he could forget about his wife’s grumbling, the way she smelled. It was only in the forest that Baluta ever felt good. It was there that he was in his element: he never got lost, always finding the way home. In the forest, everything knew him, and he in turn knew almost every living thing. Wild animals, trees, and birds were Kalina Baluta’s best friends—they greeted him, spoke with him, and often consoled him.
Kalina Baluta was in no one’s debt. He took care of his friends. It’s no coincidence that the feeding trough he made was awarded a silver medal at the International Friends of the Forest Exhibition. His nesting boxes too received a special prize. And as much as the organizers of the exhibition tried to talk Kalina into selling his troughs, even offering huge sums of money, Baluta wasn’t tempted. He kept repeating that he’d made them for his friends in the forest, which is why he wouldn’t give them up to any strange animals he’d never met, not to speak of foreigners.
The troughs returned to the forest, as did the nesting boxes. Kalina Baluta never regretted it, though his wife grumbled that it would have been possible to buy a house in Minsk if he’d sold it all. No, Kalina Baluta would never move to the republic’s capital. What would he do without the forest? He’d suffocate right on the asphalt.
And what pure air there was in the forest! All that oxygen! You want to breathe it all in, fill your chest, suck that freshness in.
Look, a squirrel galloping along the pine branches: his little tail twitching back and forth. And there Kalina could see moose tracks. Looks like the poor thing was limping, injured. Baluta wished he could take care of it—he feelt sorry for the elk.
Everyone needs sympathy, love. If it wasn’t for Baluta, there would be no wisents left for Europe to take pride in. Kalina fed the calves with his own hands, gave them milk, swaddled them, rocking them in his arms. Later they thanked him with their affection, following Kalina around as though he were their mother, never letting him go anywhere unaccompanied. They would stare down any strangers who approached. Kalina’s wife was jealous again. And for no reason.
Kalina Baluta didn’t like hunters, he didn’t understand the morbid pleasure people took in killing animals, especially wisents. They were such trusting beasts. Baluta had never owned nor would ever buy a rifle. However, such was life: Hunters open fire at wild animals in the forest, claiming the animal population would skyrocket otherwise. Nonsense!
A badger ran off, thumping along . . . How adorable! Most likely going back to his family. And here’s a little river, a beaver dam. Those crazy beavers, look how many trees they pulled down without showing the least remorse. Baluta will have to have a word with them.
He bent over, scooped up some water with his palms, and drank it greedily. Good-tasting water from the river—clean, pure, almost like bottled water.
Refreshed, Kalina Baluta stood up, wiped his thick mustache with the palm of his hand, and headed deeper into the forest.
It became darker and darker, harder and harder to force his way through the pine.
A hare bounded off, frightened. And this long-eared tailless wonder made good its escape.
Kalina smiled. He proceeded further. “What might be awaiting me?” he wondered. What is awaiting the marten, the forest polecat, the mink?
There was a problem with the wild boars. It was impossible to come to an agreement with them. Kalina tried one way to appease them, and then another, but no matter what he did, they still liked to make their way out of the forest, dig up the potatoes of this or that collective farmer, and leave tracks all over the fields. The collective farmers were angry, calling for revenge. Which was understandable—when there are no potatoes left, whole families go hungry. What can a forest ranger tell them (the people)? Nothing. Which is why he guiltily lowers his head, when they threaten to shoot all the wild boars.
Baluta was very angry, of course. The wild boars aren’t to blame. The brown-nose fox, having killed his neighbors’ hens, isn’t guilty either, nor is the mad gray wolf that stalked and bit a bunch of students out mushroom hunting. All of whom died last fall. They should have been more careful. That’s what nature is like; if you don’t know how to deal with it, keep away. Don’t go into the forest if you’re afraid of ticks and snakes.
He couldn’t imagine keeping away from nature himself. He loves it. Love, love is the only foundation for it all. As the forest ranger likes to say, nature tears down even the mightiest walls of distrust.
Baluta stood near a pine. He looked at its trunk. The bark was damaged, it’s clear that a bear had sharpened its claws there. That disobedient bear—the forest ranger knows him well. A four-year-old male.
Kalina Baluta put his hand on the tree’s wound. He caressed it. His fingers became smeared with resin. Kalina began to cry, together with the tree. He embraced it like a brother, like a beloved one. He comforted it. Baluta felt sorry for the tree, sorry for the broken branch, sorry for the trampled moss, the needle, the little dug-up lingonberry bush, the fallen leaf, the worm-ridden mushroom.
A cuckoo bird cuckooed somewhere nearby. Kalina Baluta listened. A nightingale sang in the depths of the forest. Another joined in. A third. A black grouse. The deafening chirping of this bird orchestra sounded sweet to Baluta’s sensitive ear. Baluta would have liked to sit there and enjoy the concert, but he had to keep moving—there was work to do. Ever deeper.
It was already well past midday.
A small meadow opened up, as if there were no thick forest surrounding it. This was the territory of a regiment of timid partridges. Kalina Baluta, following them with his eyes, lay on the grass; he always did that. He looked at the sky. Not a cloud. Blue. A jet was flying by, leaving a white tail behind. It dirtied the sky, which was annoying. A little beetle crawled onto Baluta’s cheek. It tickled pleasantly. The forest ranger closed his eyes. The little beetle went along Kalina’s forehead and stopped at his eyebrow. It waited. The forest ranger carefully reached for and picked up the little beetle. It flailed its legs, wanting to escape. A hawk circled in the sky. The freed beetle tripped, ran, and soon hid itself in the depths of the grass.
In Belovezh Forest.
Mushrooms. There are so many of them there: slippery jacks, gypsy mushrooms, red-capped scaber stalks, and yellow knights.
A beautiful little red-capped fly agaric mushroom met Kalina Baluta and saluted him. Baluta immediately repaid this honor and then marched ceremoniously toward a small spruce grove, raising his legs high. There was a plantation of chestnut boletus mushrooms under its delicate, scarf-like branches. Just take some if you’re hungry, and aren’t afraid of getting poisoned.
Kalina Baluta knew the mushrooms of his forest well. He doesn’t eat them. He never has. He could eat one if he forced himself, but no, he will never put one in his mouth.
For Baluta, the forest mushrooms are works of art. Right there is the boletus, the king. And here are the others—his subjects, his courtiers. Kalina Baluta stepped carefully, trying not to touch any of them; heaven forbid he should injure them.
A good feeling. Calm.
“It’s not far now, it’s actually quite close,” the forest ranger said to himself. Soon. There’s the hundred-year-old larch, a pine with two trunks, an anthill. They, along with the forest, didn’t seem so imposing anymore.
Kalina Baluta began to breathe deeper. His steps became faster and faster. The sweat of excitement covered his face. His hands began to shake, without his knowledge—and he saw a roe deer caught in a trap. The helpless creature, tangled in a noose, was laying on its side, not struggling anymore, dying. In her eyes—a dutiful resignation to fate.
“I made it just in time,” Kalina Baluta thought. By a hair, he repeated as he listened closely to the weakening beating of the roe deer’s heart.
Soon it will be dusk.
Still trembling terribly, forest ranger Kalina Baluta undid his belt, finding himself fighting a particularly uncooperative buckle.
He was nervous.
The roe deer was barely breathing.
It was time to save her.
Baluta deftly took off his pants and lay down half naked by the creature. For some time he didn’t move, as if waiting for something, listening intently to something. Kalina waited.
Ready, he inhaled.
He tightened his buttock muscles.
He made the wailing sound of a roe deer male.
The threatening call of a deer buck echoed through the forest, frightening any and all nearby animals. You could hear them as they scattered in all directions.
Baluta pressed himself against the dying animal as though it were the Motherland itself—any closer would have been impossible. He placed one hand lightly on the warm fur of the roe deer, while the other grasped her tightly. A moment, and he’s already . . . in her. At the beginning he moves very cautiously, slowly. Later, as his conscience clears, faster and faster, as if wanting to get somewhere, as if he was pursuing something, like a predator giving chase.
After some time, the forest ranger was stroking the fur of the roe deer with one hand, squeezing her hip with the fingers of his other, quietly lowing to himself under his breath, and panting.
The creature groaned.
Soaked with sweat, Kalina Baluta straightened his back.
He froze for a moment.
He’d burst inside her.
The roe deer, pierced through its side, winced. And yet, there was hope in her eyes.
The dew-covered forest ranger Kalina Baluta, having just freed the creature from that noose, slapped it on the back firmly with his palm, and leaned back. The roe deer jumped up on her legs as though awakening from some dreadful dream, then plunged into the forest. Free again.
Kalina Baluta, smiling mischievously, followed the beautiful little deer with a kind-hearted glance. He said good-bye in his thoughts. Would he meet her again in this life? Yes, they will see each other once more, he consoled himself, smelling the sweat of the doe, which had soaked into his body.
Satisfied, Baluta curled his mustache upward, and returned to the trap. He resets it for another creature.
It’s as if nothing has happened in this forest protected by the state. The satisfied creatures got ready for bed, and the birds quieted down. Who will wind up in the trap next time, forest ranger Kalina Baluta wondered, making his way through the dark forest, heading home: a forest polecat, a lynx, or perhaps a very lost giraffe?
Once again full of energy, Kalina Baluta returned to his wife, and she was bawling. And our sensitive forest ranger had no reason to suspect that today, with just barely a year between himself and retirement, the largest country in the world, the USSR, had been erased from the map thanks to a few careless signatures in Belovezh.
TRANSLATED FROM LITHUANIAN BY JAYDE WILL